Hofstetten Castle

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Hofstetten Castle is a castle in Hofstetten ( Hitzhofen municipality ) in the Eichstätt district . At its core, it is a medieval ministerial seat - a low castle with a drained moat - located in the center of Hofstetten in the immediate vicinity of the Limes World Heritage Site as well as an important Roman road and a villa rustica . It is considered to be the first Baroque hunting lodge of the Eichstätt prince-bishops and is also the first that the Eichstättische Hofbaumeister Jakob Engel planned. Today it is privately owned and is a listed building (number D-1-76-132-10).

history

In the place of the current castle-palace there was presumably already the ancestral seat of the Hofstetter ministerial family mentioned in 1122 with “Purchard de Hovestete” in a document of Emperor Heinrich V. They owned the castle and village until the 15th century and at least temporarily served both the Eichstätt bishops and the powerful counts of Hirschberg near Beilngries in a kind of double ministry . A Heinrich Schenk von Hofstetten (died 1304), who exercised the court office of cupbearer with the Hirschbergers , founded a new branch of the family, the Baron Schenk von Geyern , who only died in 1971 in the male line .

Presumably through marriage, the castle and village came into the hands of the Erlach ministerial families around 1400 and in 1423 after Lorenz Erlacher sold it to Ulrich Hemberger the elder, who was married to a Hofstetterin. The Hemberger family can be traced back to Kleinmehring and bought the Unterstall Castle near Neuburg in 1421 . From Ulrich Hemberger the Younger (died 1472 in Berching) in 1466 the Eichstatter Prince-Bishop Wilhelm von Reichenau (1464 to 1496) bought the castle and village with all rights. For two years (1466–1468) Hofstetten was Hochstiftspflegamt and the salesman Hemberger was caretaker and at the same time Prince-Bishop Landvogt on the Willibaldsburg before he resigned from these offices. For the time after that, the sources are incomplete - the bishopric probably set up a forestry office with a district forester in Hofstetten Castle and used the complex as an early hunting lodge. The village was administratively assigned to the Landvogtei. Major reconstruction work took place under Bishop Reichenau, as noted in his vita in the Pontifical Gundekarianum , which supports this thesis. Most serious was probably the merging of the individual buildings into one structure as well as the installation of large, regular stone-clad windows.

Johann Euchar Schenk von Castell, Prince-Bishop of Eichstätt

During the Thirty Years' War Hofstetten was badly plundered by the Swedes in 1632 . Between 1690 and 1694, under Prince Bishop Johann Euchar Schenk von Castell (1685–1697), court architect Jakob Engel ( 1632–1714) transformed the complex into a baroque hunting lodge. For the first half of the 18th century, holiday stays by Eichstätt Jesuits are attested. In the course of secularization in 1802, Hofstetten came to the Bavarian state .

Auguste Amalie of Bavaria

In 1817 the mini- principality of Eichstätt, created for Napoleon's stepson, came to Eugene de Beauharnais , Duke of Leuchtenberg and his wife Auguste Amalie , daughter of the first Bavarian King Max I. Joseph . Eugene, who had received the title of Duke of Leuchtenberg and Prince of Eichstätt from his father-in-law, died in 1824 at the age of 42. His daughter-in-law, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolajewna , favorite daughter of Tsar Nikolaus I , handed over the last of the remaining Eichstatt estates - including Hofstetten Castle - to the Bavarian state in 1855 after the death of Maximilian de Beauharnais .

The state set up a forestry office in the castle from 1861, which existed until 1959. In 1962 the English Fräulein (today "Congregatio Jesu") acquired the castle. In 1974 the Leuschner and Schrefel families from Ingolstadt bought it . The Jurahaus Association was founded here in 1984 . Civil weddings have been possible in the palace and in the garden since 2010.

description

Building history

The baroque castle has an irregular floor plan due to the inclusion of high medieval building fabric. Large parts of the outer walls of the fortress house as well as parts of a utility wing and the 16 meter high keep are still in it . These parts of the building, which were already combined into one structure shortly before 1500 after a major fire, were largely gutted during the last renovation between 1690 and 1694, given uniform storey heights and accessed through corridors on the south side. Today's complex is grouped in a U-shape around a small inner courtyard with a fountain and arcades, with its generous windows and the reconstructed pseudo-architecture. Until another part of the building was demolished in 1855, the inner courtyard was bordered on all four sides.

The piano nobile with the baroque dining room and the rooms of the prince-bishop is located on the second floor and can be reached via a platform staircase with parallel arms. The rooms on the first floor were intended as two-room apartments for hunting guests. The first and second floors have quadrature stucco ceilings . The rare baroque toilet facility has been preserved in parts, as well as the 300-year-old table boards in several rooms, as well as a number of door leaves, door panels and floor coverings made of hexagonal limestone slabs. The St. Elisabeth chapel, mentioned by Vicar General Vitus Priefer in 1602, could be assigned to today's first upper floor of the tower for structural research purposes. This is also where the high entrance to the Ministerial Castle and the remains of a wall staircase that can still be walked are located.

After the last land separation in 1965, the castle stands in the middle of a park-like almost 8,000 square meter green area with valuable trees. The renovation also included the late medieval curtain wall and the Forststadel from around 1750. The stuff and grain store had already been torn down in the 19th century. Until the early 1970s, the castle was covered with limestone slabs, popularly known as slate. That is why it also has the flat roof slope characteristic of Jura houses.

From 1978 to around 1985 and from 2003 to 2013, the facility in the center of Hofstetten, a district of Hitzhofen, was completely renovated - most recently u. a. also with financial support from the Bavarian Ministry of Science and technical support from the State Office for Monument Preservation . The listed complex (number D-1-76-132-10) includes according to the list of monuments

  • the former prince-bishop's hunting lodge,
  • the palace garden walling and the
  • former prince-bishop's stash of goods and grain

Monument protection awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ J.-J. Leuschner: Hofstetten Palace , 2013
  2. ↑ P. Leuschner: My castle, my family and me. 2006
  3. ↑ See http://www.jurahaus-verein.de
  4. ↑ Castles and Palaces, Journal of the German Castle Association (DBV), Volume 35 (1994), page 55.
  5. ↑ List of monuments for Hitzhofen (PDF) at the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation
  6. ↑ Note: according to current knowledge, ehm. Forststadel

literature

  • Brun Appel, Helmut Rischert and Karl Zecherle: Castles and palaces in the Eichstätt district, Eichstätt district (ed.), Eichstätt 1981.
  • Leo Hintermayr: The Principality of Eichstätt of the Dukes of Leuchtenberg 1817–1833 . Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-10705-2
  • Juri-Johannes Leuschner: Hofstetten Palace: From the ministerial seat to the episcopal hunting lodge and cultural monument of the 20th century. Master's thesis, 2013.
  • Peter Leuschner: My castle, my family and me. Verlag LangenMüller 2006. ISBN 3-7844-3055-4
  • Felix Mader: The art monuments of Bavaria , Eichstätt district office , 1928. ISBN 3-486-50505-X
  • Wilhelm Neu, Volker Liedke: Upper Bavaria . Ed .: Michael Petzet , Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments (=  Monuments in Bavaria . Volume I.2 ). Oldenbourg, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-486-52392-9 .

Web links

Coordinates: 48 ° 52 ′ 21.2 "  N , 11 ° 19 ′ 38.8"  E