Leitzkau Castle
The Castle Leitzkau located in the district Leitzkau the city Gommern in Jerichower Land district in Saxony-Anhalt .
The St. Petri Church in the village of Leitzkau was founded between 1107 and 1114 as a provisional diocese cathedral of the Diocese of Brandenburg . 1133, a moved here Prämonstratenser - Canons on. From 1147 to 1155 a new Romanesque collegiate church including convent buildings was built outside the village . The canon monastery existed until secularization in 1535.
In 1564 the mercenary leader Hilmar von Münchhausen bought the monastery property ; under him and his sons the medieval convent was converted into a renaissance castle. This remained the seat of two manors in the possession of the barons of Münchhausen until 1945 .
In the local register of monuments , the castle and the former monastery church are listed as architectural monuments under registration number 094 41 165 . Today the castle belongs to the Kulturstiftung Sachsen-Anhalt and serves as its seat with exhibition rooms.
history
Beginnings of the Leitzkau monastery
After the Slavs were finally defeated, Leitzkau turned into a base for the Christian mission. First, the bishop of the Brandenburg diocese , Hartbert , had a wooden chapel that had existed since 1107 replaced by the stone church of St. Petri - only the side aisles were made of wood - and named Leitzkau in place of the cathedral monastery in Brandenburg, which was destroyed and occupied by the Slavs in 983 provisional seat of the diocese and thus temporarily to the cathedral . The current village church of St. Petri is probably the oldest stone church east of the Elbe , albeit in a very different form .
In 1133 the Magdeburg Convent of Our Lady established a Premonstratensian Canons ' monastery in the church consecrated to the Apostle Peter , which was given the task of evangelizing the East Elbe areas. Three years later, the newly elected Brandenburg Bishop Wigger took his seat in Leitzkau, which was temporarily given the status of a cathedral monastery. After the Petruskirche no longer met the requirements despite an expansion in 1140, Bishop Wigger ordered the construction of a new collegiate church in 1147. This was also a three-aisled basilica , the church "Sancta Maria in Monte". It was inaugurated on September 9, 1155 in the presence of Archbishop Wichmann of Magdeburg and Albrecht the Bear . Today it is only preserved as a restored ruin. However, the roof was re-covered, the nave and transept opened to each other again, and the south aisle was reconstructed. The west bar is still there, but one of the towers has been shortened to a stump.
But just ten years later Leitzkau lost its excellent position after the destroyed cathedral monastery in Brandenburg was restored. The monastery retained a say in the election of bishops in Brandenburg until the end of the 13th century, which led to later disputes (see Siegfried II. ). The monastery's possessions were in the vicinity and were hardly expanded. The monks' convent then quickly fell into poverty and had to sell the monastery property. Nine manuscripts from the Leitzkau Premonstratensian Foundation from the 12th and 13th centuries are now kept in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel and in the Dessau City Library.
Conversion of the monastery into a castle
Leitzkau, however, remained the seat of a provost . The provost Georg von Maskow became one of the strongest advocates of the Reformation in Jerichower Land. In 1535, as a result of the Reformation , the Brandenburg Elector Joachim II ordered the dissolution of the monastery and entrusted the bailiff of Plaue with the administration. At that time there were only four to five clergy left. The pen had to be pledged several times in the period that followed. In 1554 it passed into the possession of his brother Margrave Johann von Küstrin , who owned it together with the remaining lands on April 2, 1564 for an amount of 70,000 thalers to the royal Spanish colonel and mercenary leader Hilmar von Münchhausen from the noble family of Lower Saxony Münchhausen sold.
He immediately began to convert the existing, partly already dilapidated Romanesque buildings for his purposes. A rectangular palace complex was formed from the former convent building . The monastery church was converted into a castle church, with the side aisles and the choir torn down and the transept converted into a granary, the north tower was shortened by half. After his death in 1573, Hilmar's sons took over the entire property, but later transferred it to the son Statius alone. He raised the eastern wing of the convent to the so-called "Althaus" and had the cloister walled up, while he rebuilt the "Neuhaus" from 1593 on the foundation walls of the western wing of the convent. The northern wing of the enclosure was torn down and replaced by a large commercial building. Finally, the late Gothic provost's office, which is the former residence of the Leitzkau provost, was also rebuilt in the Renaissance style and later renamed “Hobeck Castle” because it was from here that the properties acquired in 1686 in the neighboring town of Hobeck were administered. The provost house and old house were connected by a four-story loggia facade based on the Vatican model, including a stair tower.
