Herrenhausen Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Herrenhausen Palace around 1670
Herrenhausen Castle. Colored lithograph by Rudolf Wiegmann 1834. On the right the castle with its kitchen extension, on the left the Garde du Corps building , in between the western courtyard entrance.

The Royal Herrenhausen is originally a building of the Baroque to the 17th century. It is the reference point and starting point for planning and designing the Great Garden in Hanover . In the 19th century there was a redesign in the sense of classicism . As a result of the air raids on the city of Hanover during the Second World War , the main building burned down completely on October 18, 1943. In 2011/2012, the facade of the classicist palace was reconstructed with financial help from the Volkswagen Foundation . A conference center and museum were set up and opened in 2013.

history

The first parts of the building were created from around 1640 through the gradual conversion and expansion of an estate into a pleasure house . Around 1670, the three-wing complex typical of the Herrenhausen Palace, which opens up to the Great Garden to the south , can already be seen. The courtyard of the half-timbered building can be reached via a gate that is located in the central axis of the two-story main building. The gate border, balcony and dormer emphasize the central axis of the north facade on the country road that runs past. On the courtyard side, a two-flight flight of stairs flanks the passage. It leads to the piano nobile . The single-storey side wings were used as stables, barns and accommodation for the service personnel.

Under Duke Johann Friedrich took place starting in 1676 the decisive extension to the Summer Palace by Marinus Cadart . The residential wing was widened and lavishly furnished to accommodate representative living and social rooms. The central hall above the passage became of central importance. Despite its small size, it was now the center of court life. The view of the growing garden, as a piece of artfully designed and thus dominated nature in this room, instead of a picture program , illustrated the power of the regent. The agricultural use of the side wings was abandoned in order to set up winter quarters for frost-sensitive plants, i.e. a first orangery . Both slightly divergent wings received accessible flat roofs sealed with lead. From them the view of the garden widened. Next to their head ends - facing the garden - the Great Cascade and the Grotto were created . They allowed direct garden access from the living rooms via the roof terraces. The kitchen wing was connected to the west of the main wing. In front of the north side of the castle, Cadart laid out the court of honor with its semicircular enclosure wall. The model was, as for the entire palace complex, the villa construction of the Italian Renaissance .

Around 1688, Duke Ernst August began planning a spacious new palace complex for Herrenhausen , in competition with the almost completed palace building in Salzdahlum . His project was inspired by the villas of Veneto and above all by Andrea Palladio's unrealized Villa Trissino. Johann Peter Wachter put the ducal design on paper as a construction plan for a wooden model, which his brother Johann Heinrich Wachter implemented. The gallery building was created in a first concrete expansion step .

During his reign, Elector Georg Ludwig , in contrast to his father, pursued another building goal from 1698 with the expansion of the water features in order to increase his reputation. The large palace complex was not built. In view of the imminent completion of the garden, Georg Ludwig contented himself with fundamentally renovating the castle between 1704 and 1706. Under the supervision of Count Giacomo Querini and the construction management of the architect and painter Tommaso Giusti , who came from Venice, the castle was given a more contemporary, still Italian-influenced appearance. The facade got a new plaster decoration , which imitated square window frames and corner frames. Short head structures above the side wings now complemented the residential wing. The castellan's new official apartment , guest apartments and accommodation for servants were placed in front of the semicircular courtyard wall. The sandstone pillars and wrought-iron bars that still exist today, which separate the garden courtyard from the large ground floor, come from this phase of renovation.

In 1725 Tobias Henry Reetz renewed the facade of the old half-timbered castle, which retained the appearance of a solid structure. Reetz also has an unrealized design for a larger castle. A new building was intended to eliminate the relationship between the size of the completed garden and the building from the time of Duke Johann Friedrich, which was still related to the significantly smaller Lustgarten, which was perceived as unsatisfactory. Despite further new construction and renovation plans by the later court architects , the structural situation of the palace was preserved under Georg II , who was born in Herrenhausen in 1683.

During the reign of George III. who was never in Herrenhausen, all baroque facade decoration was removed from the palace in 1780 under the direction of the court mason Johann Georg Täntzel . The maintenance effort for an elaborate plastering of the framework was too high.

From 1818 court building officer Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves gave the palace a classicist look. The facades received a plaster block . Laves redesigned the central window axes of the two longitudinal facades as only slightly protruding risalits . On the garden side, he only slightly emphasized the central projection. On the north facade, on the other hand, Laves placed the flat gable with a figure-adorned high attic . He highlighted the main entrance, behind which there was now a vestibule instead of the passage , with a column-supported balcony. Behind a high attic above the entire facade, it covered large parts of the roof.

In October 1821 King George IV visited Hanover. For the three-week stay, Laves adapted the castle to contemporary living conditions according to high English standards. Flush toilets and tea kitchens were set up, a dining room upstairs was created and the kitchen area renovated. Many of the old room decorations have been preserved.

Since the Hanoverian kings resided in Hanover from 1837, the castle has been used for representative dinners and receptions. From 1857, Georg V. Herrenhausen again used it as a summer residence, and later, during the construction of the Welfenschloss , also as a residence. Until it was destroyed in an air raid on the night of October 18th to 19th, 1943, the castle remained in the appearance created by Laves. The main building, consisting largely of clad timber framework, burned down - only the outside staircase , parts of the gallery and a few auxiliary buildings remained. In the subsequent reconstruction of the gardens, the outside staircase was moved to the south-western edge of the ground floor .

