Daubitz Castle
Daubitz Castle , Dubčanski hród in Upper Sorbian , is a baroque country castle in northern Upper Lusatia and is located in the village of Daubitz of the same name . The building forms the center of a manor complex , the specialty of which is the unity of manor, palace and palace park, which has remained almost undisturbed to the present day.
location
The manor , of which the baroque castle is part, is located on the Weißen Schöps and forms the western end of the street and church village Daubitz in the municipality of Rietschen ( district of Görlitz ). In terms of natural space and geography, it is located in the Upper Lusatian heath and pond landscape . Again to the west of the manor , the castle park , laid out in the English style and reminiscent of the Fürst-Pückler-Park Bad Muskau , a few kilometers to the north, extends to the boundary of Neuhammer .
history
The manor was created during the German settlement in the first half of the 13th century as the seat of a medieval rulership encompassing numerous villages. The location in a swampy depression on the Weißen Schöps favored the construction of a moated castle. A member of the von Rackel family can be documented for the first time in Daubitz in 1381, and from then on he was to remain the owner of the manor until 1666. At the turn of the 14th to the 15th century, the von Rackel had a hammer mill built to the west of the manor only about a kilometer away, from which the town of Neuhammer emerged.
The Daubitz estate, meanwhile significantly reduced by the division of inheritance and purchase, passed into the possession of the von Pentzig family after the departure of the Rackel family . This was followed in the first half of the 18th century by the von Ziegler and Klipphausen family , who finally sold the manor to the von Roeder family in 1783. Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich von Roeder auf Daubitz became the first district administrator of the newly formed Rothenburg district in the Prussian margraviate of Upper Lusatia in 1816 . Bourgeois owners of the estate followed von Roeder, among them the Böttcher family and the councilor Christian Friedrich Roscher. The latter had the Daubitzer Schlosspark laid out between 1875 and 1895 based on the Fürst-Pückler-Park Bad Muskau. In 1895 the Görlitz magistrate finally bought the manor and, after initially leasing it, made it available as a rest home for Görlitz children. In addition, between 1911 and 1916 the dining room of the palace was used to hold Sunday services, as the old Daubitz church had to be replaced by a new building due to its dilapidation. After the Second World War, a children's home was set up in the castle, which later became the “State Children's Combination Daubitz”. Private apartments were set up in the farm buildings. After the end of the GDR, the castle was used for a short time as an interim home for the Daubitz Evangelical Kindergarten, during the renovation of the old school, the actual main building of the facility, in accordance with the listed buildings. Daubitz Castle has been vacant since 1993 and has since passed from municipal ownership to changing private owners.
The attachment
The manor and park are flanked by the Weißen Schöps and the Vorderen Graben, which are connected by another ditch on the east side of the courtyard. The latter may have emerged from a moat in the moated castle and was later used to regulate the water supply for the undershot grain and oil mill . This formed part of the southern farm building and currently no longer has a mill wheel or grinder. On the opposite north side of the courtyard there is an approximately one hundred meter long farm building that, due to its street-side location, also forms the gatehouse of the manor. This building housed cattle sheds, a brewery and a still - later an inn and currently rental apartments. The eastern side of the courtyard consisted of a stable building, the central inspector's house and a large barn that no longer existed. There are now also rental apartments in the remaining sections of this building unit.
