Karlsberg Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karlsberg Castle was built in 1778–1788 by Duke Karl II August von Pfalz-Zweibrücken on the 366 m high Buchenberg (today Karlsberg) near Homburg . The glamorous castle in Bruchhof-Sanddorf only existed for a few years. Only the construction magazine of the palace complex has survived today.

Site plan of the Karlsberg
Karlsberg Castle 1790
The entire complex in 1791

history

The germ cell

The nucleus of Karlsberg Palace was the Louisenhof, built by Baron von Closen in 1760 on the Buchenberg near Homburg, which was very similar to the Königsbrucher Hof that still exists today, renamed Gut Königsbruch in Bruchhof-Sanddorf . After his death, the estate fell to his widow.

After the death of Duke Christian IV in 1775, his nephew Charles II August followed as sovereign. Two years later, on July 27, 1777, Charles II August bought the Louisenhof for 35,000 guilders and 60 new Louis d'or . According to Mannlich's memoir, this happened under the influence of his mistress Caroline Auguste von Esebeck , a sister-in-law of the owner.

The lock

Between 1778 and 1788, Duke Karl II August von Pfalz-Zweibrücken had Karlsberg Palace built on the grounds of the Louisenhof. He moved his residence there in 1779. On July 28, 1793, this castle was destroyed by French revolutionary troops.

Johann Christian Mannlich was the general building director of the Duke of Zweibrücken and leading architect on the Karlsberg. His designs in the classicism style were created at the same time as the castle in Wörlitz and are therefore among the earliest classicist buildings in Germany.

The Bavarian general and Greek Minister of War Heinrich Christian von Schmaltz was born at Karlsberg Palace in 1787 .

Destruction of the castle

The French invade Karlsberg Palace in 1793
Ruins of the orangery of Karlsberg Palace

After the outbreak of the French Revolution and also after the beginning of the First Coalition War (1792–1797), the Duke remained in his duchy, which was surrounded by French troops, because of the neutrality assured him by the French government. After the execution of Louis XVI. Charles II August should also be tried in Paris . Before he could be captured by French troops on February 9, 1793, he was warned by a farmer from Rohrbach and fled to Mannheim via Kaiserslautern . In the following years he lived in Mannheim Castle and in his castle near Rohrbach ( Heidelberg ).

In the following six months, the castle was alternately in Prussian and French hands. Under Prussian protection, the facility was evacuated to Mannheim via Kaiserslautern .

After the surrender of the French troops in Mainz , the relief army withdrew through the Glan valley and plundered . On July 28, 1793, the castle was released for general sacking and set on fire in the evening. For this purpose, up to 100 wagons of straw were brought in from the Metz area . The next morning the French had withdrawn and the surrounding population began to loot the remains.

The fire mainly destroyed the buildings that the duke had lived in himself and the buildings that were made of wood ( half-timbered ). In the following years the Karlsberg was still inhabited. In November 1793, the church registers still record births on the Karlsberg, the accounts of the court go back to the year 1797. The residents of the Karlsberg suffered most from the consequences. They lost their property through the looting and their homes through the destruction.

After the destruction, the remains continued to fall apart due to the lack of conservation measures. Under Napoleon , the ruins were returned to the duke's widow, on condition that the ruins were removed to the surface.

The establishment of the Karlsberg is spread across the whole of southern Germany. Parts were auctioned after the death of Duke Charles II August. The rest are among others in the following places:

building


Furnishing

Secretary from Karlsberg Palace, now in Nymphenburg Palace
Seating group from Karlsberg Palace, now in Nymphenburg Palace

The furnishings of the Karlsberg Palace were mainly created by purveyors to the court of the French king. Another source were the other Zweibrücken castles, from which furniture was brought to the Karlsberg.

The elaborately carved and gilded seating sets, console tables, picture frames as well as paneling, wallpaper strips, door leaves, etc. were primarily made by the French court groom Georges Jacob . The sculptor François-Joseph Duret was also active . The silverware came from Jean-Jacques Kirstein from Strasbourg . The fabric wallpapers and furniture covers made of silk or multi-colored damask were made in Lyon . As a sculptor u. a. Martin-Claude Monot and François-Joseph Duret. Mannlich and Jean-Démosthène Dugourc created the interior designs .

