Kranzbach Castle

Kranzbach Castle

The Kranzbach Castle is a Grade I listed building in Klais in the town of Krün in Upper Bavaria . It is located on a plateau with an alpine backdrop and is used as a wellness hotel.

Geographical location

Kranzbach Castle is located in the mountain valley between Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Mittenwald at the foot of the Zugspitze in front of the mountains of Karwendel and Wetterstein at an altitude of approx. 1040 meters above sea level. NHN.

history

“The Honorable Mary Isabel Portman ” from London , the builder of Schloss Kranzbach, was a wealthy aristocrat - a woman who acted independently for the time. In 1913, at the age of 36, she signed the purchase agreement for the “Kranzbachwiese bei Garmisch”. The building plans were provided by the English architects Detmar Blow and Fernand Billerey in the style of the English Arts and Crafts movement. The house was completed in 1915. Kranzbach Castle is the only building of its kind in Germany. The "English Castle", as the locals soon called the complex, with its stepped gables is reminiscent of the stone-walled country houses (lavishly furnished country houses) in Scotland and Ireland . The area included a private concert hall and a lawn tennis court.

The First World War ruined Mary Portman's plans to build a hospitable home for her artist friends. Portman never returned, possibly never seeing the finished building.

In the years that followed, a wide variety of guests enlivened the lonely property in the Elmautal . Young painters stayed for weeks to capture the beauty of the landscape on canvas. In 1929 a film team from Deutsche Universal-Film came to film here. In 1931 the Protestant Church in Dortmund discovered the house while looking for a place to rest and relax for young people from the Ruhr area and leased it from Mary Portman's heirs.

A fire broke out at Christmas 1933, which severely damaged the house. After the renovation, Kranzbach Castle was again a popular holiday destination for young people. It was used as overnight accommodation during the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen . In the first years of the Second World War , Kranzbach Castle was the destination for the “ Kinderlandverschickung ” program. After the end of the war, the castle was used as a recreational hotel for officers of the US Army . In 1947, the Protestant Church in Dortmund resumed its holiday operations here. Wilhelm Dieterle shot scenes from the film The Silence in the Forest in 1955 based on the novel by Ludwig Ganghofer .

At the end of 2003 the church sold the castle to the current hotel operators. In 2007 the area was opened as a hotel under the name “Das Kranzbach”, with a few buildings added. The English style interior was designed by British architect Ilse Crawford.

Web links

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

• History of the house

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Armand Limnander: Bavarian Rhapsody , in the New York Times magazine, November 22, 2009, page M222

Coordinates: 47 ° 28 ′ 21.3 "  N , 11 ° 12 ′ 52.4"  E