Ehreshoven Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ehreshoven Castle

The Ehreshoven is a moated castle , which at an altitude of about 114 meters above sea level in the district Ehreshoven of Westphalia North Rhine- community Engelskirchen stands. It is considered one of the most magnificent aristocratic residences in the Bergisches Land . The castle gained national fame as a backdrop for the TV series Verbotene Liebe and in 2017 as the venue for the ZDF program Bares-für-Rares - Germany's largest junk show with Horst Lichter and Steven Gätjen .

history

Ehreshoven Castle around 1860, Alexander Duncker collection

Ehreshoven was originally owned by the Siegburg Michaelsberg Abbey , which was founded around 1064 by the Archbishop of Cologne, Anno II. And richly endowed. As far as one can see from the sources, Ehreshoven was first mentioned in 1355. At that time the poor man asked Arnulphus de Graschap that the abbot transfer his fief with Ehreshoven to his father Heinrich von Grafschaft. This means that in 1355 a small castle, at least a permanent house , existed in Ehreshoven. Jutta von Grafschaft, the daughter of the aforementioned Adolf, was married to Wilhelm von Nesselrode († 1399), who was enfeoffed with Ehreshoven in 1396. From then on, the aristocratic residence remained in the possession of the von Nesselrode family until 1920 . Countess Marie von Nesselrode-Ehreshoven (1853–1920), who remained unmarried, bequeathed her property to the Rhenish knighthood so that the long-desired Fräuleinstift (residence for single noble ladies) could be set up there. Her nephew resisted the fact that after 525 years the ancestral property should pass into stranger hands. A process came about that was decided in favor of the knighthood. In 1924 the Ehreshoven Abbey was established.

Remains of the late medieval complex have been preserved at the rear of the manor house, namely parts of the castle house from the 14th / 15th centuries. Century. Under Wilhelm von Nesselrode and his wife Elisabeth von Schwarzenberg († 1599) Ehreshoven was significantly redesigned. In 1595 the couple (⚭ 1579) set up a monument of high art historical value with the chapel.

Towards the end of the 17th century, Philipp Wilhelm Christoph von Nesselrode and his wife Maria Adriana Franziska von Leerodt had a new building built, in which only the chapel and the north adjoining part of the original castle house were included. The three-wing manor house and the large four-wing open bailey were built during this time. In the early 18th century, the French garden was laid out north of the castle , and most of it (including a teahouse from the 16th century) is still preserved today. It is not known who built the baroque palace. Whether the plan came from Count Matteo Alberti or one of his employees cannot be determined with certainty. Count Francis Wolff Metternich, the longtime provincial curator of the Rhine Province , stated: ". Anyway, belongs to the artist in the circle of the Dusseldorf court" Towards the end of World War II caused to the castle in the air raids on Engelskirchen on February 2, 1945 considerable damage in the Were eliminated after the war.

use

The complex was owned by the von Nesselrode family for over five hundred years before the last countess of this family bequeathed it to the Rhenish knighthood as a dynasty . This still exists there today. The documentary film "Im Damenstift" by Eberhard Fechner , published in 1984, portrayed the canonies living there at the time and showed their everyday lives. Parts of the castle are now also rented out and used commercially, the income generated from this contributes to the maintenance of the complex and to the financing of the women's monastery.

The manor that used to belong to the castle is now used by the Maltese relief service as a commander .

The depot of the United Aristocratic Archives in the Rhineland is housed in the former stable of the castle courtyard, which has now been converted . Here archives from 20 Rhenish aristocratic archives are stored in over 10,000 cardboard boxes on around 1,700 meters of shelves. It is looked after by the archives advisory and training center of the Rhineland Regional Association in the Brauweiler Abbey , to which inquiries about its use should also be directed.

Building description

Ehreshoven Castle is a quarry stone building .

