Eschwege Castle
Coordinates: 51 ° 11 ′ 19 ″ N , 10 ° 3 ′ 11 ″ E
The Eschwege Castle stands on the northwestern edge of the old town of Eschwege , above the castle mill right on the Werra , in the Werra-Meissner in northern Hesse . The three-winged former Landgrave's palace in Renaissance style from the 16th and 17th centuries has served as the seat of the district administration since 1821. In the castle tower, the so-called Dietemann Pavilion, there is an art clock with the Dietemann , the symbolic figure of the city of Eschwege.
history
The previous castle
Eschwege was owned by the Landgraves of Hesse since 1264 . Towards the end of the 14th century, the citizens resisted Landgrave Hermann II's attempt to restrict their urban rights by building a castle, and therefore opened their city to Landgrave Balthasar of Thuringia in 1385 . To defend his new property against the Hessian landgraves, Balthasar did what the citizens wanted to avoid, and from 1386 built a castle on the site of the old Honer Tor. However, he promised the city not to have any further restrictions on its rights and freedoms. When the city became Hessian again in 1433, the castle initially became the official seat of Hessian ministers .
Extension to the castle
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Landgraves of Hesse, in particular Philip I (1509–1567), Wilhelm IV (1567–1592) and Moritz (1592–1627), expanded the castle into a Renaissance palace in several phases, whereby Foundations and considerable parts of the wall of the original complex were preserved and included in the construction. As a retirement home of Landgrave Moritz, who after 1627 by the Hessian Estates forced abdication until his death in 1632 lived in Eschwege, as a temporary residence from 1632 to 1655 the Landgrave Friedrich of Hesse-Eschwege and from 1713 to 1755 as the residence of Count Christian from the branch line Hessen-Rotenburg-Wanfried the building got its name as "Landgrafenschloss".
Considerable renovations and extensions took place first in 1552, under Philip I, on the north wing and then from 1581 to 1589, under Wilhelm IV., On the north and west wing. The stair towers and gables were built in this second expansion phase, probably by the landgrave master builder Hans Wetzel (Hans von Allendorf). The pavilion tower and the arcades between the north wing and the pavilion were built between 1615 and 1617 under Landgrave Moritz.
Landgrave's residence
At Easter 1637, during the Thirty Years' War , the town and castle were plundered by imperial Croats under General Johann von Götzen and largely destroyed by fire. Frederick , who was 20 years old at the time and was in Swedish service , who had received the Landgraviate of Hesse-Eschwege in 1632 on the basis of the Rotenburger Quart regulation of 1627 and 1628 , therefore probably only moved into his residence in Eschwege after his marriage to Eleonora in Stockholm in 1646 Katharina , the sister of the Swedish King Karl X. Gustav . From the birthplaces of his children it can be concluded that Friedrich's wife stayed mainly in Eschwege from 1647 to 1655. As a Swedish general, Friedrich himself traveled a lot, but nevertheless made significant efforts to rebuild the castle and town. The roof lantern on the Dietemann Pavilion was built in 1650 as part of the restoration of the palace. Friedrich fell in the Swedish service in Poland in 1655. With him, the Hesse-Eschwege branch line died out in the male line, and his (partial) landgraviate fell to his brother Ernst I of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg . Although the castle was assigned to Friedrich's widow as a widow's residence, she went instead to her Swedish fiefdom Osterholz near Bremen.
Pledging
In 1667 the castle was pledged as a dowry for her daughter Christine von Hessen-Eschwege when she married Ferdinand Albrecht I of Braunschweig to the House of Braunschweig-Bevern founded by him . It was not until 1713 that the deposit was redeemed.
When Landgrave Ernst transferred the former Landgraviate Hessen-Eschwege to his son Karl in 1676, the latter took his residence in Wanfried , as the Eschweg Castle was still pledged, and thus established the new branch line Hessen-Wanfried . Only his son Christian von Hessen-Wanfried , who had lived in Eschwege Castle since 1713 and followed his half-brother Wilhelm as Landgrave of Hessen-Wanfried in 1731 , gradually moved the residence back to Eschwege.
