Leitheim Palace

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South front of the castle with the castle church

The Castle Leitheim , the former summer residence of the abbots of the nearby monastery Kaisheim is a three-storey square building, on a hill above the north bank of the, Danube near Donauwörth is, with distant views of the Danube-Lech level and accessible from the Danube Cycle Path from. The entire area was built as a prototype of a representative ecclesiastical mansion. Today it is used as a hotel and for events.

history

Location of the castle

The Litun farm (Leiten, today Leitheim) was first mentioned in 1147, and a chapel is documented here in 1185. Up to the year 1770 profitable viticulture was practiced on the Danube slopes (in peak years up to 50,000 liters of wine):

The potential of the Leitheim vineyards, which were operated and cultivated as a kind of 'external branch' in the early years of Kaisheim Monastery, was only recognized by the 20th Cistercian Abbot Leonhard Weinmayr: Nomen est omen. In 1427 he took care of the extensive expansion and cultivation of wine growing.

In 1542 the Leitheim vineyard was surrounded by a solid wall and a splendid vintner's house was built, from which 'when the sky is clear you can see the entire imperial city of Augsburg with the most magnificent prospect'.

Abbot Elias Götz had the courtyard, which had been destroyed during the Thirty Years War , expanded into a representative summer residence of the Kaisheim monastery:

After a construction period of 15 years, the castle and church were completed and the core of the current complex was completed in 1696. An impressive archway connected the initially two-story manor house with the St. Blasius Church, named after the local saint. From 1748 to 1750 the square palace building was given a third floor and its mighty hipped mansard roof.
Leitheim Castle 3104.JPG

In 1751, the art-loving abbot Celestine I Mermos had the castle decorated into a magnificent residence with a large ballroom in Rococo forms . One of the most important fresco cycles of the southern German Rococo, designed by Gottfried Bernhard Göz , who forms a uniform iconographic concept, deserves special mention : the five senses, the four elements, the four temperaments and the periodic time cycles of the four ages, the four seasons and the change of day and night and night and day.

After the secularization (1802) difficult times began for the castle and church. After the death of the last abbot, Franz Xaver Müller - who resided in Leitheim Castle as a retirement home at state expense until his death in 1817 - consideration was given to demolishing both buildings. Finally, in 1820, King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria arranged for the property to be sold to his chief kitchen master and later court marshal Friedrich Ludwig Camil Marquis de Montperny. This furnished living quarters in the taste of the Biedermeier. The Brussels- born painter Joseph Carl Cogel died on Tuesday, May 31, 1831 on the Danube River.

When the daughter Friederike von Montperny married Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr Tucher von Simmelsdorf , Leitheim Palace passed to the Tucher patrician family from Nuremberg in 1835. Albrecht Freiherr Tucher von Simmelsdorf began in 1953 to systematically secure the castle, the substance of which was seriously endangered. In 1959 he initiated the Leitheim Palace Concerts , which his son Bernhard, an organ building expert, continued. In 1983 the Freundeskreis Schloß Leitheim e. V. founded. In 1997, on the initiative of Bernhard Freiherrn Tucher von Simmelsdorf, another extensive overall security of the building was carried out. In 2008 he sold the entire area to the Messerschmitt Foundation . He and his wife remained responsible for the annual palace concerts and other events until 2019.

The castle church is owned by the Catholic Church, but the new owner took over the patronage. The castle, which is otherwise only used during events such as B. the Leitheim concert summer is open, can be visited in summer on certain dates.

literature

  • Freundeskreis Schloss Leitheim e. V. (Ed.): Leitheim Palace . Kaisheim-Leitheim o. J.
  • Albrecht Frhr. v. Tucher: Leitheim Palace . 4th edition. Verlag Schnell & Steiner, Munich / Zurich 1979. (Schnell, Art Guide No. 728)
  • Georg Dehio (Gre.): Handbook of German Art Monuments, Bavaria III: Swabia . edited by Bruno Bushart and Georg Paula . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-422-03008-5 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A. v. Cloths; Schnell-Kirchenführer p. 3.
  2. ↑ Freundeskreis Schloss Leitheim e. V., n.d., p. 4 f.
  3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from July 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Freundeskreis Schloss Leitheim e. V., n.d., p. 8.
  5. ↑ Leitheim Palace has a new owner. Augsburger Allgemeine Online, July 8, 2008, accessed December 25, 2012 .
  6. ^ BR Klassik from December 21, 2015
  7. ↑ Guided tours in Leitheim Palace , accessed August 15, 2020.

Coordinates: 48 ° 44 ′ 45 ″  N , 10 ° 53 ′ 0 ″  E