Jägerhof Castle

Jägerhof Palace in 2011

The Jägerhof Palace , formerly also known as the Vénerie (French for "the hunt "), is located at Jacobistraße 2 in the Pempelfort district of Düsseldorf , near the city center. It was built from 1752 to 1763 by order of the Elector Karl Theodor . At that time the castle was still outside the city gates. The castle is the point de vue of the Reitallee of the Hofgarten and Jägerhofstrasse . The Goethe Museum and the Ernst Schneider Foundation have been located in the castle since 1987 .

history

Jägerhof Palace, steel engraving around 1860

Jägerhof Palace around 1900 (still with the main courtyard and wings)

Jägerhof Palace, main facade around 1910

Jägerhof Palace, designed in 1751

Former stables with gable from the workshop of Gabriel de Grupello (photo around 1909)

Plan of the court garden from 1775: The Jägerhof Palace (I) and (K) is the point de vue of the main axis of the court garden (F), the Marstall (M)

City map from 1809 - Jägerhof Palace in connection with the courtyard garden, which was redesigned and expanded to an English landscape garden

A first hunter's farm was already occupied in the middle of the 17th century. This building is said to have been located in the middle of a zoo near today's castle and from 1694 to have served as the seat of the electoral forest administration.

With the death of Elector Jan Wellem in 1716 and the departure of his widow on September 10, 1717, Düsseldorf lost the status of a royal seat. As a result, the buildings fell into disrepair and the entire site remained unused for many decades. It was only revived in the middle of the 18th century after Karl Theodors ' “ baroque love for building” , who ruled the duchies of Jülich-Berg with its capital Düsseldorf as a neighboring country , but had great plans. Karl Theodor commissioned his architect Johann Joseph Couven with the planning and implementation of a more representative Jägerhof-style pleasure palace the Rococo .

Couven's first draft from 1749 envisaged a three-story building with a central tower and wings around which the Düssel was to be directed. However, the chief construction director Nicolas de Pigage only implemented part of the originally planned construction measures. The building was completed in 1762 without a wing. Until 1795 it served as the seat of the highest Jägermeister.

Under the leadership of the electoral governor Johann Ludwig Franz von Goltstein , the older part of the court garden and the riding alley were converted into public parks with a kind of job creation measure. This was intended to alleviate the poverty caused by several bad harvests in the years 1769–1771. The Hofgärtnerhaus with a restaurant was built in 1770 .

During the Napoleonic Wars , the Jägerhof and the Hofgärtnerhaus were almost blown up by the French revolutionary troops in 1795. However, it did not escape looting by the French troops this year. The courtyard garden was also heavily cleared because of its wood . During this time the Jägerhof served as a hospital and night camp for the French and remained in a deplorable condition until Napoleon's visit in 1811. In addition, everything was hastily renovated and equipped in such a way that the emperor and his wife Marie Louise could feel comfortable during their four-day visit. A conversion plan by the classicist architect Adolph von Vagedes , which was initially not implemented, is known from that year. In a letter to his wife, State Secretary Count Roederer described the city of Düsseldorf, which had been prepared for Napoleon's visit, as “ petit Paris ” .

In 1815, after the Congress of Vienna, the Rhineland fell to Prussia . The family of the division commander Prince Friedrich of Prussia , who resided in Schloss Jägerhof from 1821, became too small, so the old plans by Johann Joseph Couven and Adolph von Vagedes were brought out again and the side wings were added under the supervision of Anton Schnitzler . In the 1850s the family of Prince Karl Anton von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen resided in the castle until the Prince became Prime Minister of Prussia in 1858 and moved his residence to Berlin. The castle remained a residence of the Hohenzollern family until 1885.

Since even the palace, which had been expanded to include a side wing, was felt to be too small and inappropriate as a residence for a member of the Prussian royal family, the state sold it, including the rear garden, to the city of Düsseldorf in 1909. The sale is said to have been "grudgingly", because otherwise the lock would have even fallen to an outside prospect. The city then tried to sell the site on as building land, but this failed due to protests from many people in Düsseldorf. In spite of this, the former official residence was trimmed around the garden and side wing and so from 1910 the Jägerhof only consisted of the central wing with a small, fenced-in forecourt. The wing structures were demolished because they protruded 1.7 m over the new alignment of the widened Jacobistraße.

During the French occupation in 1925, the building was confiscated and used as the headquarters of the commandant's office. In 1934 the consistory of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland moved into the building. However, due to considerable pressure from the NSDAP Gauleiter Friedrich Karl Florian in the Düsseldorf Gau, the existing lease was unlawfully terminated, so that the Gau headquarters could be set up in the building on January 30, 1937 . She sat here until the heavy air raid on June 12, 1943, in which the castle was badly damaged; she then moved to the building of the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court . The castle was only rebuilt in 1950 by Helmut Hentrich . Some of the young Federal Republic's receptions took place here.

museum

Jägerhof Palace has been used as a museum since 1955. First through the city museum , later through the art collection of North Rhine-Westphalia , which then moved to the new building on Grabbeplatz in 1986. The Goethe Museum has been located in the Jägerhof together with the Ernst Schneider Foundation since 1987 and, in addition to the comprehensive permanent exhibition on Goethe's life and work, offers changing exhibitions on the history of the humanities and literature. The Bremen-based publisher Anton Kippenberg was the director of Leipziger Insel Verlag and an important Goethe collector during his lifetime . His daughter brought the private collection to the independent Anton and Katharina Kippenberg Foundation based in Düsseldorf. In the foundation contract of February 13, 1953, the state capital Düsseldorf committed itself to equipment, maintenance and development. In 1774 and 1792, Goethe himself stayed not far from Jägerhof Palace in the house of the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi , where the paint box has been based since 1861 .

garden

In the garden were the figures The Seasons , which the Düsseldorf professor of sculpture Josef Bäumgen had created in 1774.

Stables

In 1713, Elector Jan Wellem had a hunting arsenal, decorated with three gables from the workshop of Gabriel de Grupello , built north of Jägerhof Palace . After the property of Schloss Jägerhof was acquired by the city in 1909, the old stables building on the corner of Pempelforter and Jacobistraße (today Alt-Pempelfort) was laid down and an orangery was built in its place. The rich wood carvings, three hunting pieces, have been reattached to the gables of the new building. During the Second World War, in 1943, the building on which the carvings were permanently mounted was completely destroyed. Parts of two gable fields could be saved and stored. The baroque main gable with the alliance coat of arms and the east gable, this only fragmentary, densely packed with hunting scenes and hunting symbols. In 2012 it was entered as a movable monument in the list of monuments. In 2014 the gables were brought to the restoration center of the state capital Düsseldorf , Ehrenhof 3a , where Alexander Diczig carried out the wood carving and carving work .

literature

Carl Vossen: Jägerhof Castle tells. About emperors, princesses, Sebastianern, diplomats and artists as well as a memorable family. Triltsch-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1990, ISBN 3-7998-0057-3 .
Ludger Fischer : The most beautiful palaces and castles on the Lower Rhine . Wartburg, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2004, ISBN 3-8313-1326-1 .
Walter Jost: The carvings on the stables of the Jägerhof in Düsseldorf. Lintz, Düsseldorf 1895 ( digitized version ).
Paul Clemen : The art monuments of the Rhine province . Volume 3, 1: The art monuments of the city and the district of Düsseldorf. City of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf. IV. Secular Buildings . Schwann, Düsseldorf 1894, p. 62 ( digitized version ).