Hetzendorf Castle

Hetzendorf Castle's courtyard

Garden facade

The Hetzendorf Palace is a baroque palace in the Hetzendorferstraße 79 in the 12th Viennese district Meidling that the seat of the Fashion School of the City of Vienna acts. It is located in the south-west of the city, not far from the Vienna Hetzendorf S-Bahn station on the Südbahn, and has a stop for the 62 tram and the 63A bus. Because the school is running, it can usually only be viewed from the outside.

history

In 1675 Princess Maria Piccolomini bought a courtyard from the Augustinian monastery in Hetzendorf , a suburb that was at that time a long way from Vienna “beyond” the imperial summer residence of Schönbrunn Palace (with which it is connected by the Schönbrunner Allee, which extends today's main axis). In 1690 she sold it to Franz Sigismund Graf von Thun and Hohenstein , who bought three more farms and from 1694 had a single-storey hunting lodge, the Thunhof, built. The architect was probably Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach . The Thunhof did not yet have a court of honor and was oriented to the south.

In 1709 the niece of the lord of the castle, Countess Eleonore von Thun-Hohenstein , inherited the Thunhof and, together with her husband Anton Florian Fürst von und zu Liechtenstein, had Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt expand it inside after 1712 and set up a park in the French style. The major renovation she requested did not come about at the time. In 1715 the first castle chapel was set up.

Before 1719 the property was extended to the Hetzendorfer Straße, around this time also the conversion to the baroque garden palace with honor yard by Anton Ospel and Antonio Beduzzi , which changed the orientation of the palace.

After a donation and an inheritance from the high aristocracy, the palace was bought by the Imperial and Royal Court Chamber for Maria Theresa , the monarch of the Habsburg monarchy , after university doctors had confirmed in an expert report that staying there would be beneficial to the health of the widowed Empress Elisabeth Christine , Maria Theresa's mother .

In 1743, Maria Theresa commissioned her court architect Nikolaus Pacassi to expand the building into a palace and make it a residence for her mother. Pacassi made the former rear side in the north the main front and by 1745 also built the castle chapel, which still exists today.

After the death of the Empress Dowager in 1750, the castle stood empty for a long time. When Maria Theresia introduced the leaf vaccination (smallpox vaccination) in 1762, she had it tried out here on noble children in the initial phase, who then lived for four weeks with their families at the expense of the court and received medical care.

Maria Theresa's son, Emperor Joseph II , lived in the palace for a time in 1789/1790, as other residences had temporarily failed due to water damage and the air in Hetzendorf was good for his poor health. He had the front and side buildings built for his court; the castle then had 150 rooms. His intention to spend more time in Hetzendorf in the future was ruined by his death in 1790.

In 1800/1801 Christian August von Seilern lived in the neighboring castle (Schönbrunner Allee 60) until his death, Joseph's brother, the elector and Archbishop of Cologne, Archduke Maximilian Franz of Austria , who was expelled during the Napoleonic wars, and in 1814 the queen of Austria , who suffered the same fate Naples-Sicily, Maria Karolina of Austria . In 1805 and 1809 French occupation troops were billeted. Glorious summer festivals took place in the palace gardens under Emperor Franz I of Austria .

After the death of Emperor Franz in 1835, the castle mainly served as an imperial guest house. In 1839–1841, 400 m east of the castle, the southern runway, which runs on a high embankment, was built. In October of the revolutionary year 1848, the palace was the headquarters of Field Marshal Alfred Fürst Windischgraetz when Vienna was reconquered for the imperial family.

Prominent guests were the Hungarian Prime Minister Count Gyula Andrássy , the German Crown Prince couple Friedrich Wilhelm and Victoria (1873) and Naser ad-Din Schah , the monarch of Persia during his visit to the Vienna World Exhibition in 1873 . The 18-year-old Archduchess Mathilde , the youngest daughter of Archduke Albrecht of Austria-Teschen , died here on June 6, 1867 after a serious fire accident.

The tram has been running through Hetzendorfer Strasse since 1907. From 1912 to 1914, with the consent of Emperor Franz Joseph I. Archduke Karl , Austria's last monarch from 1916, lived with his family in Hetzendorf Castle.

During the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the palace was administered by the kuk Schlosshauptmannschaft zu Schönbrunn and Hetzendorf and the kuk Hofgartenverwaltung zu Schönbrunn and Hetzendorf. It belonged to the court arar . At the beginning of November 1918, the new state of German Austria actually took over the supervision of these two offices, in 1919 the court was formally taken over by the republic on the basis of the Habsburg law; the two administrative institutions became federal agencies in 1920.

The sculptor Anton Hanak lived here from 1923 until his death in 1934, another tenant from the interwar period was the violin virtuoso Bronisław Huberman .

