Ermschwerd Castle
Coordinates: 51 ° 21 ′ 21 ″ N , 9 ° 49 ′ 13 ″ E
The Ermschwerd Castle is a monument and former aristocratic residence in Ermschwerd , a district of Witzenhausen in the Werra-Meißner district in North Hesse .
location
The building, a mighty, castle-like mansion , stands on the eastern edge of the old village center, immediately west of the L 3238 state road , below the castle hill on the former estate of the Lords of Buttlar, which is surrounded by residential and farm buildings . A small tree-lined park stretches to the south and east.
The construction
It is a splendid, three-story building with a massive basement and ground floor made of red sandstone - quarry stone masonry with corner blocks and two half-timbered upper floors. It is a typical example of the use of post-Gothic half-timbered forms with the shape of the arched curtain windows characteristic of northern Hesse and the southern Weser region . The builder was Margarethe von Boineburg called von Honstein (1503–1554), widow of Erasmus (Asmus) von Buttlar (1495–1541).
At the front, a two-flight staircase leads in the middle to a round-arched Renaissance portal in a rectangular frame, designed in 1616 , the outer parts of which have been historically renewed with Gothic tracery on the pilasters and their bases. In the arched spandrels there are leaves and in the apex a small heraldic cartouche with the monogram "MH", which presumably designates the or an otherwise unknown builder. Above the portal are the coats of arms of those von Buttlar and von Boyneburg, with the year 1616 between the two coats of arms , in a rectangular field with side fittings framing . The inscription bands above the coat of arms read: "ASMVS VON BUTLAR 1551" and "MARGRETA VON BOYNEBURGK GH", whereby the year 1551 probably denotes the year of the start of construction or reconstruction.
To the left of the portal there are initially two double windows with curtain arches and multi-latticed garments , then a one-story loft with two double windows and a gable roof , built in 1585 and restored in 1795, and then another double window. The ground floor front to the right of the portal contains two double windows and a single window slightly higher. On the far right, a rectangular cellar portal with a weathered band of inscriptions on the lintel leads to the cellar, which is partly above ground; on the side it is decorated with candelabra. On the right corner of the house, the original ashlar made of cuboids with fine edging and sharpened surfaces can still be seen.
The two upper half-timbered storeys protrude over the storey below. The half-timbered structure is enlivened by St. Andrew's crosses under the chest bars and “ wild men ”. The preserved window lintels show the original arrangement and size of the windows: they only reached from the chest to the neck bar and, arranged in groups of three and four, encompassed the entire wall surface between the struts on both floors. This window arrangement was restored during the extensive renovation at the beginning of the 21st century. Above each window there were curtain arches with four points (some of them still preserved). A two-story, three- tier half-timbered bay window above the portal extends over both upper floors .
At the rear of the house facing the park is a massive, four-storey, polygonal stair tower with a single-storey half-timbered structure and a baroque hood and outer door, which was added in 1586 . The inner access to the tower is a rectangular profiled door in the central hall on the ground floor, opposite the entrance portal. The coat of arms stone above the door to the stair tower bears the year 1586 and the names "HEIMER VON BOLER" (= Heimbrod von Buttlar) and "KATERINA VO OEYNHVSEN" (= Katharina von Oeynhausen ), who expand the house and the tower and the loft on the Had the front built. Doors lead from the hall to individual rooms on both sides.
The three-storey wing at the north-east end of the main building, a half-timbered building on a solid stone basement and ground floor, which extends a few meters from the rear into the courtyard, also comes from the expansion phase of 1586. A three-storey residential wing was added in 1801 as an extension of this wing to the north demolished in the second half of the 20th century; only the walls of the ground floor were left and have since formed a small inner courtyard. The northern front of the remaining side wing from 1586, which was freed as a result, was redesigned during the overall renovation at the beginning of the 21st century with a stylistically poorly harmonizing concrete and wood extension.
