Derneburg Castle

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Derneburg Castle (west side)

The Derneburg Castle is a castle in Derneburg in Lower Saxony . It goes back to an Augustinian women's choir founded in 1213 and later a Cistercian monastery that was redesigned in the middle of the 19th century by Georg Herbert Graf zu Münster into a castle in the English-Gothic Tudor style.

Monastery period

Remodeled remnants of the baroque monastery church from 1749

Originally there was a manor house in Derneburg, which the brothers Hermann I and Heinrich von Winzenburg had as a fiefdom from Burchard I von Loccum . Hermann I murdered his liege lord in 1130. Thereupon his son Hermann II handed over his court in Derneburg to Bishop Bernhard I of Hildesheim as atonement for the deed of his father with the proviso that a nunnery be founded. Due to a lack of financial means, this did not arise until 1213, when the convent of the Augustinian nuns was moved from Holle to Derneburg. This is how the Augustinian women's choir monastery in Derneburg was created in the castrum Sanctae virginis Derneburgense ("fortified house of the Holy Virgin of Derneburg").

In the following 10 years, the monastery expanded its property and added countless properties and tithe levies from the surrounding villages. Bishop Konrad II also handed over the main and baptismal church of St. Martin in Sottrum to the provost of the Derneburg monastery in 1223 . There is no document about the incorporation of the Sottrum church into the monastery. During an investigation at the Council of Basel in 1436, which was supposed to examine the legality of this transfer to the monastery, the documentary evidence of the incorporation could not be provided, since according to the monastery the documents were burned. However, the investigation must ultimately have turned out to be in favor of the monastery, since in the 16th century the entire property of the Sottrum church was in the possession of the monastery.

At the beginning of the 14th century the monastery became impoverished and the monastic customs were less and less respected by the sisters. In 1370 there was an excommunication . The abbot Heinrich Barnten from the Marienrode monastery had the disobedient nuns cleared the monastery without further ado in 1443 and handed over the order to the Cistercians . They sent nuns from Wöltingerode Abbey to Derneburg.

In 1523, the St. Andreas monastery parish placed itself under the protection of Erich I of Calenberg as part of the Hildesheim collegiate feud , because looting by rider Duke Heinrich II took place again and again . Derneburg Monastery - as an exclave of Calenberg - was therefore only reformed in 1543 when the Margravine Elisabeth of Brandenburg , Princess of Calenberg-Göttingen, visited the church.

With the Reformation in the 16th century, the monastery was converted into a Lutheran monastery for virgins, which was owned by the Dukes of Braunschweig until the 17th century . In 1643, after the reestablishment of the Hildesheim diocese in preparation for the Peace of Westphalia , the monastery was re-Catholicized and in 1651 settled as a filiation of Cistercian monks from the Rhenish Abbey of Altenberg under Abbot Jodokus Rebroik. The buildings were destroyed by multiple looting and contributions during the Thirty Years' War ; the monks met three old canonesses.

The Cistercians began with a brisk construction activity, took measures to improve the landscape around the monastery site and thus laid the foundation for the wealth of Derneburg, which is still visible today. With the tried and tested Cistercian hydraulic engineering, which is still recognizable today, they regulated the waters and created the Derneburg fish ponds. They opened up a sandstone quarry , where they extracted the building material for the farm buildings and the convent buildings, which were renovated in the 18th century. From 1735 to 1749 the Cistercians created the baroque monastery church (master builder Johann Daniel Köppel ) and the buildings of the domain. Through secularization , Prussia dissolved the abbey with 14 monks in 1803.

Conversion to a castle

Derneburg Castle with glass house and coach house, domain on the right

After the secularization of 1803 the monastery became a Prussian state domain . Four years later, French troops occupied the estate and looted it. In 1815, after the Congress of Vienna , Derneburg fell to the Welf Kingdom of Hanover as part of the Hildesheim Monastery . King George III gave the neglected former monastery of Derneburg and its property to the Hanoverian Minister Ernst Graf zu Münster (1766–1839) as a thank you for the success of the negotiations at the congress.

As a replacement for the abolished monastery church, which was also the official Catholic parish church, Ernst zu Munster had the church of St. Andrew in Sottrum built by the monastery chamber of Hanover ; part of the Derneburg church furnishings also came there.

His son Georg Herbert Graf zu Münster converted the monastery building into a castle with the help of the Hanoverian architect Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves from 1846–1848. In the course of renovations and new constructions, the buildings were given an architectural design in the English-Gothic Tudor style, which was unusual in Lower Saxony, but corresponded to the imagination of the Count who grew up in London.