Opposite this - on the park side - is the actual baroque palace. The two-storey building on a simple rectangular floor plan with nine window axes on the courtyard side and a mansard hipped roof divided by a few dormers was built in 1720 on the cellar walls of the previous building. The baroque heraldic cartouches with the aristocratic crown on the main portal are reminiscent of the owner couple. These were the royal Polish and electoral Saxon chamberlain and hunting junker Christian August von Ziegler and Klipphausen (1692–1750) and his wife Johanna Charlotte Tugendreich, née. von Pentzig (1693–1762). As her father's only heir, she had brought the Daubitz manor and the Neuhammer accessories into the marriage. Daubitz Castle has largely been preserved in its baroque architectural form. Christian Friedrich Roscher only had a rich, neo-renaissance style arbor extended by a gable structure and a flight of steps, as part of the creation of the palace gardens on the west side. The facade facing the courtyard appears extremely plain today. Only the three central window axes emerge as a central projection. A somewhat narrower dwelling closes this off at the top. Inside the castle, the alterations and fixtures made while it was being used as a children's home seriously damaged the overall effect of the building. Nevertheless, the baroque room layout can still be seen clearly. The entrance hall is on the ground floor, flanked to the left by the large dining room with another salon and sanitary rooms. On the opposite side were the kitchen and other ancillary rooms. Also on the ground floor are the entrances to three separate cellars, which in turn are divided into different rooms. From the entrance hall, a three-flight staircase with a half-platform leads to the upper floor. Access to the park is possible from the platform via the arbor and the outside staircase. From the arms of the stairs you first enter the elongated, narrow hallway on the upper floor. This leads to three rooms facing the courtyard, which together with the corner rooms also facing the courtyard form an enfilade . Of these corner rooms, the northern one has the richest stucco ceiling in the palace. Whether this room had a prominent representative function and if so which one cannot be decided on the basis of the current state of knowledge. The stucco profiles in the other rooms, on the other hand, appear significantly reduced. There was also a hall-like room on the upper floor, here in the northwestern part. However, this was divided into two separate rooms by a wall that was added later. With the help of the small staircase adjacent to these rooms one arrives at the three-story attic, which contains a few simple built-in chambers. These were possibly used as storage rooms or as accommodation for house staff.
All buildings of the former Daubitz manor, including the castle, are currently in a very bad condition.
The castle park
On an old appreciation card from 1885, a small garden-like park with a baroque structure can be seen southwest of the palace. However, this seems to have finally disappeared in the course of the establishment of the English park. The allotment garden areas of the tenants in the former farm buildings, which have since been removed, were later located at the named location.
The elongated, currently overgrown castle park connects to the west of the manor. The castle mediates between the two units with its corresponding facade design. Between 1875 and 1895, the last private owner of the manor, Christian Friedrich Roscher, had the park laid out in the English style . To this end, he consciously oriented himself towards the Fürst-Pückler-Park Bad Muskau, which is only a few kilometers away. For this purpose, he had the stream of the Vorderen Graben, which was previously still winding in the lower reaches, straightened and adapted to the course of the Rietschen-Daubitz connecting road. Weißer Schöps and Vorderer Graben unite about 800 meters from the Rittergutshof on the corridor border with Neuhammer and thus define the total length of the park. On the newly staked-out area, up to 200 meters wide, the former fields were now merged to form the large central park meadow and, following the course of the Weißen Schöps and the Vorderen Graben, a forest strip between ten and forty meters wide was planted to form the park meadow lock in. The forest strips are structured on the meadow side by several indentations that become weaker and weaker towards the west, tapering to the top. This makes the park meadow look longer. The shape of the park creates a central visual axis from the castle to the tapering end of the castle meadow. However, this line does not extend the axis of symmetry of the castle, but deviates from it by about 15 degrees. The park is accessed by a path running around the forest. From this path, through the indentations of the forest strips, new lines of sight to the park meadow are created. The system manages with very few design elements. Only an island of trees on the edge of the park meadow, about halfway up the visual axis, seems to oppose the strict system.
Not only the shape determines the effect of the park, but also the tree species used, including numerous rare ones. The planting of the forest strip creates different spaces. For example, a high beech forest alternates with a corridor of mighty oaks and various mixed forest zones .
After the liquidation of the manor, the park experienced various external uses. It served as a sports field or as a festival meadow. For the latter purpose, the park area was one in the 1970s on the southeastern edge cottage built.
Park and Schloss Daubitz are currently privately owned and are not open to the public.
literature
- Jan Bergmann: From the history of the manor at Daubitz , in: Oberlausitzer Heimatblätter 18 (2008), pp. 55–60; 19 (2008), pp. 27-39.
- Lars-Arne Dannenberg / Matthias Donath : Castles of Eastern Upper Lusatia , Meißen 2009, p. 110.
- Ernst Panse (Hrsg.): Parkführer durch die Oberlausitz , Bautzen 1999, pp. 144–148.
Coordinates: 51 ° 23 ′ 47.6 " N , 14 ° 49 ′ 12.2" E