Since father Hilmar and son Statius had already built several Renaissance buildings in the Weser-Ems area, in particular Schwöbber , new and old houses were also built in this style and with the help of stone masons and master builders there; Leitzkau is considered to be an "island" of the Weser Renaissance shifted to the east in the middle of the Saxon Renaissance area ; Recent research has shown parallels in detail to the town hall in Alfeld . As a result, the former canon monastery became a Renaissance castle by 1600 . However, Statius had financially taken over with Bevern Castle, which was subsequently built between 1603 and 1607, and had to sell Leitzkau to the sons of his brother Hilmar the Younger on October 29, 1618, almost simultaneously with the outbreak of the Thirty Years War . At the time of the Magdeburg Wedding in 1631, when the city was completely destroyed, the nearby Leitzkau also suffered considerable damage from billeting, looting and fires. Philipp Adolf von Münchhausen (1593–1657), the pious and learned son of the younger Hilmar, brought the devastated estate back up over many years from 1638 on, for which his friend Count Anton Günther von Oldenburg lent him 6,000 thalers.
In 1679 the families of two brothers divided the buildings and lands among themselves by lot; Two independent estates, the Althaus and the Neuhaus , were created, and the castle courtyard was divided by a wall. The two estates remained in the possession of two lines of the von Münchhausen family until 1945. The "Gut Althaus" later went to Philipp Adolf's three grandchildren, Weimar Chamberlain Ernst Friedemann, Hanoverian Prime Minister Gerlach Adolph and Hanoverian Minister Philipp Adolph . One of the latter's children was the married Amalie von Werthern (1757-1844), who caused a scandal at the Weimar Court of the Muses in 1785 by arranging her mock funeral in Leitzkau and at the same time escaping to Africa with August von Einsiedel , which she escaped after her return and divorce Married in second marriage in 1788. The wooden bust from her coffin could still be seen in Leitzkau in 1938.
The two Münchhausen lines were driven out of their estates, which included large forest and land holdings, by the Soviet occupying power in 1945 after almost 400 years, and even after reunification in 1990 they did not regain their original property.
Since 1773 the area of Leitzkau belonged to the Brandenburg-Prussian Duchy of Magdeburg and was part of what was then Ziesar's district , whose area was exchanged for the Magdeburg district of Luckenwalde within Prussia. The place burned down almost completely in the Battle of Möckern on April 5, 1813. When in 1818, as part of the Prussian administrative reform, Leitzkau was incorporated into the Jerichow I district, the place was also the seat of the district administration for a short time. In 1910 there were 1261 people living in the village.
On September 30, 1928, the Althaus Leitzkau manor district was merged with the Leitzkau rural community. On October 17, 1928, the Neuhaus-Leitzkau manor district was united with the rural community of Leitzkau, with the exception of the part "Wintau" enclosed by the municipality of Kleinlübs , which was united with the rural community of Kleinlübs .
During the Second World War , the Gestapo operated a “reception camp for re- apprehended Eastern workers ” who were caught on the run from their forced labor .
Development since the Second World War
As a result of the land reform of 1945, both lines of the von Münchhausen family were expropriated. In 1945 Althaus Castle was damaged by bombs and therefore demolished in 1950. The castle church, which was also damaged, was restored in its original Romanesque form , as far as it still exists . Neuhaus Castle was initially inhabited by expellees and then used as a school until the 1990s. The palace complex has been owned by the state of Saxony-Anhalt since 1994 and is the seat of the Saxony-Anhalt Cultural Foundation , which was responsible for extensive renovation work. There is a free exhibition on the history of the castle on the ground floor of Neuhaus Castle.
literature
- Konrad Breitenborn, Boje Schmuhl (Ed.): Schloss Leitzkau . (= Series of publications by the Foundation for Palaces, Castles and Gardens of the State of Saxony-Anhalt. Volume 3.) Halle ad Saale 2005. Scientific contributions to history and architecture
Web links
- Literature about Leitzkau Abbey and Castle Regesta Imperii
- Leitzkau Castle Church at www.gommern.de , accessed on June 27, 2017
- The collegiate church of Sancta Maria in Monte in 155 photos
Individual evidence
- ↑ Short question and answer Olaf Meister (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), Prof. Dr. Claudia Dalbert (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), Ministry of Culture March 19, 2015 Printed matter 6/3905 (KA 6/8670) List of monuments Saxony-Anhalt
- ^ Claudia Grahmann: The Leitzkauer Gutswirtschaft in the 16th and 17th centuries , in: Breitenborn / Schmuhl, Schloss Leitzkau , p. 269
- ↑ Udo von Alvensleben (art historian) , visits before the downfall, aristocratic seats between Altmark and Masuria , compiled from diary entries and edited by Harald von Koenigswald, Frankfurt / M.-Berlin 1968, p. 117
- ↑ Administrative region of Magdeburg (Ed.): Official Gazette of the Government of Magdeburg . 1928, ZDB -ID 3766-7 , p. 201 .
- ↑ Administrative region of Magdeburg (Ed.): Official Gazette of the Government of Magdeburg . 1928, ZDB -ID 3766-7 , p. 230 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 3 ′ 44.6 ″ N , 11 ° 56 ′ 57.7 ″ E