Grimberg Castle

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Grimberg Castle before 1914, view from the southeast
Grimberg Castle before 1914, view from the southwest

The Grimberg castle , also known as House Grimberg known, was a surge in Gelsenkirchen district of Bismarck on the outskirts of Herne -well. It emerged from a Brandenburg moated castle to secure the border and was a fiefdom of the Counts of the Mark that was eligible for parliament . The facility not only had a purely security function, but also served as the residence of the tenants and as an economic and administrative center. After gradual deterioration and severe damage during World War II , the palace buildings were completely demolished in the 1960s. The current owner of the castle grounds is the Thyssen company . The approximately 32.3  hectare area is fenced all around and not freely accessible.

history

middle Ages

The facility was built as a permanent house before 1307 in the swampy Emscherbruch by Wennemar von Grimberg (Winemarus miles de Grintberg). The house served as the Brandenburg border fortress against the Electoral Cologne Vest Recklinghausen and the county of Kleve , because it stood at the confluence of the Ah (today's straightened Hüller Mühlenbach) in the Emscher and thus only about 500 meters from the "Hohen Schlemm". where first a ford and later the Grimberger Bridge offered a possibility to cross the Emscher. The von Grimberg family, called Altenbockum , was originally in the service of the Essen women's monastery and around 1300 administered the Brockhof, one of the largest Fronhöfe in Essen . At an early age they also placed themselves in the service of the Counts of the Mark, with whose help they were able to enforce sovereignty over the former Essen property in Gelsenkirchen. For example, two of the Brockdorfer Unterhöfe were spun off and made into the construction of Grimberg Castle.

In 1317 the moated castle was first mentioned as castrum tur Ah . It is possible that the mention of a chapel in a Werden document from 1183 already referred to the same complex, and before 1220 “Grintberge” appeared in a bailiff of the Essen monastery. The house was expanded around 1317, as construction work is documented for that year. During the lifetime of its builder, the moated castle was completely transferred to the Brandenburg property, but returned to the von Grimberg family as an inheritance . Count Engelbert II. Von der Mark secured the right to open this strategically important facility. Wennemar von Grimberg later founded a castle chapel , which is attested to in 1328. In that year the lord of the castle donated memories for himself and his wife.

Wennemar's granddaughter Mechthild married Albert Sobbe before 1346 and brought him the property after her father's death around 1349. Under the Sobbe family, the complex was renamed after the testers, so that it was known as Haus Grimberg (also Grintberge, Grymberke and Grymberge) from around 1400.

Early modern age

After Adrian von Sobbe's death, his son Hannemann from his marriage to Jutta von Lützenrode was enfeoffed with the Grimberg family in 1522. With his childless death, the male line of the family died out, and the castle came to her husband Gert Knipping via Hannemann's sister Dorothea Ursula. The couple's heir, Heinrich Knipping, received the loan for Grimberg on September 12, 1541. He had the old castle replaced by a three-part palace in the Renaissance style . He transferred the Grimberg Chapel to the Protestant parish and had a splendid altar built there in 1574 . Servants settled on the outer bailey island of the castle and benefited from the fact that the island had the status of a freedom . This freedom included a separate judicial district, which also extended to farms in the judicial area of ​​Dorneburg, Eickel and Bickern and was created as a result of a sovereign privilege. Presumably, the Lords of Grimberg held this jurisdiction as an inheritance from the beginning of the castle. It was only abolished by Napoleon on June 16, 1810.

Grimberg Castle after the changes under Johann Hermann Franz von Nesselrode; North is on the left edge of the picture

