Dornburg Castle on the Elbe

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Dornburg Castle

The Dornburg Castle is located in Dornburg , a district of Gommern in Saxony-Anhalt . Of the palace complex planned by the baroque master builder Friedrich Joachim Stengel (1694–1787), only the central building, the corps de logis, was completed.

Until recently, the castle was owned by the state of Saxony-Anhalt and was used as a depot and restoration workshop for the state archaeologist for prehistory and early history. Its structural condition is questionable.

Builder and architect

After the death of a tenant from the von Münchhausen family in 1674, the Dornburg reign fell back to the Anhalt-Zerbst family . (For the history: see the article Dornburg (Gommern) .)

Instead of a previous building that burned down on July 28, 1750, which Prince Karl Wilhelm had built after 1674, Princess Johanna Elisabeth von Anhalt-Zerbst was now the builder of the new castle, a born Duchess of Holstein-Gottorf, sister of the Swedish King Adolf Friedrich . After the death of her husband Christian August von Anhalt-Zerbst, she initially lived in the previous building, a three-wing complex that the court architect Johann Christoph Schütze had planned. In September 1750, she commissioned the builder Friedrich Joachim Stengel , who was born in Zerbst but had been in the service of the ducal Nassau since 1733, to rebuild Biebrich Castle by two wings from 1734–37 and built the New Saarbrücken Castle in 1738–48 .

Stengel had terrain surveys brought to Saarbrücken and made plans for the new palace complex. With the permission of the Prince of Saarbrücken, he traveled to Zerbst on March 3, 1751. After inspecting the building, he recommended demolishing the remaining masonry. From the evaluated written sources it can be concluded that the Duchess and Stengel planned a horseshoe-shaped complex, but only the large central main part of the palace complex, the corps de logis, was built. The realization of the project was largely in the hands of Zerbster Carl Wilhelm Christ, whom Stengel supported by letter. Dornburg Castle was planned as a country castle for the court's temporary residence or as a widow's residence for the client.

The size and splendor of the building should provide a worthy setting for the eventual reception of the royal Swedish brother and the imperial daughter of the builder, because the daughter Katharina had been married to the Russian heir to the throne since 1745 (and ruled as Catherine the Great from 1762 ). But these visits never came. Except for the stairwells and some stucco halls inside, the castle was not completely expanded. When in 1758, at the beginning of the Seven Years' War , due to the war between Prussia and Russia, the principality was occupied by Prussian troops, the princess, like her son Friedrich August , had to flee the country and died two years later in Paris. After the death of Friedrich August 1793, the Principality of Anhalt-Zerbst was divided in 1797 into the Zerbst division between the other Anhalt-Bernburg , Anhalt-Köthen and Anhalt-Dessau states. Dornburg fell to August Christian Friedrich von Anhalt-Köthen. He and the later Koethen princes were no longer interested in the building.

The art historian Udo von Alvensleben wrote in 1928:

“Dornburg is Stengel's main work ... and one of the most important late Baroque buildings in Northern Germany ... The side elevations, the wrought-iron balconies, the putti of the roof balustrades, the French roof and mansard shapes are alluring. The central projection is less happy in its proportions ... Buildings and gardens look pitiful and are therefore reluctant to be shown. The building of the palace was certainly beyond Zerbst's standards and was perhaps only undertaken at the expense of Russian relations with Russian money. A widow spent a few boring decades in this far too wide framework. Then the Zerbst house died out, Dornburg fell into strange hands, and the purely French building, with its empty rows of windows, has since looked betrayed and sold across the Elbe meadows and poses a riddle to those who pass by. Symptoms of deterioration upset the subconscious. Decay without dignity is not even romantically attractive. We hate to see the masterpieces of our ancestors and the witnesses of higher attitudes so depraved. The German province lives in the ruins of the feudal age. Every step convinces us of the riches of accumulated cultural values, which however mean little for the consciousness of the people, despite all efforts to awaken them here and there to new life. ... "

- Udo von Alvensleben : Visits before the sinking
Central projection of Dornburg Castle on the Elbe with the alliance coat of arms of House Anhalt and Holstein-Gottorf

FJ Stengel's construction plans

Numerous archives from the holdings of the Zerbst Chamber report on the palace construction planned by FJ Stengel from 1750 onwards. The art historian Karl Lohmeyer first viewed these building files in 1911.

