Leerodt Castle
The Castle Leerodt one of the many moated castles of the worm valley and is situated between the towns Süggerath and garbage village on the L 42 in the area of City Geilenkirchen .
history
The former moated castle Leerodt, first mentioned in 1354, had been the ancestral seat of a noble family of the same name since the 14th century . The castle was a fief of the Lords of Randerath and later of the Lords of Heinsberg . Christoph von Leerodt expanded the former moated castle around 1578 and built the outer castle in 1616 . His grandson, Heinrich Wilhelm, court master and chamber president at the court of Düsseldorf , built the stately mansion in 1647 , which today only exists as a ruin after being destroyed in the Second World War . With Baron Clemens August von Leerodt, the male line died out in 1829. The widow of his nephew Max von Leerodt, a born Freiin von Eynatten-Trips , did not live in the castle as heiress. It gradually fell into disrepair, and in 1840 part of the manor had to be demolished. After her death in 1882, Leerodt fell to her grandson, the major and royal chamberlain Freiherr Georg Schütz von Leerodt.
During the fighting on the Rur Front at the end of World War II, there was an emergency hospital of the US Army.
building
From the system from the first half of the 17th century, only the ruins of the manor house and the buildings of the five-sided outer bailey have been preserved. The brick buildings of the outer bailey date from the 17th century, the gate from 1658. After two wings of the four-winged mansion, which was originally grouped around a courtyard, were laid down in 1840 due to disrepair, the remaining building stock of the manor house suffered considerable war damage in the Second World War and is since then preserved as a ruin. After Edmund Renard d. Younger (see lit. ) Schloss Leerodt was once one of the finest secular buildings on the Lower Rhine in the style of the Dutch Renaissance .
literature
- Paul Clemen , Edmund Renard: The art monuments of the Rhine province . Volume 8, L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1904.
- Karl Emerich Krämer : From castle to castle between Cologne and Aachen . Mercator, Duisburg 1979.
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments . North Rhine-Westphalia I. Rhineland . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich.
Web links
- Picture and short history in the digital collection of the Central and State Library Berlin (PDF file; 197 kB)
- Some pictures on a private website about the city of Geilenkirchen
Coordinates: 50 ° 59 ′ 8 ″ N , 6 ° 9 ′ 9 ″ E