Heinrich Knipping had married Sybilla von Nesselrode zu Stein and Herten in 1548 , but no children had resulted from the union. When Henry died childless in 1578, he had therefore been his two sisters Anna and Sophia used as heiresses, but that his widow would not resign because of the large Grimberger property comprised in the 16th century next to the Alloden family also around 95 individual farms and Kotten from mortgages. A protracted inheritance dispute broke out between the parties, which only came to an end in 1676 when Freiherr Johann Salentin Wilhelm von Nesselrode became the new owner of the Leithe house and two years later received the loan. In 1666 he married Franziska Margaretha Christina von Brempt, who had been one of the Grimberg co-heirs through her mother, and found the remaining heirs or bought their shares in the meanwhile neglected property. Elevated to the rank of imperial count on September 4, 1710 , he left the property to his son Johann Hermann Franz when he died in 1715. He was in imperial service and mostly stayed at the Austrian court. He was therefore not there when a fire destroyed large parts of the castle. Johann Hermann Franz decided to rebuild in the Baroque style and commissioned the architect Johann Conrad Schlaun with the drafts for the reconstruction and the building supervision. Construction began in the summer of 1733. Under Schlaun's direction, not only were the destroyed parts of the upper castle replaced and the burned-down farm buildings rebuilt on the lower castle, but far-reaching changes were also made to the existing structure. For example, the upper castle was given a completely new floor plan. Schlaun also completely redesigned the Vorburginsel. With the exception of the chapel, all the buildings there were demolished and a tree courtyard was created on the site in 1734. The cemetery, which is also located on the island, was transformed into a garden. The Lutheran Chapel was Johann Hermann Franz von Nesselrode 1738 convert to a Catholic chapel. Before that, he had built a new church for the Protestant community with the Bleckkirche outside the palace area and had it equipped with Knipping's grand altar from the 16th century. After construction work was completed in 1747, the Grimberg Palace complex consisted of five islands (including a separate garden island), which were connected to one another by renewed or newly built bridges.

But Herr von Grimberg could not enjoy his new castle for too long, because he died in 1751 only four years after it was completed. His son Johann Wilhelm Maximilian succeeded him and, after the related family line of Nesselrode-Reichenstein had expired in 1776, acquired their properties, including Herten Castle , where he then lived. He was the last member of the family to use Grimberg Castle as a residence. In 1798 it was only inhabited by the tenant who worked and was administered from Herten.

19th century and later

When this branch of the male line died out with Johann Wilhelm Maximilian's son Johann Franz Joseph von Nesselrode-Reichenstein , Grimberg Castle - like the entire Nesselrode property - passed to the family of the barons Droste zu Vischering , who subsequently called themselves Droste zu Vischering von Nesselrode-Reichenstein .

Grimberg Castle on a postcard from 1913

At the end of the 19th century, the owners gradually sold the lands belonging to the castle. In 1895 there were also plans to sell 80  acres of land to the city of Gelsenkirchen, which wanted to convert it into a public park , but the plan failed. From 1905 the leaseholder of the complex ran a restaurant in the castle, which together with the Bismarckhain (today Zoom Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen ) developed into a popular destination for Gelsenkirchen residents. At that time, visitors also had the opportunity to visit the interior of the castle. In 1907, Count Felix Droste zu Vischering von Nesselrode-Reichenstein sold the entire plant to Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG . At the time, GBAG provided the harbor master Wilhelm Bernard Wilting and his family with Grimberg Castle as an apartment so that the master craftsman could be on site immediately. Only a little later, the Rhine-Herne Canal was built in the direct vicinity of the castle buildings , which destroyed the western part of the castle park . The moat was also cut and then fell dry. This, in turn, had negative effects on the building's stability, because Grimberg Castle was a pile foundation whose oak piles began to rot. The park's old trees also suffered from the gradually falling water table. To save the Grimberger chapel before the collapse, leaving the last noble owner of the castle, they wear away stone by stone in 1908 and the Hertener Schlossinsel translocate . With the Second World War, the tenants of the castle moved away and gave up the castle gastronomy. The buildings were then empty and unused. After the war ended, they were used as emergency accommodation from around 1920. For this purpose, the castle rooms were divided into apartments, whereby much of the rich stucco and wooden decorations inside were lost. In 1934 lay people examined the death cellar that was still in place at the site of the old castle chapel. The uninformed excavators found two burial chambers and 14 burial niches. They removed the furnishings such as grave slabs and coffin fittings before the remains of the unknown dead were buried in Nesselroden's hereditary burial.

The castle was badly damaged in the Second World War. Vacancy, lowering of the groundwater level and neglect caused it to deteriorate into a ruin by 1950 , the structural remains of which were removed down to the foundation walls in the 1960s. The site was filled with excavated soil and building rubble. Since 2006, the Grimberg harbor nature reserve has been designated on the site due to rare bird and bat species .

description

After a renovation and expansion in the 18th century, Grimberg Castle was a three-part moated castle, whose moats were fed by the Hüller Mühlenbach. The complex had a rectangular floor plan and was spread over five islands, three of which were occupied by the castle freedom, the outer bailey and the manor house. The other two islands served as a cow meadow and garden. Around the outer bailey and the manor house, the moat was widened to a house pond.

