Gedern Castle

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Gedern Palace, in front of the Renaissance building , in the back on the left the Prinzessbau
Gedern Palace, in front of the Renaissance building , in the back on the left the Prinzessbau
The palace complex, view from the north: on the left the Renaissance building , central building with tower, on the right merging into the Prinzessbau ( new building )

The Gedern Castle is a Baroque castle in Gedern in northeastern Hesse Wetteraukreises . It emerged from the so-called Wolframsburg of the 13th century.

location

The castle is located on the Schlossberg slightly east of the center of the small town of Gedern. The area covers an area (with park) of around 200 m (west-east expansion) by 150 m (north-south expansion). Close in its northern and eastern parts face the street Schlossberg and upper Seemer -Straße the building of the castle. The palace park extends to the west and south.

history

The castle had its predecessor in a castle from the first half of the 13th century. This was a hilltop castle in the locality. The foundation walls and some parts of the facade can be assigned to this predecessor castle. The gentlemen von Gedern are considered to be the builders. In 1255 a Wolfram von Gaudern (Gedern) is mentioned for the first time, from which the name of the predecessor castle Wolframsburg probably comes. Rudolf Knappe, on the other hand, sees a side branch of the Lords of Büdingen , the Ortenbergers, as the builder. From Eberhard III. von Breuberg , Wetterauer Landvogt , via the Trimberger (1323) and the Eppstein -Königsteiner (1376) the owners of the Gedern and the castle changed until it came into the possession of the Counts of Stolberg in 1535 when the Königsteiners died out 1677 had it expanded into a castle. The first owner was Count Ludwig von Stolberg-Königstein, nephew of the extinct Königsteiner. After disputes with Kurmainz , the Stolbergers had to give up control of Königstein and subsequently shared the ownership of the Wetterau. The Ortenberg line also received Gedern. With the extinction of this line in 1641 and a renewed division of the Stolberg house, the Stolberg-Wernigerode line received the Gedern Castle in 1657, which founded the Stolberg-Gedern line, which existed until 1804. With the mediatization , the rule Gedern was attached to the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1806 .

The bridge with the gate hall (later the royal stables ) dates from 1605 (or 1609), the former brewery (on the opposite northeast side of the street) was built in 1675, the central part of the castle from 1706 and the rent office in 1710. The building was partly built on the foundations of the medieval castle complex and its older buildings. Count Ludwig Christian zu Stolberg took up residence in Gedern in 1677 and began extensive renovations and extensions. This also included a cellar and brewery , grain floors , a nursery, the garden delight house , an orangery and a forge . Under Friedrich Carl zu Stolberg-Gedern , who received the princely diploma from Emperor Karl VII. In 1742, the rent office was completed and the outer walls of the castle were reinforced. After the death of his grandson Carl Heinrich, the last male offspring of the Stolberg-Gedern line from 1767 until his death in 1804 , the castle fell to the Count's House of Stolberg-Wernigerode.

In the course of the customs riots , Gedern Castle was attacked from the garden side by over 100 rebellious farmers on September 30, 1830, demanding the surrender of rifles and papers.

The Vice Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto zu Stolberg-Wernigerode , who later worked under Bismarck , was born in 1837 in Gedern Castle. Today a memorial stone in the castle park commemorates him . The family lived in the castle until 1927. When the family then moved to the castle in Wernigerode , a large part of the furniture was moved there and sold.

From 1930 to 1945 the castle was leased to the Reich Labor Service . After the Second World War , the remains of the inventory were looted . Displaced persons were housed in the castle itself . In the following years there was hardly any maintenance work on the buildings and they were in danger of complete ruin. In 1987 Christian Heinrich Fürst zu Stolberg-Wernigerode sold the castle to the city of Gedern. Extensive restoration work followed over the next ten years , until the Gedern city ​​administration was able to move into the castle in 1997 . As a result, the historically valuable architectural monument was preserved.

description

The palace complex has three irregularly grouped S-shaped wings. The south-facing four-storey main wing with a hip roof and a staircase in front with a mansard roof and an attached octagonal tower is called a Renaissance building . The central building continues the four-storey palace complex to the north. At its northeast corner there is a late Gothic stair tower, which slightly towers over the roof with its baroque tower dome. A two-story north wing with a mansard roof stands in front of the central building at its northwest corner, a baroque building called the Prinzessbau or the Neuer Bau . The castle with its clear Protestant Baroque lines is generally unadorned, but of a clear, well-proportioned shape.

The building of the former rent office to the north-east and the so-called arched house (east of the castle building), which is located opposite to the southeast via an inner courtyard , probably the former entrance to the previous castle as a gatehouse and at the same time stables , are part of the castle complex. The stables have a keystone with the year 1605 (or 1609). There is also a coach house to the south .

The park-like former castle area connects to the west and south as a palace garden with old trees.

  • Archway house and stables, view from the east into the passage

  • Archway house and stables, view from the castle side (west)

  • Rentamt, view from the street side

  • Small gatehouse

Todays use

Today the castle houses a castle hotel with a restaurant and café, the seat of the city ​​administration , a law firm and a soap factory that can be visited. Since 2004 the Museum of Cultural History has been housed in the castle's archway . The Alte Schmiede information center has been set up in the Alte Schmiede on the castle grounds since 2012 . The focus is on iron ore processing , which was once important regionally, as well as the mining of basalt and information on geotopes in the Niddertal . Exhibits on historical traffic routes, economic history and the mining of raw materials are presented.

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Knappe: Medieval castles in Hessen. 1995, p. 352.
  2. ↑ Half a fief went to the Archbishop of Trier , Baldwin of Luxembourg .
  3. ↑ * December 21, 1922 in Wernigerode ; † December 4, 2001 in Bad Nauheim , son of the last Stolberg Count Botho zu Stolberg-Wernigerode
  4. ↑ See castle history on www.vulkanstadt.de ( Memento from September 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ See in particular: Schneider: The Rent Office of the Castle in Gedern. 2013.
  6. ↑ Castle Hotel Gedern ; accessed on January 30, 2020
  7. ↑ Soap boiler at Gedern Castle ; accessed on January 30, 2020
  8. ↑ Kulturhistorisches Museum , website of the city of Gedern; accessed on January 30, 2020
  9. ↑ Information center Alte Schmiede , website of the city of Gedern; accessed on January 30, 2020

Coordinates: 50 ° 25 ′ 23.9 "  N , 9 ° 12 ′ 11.4"  E