Gnadenthal Castle

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Garden facade of the manor house

The Schloss Gnadenthal is a neoclassical palace complex in Klever district Donsbrüggen , about three kilometers northwest of the city of Cleves. In nature and landscape protection area of the duffel located, the castle stands as a monument under monument protection .

In the Middle Ages, there was a manor on the site of today's castle , which was used as a monastery by Augustinian canons in the 15th and 16th centuries and destroyed in the Eighty Years War . At the beginning of the 18th century, Johann Moritz von Blaspiel had a baroque palace and gardens built on the former monastery grounds , which the von Hoevell zu Westerflier family changed in the early 19th century in the classicist style. During the associated redesign of the palace garden, the sculptures in it were removed because they no longer corresponded to contemporary tastes. Six of these valuable sculptures were accidentally rediscovered in a pit in the 1950s.

Since the 1980s, the complex with the surrounding English landscape garden has served as a conference and educational facility and has been owned by the Geldersch Landschap en Geldersche Kasteelen Foundation since 2008 .

description

View to the manor house over the mirror pond
The orangery

The palace complex consists of a mansion in the classicism style and some outbuildings to the north of it. The buildings are enclosed by a system of ditches and are located in the middle of a landscape park. An approximately 420 meter long avenue of chestnut trees leads on the east side to a wrought iron gate with pillars crowned by vases , which dates from around 1830.

Mansion

The unadorned mansion is an elongated, two-story building that is closed off by a hipped roof with dormer windows . The brick building is plastered and painted a light yellow color that contrasts well with the dark green of the shutters. The southern facade facing the garden is divided into 15 axes by windows and has pavilion-like corner risers at the ends . Its defining element is a three-axis central projection with a balcony that rests on four columns of the Tuscan order . A windowed attic storey forms its upper end. The appearance of the central projection is based on renovations from around 1830, during which it also received the cast-iron division of its three skylights on the ground floor. Inside, some stucco ceilings and chimney superstructures have been preserved from the same period .

Outbuildings and palace gardens

To the north of the manor there are two low farm buildings at right angles to this. To the east of this is the so-called orangery , a two-story house from the 18th century. Its brick facade with the crenellated central projectile and large round arches comes from later changes in the middle of the 19th century and was based on a design by Ernst Friedrich Zwirner .

The five- hectare large castle park -style landscape garden ranges from large areas of forest still some remains of the now vanished Baroque gardens . In addition to a mirror pond south of the manor house, this also includes the extensive moats that run through the palace area and six baroque garden sculptures that are now set up by the orangery. The sculptures of ancient natural gods were found in a pit in 1956 and originally come from the baroque palace gardens of the 18th century.

history

First an estate, then a monastery

In the Middle Ages, at the site of today's castle or in its immediate vicinity, there was a manor, which was first mentioned in a document on August 28, 1373 as an allodial named Ganswykhof. Since then this farm has been owned by smaller, regional noble families . In 1448 Arndt von Nyel sold the Ganswyk farm to Elbert van Alpen, Lord von Hönnepel . He in turn exchanged ownership on Lambertus Day , September 17, 1452 with the provost of the Klever Stiftskapitels , Heinrich van Nyenhuis, for 53.5 Dutch acres of land in Niel and More . The Ganswykhof was converted into a monastery with the approval of Pope Paul II , into which the Augustinian Canons should move. These had previously been based in Uedem , but got into financial difficulties due to the chaos of war and had to give up their monastery there and the Heiliggeisthospital they ran. On 12 April 1469 the Klever Propst Hermann van Braekel handed the canons the converted farm for an annual sum of 58 gold florins as "Sweet and services-free property." The Augustinian Canons moved into their new quarters around 1470 and gave their convent the name "vallis gratiae" (Valley of Grace or Gnadental), which was first mentioned in 1481. In that year the monastery church was completed.

During the Spanish-Dutch war, the monastery was first besieged by Dutch troops on April 4, 1590 in the course of the fighting for Schenkenschanz , then plundered and finally set on fire. The buildings were then devastated and uninhabitable, so the brothers had to move to temporary accommodation in Kleve. The convent never returned to Gnadenthal, because it moved back to Uedem in 1603 with the permission of Duke Johann Wilhelm from Kleve. The canons sold the building material of the monastery ruin on August 18, 1663 to the Brandenburg governor Johann Moritz von Nassau , who used the stones for the renovation of Klever Castle .

New castle building

Gnadenthal Castle 1745, engraving by Hendrik Spilman
Lithograph of the castle in the 1860s

Gnadenthal changed hands on November 24, 1670: the Augustinian Canons exchanged the property with Baron Werner Wilhelm von Blaspiel (also Blaespeil and Blaespeyl) for three farms in Uedem. Blaspiel was the ducal councilor and ambassador of the Great Elector , and he probably planned to build a castle on the Gnadenthal property as a representative country estate, but it was only his son Johann Moritz, Prussian minister and godchild of Johann Moritz von Nassau, who realized the construction plans. He built a baroque palace with an extensive French garden on the foundations of the former monastery. The work on this was probably finished in 1704, at least the frame of the carillon previously installed in the castle bore this date. After its completion, contemporaries praised Gnadenthal as one of the most beautiful aristocratic residences on the Lower Rhine . After the death of Johann Moritz in 1723, the palace was temporarily uninhabited, because the widow Dorothea Henriette, née van Hoft, went to the Potsdam court, where she became chief steward of Princess Amalie of Prussia in 1745 . Instead of them, the merchant and banker Thomas Franciscus von Cloots lived in the property for rent from December 6, 1747. Dorothea Henriette's heirs sold the palace to him on September 11, 1748, including the goods belonging to it, for 35,000 Dutch guilders. The financial basis for the acquisition was the inherited fortune of his great uncle Johannes Baptista Cloots, who died in 1747. Among the eight children of Thomas Franciscus, who were all born at Schloss Gnadenthal, was his son Johann Baptist Hermann Maria, who made a name for himself under the name Anacharsis Cloots in Paris during the French Revolution and who finally died under the guillotine .