Liberty and Castle Chapel

Grimberg Castle Chapel with portal (today Herten Castle)

Up until the early 20th century there was a baroque, whitewashed castle chapel on the Freiheit, which was sometimes also called the “Vorburg”, which was demolished in 1908 and rebuilt at Herten Castle. A cemetery belonged to it until the 18th century, but it was replaced by a garden by Johann Conrad Schlaun in 1734. For this, the castle servants' houses had to give way.

See also: Herten Castle Chapel

Lower castle

To the north of Freiheit was the "Lower Castle", which could be reached from Freiheit via the "first castle bridge". The three-winged economic complex of the castle stood on the island. The entire south side was taken up by a gatehouse , while the steward's house and a stately horse stable from the Baroque period stood on the east side. The western wing was formed by the so-called "Teutsche Haus", an economic building with a brewery , smithy, bakery , sleeping chambers for grooms, the vicar's bedroom , coach house and dog kennel. All buildings were two-story and made of brick . The Kuhwiese could be reached via two bridges on the eastern side of the island.

Oberburg

South side of the lower castle, 1908

The manor house of the castle stood on the "upper castle", which was north of the "lower castle". It was accessible from the south via a stone arch bridge with a drawbridge element at the end. On this stood two figures made of Baumberger sandstone , of which the Madonna stands today in the Herten castle park.

The manor house is a right-angled two-wing building, with a round corner tower on the northeast corner. The whitewashed brick building stood on a stone base and was covered by a slate hipped roof. The base and the sockets of the window and door openings were made of sandstone . A two-flight flight of stairs led to the castle portal , which had been designed by Johann Conrad Schlaun. The north wing of the manor house was rebuilt in 1733 after a fire. It is known which rooms were in it: The basement included the kitchen, the pantry, a wine and a milk cellar and rooms for the servants. The ground floor accommodated living and common rooms such as bedrooms and cabinets , a large hall and the archive. On the first floor there were further bedrooms and their respective dressing rooms.

Castle gardens

The area of ​​the castle garden is now a nature reserve.

The gardens of Grimberg Castle were a total of 8.6  hectares . In addition to old trees, rare flowering plants also grew there. They also served as habitats for snipes , teals , partridges , pheasants and mallards , which were hunted . Like the entire palace, the gardens fell into disrepair from the 1940s onwards due to insufficient maintenance. Nevertheless there are still old trees there today, for example a 150 to 200 year old winter linden tree and some horse chestnuts that are 80 to 100 years old. The garden area has been under nature protection since 2006 as the "Hafen Grimberg" .

literature

  • Gustav Griese: Castle and Castle Grimberg. In: Gustav Griese (Ed.): Castles and palaces in Gelsenkirchen. 2nd Edition. Heimatbund Gelsenkirchen, Gelsenkirchen 1960, pp. 33-66.
  • Albert Ludorff : The architectural and art monuments of the district of Gelsenkirchen-Stadt (= The architectural and art monuments of Westphalia . Volume 26). Schöningh, Münster 1908, pp. 20-25 ( digitized version ).
  • Annegret Müller, Heidemarie Otten: Historic gardens and parks. Emscher Landscape Park. Municipal Association of the Ruhr Area, Essen 1992, p. 137 and no.
  • Rudolf Zienius: Grimberg Castle. In: Gesellschaft für Heimatkunde Wanne-Eickel (Hrsg.): The Emscherbrücher. Wanne-Eickeler booklets. Volume 1. Wanne-Eickel 1984, ISSN  1610-3904 , pp. 12-20.