The parade bedroom, of which essential parts of the furnishings have been preserved in the Munich Residence and in the Royal Berchtesgaden Castle, contained an elaborate bed à la Romaine, which shaped the style of comparable furniture of the King of France. Before it was delivered to Homburg, the parade bed was exhibited in the atelier of the gilders Menage and caused a sensation there.

The gardens - The Karlslust

The palace gardens can be divided into three parts: the park by the palace, the Karlslust and the Hirschwürzloch. While one can assume a strong Baroque influence in the grounds directly at the castle, the Karlslust, which was created in the valley previously known as the “Devil's Hole” because of the gloomy wild landscape, is more of an English landscape garden . The creator of the garden cannot be precisely determined. There was probably no overall plan for the garden or for the palace. Mannlich reports in his memoir that he had supplied various designs for individual garden scenarios. Even Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell worked by its own account twice for the Zweibrücker Duke without specifying exactly the works.

The Zweibrücken court gardener Johann Ludwig Petri , who also designed the baroque wheel for the Schwetzingen palace gardens, was also involved in the planning. Furthermore, Ernst August Bernhard Petri and Bernhard Petri served as court gardeners on the Karlsberg , as did Matthias Sckell , a brother of Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell.

  • Terraces in the Karlslust

  • View of the trilage pavilion

  • Fountain at the entrance to Karlslust

  • Foundations of a pavilion

  • Ducal chestnuts in Karlslust

  • Apple avenue, connection to Karlslust

Duke chestnuts

The "ducal chestnuts" were part of the Karlsluster gardens above the deer spice hole. The trees were planted at the time of Duke Charles II August and survived the destruction of the castle. In 1990 they fell victim to the hurricane "Wiebke" . The trees with sweet chestnuts were very popular with the Homburg population for picking chestnuts.

Tschifflik Pavilion - The Great Cascade

The so-called "Tschifflik Pavilion" is a building in Karlslust. The original name and use is unknown today. Until the excavations on the Karlsberg in the 1950s, these ruins were called the chapel. The pavilion is a Turkish-style building which, in combination with the “Great Cascade ”, was one of the highlights of the Charlemagne . The inspiration for this system was probably Tschifflik near Zweibrücken . Several people lost their lives in a fireworks explosion on December 19, 1785.

The "Great Cascade" has ten inclines of 1.5 m high and a step area of ​​10 × 10-15 m. Not far from the starting basin of the cascade, the remains of the "large basin " for feeding the cascade can be seen.

Based on current research, it can be assumed that the ruins in the Karlslust called Tschifflik do not come from Tschifflik, but from the building, which was located opposite the large cascade on a terrace.

  • Karlsberg Karlslust Tschifflik 01.jpg

  • Remains of the "Tschiffliker Pavilion"

  • Karlsberg Karlslust Tschifflik 03.jpg

  • Starting point of the Great Cascade

  • The cascade flows into the uppermost swan pond

  • View along the cascade into the valley

  • View along the cascade from the valley

  • Reservoir of the cascade

Bear kennel

A circular ring with 19 semicircular “cages” and a box is called a “bear kennel ”. In the middle is a moat with a square island on which a pavilion stood. The facility was by no means a bear pen, as it is popularly known, but rather the small "stables" were aviaries . A similar facility can still be seen today in the Schwetzingen Palace Gardens .

  • View of the "Bärenzwinger"

  • View of the "Bärenzwinger"

  • Island in the "bear kennel"

Swan pond

The three swan ponds are located in the center of the Karlslust valley. The top round pond is the stilling basin of the large cascade. It is followed by two more ponds. The complex is completed by a burial mound on which there is a ruin. In the middle of the burial mound is a niche that was formerly lined with shells and contained a spring. Like the fountain in the swan ponds, this spring was fed via the large cascade. The burial mound, like the dam between the ponds, is clad with boulders . The complex is similar to the fort in Schwetzinger Park, which was built at the same time.

  • Swan pond drain, before restoration

  • Middle swan pond, before restoration

  • Lower swan pond with tumulus, before restoration

  • Swan pond, cascade and tumulus, before restoration

  • Tumulus, before restoration

  • The notice board at the swan ponds after the restoration

  • The lower swan pond with tumulus

  • The middle swan pond viewed from the inlet

  • The middle swan pond viewed from the spout

  • The upper swan pond in winter

The Karlsberg today

Construction magazine

The only building in the palace complex that is still inhabited today is the construction warehouse. Like the other buildings at the foot of the mountain, it was spared the destruction. In the following years it was used as a brewery and forester's house until it was finally bought by the Karlsberg Brewery , renovated and then used as the director's villa. The current building bears little resemblance to the original state. The building is shorter, the roof shape is no longer the original, and the increase at one end comes from the time it was used as a forester's house .