Outer bailey

From the federal road 55 between Engelskirchen and Overath a short avenue leads to the castle in the Aggertal. A flat stone bridge leads to the main gate of Ehreshoven. The four butt-angled wings of the outer bailey are two-story and have hipped roofs that are covered with blue-glazed hollow tiles. The stone-covered outer walls are only interrupted by small, irregularly placed windows. Strong three-storey towers on an approximately square floor plan, which are covered with double-retracted five-sided hoods, protrude from the two blunt corners.

The gate is particularly noticeable on the outside of the large, expansive outer bailey. The floor plan of the outer bailey means that the gate on the field side is highlighted opposite the sloping wing. The design increases this effect. Strong Tuscan pilasters with heavy rusticated bosses support the wide frieze with the small gable above the arched passage. The main cornice is cranked, so it goes over the protruding pilasters. Three vases with wrought-iron flowers crown the gable with a straight end and sloping cheeks. The openings for the pull chain of the former bridge can be seen in the brickwork of the gate; the pulleys are preserved in place. This leads to the conclusion that the old drawbridge was probably removed in the 18th century or even in the 19th century and replaced by a stone bridge.

Flower idyll at Ehreshoven Castle

Main building

Immediately after the main gate, the room narrows. Here the passage has only a simple arch. After leaving the small kennel-like room created by the construction of the outer bailey, the courtyard opens up to the full width. The five-sided courtyard is divided into lawns. Two pairs of large stone spheres set apart form marking and distance points on the way to the main castle. The walls that secure the moat between the two islands and the pair of pillars at the entrance to the main courtyard have the same function. The outer bailey frames the prospect of the castle pictorially because in the plan it would go past the side wings if it were extended. The distance elements of the outer bailey narrow the view of the manor house.

The courtyard side of the outer bailey is very simple. Regularly installed windows with sandstone frames are used on the upper floor. On the other hand, the ground floor is irregularly structured, as it corresponds to a functional building. The outer wings here have arched openings; those on the north wing are now closed by window fronts, those in the south by wooden gates. The earlier use as a coach house can still be seen.

The entrance to the main courtyard is formed by two embossed pillars, between which a wrought-iron gate of remarkable craftsmanship from around 1700 has been preserved. The design corresponds to the gate to the park.

What can be seen in the outer bailey is confirmed in the manor house: the individual forms are strikingly conservative. This is typical for the entire Rhineland at the time the castle was built and shows the time lag with which an art style asserts itself away from the main routes.

Mansion

The middle wing of the now plastered Ehreshoven Castle has eleven (4: 3: 4) axes to the cour d'honneur . Two full floors rise above a high basement. There are two simple doors on the sides. The windows are usually transversely rectangular with a central support.

The most striking part is the triaxial central projection, towards which the view is directed from the main gate of the castle. This shows more clearly than usual in Ehreshoven that the castle is committed to Italian mannerism, at a time when this style had long since been overcome in Italy. The central projection is emphasized by a strong corner cuboid, but only slightly protruded from the front. A double flight of stairs with richly decorated iron railing leads to the main portal. There is a round arched door to the basement between the stairs. Small wall fountains with lion masks and seashells made of sandstone are attached to the side projections of the stairs. The false windows next to the stairs are transversely oval and have rich volute frames. The arched portal to the main floor is framed by profiled pilasters. In the gable window, a bracke and a lion hold the crowned alliance coat of arms Nesselrode-Leerodt. A segmented gable with an attached stone sphere completes the portal architecture.

The tall rectangular windows on the full floors have straight lintels and central supports. The windows next to the portal are crowned by flat triangular gables.

The striking house stone gable of the risalit is richly structured. It is strongly reminiscent of Italian buildings of the Renaissance and Baroque. The gable is divided into two zones, which are connected by the order of pilasters. A clock is attached in the upper field. Underneath in the middle there is a rusticated rectangular window without a central support, accompanied by portholes in stone walls. Volute cheeks and a segmented gable frame the whole. Stone balls and vases serve as acroters; A wrought-iron weather vane rises above the end of the segment.