Web links

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

Footnotes

  1. ^ Gustav Griese: Burg and Schloss Grimberg. 1960, p. 42.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Annegret Müller, Heidemarie Otten: Historical gardens and parks. Emscher Landscape Park. 1992, no p.
  3. ^ Stefan Pätzold: Knight seats north of the Ruhr. Fortified houses in the Bochum district of Brandenburg during the late Middle Ages. In: Werner Freitag (Ed.): Castles in Westphalia. Defense systems, mansions, economic centers (12th-14th centuries). Aschendorff, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-402-15052-8 , p. 170.
  4. ^ Hubert Kurowski: The Emscher as the limit of the vestic area . In: Hans Udo Thormann (Hrsg.): Franks and French in Vest 1773 to 1813. Influences and invasions, immigration and incorporation. Pomp, Bottrop 2010, ISBN 978-3-89355-262-7 , p. 53.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Entry by Cornelia Kneppe on Grimberg Castle in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
  6. ↑ Cornelia Kneppe: On both sides of the Emscher - noble seats in the urban area of ​​Gelsenkirchen. In: LWL-Archeologie für Westfalen, Altertumskommission für Westfalen (Ed.): Archäologie in Westfalen-Lippe 2011. Beier & Beran, Langenweißbach 2012, ISBN 978-3-941171-76-3 , p. 239.
  7. ↑ Stefan Pätzold points out in Rittersitze north of the Ruhr that this mention from 1317 is not certain, but the first reliable mention of the complex was made in a document from July 24, 1322. Cf. Stefan Pätzold: Knight seats north of the Ruhr. Fortified houses in the Bochum district of Brandenburg during the late Middle Ages. In: Werner Freitag (Ed.): Castles in Westphalia. Defense systems, mansions, economic centers (12th-14th centuries). Aschendorff, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-402-15052-8 , p. 173, note 48.
  8. ↑ a b Information on Grimberg Castle on the website of the city of Herne , accessed on May 19, 2017.
  9. ↑ a b c Schloss Grimberg in GenWiki , accessed on June 3, 2017.
  10. ^ Stefan Pätzold: Knight seats north of the Ruhr. Fortified houses in the Bochum district of Brandenburg during the late Middle Ages. In: Werner Freitag (Ed.): Castles in Westphalia. Defense systems, mansions, economic centers (12th-14th centuries). Aschendorff, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-402-15052-8 , p. 181.
  11. ^ Hubert Kurowski: The Emscher as the limit of the vestic area . In: Hans Udo Thormann (Hrsg.): Franks and French in Vest 1773 to 1813. Influences and invasions, immigration and incorporation. Pomp, Bottrop 2010, ISBN 978-3-89355-262-7 , p. 54.
  12. ↑ Albert Ludorff: The architectural and art monuments of the Gelsenkirchen city district. 1908, p. 20.
  13. ^ Stefan Pätzold: Knight seats north of the Ruhr. Fortified houses in the Bochum district of Brandenburg during the late Middle Ages. In: Werner Freitag (Ed.): Castles in Westphalia. Defense systems, mansions, economic centers (12th-14th centuries). Aschendorff, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-402-15052-8 , p. 186.
  14. ^ Stefan Pätzold: Knight seats north of the Ruhr. Fortified houses in the Bochum district of Brandenburg during the late Middle Ages. In: Werner Freitag (Ed.): Castles in Westphalia. Defense systems, mansions, economic centers (12th-14th centuries). Aschendorff, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-402-15052-8 , p. 185.
  15. ^ Gustav Griese: Burg and Schloss Grimberg. 1960, p. 36.
  16. ^ Gustav Griese: Burg and Schloss Grimberg. 1960, p. 51.
  17. ↑ a b c Annegret Müller, Heidemarie Otten: Historical gardens and parks. Emscher Landscape Park. 1992, p. 137.
  18. ↑ Albert Ludorff: The architectural and art monuments of the Gelsenkirchen city district. 1908, p. 21.
  19. ^ Gustav Griese: Burg and Schloss Grimberg. 1960, p. 65.
  20. ^ Gustav Griese: Burg and Schloss Grimberg. 1960, p. 43.
  21. ^ Gustav Griese: Burg and Schloss Grimberg. 1960, p. 57.
  22. ^ A b Gustav Griese: Burg and Schloss Grimberg. 1960, p. 55.
  23. ↑ a b Information on the "Hafen Grimberg" nature reserve on the website herner-netz.de ( Memento from November 9, 2004 in the Internet Archive )

Coordinates: 51 ° 32 '42  .4 " N , 7 ° 7' 31.4"  E