Höhenried Castle

Höhenried Castle

Höhenried in winter

The current grounds of Schloss Höhenried in Bernried were founded in 1914 (Hofgrund Bernried, Gut Adelsried) and 1927 (Gut Höhenried) by Wilhelmina Busch, co-heir of the Anheuser-Busch brewery, who was born in St. Louis in 1884 , and her first Acquired husband, Eduard Scharrer from Stuttgart . The Busch-Scharrer couple initially bought the Postvilla in Bernried and enjoyed great social prestige. After August Scharrer suddenly died in 1932, Wilhelmina Busch married her doctor, Carl Borchard, in 1933, from whom she divorced a few years later.

history

Her great dream of building a castle on the site was fulfilled in 1937. The topping-out ceremony was held in February 1938 and the castle with 60 rooms was completed in the summer of 1939. When the USA entered the war, Wilhelmina Busch moved her residence to Switzerland, but retained her German citizenship.

The castle was confiscated in 1943. An orthopedic clinic has been quartered here for the first time for two years.

Shortly before the end of the war, Ms. Busch succeeded in evacuating the Swiss embassies and the Geneva Red Cross to Höhenried, so that the entire property was protected from destruction. At the end of the war, the Americans confiscated Höhenried and left it in March 1946.

Wilhelmina Busch herself returned to Höhenried for the first time in the autumn of 1946 and in 1948 married the American Consul General Sam E. Woods , whom she had met in Switzerland in 1942. Due to the professional position of Sam Woods, important political and social events took place in Höhenried.

View of the park and Lake Starnberg

In the following years, the Busch-Woods couple had the approximately 600,000 square meter park redesigned according to their plans. a. built the Mississippi ponds and an enclosure with white fallow deer that still exist today. In addition, the Busch-Woods family donated the Bernried Nature Park in 1950, an area of ​​around 80 hectares, the grounds of which may no longer be changed. From 1952 this Höhenried park was also opened for viewing.

Wilhelmina Busch-Woods died of heart disease and heart surgery in 1952 in Munich. She was buried on Wilhelminen-Platz in Höhenrieder Park. Her husband, Sam Woods, died unexpectedly shortly afterwards in 1953, and he was also buried in Höhenried. On the coffins is the saying: “Love never ends”.

The Museum of Fantasy , better known as the Buchheim Museum, is located on the grounds of Schloss Höhenried .

Use as a clinic

Clinic building

After the deaths of both of them, the property passed to a community of heirs who had no great interest in maintaining Höhenried Castle. The system was therefore up for sale and was acquired by LVA Oberbayern on October 27, 1955 (since October 1, 2005: Deutsche Rentenversicherung Oberbayern and since January 1, 2007 Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bayern Süd ) .

First of all, preventive cures were carried out in Schloss Höhenried from 1958 to 1966. After extensive construction work, the Höhenried Clinic was opened in 1967; Since then, Höhenried has been a rehabilitation center for the field of cardiology . From 2003 the indication area orthopedics and from 2005 psychosomatics was added. In the course of renovations, the clinic was extensively renovated between 2003 and 2005.

literature

• Florian Neumann, Maximilian Schreiber: Höhenried. Castle and clinic, past and present. August Dreesbach Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-940061-01-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sylvia Böhm-Haimerl: A dream come true , article in the Starnberg local edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung from August 31, 2015

Web links

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

• Castle of the Höhenried Clinic

Coordinates: 47 ° 52 ′ 36.5 ″  N , 11 ° 17 ′ 7.4 ″  E