Hohenburg Castle (Lenggries)

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Hohenburg Castle

Hohenburg Castle is part of the municipality of Lenggries in the Isarwinkel .

prehistory

Already since around 1100 there was a Hohenburg near Lenggries , from which the fate of the Isarwinkel was directed for centuries. The original wooden structure was probably replaced by a stone structure as early as the 12th century. Since 1566 this castle was owned by the noble Augsburg family and patricians Hörwarth . During the Bavarian people's uprising of 1705, the castle castle with its armory was given an unrealistic meaning with regard to the - illegitimate! - Armed the insurgents assigned. In the aftermath of the Sendlinger Murder Christmas, a unit of no more than ten imperial hussars was quartered under one lieutenant. It was they who set the castle on fire on July 21, 1707 and were responsible for its destruction. The court lord Ferdinand Joseph Hörwarth von Hohenburg, who resided in Munich, decided within a short time not to rebuild the castle, but to build a new castle, which was built on the Hofacker below the castle after examining several different locations (more on the castle in the main article Hohenburg (Lenggries) ).

Building history

Construction of the palace began on May 12, 1712 with the laying of the foundation stone and ended around 1719. The old castle, shown by Michael Wening in 1701, was used as a quarry. In terms of design, the building can be attributed to the early baroque era. The magnificent palace garden based on Versailles was laid out by Matthias Diesel , who also depicted it in an engraving. Since there are no more traces of a French garden, this engraving and the depicted garden have been questioned. In fact, the first photograph at the beginning of the 19th century also shows a French garden. On the votive plaque for the Tyrolean invasion during the Napoleonic Wars, the palace garden is only depicted as a fenced-in English lawn.

West side of the castle

Hohenburg Castle has been used for schools since 1953. Originally, the Ursulines von Landshut set up a household school with boarding school, from which the secondary schools for girls, a secondary school and a high school with a day care center, which still exist today, developed. Today the archdiocese of Munich-Freising is responsible for these schools.

The actual residential building, an elongated building with hipped roofs, comprises three floors with a mezzanine in the middle section. The corner projections are even higher due to an additional mezzanine. Above the courtyard-side risalit with the staircase sits a strong, brick roof turret with a bell cage. The stairwell is one of the few components that can be traced back to the construction period.

In addition to the large main building, the castle has two free-standing wings that have been connected to the main building since 1953 at the earliest. Once there were three wings that formed a closed courtyard to the east.

The south wing was used as a brewery and Bräustüberl from 1818. After the castle was taken over by the Ursulines in 1953, the brewery was converted into the St. Ursula school church. After the Ursulines left in 2003, this church was once again used as a classroom.

A stables, which extended the north wing in parallel with the same ground plan, was added by the 19th century at the latest. Today the school canteen, garages and classrooms are located there. In the north wing there has been a gymnasium since the schools were founded, which was replaced by a secluded new building in the 2000s and has served as an auditorium ever since.

The small castle chapel at the north end of the main building, the former hunting hall and the opulent stairwells are well worth seeing. In several rooms of the castle, which has been used as a school since 1953, there are still frescoes and paintings. Also noteworthy are the gargoyles on the roof, formed into dragon heads.

Ownership history

In 1800 the male line of the Bavarian Hörwarth became extinct, whereupon a long-term inheritance dispute between Friederike Countess von Zech from the Steinacher line and Countess Rambaldi from the Hohenburg line attacked the economic basis of the property. Due to the debts, the building yard had to be auctioned in 1801 and part of the Hohenburg facilities, such as the benefit house and the tavern (Gasthof Altwirt in Lenggries) were sold. Hohenburg Castle was finally founded on April 7, 1807 by Friederike von Zech, b. Hörwarth, struck. It was robbed on July 17th, 1809 by the Tyroleans who gained entry. Her future son-in-law, the toll billing commissioner Max Kramer, who with his wife Josepha was given ownership of the property in 1817, was already present. So that Kramer could exercise jurisdiction in the Hofmark, he was ennobled by the sovereign. Due to the economic difficulties of the property, which was still the administrative center of a Hofmark, Hohenburg was approved to build a brewery. Maximilian von Kramer, who died early on December 13, 1820 at the age of 40, is the last to be buried in the Hörwarth family crypt in the parish church of St. Jakob in Lenggries. The widow, with her four still underage children and in constant struggle with the long-time administrator Schmid, who was imprisoned for embezzlement in 1823, was ultimately unable to hold the over-indebted property and had to sell in 1833. In the farewell year, Josepha von Kramer arranged for a Black Madonna to be returned to the castle chapel, which had been transferred to the St. Anna chapel in Lenggries-Fleck in the course of secularization, in order to at least keep it in the parish.