The palace was planned between autumn 1750 and spring 1751. From the letters between the client and the architect and the files of the Princely Chamber it can be seen that several designs were made for the new palace complex. In 2002, plan materials for the new construction of the Dornburg Palace were found in the St. Petersburg Hermitage, but they do not completely match the construction. The drawings are neither dated nor signed. The floor plans found are attributed to the draftsman Johann Wilhelm Christ, who is likely to have copied the Stengel originals. The room labels in the plans are assigned to Princess Elisabeth von Anhalt-Zerbst. The elevation found is regarded as the original draft drawn by Stengel.

Johann Christian Püschel: The Prince's Palace in Dornburg, copper engraving 1757 (State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt, Halle; archive)

Description of the planned palace complex

The three-storey corps de logis was connected to four two-storey pavilions and the gate system via column colonnades. The center of the facility is the monumental corps de logis with 19 window axes and the three main axes of the central projectile. According to the construction task of a “ maison de plaisance ” or “ retraite ”, its disposition is to be compared with the corresponding French castle complexes. The Corps de Logis is geared towards the courtyard, which was designed as a fairground. The access path in the central axis of the palace complex is flanked by an avenue of 26 colossal statues. In the central axis of each of the four pavilions there is a fountain in oval basins composed of curved arches, which are equipped with sculptures based on the fables of Jean de La Fontaine and putti riding on dolphins .

Web links

View from the Kirchsee (former Elbarm)
Commons : Schloss Dornburg (Gommern)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Büttner Pfänner zu Thal: Anhalt's architectural and art monuments ... Booklet XI., Rich. Kahle's Verlag, Dessau, 1894
  • Horst Duration: Baroque palace architecture from Anhalt-Zerbst, Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna 1999
  • Karl Lohmeyer : Friedrich Joachim Stengel. Düsseldorf 1911. - The unchanged reprint published in Saarbrücken in 1982 has been supplemented by two bibliographies by Peter Volkelt, who name the literature on Stengel and the author Loymeyer.
  • Hans-Christoph Dittscheid / Klaus Güthlein (eds.): The Stengel family of architects, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2005
  • Dirk Herrmann: Zerbst Castle in Anhalt. History and description of a destroyed residence. Hall 1998
  • Alfred Werner Maurer: The building history of the Saarbrücken castle and its research. In: Jürgen Karbach, Paul Thomes (Hrsg.): Contributions to the Stengel Symposium on the occasion of the 300th birthday of Friedrich Joachim Stengel on 29./30. September 1994 in Saarbrücken Castle. (= Magazine for the history of the Saar area. 43,1995). Historical association for the Saar region, Saarbrücken 1995, pp. 177–217
  • Alfred Werner Maurer: Friedrich Joachim Stengel, his buildings and the relationship to architectural theory. Philologus documents Basel (CH) 2009.

Remarks

  1. Visits before the fall, aristocratic residences between Altmark and Masuria , compiled from diary entries and edited by Harald von Koenigswald, Frankfurt / M.-Berlin 1968, pp. 119f.
  2. Landesarchiv Oranienburg, Zerbst Chamber, No. 2367/1 and No. 6686, sheet 396.
  3. cf. Duration 1999, p. 290 .: JW Christ will design the pleasure house in the palace garden a. assigned to the Evangelical Church near the castle.
  4. The set of plans found consists of four floor plans from the basement to the second floor (scale 100 pieds = 240 mm) and an elevation of the corps de logis. Plan sizes 29 × 65 cm
  5. According to the current state of research, only the corps de logis can be traced back to Friedrich Joachim Stengel (1694–1787). All other buildings in the palace complex are the imagination of the copper engraver Johann Christian Püschel. The depicted picture of the palace complex has not been proven by original design drawings by the architect or archaeological finds of old buildings. In Lentz 1757, after page 950, it is documented by a signature that the preliminary drawing for the copperplate was also made by Johann Christian Püschel. This suggests that the copperplate engraving does not show a show tear by Stengel's hand. It has not been proven whether Püschel possibly assembled individual designs of the castle buildings planned by Stengel into an overall perspective.

Coordinates: 52 ° 2 ′ 5.6 "  N , 11 ° 52 ′ 42.3"  E