The architect Laves created an English landscape garden around the castle under Count Ernst zu Münster and the facilities near the castle:

  • Derneburg Tea Temple (1827) (popularly) . Temple-like structure in the ancient Greek style with Doric columns on the Donnerberg as a lookout point for Count Ernst zu Münster with a fireplace room
  • Laves Bridge (1838). 1992 reconstructed pedestrian bridge over the Nette with the "Lavesbalken", a lens support below. The design enables a delicate bridge when spanning longer distances.
  • Mausoleum of Count Ernst zu Münster (1839). Erected as a steep Egyptian pyramid with a height of 10.51 m. Inside is the von-Münstersche family grave for the client and other family members.
  • Tower ruins near Astenbeck, which used to be part of the line of sight to the tea temple. Today the line of sight is covered by the trees, but the tower can be seen from Bundesstraße 6 .

Landscape park

When Count Ernst Friedrich Herbert zu Münster received the former Derneburg monastery, he had an English landscape garden laid out around the palace by Laves, the Hanoverian building director . This intention of the art-loving Count is apparently based on the fact that during his years in London he got to know the English landscape gardens of Stowe , Rousham and Stourhead, which were then known all over Europe . He endeavored to include meadows and fields as well as buildings, mills and ponds that served the landscape in his romantic design efforts in his native Derneburg. This was common in England in the area of ​​stately landscaped parks.

20th century

During the Second World War the castle was a military hospital of the Wehrmacht , after the war it was a hospital of the British Rhine Army . After the war, many displaced persons sought refuge in the castle, so that a refugee camp was established. Around 250 elderly people lived there in an elderly area for five years. The result was the Caritas St. Josef Home , which was relocated to Hildesheim in 1952 because the Count of Münster, who had fled to England, reclaimed his castle rooms.

In 1955 the state of Lower Saxony acquired the property of the castle for the operation of the formerly neighboring castle domain. The castle remained in the possession of the Münster family, who sold it to the artist Georg Baselitz in 1975 after five generations through Peter Graf zu Münster for 300,000 DM . In 2006, the US broker and art collector Andrew J. Hall acquired the property. Afterwards, the castle was merged with the adjoining domain in cooperation with the Schloss Derneburg Museum gGmbH, and the castle and domain were completely renovated in order to serve the Hall Art Foundation as a publicly accessible exhibition area.

The former greenhouse of the castle was converted in 1988 into a cultural event location and excursion restaurant under the name of the glass house .

literature

  • Hans Adolf Schultz : Castles and palaces of the Braunschweiger Land. Braunschweig 1980, ISBN 3-87884-012-8
  • Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The Derneburg near Hildesheim. Pp. 139–141, in: When Stones Could Talk. Volume III, Landbuch-Verlag, Hanover 1995, ISBN 3-7842-0515-1 .
  • Nicolaus Strube: The Cistercians in Derneburg (1651–1803). A late filiation of Altenberg. In: Altenberger Blätter 60 (November 2014), pp. 29–36.
  • Heinz-Joachim Tute: Historical gardens in the Hildesheim district. In: Yearbook 1996 of the district of Hildesheim. Pp. 150-152.
  • Rainer Schomann (Ed.), Urs Boeck : Park of the Derneburg Palace in: Historical Gardens in Lower Saxony, catalog for the state exhibition, opening on June 9, 2000 in the foyer of the Lower Saxony state parliament in Hanover . Hannover, 2000, pp. 148-149.
  • Margret Zimmermann, Hans Kensche: Castles and palaces in Hildesheimer Land . Hildesheim, 2001, pp. 35-37

Web links

Commons : Schloss Derneburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The monastery . From: derneburg.de, accessed on June 10, 2017
  2. ↑ a b St. Andreas in Sottrum ( Memento from January 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) History of St. Andreas in Sottrum, viewed on April 21, 2017
  3. ↑ Augustiner Choir Women Monastery in Derneburg (GSN: 78). In: Germania Sacra, accessed on December 27, 2014
  4. ^ Nicolaus Strube: The Cistercians in Derneburg (1651-1803). A late filiation of Altenberg. In: Altenberger Blätter 60 (November 2014), pp. 29–36.
  5. ↑ wohldenberg.de
  6. ↑ The Counts . From: derneburg.de, accessed on June 10, 2017
  7. ↑ Anja Lösel: A lock for oil in the star from September 1, 2009, accessed on June 2, 2015

Coordinates: 52 ° 5  '43.8 " N , 10 ° 7' 54.8"  E