Lehenhof Castle

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Lehenhof

The Lehenhof Castle , also Villa Almasy , stands on a terrace overlooking the valley in the hamlet Hochbruck in the municipality of Scheibbs in District Scheibbs in Lower Austria . The castle is under monument protection ( list entry ).

The castle was the summer residence of the poet Albrecht von Wickenburg and his wife Wilhelmine , née Countess Almasy. After it came into the possession of Albert von Ettingshausen around 1912 , it was leased from 1925 to 1939 to the furniture manufacturer Thonet , who set up a music room in it with the main work of Josef Maria Auchentaller . At that time, Thonet-Mundus was the largest furniture manufacturer in the world.

history

The Lehenhof was first mentioned as a homestead in 1336. The current palace building was only erected between 1835 and 1845 during the Biedermeier period , at the same time as the neighboring Töpperschloss and Ginselberg Castle on the opposite slope . Afterwards it served as the summer residence of the writer couple Albrecht von Wickenburg and his wife Wilhelmine , who was born as Countess Almasy, under the name Villa Almasy . Around 1912 the castle belonged to the Austrian physicist Albert Freiherr von Ettingshausen . He had the building renovated and the facade of the main front changed in a neoclassical style. The later owner, Baroness Anniebel Baroness von Leitenberger (Anna Isabella Baroness Berger von Waldenegg , Baroness von Leitenberger), leased the Lehenhof to the well-known furniture manufacturer Victor Thonet , who had a lively cultural life there. In 1934 Thonet built a castle pension on the site, presumably for economic reasons. On May 1, 1939, Anniebel von Leitenberger bought it from the Vienna community as a children's rest home. Nevertheless, the villa was confiscated by the Russian occupation forces as German property in 1945 and partly devastated. After the Russians left, the Republic of Austria took over the facility and leased it to the Vienna Youth Welfare Organization. It has now become the property of the City of Vienna.

investment

Honor courtyard of the Lehenhof

The horseshoe-shaped Lehenhof is located on a slope terrace in a narrow part of the Erlauftal next to the main road. It is a three-sided complex, the courtyard of which is open to the mountain side. The three wings of the building have hip roofs. The two-storey main facade in the west is directed down the valley. It has nine axes, with three window axes on the central projection. This is particularly emphasized by its neo-classical triangular gable. The pediment shows a clock framed by garlands . Below are tall windows with semicircular skylights. They are separated by double pilasters . In front of them was a balcony supported by pillars. It was canceled in 1965. Three large reliefs showing putti playing and making music are walled in over the upper floor windows . The main entrance is on the courtyard side of the main wing. It is a basket arch portal , which is decorated with a mask keystone and a stucco field attachment supported by pilasters . The two side wings are kept relatively simple. Your only ornament is a surrounding ledge that visually separates the two floors. The side wings are five-axis on the courtyard side. Their front sides have only two windows per storey. Four Tuscan columns support a coffered ceiling in the vestibule . The staircase is equipped with neoclassical decor. The interiors are functional. The castle is surrounded by a well-tended park and several sports facilities. A flight of stairs leads to a fountain basin in front of the building.

Thonet 1925-1939

Veranda around 1920 at the time of Thonet. The balcony on the left was later demolished

Around 1903 Victor Thonet, son of Jakob Thonet from the furniture dynasty, married Martha, the daughter of the Viennese jewelery manufacturer Georg Adam Scheid , in Bystritz (Moravia) . This marriage laid the foundation for the exclusive collection of pictures by Josef Maria Auchentaller . Auchentaller's main work, the eight oil paintings for the music room in Villa Scheid (1898/99), has been preserved in its entirety and was relocated several times in the later episode. When the Villa Scheid in the Viennese Cottage was sold around 1911, the pictures were dismantled and first moved to another house belonging to the jewelry manufacturer Georg Adam Scheid. Later, from 1921, they passed into the possession of the Thonets in Bystritz, who in turn moved back in 1925 to Scheibbs in Lower Austria. There, Auchentaller's works were then placed in a representative music room.

The Lehenhof in Thonet's time was a stately building with a park, a market garden, glass houses and a large farm. The library in the Lehenhof was furnished with pieces by the architect and Otto Wagner student Marcel Kammerer , who was exclusively employed by the Thonet company. For a major exhibition in London in 1906, Kammerer designed most of the furniture in the library. As one-offs, they remained in the possession of Victor Thonet, who was responsible for production. Part of it is still in the Victor & Martha Thonet collection today.

A bronze bust of Peter Breithut was placed in the garden of the Lehenhof . Breithut, an Austrian goldsmith, medalist and painter, created this bronze bust during his stay in Paris in 1913. At that time, a real cult had developed around the death mask of a drowned beauty among artists. From 1925 the bust stood in the garden of Victor Thonet's Lehenhof.

Music room with Auchentaller's main work

Auchentaller's pastoral cycle hung for only 12 years in the setting originally designed by the artist, the Villa Scheid. In 1911 the Villa Scheid was sold and the pictures moved to the Landhaus Scheid in Maria Enzersdorf . They remained there, shortened and framed separately for another 15 years, albeit also in a music room. When Victor and Martha Thonet moved from Bystitz in Moravia to Scheibbs in the Lehenhof, the Auchentaller pictures came there too.

In contrast to Auchentaller's original plans for Villa Scheid, which built the pictures into paneling , here they hung freely on the walls. As was customary at the time, the walls were covered with wallpaper. Behind the seating group hung on the left the storm, separated from his second picture, and on the right the metaphorical implementation of the III: sentence from the pastoral in Auchentaller's painting: Happy Country Life . From the Thonets' salon in the Lehenhof, visitors had a magnificent view of the music room of Auchentaller's last picture of the Pastorale cycle, the «Vespers» . There was a Steinway and a Bösendorfer grand piano in the music room .

Wolfgang Schneiderhan gave concerts in the Lehenhof, the famous pianist Wilhelm Backhaus came to the Lehenhof as a guest in 1932, as did Alfred Gerstenbrand , Austrian painter and caricaturist and from 1918 a member of the Secession . Auchentaller also often came to visit the Lehenhof with his family from Grado.

literature

  • The art monuments of Austria. Dehio Lower Austria south of the Danube 2003 . Scheibbs, municipality area, Hochbruck, Lehenhof Palace, Hochbruck No. 6, pp. 2115–2116.
  • Gerhard Stenzel: From castle to castle in Austria . Kremayr & Scheriau publishing house. Vienna 1976

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rustikal.at: History of a furniture brand. Retrieved November 1, 2018 .
  2. ^ Chronicle of the city of Scheibbs, accessed on October 28, 2018
  3. ↑ Archive. Retrieved October 27, 2018 .
  4. ↑ The Victor & Martha Thonet Collection. Retrieved October 27, 2018 .
  5. ↑ The Lehenhof | Josef Maria Auchentaller (1865-1945). Retrieved October 27, 2018 .

Coordinates: 47 ° 59 ′ 36.8 "  N , 15 ° 9 ′ 58"  E