The top floor has two rows of dormers. However, the sequence is interrupted in the second axis next to the central projection, because there are mid-houses with false gables in Tuscan order. The gables are crowned by stone balls.

The single-storey side wings have six window axes towards the courtyard and two towards the outer bailey. The frames correspond to those on the skin wing. In the basement there are simple doors in the second and fifth axes. The peculiar roof on the side wings is particularly striking. From a hipped roof with keel-arched dormers rises a slated top arcade with small rectangular windows , over which a keel-arched hipped roof is built.

For the building history of Ehreshoven, the back of the castle is of particular interest. Here you can still see the older components on the masonry, which protrude far from the line of the new building. At the northern corner, the Gothic castle house has been incorporated into the castle. You can see the irregularly placed window openings. The small wooden bay window comes from the baroque construction phase. The three windows on the second floor were enlarged around 1700 and protrude into the large keel arched roof, which is provided with oval portholes. The old castle house has a bell-shaped hipped roof. The approach to the roof of the Ehreshoven mansion is formed by a wooden cornice cornice.

Next to this component, the late medieval castle house, you can see the chapel building. On the ground floor, the three-sided altar bay with its large ogival windows juts out over profiled consoles. The castle archives were originally located in the room above the chapel. The chapel bay window in Ehreshoven has a polygonal pent roof, which is interrupted in the upper part by a narrow cornice. The chapel itself has a pyramid roof.

The stairwell emerges like a tower from the rear of the new building. The windows here correspond to those on the courtyard side. On the back, the additive element typical of a castle is still preserved in remains, i.e. H. in the Middle Ages only the necessary structures were built. If these were no longer sufficient, they were grown.

Compared to this medieval attitude, the main front of Ehreshoven has a modern effect. Above all, the axial arrangement and the closedness of the two main views show that the entire building complex is not put together additively. One recognizes the will of the client to build a baroque castle instead of the medieval castle.

The inner

Ehreshoven Castle is inhabited and not open to the public. Behind the main portal there is a vestibule that takes up the entire depth of the house and has a width of three window axes. However, the entrance is not in the middle here, but has been moved to the side. The floor is covered in checkerboard style with stone slabs in alternating colors. The doors have profiled frames made of black marble. The base zone consists of tile cladding. The staircase, which is disproportionately small in contrast to the vestibule, has a timelessly simple balustrade made of colored stucco marble .

The dining room adjoining the anteroom to the north is covered with a remarkable leather wallpaper. It dates from the time the castle was built and may have been made in a Flemish workshop. The motif is a large tendril with various flowers and fruits, alternating between a putto with a trumpet in the left hand and a laurel wreath in the right hand, a putto hitting the tambourine or a dove with an olive branch in its beak. On the narrower plinth frieze you can see birds' heads between flowers. The base of the carrés is silver-plated; The red colored fruits, flowers and garments as well as the green foliage stand out from this.

literature

  • Heinrich Neu , Walther Zimmermann : The work of the painter Renier Roidkin. Views of West German churches, castles, palaces and cities from the first half of the 18th century. L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1939.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ programm.daserste.de/archiv_service.asp?sdatlo=14.04.04&id=X000170616&dpointer=22&nummer=42 Forbidden love on the ARD website (link no longer available)
  2. ↑ Engelskirchen 60 years ago. Ed .: Community of Engelskirchen, p. 15.
  3. ^ Josef Hesse: Das Inferno - Engelskirchen 60 years ago after the air raids of March 19 and 28, 1945 . Ed .: Community of Engelskirchen. Schiefeling Verlag, Engelskirchen 2005, p. 15 .
  4. ↑ Petra Pluwatsch: The comeback of the nobility. In: Kölner Stadtanzeiger from January 14, 2010, p. 28 ( online ( memento of the original from January 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and remove then this note. ), accessed January 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ksta.de

Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ′ 26.9 ″  N , 7 ° 20 ′ 39.2 ″  E