Heusenstamm Castle
The Heusenstammer Castle or Schönborn Castle is in the Hessian Heusenstamm .
Today's castle is divided into a rear and a front lock. It's right on the left bank of the Bieber .
Rear lock
The rear castle today consists of a residential building and a separate tower, the so-called Bannturm. It stands on the site of the old castle of the Lords of Heusenstamm . The old castle was destroyed several times, rebuilt and rebuilt. Especially at the beginning of the 15th century and in the middle of the 16th century (secured in 1561). The Thirty Years' War in particular caused great damage .
After the lords of Heusenstamm, who lived here, died out in 1616, the castle and the Heusenstamm lordship fell to the Austrian side of the family, who leased the place to the Frankfurt patrician family Steffan von Cronstetten . During the Thirty Years War the village and the castle were almost completely destroyed. In 1661 the rule of Heusenstamm, to which the towns of Obertshausen and Hausen belonged, was sold to the Mainz governor of Steinheim , Philipp Erwein von Schönborn .
After the Schönborn family moved in in 1661, the front castle was built, which was initially planned as a four-wing moated castle . The rear lock was repaired, but partially only inhabited by the servants. From 1896 a kindergarten of the Sisters of Divine Providence was housed in it, then, in the 1940s, an NSV day care center . During the Second World War one was on the spell tower Flakleitstellung installed, which was discovered by the American aerial reconnaissance. In an Allied air raid on December 11, 1944, an attempt was made to destroy this anti-aircraft position, but it was unsuccessful. Instead, part of the old castle's building was badly damaged and the remains of it were removed during the post-war renovation.
Front lock
The front palace in Renaissance style was built between 1663 and 1668 by Philipp Erwein von Schönborn on the former forecourt of the old castle. The parish church of St. Cäcilia was built from 1739 to 1741 as a Catholic burial church of the Heusenstammer branch of the Counts of Schönborn by the builder Johann Balthasar Neumann . When Emperor Franz I lived in Schloss Heusenstamm in 1764 on the occasion of the coronation of his son in Frankfurt (Goethe reports on the event in his poetry and truth ), a magnificent gate was built in his honor, with two stone lions on the sides of the gate and Schönborn ' coat of arms.
In front of the castle there is a small park, a remnant of what used to be a spacious orangery , which is clearly recognizable from the castle ponds and the castle avenue in front of it. The castle is surrounded by a moat that is now drained and which was once fed with water from the Bieber. Remnants of the former manor garden are still there: these include the Kaiserlindenallee, which was newly planted in 1995, in the entrance axis and two ponds on both sides outside the palace district. Today's baroque garden has been laid out again in recent times.
Of 17 May 1954 to 1976 which maintained Oberpostdirektion Frankfurt a Post School in the rented Heusenstammer castle. It was used to train senior civil servants. In 1978 the palace complex was bought by the city of Heusenstamm together with most of the Schönborn property in Heusenstamm. The front castle was then supplemented by additions to form a closed building complex based on the model of the Aschaffenburg castle in order to use it as a town hall and administrative seat.
Today the town hall and a restaurant, the "Schloss-Schenke", are located in the castle. A wine festival takes place on the grounds around the castle in summer and a Christmas market, the so-called "Heusenstammer St.Nikolausmarkt", takes place on the second weekend of Advent. A roofed open-air stage permanently installed between the rear castle and the Bannturm is the venue for the cultural summer with numerous musical events.
Web links
literature
- Heimatverein Heusenstamm (ed.): 750 years Heusenstamm , 1961
- Rolf Müller (Ed.): Palaces, castles, old walls. Published by the Hessendienst der Staatskanzlei, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 3-89214-017-0 , p. 180.
Coordinates: 50 ° 3 ′ 45 " N , 8 ° 48 ′ 28" E