  • The wall of the main courtyard, built in 1676

  • Cross-section through the Herrenhaus Castle, 1764

  • View of the garden with the facade design from 1725

  • Herrenhausen Palace around 1895 with grotto (left)

  • View of the garden side in the 19th century

Reconstruction of the castle

The rebuilt castle seen from the garden side
The rebuilt castle seen from the courtyard side
Chancellor Angela Merkel receives US President Barack Obama in front of the castle with military honors , 2016

After the Second World War, there were various unimplemented proposals to partially or completely rebuild the castle. Two proposals put forward by senior building officer Karl Cravatzo in April and May 1958 were for a castle hotel . A year later, Otto Fiederling designed a museum for fine arts including an art gallery. In 1962 the ruins of the castle were transferred from the property of the Hanoverian line of the Welfen to the city of Hanover. In 1963, Cravatzo's proposal was for the music college to occupy Schlossplatz. Another year later, a viewing platform with a restaurant called Bella Vista was to be created based on a design by the architect Arne Jacobsen . In 1977, then Prime Minister Ernst Albrecht suggested that the Herrenhausen Palace be rebuilt. The following year, engineers Jürgen Haack and Peter Krüger had the idea of ​​creating a planted viewing platform.

In 1986, the cultural agreement concluded between the city of Hanover and the state of Lower Saxony stipulated a structural addition tailored to the Great Garden. In-depth historical analyzes and monument conservation considerations followed in preparation for an architectural competition, which, however, did not take place for financial reasons.

In November 2007, negotiations between the city of Hanover and the Volkswagen Foundation about the reconstruction of Herrenhausen Palace became known. In July 2009, a 99-year leasehold contract was signed between the city and a foundation-owned company . On this basis, the facade of the classical Laves Castle was reconstructed with funds from the Volkswagen Foundation . The Hamburg office JK - Jastrzembski Kotulla provided the plans. The construction cost a little over 25 million euros.

The foundation stone for the castle was laid on June 6, 2011, the opening was celebrated on January 18, 2013 with a lecture by the President of the Federal Constitutional Court, Andreas Vosskuhle .

Use of the building

In the main building there is a conference center that is primarily intended to be used for scientific lectures. A lecture hall in the basement offers around 270 seats. A ballroom suitable for chamber music, seating 700 in rows and up to 360 for banquets, occupies the upper floor. The Herrenhausen Palace Museum was opened on May 14, 2013 as a department of the Hanover Historical Museum in the palace wings and an underground connecting passage. The exhibition in the east wing deals with the development of the Herrenhausen summer residence and its significance for the Guelph princely state in the Baroque era. Among other things, the focus is on the personalities of the late 17th century who were important for the history of the Great Garden. The garden design as an expression of the Baroque culture is presented in the connecting passage. The exhibition in the west wing is dedicated to the history of the Herrenhausen Gardens since 1760.

  • Entrance from the garden side

  • Garden side with sundial

  • Exhibition room of the museum in the east wing

The art and antiques fair , which has been held since 1969, has also found its place here. It traditionally takes place in the gallery building, which was built from 1694 and was supplemented by the Arne Jacobsen foyer in the 1960s. The fair is partially accompanied by the television program Kunst und Krempel .

Web links

Commons : Herrenhausen Palace  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Florian Stark: Hanover's splendor: Herrenhausen Palace - risen from the ruins . In: THE WORLD . January 18, 2013 ( welt.de [accessed on May 6, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Bernd Adam: "The mansion castle ...", pp. 95–96.
  3. ↑ a b Bernd Adam: "The mansion castle ...", pp. 96–98.
  4. ↑ Urs Boeck: "Two courtly festival rooms ...", pp. 68, 71–72.
  5. ↑ Bernd Adam: "The mansion castle ...", p. 98.
  6. ↑ Bernd Adam: "The mansion castle ...", pp. 98–99.
  7. ↑ a b c Bernd Adam: "The mansion castle ...", p. 99.
  8. ↑ Heike Palm: "The story ...", p. 33.
  9. ↑ Cord Meckseper: "Visions ...", p. 102.
  10. ↑ Florian Stark: Hanover's splendor: Herrenhausen Palace - risen from the ruins . In: THE WORLD . January 18, 2013 ( welt.de [accessed on May 6, 2018]).
  11. ↑ NDR.de of January 18, 2013 ( memento of January 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 18, 2013
  12. ↑ HAZ topic page on the castle opening , accessed on January 25, 2013
  13. ↑ “Magnificent, but not ostentatious. The new Herrenhausen Palace fits perfectly into the Great Garden ”. In: From the gardens. Information for friends of the Herrenhausen Gardens eV, 2.2012, p. 7.
  14. ↑ Work for the castle museum is in full swing in: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung from January 8, 2013
  15. ↑ A museum opens its doors. (No longer available online.) Press and public relations work of the state capital Hanover, May 14, 2013, archived from the original on September 27, 2013 ; Retrieved September 17, 2013 .
  16. ↑ https://www.messen.de/de/4553/messeort/galerie-herrenhausen/messen
  17. ↑ https://www.hannover-online.de/news-lesen/art-fair-antiquitaeten-auf-der-kunstmesse-in-herrenhausen.html
  18. ↑ https://www.ndr.de/der_ndr/presse/mitteilungen/pressemeldungndr10091.html

Coordinates: 52 ° 23 ′ 29 ″  N , 9 ° 41 ′ 50 ″  E