Despite a bomb hit at the end of the Second World War - it affected the left wing of the main courtyard - a large part of the precious baroque interior was preserved. It had been moved to salt mines in good time. In 1946 the City of Vienna leased the palace from the federal government for its fashion school and bought it in 1987.

The castle today

Ballroom

Particularly noteworthy are the representation rooms with the central ballroom (frescoes based on a design by Antonio Beduzzi , figures by Carlo Carlone , mock architecture by Francesco Messenta). Above the chimneys are allegories of the four elements by Daniel Gran .

On the garden side, there is the mirror gallery with portrait paintings attributed to Martin van Meytens or his school: They depict Empress Maria Theresa, her husband, Emperor Franz Stephan of Lorraine , and her sister, Archduchess Maria Anna . The portraits of Maria Theresa's children are was lost in the war-related outsourcing.

The Japanese Room, created between 1743 and 1745, looks particularly precious: It was designed by Pacassi, the templates were provided by François de Cuvilliés the Elder .

Sala terrena

The writing room used from 1912–1914 by the then Archduchess Zita , wife of the last Austro-Hungarian monarch who ruled from 1916–1918, was preserved .

Castle Church

It cannot be seen from the outside that there is a church in the castle, namely the Hetzendorf Castle Church , a rectorate church that belongs to the Archdiocese of Vienna . The Hetzendorf Castle Church, which is consecrated to the Most Holy Trinity , was solemnly consecrated on June 27, 1745 by the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Count Sigismund von Kollonitz (1716–1751), as can be seen from the consecration bull, the facsimile of which can be viewed in the pastoral care room of the church.

Overall impression of the Hetzendorf Castle Church - Most Holy Trinity - Blessed Emperor Karl Memorial Church in 2007.

In the course of the Josephine parish reform , she was a local curia from 1784–1807 and the parish church of Hetzendorf from 1832–1910. Since May 13, 2008, the church has been nicknamed the "Seliger-Kaiser-Karl-Gedächtniskirche" by the archbishopric.

The ceiling of the nave is adorned with frescoes by Daniel Gran - not, as is wrongly based on a signature that is located at the vault on the right above the high altar ("Fr. Jo. Wiedon P. Architect 1744" [Note: Franz Josef Wiedon pinxit Architecturam]), was adopted by Franz Josef Wiedon. The high altar painting is by Johann Karl Auerbach (1722–1788), son of the court and chamber painter Johann Gottfried Auerbach . The premises in which the castle church is located were renovated in 1994–1999. In 2000 further work took place.

Fashion school

The less important rooms have been used by the Vienna Fashion School in Hetzendorf Castle since 1946 . Most of the school premises are located in the former auxiliary and farm buildings.

In front of the palace, the outbuildings extending to Hetzendorfer Strasse form a courtyard. Behind the castle is the Hetzendorfer Schlosspark, where the fashion school organizes its annual fashion show, where the schoolchildren present their creations themselves. The most distant part of the castle park is open to the public from Altmannsdorfer Anger.

Surroundings

On the street side there was a house "two houses down" (at today's address Hetzendorfer Straße 75a) until 1915, where Ludwig van Beethoven lived in 1823 , as indicated by a plaque. He was visited here by Franz Grillparzer . Beethoven had already stayed in Hetzendorf in 1805.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Equipment of the Hetzendorf Castle Church , on the homepage of the Association of Friends of the Hetzendorfer Castle Church , ZVR: 557459635 , accessed on October 16, 2013
2. ^ Chronicle of the castle church in Hetzendorf
3. ^ Engraving, printed in: Association for the History of the City of Vienna (ed.): Wiener Geschichtsblätter , supplement 4/2002, Hans W. Bousska: Bezirksmuseum Meidling , p. 15

literature

• Julius Brunner: Hetzendorf and its castle. Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1972, ISBN 3-7141-6205-4 .
• Magdalena Hawlik-van de Water: The imperial pleasure palace Hetzendorf: the fashion school of the city of Vienna. Böhlau, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-205-98601-6 .
• Franz Weller: The imperial castles and palaces in words and pictures. Hof-Buchdruckerei, Vienna 1880. ( Online )
• Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. Volume 3: Ha-La. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-218-00545-0 , pp. 173-174.
• Wolfgang Mayer: Viennese district culture guide. XII. Hireling. (= Issue 12 of the edition for the Association for the History of the City of Vienna). Jugend & Volk, Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-224-10613-1 .

Web links

Castle church Hetzendorf - historical

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

• Entry via Schloss Hetzendorf to Burgen-Austria

Coordinates: 48 ° 9 ′ 57.9 "  N , 16 ° 18 ′ 29.7"  E