A cadastre of the patrimonial courts of the Isar district drawn up in February 1835 lists Hohenburg as the second class patrimonial court. Joseph Max Graf von Taufkirchen-Hohenburg, royal Bavarian chamberlain and lieutenant colonel a la suite (detached), was listed as landlord . It was speculated about Count von Taufkirchen that he invested thousands of guilders in renovations, but also withdrew valuables. The brief ownership of only three years feeds the assumption that he was a project developer - a speculator - who bought a property under public law that was sold under distress, prettied it up and resold it at a high price.

In Prince Karl Emich zu Leiningen (* 1804, † 1856), a lover acquired the castle with Hofmark, who made it according to his status - his little stepsister was Queen of England from 1837! - had it prepared. After the death of his father Emich Carl Fürst zu Leiningen in 1814, his mother Victoire von Sachsen-Coburg-Saalfeld was married to Eduard August, Duke of Kent and Strathearn , whose only child was Queen Victoria . Karl Emich zu Leiningen had the outside of the palace slightly modified and several rooms and halls refurbished. He was also an avid hunter and built up an extensive hunting ground here . Almost at the same time he had the neo-Gothic Waldleiningen Castle built in the Odenwald . He was the last lord of the court; he could not agree to the abolition of his status as court lord due to the laws of June 4, 1848. On May 4, 1849, in Hinterriß, he wrote his farewell to his Lenggries subjects: “I stopped being the landlord of the residents of my former Hofmark Hohenburg by law and for this reason did not show any decency about the property I had left, including the brewery and To sell the castle. ”Nevertheless, Prince von Leiningen was drawn back to Lenggries; he died here on November 13, 1856.

Painting of the castle by Franz Sauer (1880)

Similar to the episode with Count von Taufkirchen, Count Max Arco Zinneberg (* 13.12.1811) came on the scene as a buyer, just like he was a royal Bavarian chamberlain and major a la suite. Arco acquired Hohenburg in April 1849 and sold it on to his sister-in-law's brother on January 1, 1851: Marquis Fabio de Pallavicini, former Sardinian envoy to the Bavarian court. Arco Zinneberg had already sold his parents' property at Schloss Zinneberg to him in 1850. Pallavicini leased the castle economy and after a few years was already looking for a buyer.

In 1857 Baron Carl von Eichthal acquired Hohenburg Castle, which had now been badly run down, for 32,000 guilders . His father, Simon Aron Freiherr von Eichthal (formerly Seligmann) financed, among other things, the art purchases of Crown Prince Ludwig and brokered Bavarian government bonds to Greece . In 1834 he was one of the founders of the Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank and co-founder of numerous railway companies in the Kingdom of Bavaria , as well as the holder of mining concessions in Penzberg. The also ennobled son Carl bought the secularized monastery of St. Blasien in the Black Forest and ran an ammunition factory and a cotton spinning mill there. At that time, the family was considered the wealthiest family in the Grand Duchy of Baden . From 1868 to 1871 he was a member of the Customs Parliament, the Reichstag of the North German Confederation, supplemented by members of the southern German member states of the German Customs Union, which was responsible for legislation on customs duties, consumer taxes and trade agreements.

In 1863, the Hohenburger landlord Eichthal bought the Leimermüller property, the saw and several parish properties on the spot (today a district). There he had a modern sawmill built with cast iron cutting corridors, in which around 100 cut trees are said to have been processed every day. The water required for operation was brought in via a sump on the Isar and a canal. This sawmill was unique in Bavaria at the time. Eichthal's activities were not well received by the locals, especially those who earned their wages by working with wood. In his “honor” on October 27, 1867, they dedicated their second Haberfeld drive in Lenggries - which remained the last due to intensified persecution. As a result of these disputes, Eichthal decided to move away and sell Hohenburg.