A granddaughter of Thomas Franciscus, Clara Francisca Cornelia Maria, married the Baron Arnold Johann Antonius von Hoevell zu Westerflier and Wezeveld on June 11, 1806 and thus brought the castle to this family. The new owner had the manor house remodeled in the classical style according to the taste of the time and thus essentially gave the building its present appearance. The English landscape garden, which he had created instead of the symmetrical baroque garden, can also be traced back to him. Baron Otto von Hoevell became his heir in 1862.

Since the 20th century

During the Second World War , the castle was damaged by artillery fire. The occupation of the building, first with soldiers from the German Wehrmacht and then with the Canadian military, was not good for the structure either. After Allied troops occupied Klever Land in late February / early March 1945, British soldiers also looted the property, so that the von Hoevell family found an empty castle when they returned in June 1945.

From 1946, the Franciscan Sisters ran a retirement home in one half of the manor house. From May 1947 the entire property was managed as a senior citizens' home for the city of Kleve. In terms of use, profound changes were made inside - especially in the room layout - but also on the outside of the main building. For example, the mansion's current dormers come from adapting to modern use. With the completion of the Franziskusheim in Klever Spyckstraße in 1977 this type of castle use ended. The impending vacancy and the associated decline could be prevented by the fact that members of the American Air Force moved into quarters in the manor house for the next four years.

Since the spring of 1981 the castle has served as a conference and seminar hotel, which has been run by the Education and Life Society, which belongs to the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband , since 1987 . In 2008 the castle complex changed hands for the last time: the von Hoevell family donated the property to the Geldersch Landschap en Geldersche Kasteelen Foundation , but they still live in the orangery.

literature

Web links

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

Footnotes

  1. ↑ List of architectural monuments in the city of Kleve - Part A (page no longer available)
  2. ↑ Andreas Daams: A castle in good hands. In: Neue Rhein Zeitung . Edition of August 20, 2008 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Information according to the online cadastral map of the Kleve district
  4. ↑ a b Georg Dehio: Handbook of German Art Monuments. North Rhine-Westphalia. 1967, p. 117.
  5. ^ A b Karl-Heinz Hohmann: Architectural and art monuments in the Kleve district. A cursory overview (= Rheinische Kunststätten . Issue 419). Neusser Druckerei und Verlag, Neuss 1995, ISBN 3-88094 , p. 95.
  6. ^ Website of the castle , accessed on January 22, 2020.
  7. ↑ a b c Rainer Hoymann: Vallis Gratiae - Val de Grace. From the people in the Valley of Grace ( Memento of April 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ a b c Alexander Duncker: The rural residences, castles and residences… 1866/67.
  9. ↑ Gregor Spohr: How nice to dream here. 2001, p. 82.
  10. ↑ Brief history on the castle website , accessed on January 22, 2020. Some publications mention this year as the date of the canons to move in.
  11. ↑ Robert Scholten : The Regulier-Chorherren-Kloster Gnadenthal near Kleve. In: Contributions to the history of the Lower Rhine. Volume 14. Lintz, Düsseldorf 1900, p. 63 ( digitized version ).
  12. ↑ Walther Zimmermann, Hugo Borger (ed.): Handbook of the historical sites of Germany. Volume 3: North Rhine-Westphalia (= Kröner's pocket edition. Volume 273). Kröner, Stuttgart 1963, DNB 456882847 , p. 227.
  13. ↑ Robert Scholten: The Regulier-Chorherren-Kloster Gnadenthal near Kleve. In: Contributions to the history of the Lower Rhine. Volume 14. Lintz, Düsseldorf 1900, p. 69 ( digitized version ).
  14. ↑ According to Karl Emerich Krämer , the temple in Klever Tiergarten was built from the ashlars of the monastery church . Cf. Karl Emerich Krämer: From castle to castle on the Lower Rhine. Volume 1, 4th edition. Mercator, Duisburg 1982, ISBN 3-87463-057-9 , p. 64.
  15. ↑ It is not entirely certain whether the palace was actually built on the foundations of the monastery or whether it was in the immediate vicinity of the former location.
  16. ^ Johan Henrich Schütte: Amusemens des Eaux de Cleve or amusements and delights in the waters of Cleve. Meyer, Lemgo 1748, p. 183.
  17. ^ Municipal Museum House Koekkoek (ed.): The Lower Rhine. Drawings, prints and books from the Robert Angerhausen collection. Boss, Kleve 1993, ISBN 3-89413-334-1 , p. 11.
  18. ↑ Robert Scholten: The Regulier-Chorherren-Kloster Gnadenthal near Kleve. In: Contributions to the history of the Lower Rhine. Volume 14. Lintz, Düsseldorf 1900, p. 73 ( digitized version ).

Coordinates: 51 ° 48 ′ 22.5 ″  N , 6 ° 6 ′ 27.5 ″  E