Redemption of the pledge and residency
After the death of his father in 1711, Christian initially took over the Landgraviate of Hessen-Wanfried, but his older half-brother, Canon Wilhelm , appeared in Wanfried that same year to assert his own claim to the inheritance. In that of Emperor Charles VI. After the dispute was settled, Christian renounced the Landgraviate, but received the residential palace in Eschwege after it had been triggered by the redemption of the pledge from the Duke of Braunschweig-Bevern in 1713, as well as an annual allowance of 7,500 guilders. Christian renovated and expanded the neglected castle and built a Catholic chapel. The half-timbered south wing of the palace dates from 1755. After the death of his brother Wilhelm in 1731, Friedrich took over the leadership of the Hessen-Wanfried line. With his childless death in October 1755 the line became extinct, and Hessen-Wanfried- (Eschwege) fell back to Hessen-Rotenburg. When this line also died out in the male line in 1834, the entire Rotenburger Quart was returned to the parent company Hessen-Kassel . The castle in Eschwege was therefore only used as a secondary residence after Christian's death.
District administration
With the administrative reform in Hesse-Kassel through the organizational edict of Prince Elector Wilhelm II and the associated creation of the Eschwege district in 1821, the castle became the seat of the district administrator and the district administration. It still serves in this capacity today. The current owner is the district administration of the Werra-Meißner district (Schlossplatz 1, 37269 Eschwege).
investment
The core building is the castle from the 14th century. Substantial renovations and extensions took place in 1552 (north wing), 1581–1589 (north and west wing) and 1615–1617 (pavilion and arcades), with further extensions and modifications in the 18th century.
The castle has three wings. The renaissance complex includes the north and west wings (both with considerable parts of the wall originating from the medieval castle) as well as the arcades and the pavilion (tower) on the east side. The third (southern) wing, designed in half-timbered construction on the upper floors, was only built in 1755.
North wing
The basic substance of the north wing, with gables on the east and west sides, dates back to the 14th century, as the masonry made of large cuboids and the added rectangular windows on the west gable show. It consists of two low basement floors with simple rectangular windows and two higher main floors with partially coupled windows. On the north side there are two buttresses extending to the third floor. On the south side there is a polygonal stair tower with a spiral staircase reaching into the attic . To the west of the stair tower is a rectangular portal, framed by diamond blocks and circular ornaments and topped off with a carnies cornice. On the east side is a two-storey bay window, probably built in 1552, which sits on a richly decorated base on the first floor. The bay windows have gothic framework frames that differ from the other windows . On the gable ends, the floors are separated from one another by cornices . A wide cornice surrounds the entire building above the 3rd floor, above which the three-story volute gable begins. In the lower gable storey two windows are symmetrically related to one another in the middle one. The gable volutes have rolled ends and a central "kink" on each of the two lower floors, on which a vase stands on the lower floor. The gable is closed at the top by a semicircular rosette.
The stair tower leads on both upper floors into an anteroom that takes up the entire width of the building. The Landgrave's room and a small hall are on the first floor. The Landgravine's room and the hall for her wives are on the second floor. The two landgrave's apartments were probably divided into a living room, chamber and anteroom. There is only a connecting door to the west wing on the first floor.
West wing
The west wing is only three storeys high, with a high ground floor and gables on the north and south sides. The heights of the two upper floors match those in the north wing. The ground floor with two and three-part windows contains the two-aisled knight's hall , which from 1736 also served as a chapel. The gable shapes and gable windows correspond to those of the north wing. On the courtyard side there is a polygonal stair tower with a clockwise spiral staircase. The masonry on the ground floor to the left of the stair tower consists of large blocks with wide joints and dates from the 14th century. Only from the 2nd floor and to the right of the stair tower is the masonry from the Renaissance, although there too - as on the north wing - the red cuboids from the Gothic construction period can still be seen many times. On its northern and western sides, too, this wing contains masonry from the 14th century up to about the middle of the first floor. The slotted windows on the west side also date from this period, and the medieval masonry here probably extends to the window sill on the second floor. On the south gable there are two toilet bay windows on both upper floors and another bay window on the top floor. This wing can also only be reached through the stair tower, which in turn leads on both main floors into an anteroom that takes up the entire width of the building. The Fürstensaal and the “Saxon Chamber” with room and chamber with toilet are located on the first floor. On the 2nd floor are the "Palatinate Chamber" and the "Brandenburg Chamber" with a similar room layout.
