Höchstädt Castle

Castle portal

Portal in the courtyard of the castle

Stair tower in the courtyard of the castle

Höchstädt Castle

South / west front of the castle

South front of the castle

The Höchstädt Castle in Höchstädt on the Danube is one of the most valuable buildings from the German late Renaissance .

history

The palace was built between 1589 and 1603 at the request of Count Palatine Philipp Ludwig von Pfalz-Neuburg according to designs by Lienhart Grieneisen by court architect Sigmund Doctor as a three-storey building on a rectangular floor plan with more than 120 rooms, gables , stair turrets and the four round corner towers. The Gothic keep of a previous building was included and defies symmetry. The castle served as the widow's seat for Philipp Ludwig's wife Anna von Jülich-Kleve-Berg , who lived there from 1615 to 1632. In contrast to her son Wolfgang Wilhelm , she adhered to the Protestant creed, which the painting in the palace chapel still attests to today. Wall paintings from the time of origin, stucco ceilings and inlaid portals have been preserved in the rooms. The castle later served as a district court with prison cells and, during the National Socialist era, for the Reich Labor Service .

The task force responsible for the theft of art in Europe, Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), deposited more than 550,000 objects of cultural goods and scientific material, 14 railway wagons from Ukraine and 4 wagons of museums from Minsk, in the castle and employed a group of Ukrainian scientists with the inventory the company from Paul Grimm, appointed as custodian, and from the directors Rudolf Stampfuß and Werner Shell . In 1945 the objects were transported to the Central Collecting Point in Munich and returned to the Soviet Union in 1946.

In the 1980s, the restoration work began by the Bavarian Palace and Lake Administration. Almost the entire castle has been restored and made accessible since 2004. Only the duchess's bedchamber is still incomplete.

Todays use

Today the castle houses exhibition rooms for various traveling exhibitions, the knight's hall and the castle chapel as a concert hall, various seminar and conference rooms and the castle cellar as an event location for weddings, birthday parties, etc.

Not least because of these numerous possible uses, the castle has developed into a community cultural center in recent years. 2009 came 12,900 visitors.

Currently, a permanent exhibition on the 2nd floor commemorates the Second Battle of Höchstädt of 1704, which was significant for the history of Europe .

literature

• Reinhard H. Seitz: The princely renaissance castle to Höchstädt ad Danube. Konrad, Weißenhorn 2009, ISBN 978-3-87437-537-5 .

Web links

Commons : Schloss Höchstädt  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Bavarian Palace and Lake Administration

• Höchstädt Castle

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ulrike Hartung: Abducted and lost: a documentation of German, Soviet and American files on Nazi art theft in the Soviet Union (1941–1948). Bremen: Temmen, 2000 ISBN 3-86108-336-1 , p. 118; P. 216; P. 265ff; P. 290ff

Coordinates: 48 ° 36 ′ 36 ″  N , 10 ° 34 ′ 26 ″  E