Donaumünster Castle

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View of the castle from the castle garden

The Castle Donaumünster is the Alexander von Bernus-Straße 4 in Donaumünster , Tapfheim , district of Donau-Ries , administrative region of Swabia in the state of Bavaria .

history

Only Münster was the place name until 1923, it used to be in the Erlingshofen district and was initially owned by the Reichenau Monastery on Lake Constance . Since the 13th century, the knightly family of the Lords of Munster has been found, whose castle on the right bank of the Danube is first documented in 1256. In the possession of Count Ludwig the Elder of Oettingen since 1363 , the entire property was sold to the Holy Cross Monastery in Donauwörth in 1365 . Between 1720 and 1730, an abbot of this monastery had a castle-like Baroque office building with tail gables built. After the secularization operated by Napoleon , Münster came to the princes of Oettingen-Wallerstein in 1803 , who u. a. the entire church property including the so-called Donaumünster Castle , like other properties in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg , were awarded to Dagstuhl (today to Wadern in Saarland ) to compensate for the loss of territory .

In 1921 Alexander von Bernus , poet and alchemist , acquired the small baroque property, which he initially only used as a summer residence. After his two houses in Stuttgart (apartment and laboratory) were completely destroyed in the first bomb attack on the city in 1943, he moved to the little house with his third wife Isa von Bernus , née Isolde Oberländer, and their daughter Marina, born in 1933 from this marriage Baroque Donaumünster Castle back. Another daughter from the second marriage of Alexander von Bernus to the Baltic artist Imogen von Glasenapp , Ursula Pia von Bernus , was at most a visitor to Donaumünster Castle. The daughter of Alexander von Bernus with Isa von Bernus, Marina von Bernus, was married to Peter Harry Fuld (1921–1962), son and heir with Canadian citizenship of Harry Fuld (1879–1932), the founder of TN TELE NORMA . The marriage was divorced on July 27, 1961, Marina von Bernus moved to Canada .

Alexander von Bernus died at Donaumünster Castle on March 6, 1965, he was buried in the municipal cemetery in Donauwörth . His wife and widow Isa von Bernus lived in the slowly crumbling castle with a lifelong right of residence until her death on May 12, 2001. She died at the age of 103, cared for by friends, after she published her first book " Irene - Or the Metamorphosis of a Heart " in 1996 at the age of 98 .

The castle was home to the extensive private library that Alexander von Bernus had built up over many years due to his humanistic education, as well as the Soluna laboratory that he had built in accordance with his alchemical interests in its own new building connected to the castle building with an arcade. Above all, he researched the works of Paracelsus . From 1914 to 1921 v. Bernus and Conrad Johann Glückselig (1864–1934) on the development of spagyric medicines. After the First World War , on July 1, 1921, the alchemical-spagyric "Laboratorium Soluna" was founded at Neuburg Abbey. On September 1, 1926, he returned the Neuburg Abbey to the Benedictine Abbey of Beuron . In the spring of 1927 he moved the laboratory together with his residence to Stuttgart . There the company grew steadily until it was totally destroyed by air raids on the night of October 7th to 8th, 1943. As early as the spring of 1939, v. Bernus set up a branch on his estate at Donaumünster Castle, so that the company could continue to operate at Donaumünster Castle, where it has been since then, without experiencing any interruption.

After the death of Isa von Bernus, lengthy inheritance matters had to be settled, while at the same time the property had to be preserved from final ruin and the remains of the library were the object of an emergency rescue because of the leaky roof. Today his legacy of documents and the part of his extensive library that relates to alchemy is in the Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe .

In April 2016, the artist David Sohl acquired Donaumünster Castle.

  • Donaumünster Castle in autumn 2019

  • Renovated entrance area to the castle from 2019

  • Donaumünster Castle in winter 2020

Web links

Commons : Donaumünster Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franz Anselm Schmitt: Alexander von Bernus . H. Carl, Nürnberg 1971, pp. 133-134.
  2. ^ Laboratory Soluna - its history. In: soluna.de. Retrieved August 15, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Annelies Stöckinger and Joachim Telle. The Alexander von Bernus alchemy library in the Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe: Catalog of prints and manuscripts. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1997 (digitized version)
  4. ↑ Augsburger Allgemeine: A castle wakes up from its slumber on November 23, 2016.

Coordinates: 48 ° 40 ′ 51.3 "  N , 10 ° 42 ′ 34.8"  E