In 1870, Duke Adolf von Nassau-Weilburg , who had to cede his Duchy of Nassau to Prussia after the defeat in the German-German War in 1866 and who has since traveled from relatives to relatives, bought the castle and its extensive hunting grounds. On February 26, 1870, he signed the contract of sale. Noble life returned to Hohenburg. The Nassau redesigned the castle. In particular, the Duchess Adelheid Marie, a passionate painter, moved to Hohenburg as a patroness and supporter of the painter, where she immortalized herself in unsigned wall paintings such as the hunting hall. Since the duke and ducal couple were passionate about hunting, it is primarily hunting scenes and motifs that can still be found in the hunting hall and some classrooms today. A splendid episode from this Hohenburg epoch, the marriage of Princess Hilda to the Grand Duke of Baden in 1885, was described by the Baroness von Stackelberg in her little book Hohenburg im Isartal, published in Heidelberg in 1886 .

After Duke Adolf von Nassau took the place of the sick King Wilhelm III in April 1885. of the Netherlands exercised the government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, he swore his oath as Grand Duke of Luxembourg after the king's death on December 9, 1890 . Hohenburg was henceforth the permanent summer residence of a ruling prince. Only the very best horses were tolerated in the trains of four in which the princely family used to drive through Lenggries and the Isar valley. The Grand Duke himself drove with four black horses , the Grand Duchess with four foxes . The third team consisted of four white gray horses , as demonstrated by the Vienna Riding School.

Copper engraving by Matthias Disel (around 1720), on the left in the background the ruins of the old Hohenburg.

Born as Hereditary Prince of Nassau in 1852 at Biebrich Castle near Wiesbaden, his son Wilhelm was commissioned as Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg to exercise official duties in 1902 and, after his father's death in 1905, became the fifth Grand Duke of Luxembourg. He fell seriously ill and withdrew more and more to Hohenburg Castle. Since the couple only had daughters, Wilhelm made sure that the female succession to the throne was introduced in Luxembourg. In 1908 his Catholic wife Maria Anna was first appointed regent, after Wilhelm IV's death on February 25, 1912, the eldest daughter Marie-Adelheid von Nassau-Weilburg (* June 15, 1894) followed. The widow of Wilhelm IV took over the reign for the four months up to the age of majority before she withdrew to Hohenburg.

In his will of January 15, 1908, Wilhelm IV expressly designated Hohenburg Castle as the widow's seat of his wife Maria Anna of Portugal . She lived there until the outbreak of the Second World War . On September 24, 1939, she left Hohenburg Castle forever and emigrated to the USA with a large part of the grand ducal family . She died in a New York clinic on July 31, 1942 at the age of 81 as a result of an operation. After the end of the Second World War, General George S. Patton returned the property to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and to the Grand Duchess Charlotte , sister of Marie Adelheid, who died at an early age.

In 1953, the Fürth entrepreneur Max Grundig acquired the entire Hohenburg property and on October 3, 1953, handed the castle over to the sisters of the Ursuline convent St. Josef in Landshut . The convent opened an all-girls middle school and housekeeping school and a boarding school here . 1990 took Archdiocese of Munich and Freising , the St. Ursula schools . In 2003 the Hohenburg sisters returned to Landshut. Today, the castle houses a girls' school and a girls secondary school (since the 60s). A technical college established in 2007 (social branch) was closed again in 2011.

Photo gallery

  • Hohenburg Castle (May 2008)

  • South side (with classrooms)

  • Gargoyles

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ State Office for Surveying and Geoinformation and Bavarian State Office for Statistics and Data Processing (ed.): Bavarian municipal parts file with Gauß-Krüger coordinates - geographic base data . 2009.

literature

  • Jean Louis Schlim: Hohenburg Castle - The Nassau-Luxembourg residence in Bavaria. Aviatic Verlag 1998, ISBN 3-925505-45-8
  • Stephan Bammer: Hey who's singing so beautifully in it - The downfall of Hohenburg. 2007, ISBN 3-000217-37-1
  • Verena Friedrich: Lenggries: Hohenburg-Kalvarienberg Castle Chapel and St. Dionysius Chapel. 1998, ISBN 3-896431-01-3
  • Georg Paula , Angelika Wegener-Hüssen: Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district (= Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation [Hrsg.]: Monuments in Bavaria . Volume I.5 ). Karl M. Lipp Verlag, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-87490-573-X , p. 387 .
  • Ingrid Zimmermann, Klaus Knirk, Herbert Schruf: Picture book from Isarwinkel. 1982, ISBN 3-924439-00-1
  • Jochem Ulrich: The castle above the village - 700 years of Hohenburg. 2001/2007

Web links

Commons : Hohenburg Castle (Lenggries)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 47 ° 40 ′ 20 ″  N , 11 ° 35 ′ 14 ″  E