A single-storey, massive extension with a large arched gate, the so-called “Marstall”, was added at right angles to the western end of the courtyard in 1596.
history
The Landgrave Hessian village of Ermschwerd, which has been in Hesse since 1361 , came in 1486 as an accessory to the Ziegenberg Castle , which had previously been pledged several times to various pledges, with this as pledge from Landgrave Ludwig I for 1900 guilders to his court servant Georg von Buttlar (1408-1489). His son Georg received the Ziegenberg Castle with all accessories as a man fief in 1494, waiving the pledge . The widow of Georg's son Erasmus (Asmus) von Buttlar (1495–1541), Margarethe von Boineburg called von Honstein (1503–1554), was the builder of the castle-like mansion on the estate in Ermschwerd, probably around her youngest son Heimbrod von Buttlar (1541–1609), who was born just a few months before his father's death, to create a suitable residence. Heimbrod received the estate Ermschwerd and shares in the neighboring Buttlarschen estates Stiedenrode and Freudenthal as well as in Elberberg and Laubach when the paternal inheritance was finally divided in March 1571 ; he became the progenitor of the Ermschwerder or Elberberger line of the Buttlar family. His eldest brother Jost Oswald von Buttlar (1534–1594) became the progenitor of the Buttlar-Ziegenberg line. The second brother, Oswald, died childless in the spring of 1571 at the latest. The building inscription above the portal from 1616 mentions Asmus von Buttlar with the year 1551, but since he died in 1541, it is assumed that his widow Margarethe had the building restored or largely rebuilt after a fire in 1551 and that the grandson of the two, Dietrich Hermann von Buttlar (1588–1625), had this documented with an inscription when the portal was revised in 1616. The main building was not completed until 1558 by Heimbrod's brother Jost Oswald von Buttlar.
Heimbrod himself had the building expanded considerably as early as 1585/86 by building the northeast wing, the stair tower and the front loft. In 1596 he had the “Marstall” added. The Renaissance portal on the front dates from the time of his son Dietrich Hermann. In 1795 the Auslucht in particular was restored.
Until 1813 the manor and mansion remained in the possession of the Lords of Buttlar in the line of Ermschwerd. Then, however, King Jérôme von Westphalen forced the sale of the property to the state, on the pretext of paying a sum that had already been owed to the Elector of Hesse-Kassel . With the restitution of Kurhessen in 1813, the Ermschwerd estate was leased to the Kurhessian state domain and then as such. With the annexation of Kurhessen by Prussia in 1866, the domain also became Prussian.
In 1935 the lands of the manor were separated into three separate farms. The manor house remained in state ownership and served until 1945 as a country year home to accommodate boys who, after finishing school, worked in agriculture for a year and were also subjected to “pre-military training” and “national political training”.
After the Second World War , the Witzenhausen district took over the building and had it partially converted into apartments. In 1954 the municipality of Ermschwerd bought the property including the small park and furnished additional apartments to meet the housing shortage in the post-war years. More than 20 families were housed in the palace complex in the 1960s. When Ermschwerd became part of Witzenhausen in 1974 as part of the Hessian regional reform , the building became the property of the city.
In 1984 the worthy of preservation of the castle was a decisive reason for the inclusion of Ermschwerd in the Hessian village renewal program . A renovation concept presented in 1987 provided for social living space to be provided in the castle. The listed building was then extensively renovated. Four modern apartments, a kindergarten (moved into in 1997), a large hall for events and common rooms were furnished and equipped with modern equipment, and an elevator was added to make the building, which was used as a house of generations, barrier-free for everyone. The castle has been open for a variety of events since October 2003.
literature
- Friedrich Bleibaum (Ed.): Witzenhausen district. Festschrift for the 150th anniversary of the Witzenhausen district. Handbook of the Hessian Heimatbund, Vol. IV, JA Koch, Marburg 1971, p. 109 f.
- Artur Künzel: The Ermschwerder Castle. In: The Werraland. Volume 49, Issue 2, 1997.
Web links
- Ermschwerd Castle in the Wiki of the project "Renaissance Palaces in Hesse " at the Germanic National Museum
- Schloss Ermschwerd Website of today's users
- Photos of the castle on www.burgen-und-schloesser.net