Grebendorf Castle
Coordinates: 51 ° 12 ′ 15.7 " N , 10 ° 3 ′ 55.4" E
The Grebendorf Castle , also Old Castle Keudellsches or Keudellsches mansion called, is in Grebendorf , in the municipality of Meinhard in northern Hesse Werra-Meissner . It is located in the center of the village on Sandstrasse and has housed Meinhard's municipal administration since 1993.
The attachment
The former castle, built until 1610 in the Renaissance style , has a floor area of around 20 × 12 m. On the massive ground floor made of sandstone , two half-timbered upper floors and two attic floors rise under the half- hipped roof . On the east side facing the street there is a two-story dwelling . The framework was exposed during the renovation and renovation work in 1988. The long sides in the east and west are six-axis, the transverse sides four-axis. In the south side, slightly offset to the east side, there is the round arch portal from the Renaissance, with the two relief coats of arms of the couple who built it in the triangular gable above the lintel , an inscription with their names ("Bernhart Keudell zu Schwebda - Beata Keudelin gv Berlepsch ") below the Lintel and the year of construction 1610 above the arch .
history
In 1596, Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel enfeoffed his bailiff to Rotenburg and Sontra , Bernhard (IV.) Von Keudell († 1607) as a hereditary fiefdom for him and his sons with four feet of land and court and the associated buildings in the middle of Grebendorf. The feud also involved the lower hunting (rabbits and foxes), fishing in Grebendorf and Frieda and a free drift of 200 sheep and cattle, garden, fields and vineyards, as well as the Low jurisdiction . Possibly he received the fief because his previous property in Eichsfeld had been outside the Landgraviate since the Merlau Treaty of 1583 and Moritz not only wanted to reward him for his services with a Hessian fief, but also wanted to bind him more closely to Hesse. Keudell then bought two neighboring small farms as his own property , including from the parents of the later famous alchemist Johann Thölde , in order to be able to build a manor with a manor house . After the farms were demolished, he first had the farm buildings erected, then the palace gardens and finally the manor house. However, if you can believe the signature of the relief coat of arms at the main entrance of the manor house, he does not seem to have seen its completion.
In contrast to the village, the castle survived the Thirty Years War and the desolation of the imperial Croats through the Werra valley in April 1637 unscathed because the Keudell had letters of protection from the emperor.
The last owner of the castle from the client's family was Heinrich Walrab von Keudell. He had fought 1779–1783 as a colonel in the musketeer regiment “Landgraf” (No. 5) with the Hessen-Kassel troops in the American War of Independence and died, unmarried, on June 9, 1792 as a major general a. D. in Schwebda . With that, the Grebendorfer fiefdom fell back to the landgrave. The now domain property with around 150 fields and 200 sheep was still managed by tenants who, however, no longer paid the rent to von Keudell, but to the landgrave .
With the Prussian annexation of Kurhessen in October 1866, Grebendorf Palace and Domain became Prussian state property. In 1876 the Grebendorf community bought the farm and its lands. Part of the agricultural area was used to replace land for local farmers that they had to give up for the construction of the Kanonenbahn ( Leinefelde – Treysa section ). The remaining approximately 35 acres with the castle and farm buildings were sold to a local farmer; the profit made was used to finance the rectory. The buyer, Johann Peter Mengel, gave the property to his daughter Emilie and her husband Adolf Strauss, who after the early death of his wife and child left it to his brother-in-law Johann Christoph Menthe, who had married Mengel's other daughter and had it in his family for four generations stayed.
In 1987 the community of Meinhard bought the manor house, which had meanwhile become uneconomical, and the neighboring farm buildings, and had the entire property extensively renovated over a period of six years. Since 1993 it has served the municipality as the administrative center.
literature
- Ulrich Klein: On the building history of Meinhard-Grebendorf Castle. In: Eschweger Geschichtsblätter 2, 1991, pp. 17-23
Web links
- Grebendorf Castle, Meinhard community. Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
- On the history of the castle and village of Grebendorf
Notes and individual references
- ↑ It was only later, when Bernhard's grandson Georg Sebastian built the mansion on the Keudelstein in 1660 , that this branch of the family called itself "von Keudell zum Keudelstein".
- ↑ He was a son of Friedrich von Keudel and Mechthild von Treffurt .
- ↑ Max Von Eelking: The German Allied Troops in the North American War of Independence, 1776–1783. Albany, 1893 (reprint Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, 1969/1990/2002, ISBN 0-8063-0100-7 , p. 296 ( limited preview in Google book search)
- ↑ Around 1770 the annual rent was 350 Reichstaler .