  • Former construction magazine of the castle

  • Former connecting avenue to Homburg

  • Paradestrasse along the castle front

  • View of the Karlsbergweiher

  • Fountain of the former Karlsberg forest house

  • Terrace at the bear kennel

  • Ramp behind the riding arena

  • Location of the depots

  • Fountain of the former forester's house behind the riding arena

  • , The basement of the building cavalier popularly den of thieves called

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Johann Christian von Mannlich : Rococo and Revolution , p. 202 f.
  2. ^ Johann Christian von Mannlich : Rokoko und Revolution , p. 226 ff.
  3. ↑ Friedrich Christian Karl von Fürstenwarther: Memory of the evenings sacred to Maximilian and Wilhelminen. 1786 . In: Mitteilungen des Historisches Verein der Pfalz , 7, 1878, pp. 63–70. Here p. 67 ff.
  4. ↑ Zweibrücker Zeitung of January 1, 1786, No. 1, p. 1 f.

literature

sorted alphabetically by author

  • Julius Dahl / Karl Lohmeyer: The baroque Zweibrücken and his masters , 2., ext. Ed., In Komm.G. Hornberger, Waldfischbach / Pfalz 1957.
  • Reiner Marx: "this fairy castle with its treasures" - the Karlsberg and Karl II. August in literature. An annotated reading book . Saarpfalz-Blätter for History and Folklore 2010, special issue. Homburg 2010.
  • Ralf Schneider: Carlsberg - Carlslust. The Homburg Gardens of Duke Carl II August von Pfalz-Zweibrücken . In: Die Gartenkunst  11 (2/1999), pp. 339–376.
  • Ralf Schneider: Palaces and country houses of the dukes of Pfalz-Zweibrücken in the upper offices of Zweibrücken and Homburg in the 18th century. Architecture - interior - garden art . Rottenburg 2003.
  • Reinhard Schneider: About the monument conservation approach to ruins: the example of Karlsberg . In: Denkmalpflege im Saarland, Annual Report 2013. Saarbrücken, pp. 127–133.
  • Jutta Schwan: Studies on the architectural history of Carlsberg Palace: Report on the current state of the entire Carlsberg building industry (series B treatises on the history of the Palatinate), Vol. 9, Foundation for the promotion of Palatinate historical research (publisher), Neustadt an der Weinstrasse 2010, ISBN 978 -3-9810865-6-0 .
  • Eugen Stollreither (Ed.): Rococo and Revolution - Memoirs of Johann Christian von Mannlich. 1741-1822 . Revised version of the 1913 edition. Stuttgart 1966.
  • Jutta Schwan and Stefan Ulrich: Castle ruins and forest park Karlsberg Homburg , Verlag Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-7954-6744-9 .
  • Jutta Schwan: a world gardener. New discovery in the archive: the garden plan of Carlsberg Palace and the explanations of its creator Bernhard Petri . In: saargeschichten: magazine for regional culture and history, Ed. Schaumberg, Issue 1-2014, ISSN  1866-573X , pp. 22-28.
  • Jutta Schwan: "Servant of two masters": the Zweibrücken court gardener Johann Ludwig Petri . In: Hundred years of passion for roses / Rosengarten Zweibrücken, Zweibrücken 2014, ISBN 978-3-00-045297-0 , pp. 32–43.
  • Jutta Schwan: Fireworks and festive culture at the end of the 18th century in Homburg's Carlslust: "[...] I prepared for the most gracious rulers on the Carls-Berg for those celebrations and feyers" . In: Languages ​​of Art: Festschrift for Klaus Güthlein on his 65th birthday, Verlag Werner, Worms 2007, ISBN 978-3-88-462259-9 , pp. 171–178.
  • Wilhelm Weber : Karlsberg Castle - Legend and Reality. The Wittelsbach castle buildings in the Duchy of Pfalz-Zweibrücken . Homburg 1987.

Web links

Commons : Schloss Karlsberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 49 ° 20 ′ 5 ″  N , 7 ° 22 ′ 44 ″  E