Dietemann Pavilion
The so-called Dietemann Pavilion, built between 1615 and 1617 in the southeast of the complex, has two lower basement and two higher upper floors and a curved roof with a half-timbered structure from 1650 in which the clockwork with the “Dietemann” is housed. The roughly square building has two rows of coupled windows on each side on the 2nd and 3rd floors. On the second floor there is a door to the arcade on the north side. The tower once contained the "Golden Hall", of which an alabaster door has been preserved in the University Museum Marburg. The tower and hall could be reached from the two residential wings through walkways on the castle walls.
The artificial figure of Dietemann - part of the artificial clock and symbolic figure of the city of Eschwege - is a tower guard with a halberd , lantern and horn. It was inaugurated on July 2, 1927. During the day it blows every hour on the hour during a tour around the top of the tower from which it guards the city. Once a year for Johannisfest on the first weekend in July it rises from the tower, and leads the procession.
Arcade wing
The north wing and the Dietemann pavilion are connected by a five-arched arcade with a walkway at the level of the 2nd floor. The four side arcades are round-arched, the middle one is ogival. The arcades were built at the same time as the Dietemann Tower in the years 1615–1617.
South wing
The rather simple south wing in half-timbered style was built around 1755 under Landgrave Christian.
Outdoor area
The adjacent area to the north-west outside the wall area served as the palace park. The " Frau-Holle -Brunnen" in the castle courtyard is from 1930 and shows on its outside main scenes of the fairy tale " Frau Holle " by the Brothers Grimm in the form of reliefs . The reliefs were designed by Prof. Hans Sautter from Kassel and made by the sculptor Sauer Warburg / Westphalia shaped in shell limestone.
iconography
The castle contained an arrangement with allegorical and emblematic paintings of princely virtues, created around 1600 under Landgrave Moritz, but largely destroyed in 1637 . A contemporary description and interpretation printed in 1625 allowed a precise reconstruction of this early Baroque iconographic program a few years ago . As his correspondence with the court painter Christoph Jobst between 1598 and 1604 documents, Landgrave Moritz had a decisive influence on the choice of subjects and the design of the pictorial equipment. Design and choice of topics come from himself; The program was worked out in collaboration with his former court master Tobias von Homberg. The complex iconography represented the specifically early modern conception of the state of the Calvinist landgrave. As Sabine Mödersheim has pointed out, the program served the ruler's self-portrayal, but also outlined the ethical obligations of the members of the court and the ideal virtues of the national mother. The choice of themes and the placement of the individual allegories of virtue in certain rooms of the palace gave a moral and didactic picture of the ideal court and ideal rule.
literature
- Heiner Borggrefe, Thomas Fusenig, Birgit Kümmel : Ut Pictura Politeia or the painted princely state. Moritz the Scholar and the picture program in Eschwege. Jonas Verlag, Marburg 2000.
- Sabine Mödersheim: Review by: Heiner Borggrefe / Thomas Fusenig / Birgit Kümmel: “Ut Pictura Politeia or the painted princely state. Moritz the scholar and the image program in Eschwege. ” In: Art Form 2 . No. 03 (2001) . Jonas Verlag, 2000, ISSN 1618-7199 ( online [accessed on January 23, 2016]).
- Rolf Müller (Ed.): Palaces, castles, old walls. Published by the Hessendienst der Staatskanzlei, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 3-89214-017-0 , p. 108f.
Web links
- Entry by Stefan Eismann on Eschwege in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Eschwege Castle in the Wiki of the project “Renaissance Castles in Hesse” at the Germanic National Museum
- Eschwege Castle near castles and palaces
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dietemann at Eschwege.de
- ↑ Landgrave Castle with Mrs. Holle Brunnen
- ↑ Frau Holle Brunnen Eschwege on page 24
- ↑ Mrs. Holle Brunnen
- ↑ Borggrefe et al., 2000; Mödersheim, 2001