Dahlen Castle
The Castle Dahlen is a late Baroque castle in Dahlen in the Free State of Saxony . It became the scene of history on February 21, 1763, when Prussia's King Frederick II the Great signed the final act of the Peace Agreement for the Seven Years' War there .
The construction goes back largely to Heinrich Graf von Bünau in the middle of the 18th century. The castle was destroyed in a fire in 1973 and fell into ruin. The Schloss- und Parkverein Dahlen eV has been working on the preservation and reconstruction of the castle since 2009. Meanwhile, the Dahlen Castle with its events is again an attractive point of attraction for visitors from near and far.
history
Since the beginning of the 13th century there was a noble farm in Dahlen , called curia , which was managed by ministerials of the Bishop of Naumburg . A manor soon emerged from the farm, the owners of which acted as guardians of the market and the road to Torgau , as well as lords of the town. In the 14th century, the overlordship over Dahlen changed from the Naumburg diocese to the Bohemian Crown and from there in the middle of the 15th century to the Wettins , which Dahlen passed on to the von Schleinitz family .
In 1618 Heinrich von Schleinitz sold Dahlen for 44,200 Bohemian guilders to his brother-in-law, the Reichspfennigmeister and Privy Councilor Christoph von Loss the Elder. J. , who exchanged it for the Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony in 1619 . The elector sold the Dahlen , which had been marked by the Thirty Years' War, to his secret councilor David von Döring. His granddaughter, Auguste Helene von Döring, married the Reichshofrat Heinrich von Bünau in 1721 , who five years later took over the management of the manor himself.
Between the years 1744 and 1751 Heinrich von Bünau had the palace building, including a courtyard and orangery, built in the Dresden Baroque style. It was built with sandstone, which was obtained from the Elbe Sandstone Mountains . The floor plan of the building corresponded to a Latin H, which should probably refer to the first name of the builder. The castle had two floors and an attic floor. Adam Friedrich Oeser was responsible for the ceiling paintings of the Kaisersaal, the large ballroom, the entrance hall and the staircase, which were designed in the Viennese Baroque and Classicism . An extensive library of the castle was created by Johann Joachim Winckelmann . Behind the castle, a two-lane ramp led into the English-style castle park, today's Dahlens City Park.
Dahlen Castle gained historical importance with the Prussian King Friedrich II the Great , who resided there in 1763 on the occasion of the peace negotiations in nearby Hubertusburg Castle near Wermsdorf , which ended the Seven Years' War . There, “ old Fritz ” signed the final act of the peace agreement on February 21, 1763 and is said to have said that the palace's amenities were “ really quite fabulous, almost exquisite! “Have found. In a letter dated March 14, 1763, to the Countess von Bünau, who resided in Dresden , Reubig, the castle administrator, was not quite as positive about the hospitality of the king :
- “ Your Majesty the King of Prussia stayed here for over three weeks from February 19th and caused us a lot of unrest, so we the same, with the whole suite, finally got rid of yesterday morning at 8 o'clock, God be thanked for that and traveled to Torgau, have left quite a souvenir, made the rooms and furniture very inconspicuous and almost ruined them. "
In 1851 the castle passed to the Sahrer von Sahr family , who lived here until they were expropriated by the Soviet occupying forces in 1945. Karl Detlev Siegfried Sahrer von Sahr auf Dahlen adopted his nephew Hanns Heinrich Graf von Schönberg in 1939 , who took the name Sahrer von Sahr von Schönberg .
Art objects and inventory were removed from the castle as early as the Second World War . After Schönberg was expropriated without compensation during the land reform in autumn 1945, the Soviet military administration had all art objects transferred to the Old Masters Picture Gallery in a castle salvage operation. These included works by Italian masters from the 16th to the 18th centuries, such as Dresden city views by Canaletto , a collection of copper engravings and the ancestral gallery of the former castle owners.
A police school was housed in the castle building until 1954, after which an engineering school for meat processing, which was subordinate to the Ministry of Agriculture of the GDR , was set up. Students of different nationalities, especially from Vietnam , were accommodated and taught here.
Extensive renovation and restoration work has been carried out on the castle since the early 1970s. A fire broke out on the night of March 20, 1973, triggered by an improper connection of a cannon furnace. In addition to the Dahlen volunteer fire brigade , all the surrounding villages participated in the fire fighting. However, the operation was hindered by the intervention of the management of the Leipzig district , which finally took over the extinguishing work. The fire destroyed almost the entire central building of the palace, and the roof structure broke through to the ground floor. However, the district administration was responsible for the destruction of the side wing, which remained largely undamaged, and until April 1973 had the roof trusses and floors of the wing torn down with a wrecking ball. The same thing happened with a wing of the farm buildings to the north of the castle. The sum insured for the castle was used for other purposes by the Ministry of Agriculture.
Since then, only the foundation walls of the building can be seen as ruins. After reunification, the city of Dahlen carried out several security work on the ruins. In 2001, students from the Technical University of Dresden won first prize at the first exhibition academy, the architecture competition at denkmal 2000 in Leipzig , with their concept of rebuilding the Dahlen Palace as the main building of a botanical research center. Considerations to rebuild the castle have since failed due to the financing.
On January 3, 2009 the “Schloss- und Parkverein Dahlen e. V ”, with the intention of preserving the existing building fabric as well as the city park through maintenance. The association tries to maintain general attention for the castle through events. By August 2011, the association was able to secure the building to such an extent that it is completely accessible to visitors. After the roof, the peace room is to be repaired by 2013 . The cost of the complete repair is estimated at around 18 million euros.
In September 2017, as part of the Workcamp Parquet 2017, high-quality parquet based on historical models was laid in the mirror and in the Kaisersaal. Parquet layers from all over Europe took part in this campaign free of charge.
In 2019, three window axes on the inside of the right wing of the castle, which had previously been roughly plastered, were provided with three different facade samples in yellow and white. The aim is to try out their effects and to give the visitors an idea of the former and possibly one-time recurring splendor of the castle.
View from the city park (around 1900)
Garden front (1902)
View over the park pond to the castle (1902)
Castle Park (1902)
The castle ruins in 2009
See also
literature
- Cornelius Gurlitt : Dahlen. In: Descriptive representation of the older architectural and art monuments of the Kingdom of Saxony. 27. Booklet: Oschatz Official Authority (Part I) . CC Meinhold, Dresden 1905, p. 77.
- Barbara Gabriel: The Dahlen Castle Park . in: Sächsische Heimatblätter 54 (2008) 4, pp. 356–361
- Peter Haferstroh (ed.): The Dahlener Heide. Forays into cultural history. Edited by the Association for Village Cultural Development in Saxony e. V. Leipzig, Passage-Verlag, Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-9803465-6-0
- Claus Legal; Gert Legal: Friedrich II. King of Prussia, Saxony's enemy, regent at Dahlen Castle. Greifenverlag, Rudolstadt u. Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86939-371-1
- Helmuth Gröger: Dahlen Castle . In: Castles and Palaces in Saxony , Heimatwerk Sachsen, 1940, p. 94
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ The haunted castle in Saxony in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 19, 2011, page 28
- ↑ Workcamp Parquet 2017. Accessed April 26, 2019 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 22 ′ 2.8 ″ N , 12 ° 59 ′ 45.4 ″ E