Letzlingen hunting lodge
The Letzlingen hunting lodge is located in the Gardelegen district of Letzlingen in the south of the Altmark district of Salzwedel in Saxony-Anhalt . It is located in the north-west of the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide , a heathland and forest area that is mainly used for military purposes today .
The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV had the hunting lodge built on the walls of a previous building. According to the plans of the architects Friedrich August Stüler and Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse , a palace complex was built in the neo-Gothic style of English Tudor architecture from 1843 onwards .
Today the castle ensemble is used for gastronomy, as a hotel and as a museum. The exhibition “Hunting history of the Letzlinger Heide. Royal Prussian court hunt ”. The castle is managed by the Kulturstiftung Sachsen-Anhalt as owner.
history
A simple hunting lodge stood on the site of today's complex until the middle of the 16th century. After the demolition of the old building, the Brandenburg electoral prince Johann Georg had a hunting castle built by the builder Lorenz Arndt from 1559 to 1562 . The "Hirschburg" with game reserve was a fort-like facility. The residential building in the middle was surrounded by a circular wall with corner towers and a moat . Johann Georg often stayed in the game-rich hunting ground of the Letzlinger Heide and celebrated his marriage to Elisabeth von Anhalt, his third wife and daughter of Joachim Ernst von Anhalt , in the castle in 1577 .
The subsequent Hohenzollern rulers preferred other hunting grounds or found no interest in hunting until Friedrich Wilhelm IV rediscovered the castle in 1840. On the walls of the ruined hunting lodge, he had a castle built in the form of English neo-Gothic according to plans by the architect Friedrich August Stüler. In 1843/44 Stüler converted the corps de logis . This main house with a square floor plan was increased to four storeys. A round stair tower, which is in front of the building, towers over all the buildings on the site. By converting the high gatehouse in the east and the four corner towers of the curtain wall, the buildings received a stylistic adaptation in the neo-Gothic form. All buildings close at the roof edge with a crenellated wreath . Probably in the years 1851 to 1853, the refurbishment of the dining room and kitchen took place according to Stüler's plans. The architect's brother, building inspector Karl Askan Stüler , and the Magdeburg building officer Karl Albert Rosenthal took over the management of the work .
Friedrich August Stüler designed a castle church in the English neo-Gothic style, and Rosenthal took over the construction management. After the laying of the foundation stone in 1857, construction did not actually begin until 1859. In 1861, the year Friedrich Wilhelm IV died, the church was completed. The reigning brother Wilhelm I took part in the inauguration on December 11th . With the construction of a castellan's house according to plans by the architect Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse, the building work came to an end in 1868.
The Prussian kings invited hunting guests such as Archduke Franz Joseph - who later became Emperor Franz Joseph I -, Otto von Bismarck , Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg , Bernhard von Bülow and Russian grand dukes to the “Letzlinger Hofjagden” in late autumn . The last court hunt took place in November 1912 under Kaiser Wilhelm II in honor of Hereditary Duke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
After the First World War and the end of the monarchy, the palace came into the possession of the new Prussian government. In 1922, the Free School and Work Community , founded by Bernhard Uffrecht and his wife Ini, independent of state and church, moved in . This school was closed by the National Socialists in April 1933 and it was used again as an SA leadership school and the building was still used as a hospital during the Second World War . From 1945 to 1991 a department of the Gardelegen district hospital was located there . After the fall of the Wall , the hunting lodge came into the care of the “Foundation for Palaces, Castles and Gardens of the State of Saxony-Anhalt”, today the Saxony-Anhalt Cultural Foundation .
The operating company of the hotel had to file for bankruptcy in 2016; It changed hands in April 2017.
literature
- JL Bashford: Homes of Sport of the Hohenzollern: Letzlingen. In: The Badminton Magazine of Sports & Pastimes 21 (1905), pp 355 -369
- State Palaces and Gardens of Berlin (Ed.): 450 Years of the Grunewald Hunting Lodge, 1542–1992. I. Articles, Berlin 1992, pp. 138f.
Web links
- Saxony-Anhalt Cultural Foundation: Letzlingen Hunting Lodge
- Object collection of the hunting lodge Letzlingen on museum-digital
- Heinrich von Heintze-Weißenrode and Kaiser Wilhelm II at the Letzling court hunt in 1912 ( Getty Images )
Individual evidence
- ^ Andreas Kitschke: Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse (1795–1876). Court architect under three Prussian kings. Munich / Berlin 2007, p. 361.
- ^ Letzlingen: Castle hotel sold. Altmark Zeitung , accessed May 4, 2017
Coordinates: 52 ° 26 ′ 42.7 " N , 11 ° 28 ′ 51.2" E