Luberegg Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Luberegg Castle

Luberegg Castle is located in St. Georgen bei Emmersdorf in the Melk district in Lower Austria on the left bank of the Danube . The facility, built by Joseph Weber von Fürnberg around 1780 , initially served as a wood washing machine and post office, then as the seat of various state institutions. Emperor Franz II temporarily used Luberegg as a summer residence. In the recent past a museum was set up in Luberegg and parts of the complex have been used as a hotel and inn.

history

The construction of the castle

Joseph Freiherr von Fürnberg, the owner of the Leiben estate , was a bustling entrepreneur in the 18th century who contributed a lot to the economic development of the southern Waldviertel. His operations included the glassworks in Gutenbrunn and the paper factory in Leiben. On July 16, 1774, he was granted the privilege of building a wooden floodplain that stretched from the Weinsberger Forst to Luberegg. At the mouth of the Weitenbach , almost half of Vienna's need for firewood was temporarily loaded. In addition to the large storage area, von Fürnberg had a wooden country house built between 1774 and 1787 as an administration building and summer residence. He had an apartment set up on the ground floor of the main building, and on the upper floor, to which a large staircase leads, a large hall with painted walls and two adjoining rooms for representative purposes. There were also stables for 24 horses, a carpentry shop, workers' apartments and an inn.

At the wood storage area, 24 boats ( barges ) were available to transport the wood. In 1791 von Fürnberg also received the postal privilege for the Waldviertel, Luberegg also served as a post office on the way to Pöggstall and on to Budweis .

After his debt had grown to two million guilders in 1795, von Fürnberg sold the entire property to Baron von Braun on October 17, 1795. However, Braun appeared as a representative of the imperial family fund.

Management by the family fund

This family funds to supply the family was of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Joseph II. With a portion of the assets of Emperor Franz I. established. The general management of the fund became an independent authority, and an inspectorate was set up in Luberegg for the administration of the family funds in the southern Waldviertel. The majority of the customers for the wood were the city of Vienna and the Augarten porcelain factory .

In addition to these economic activities, the palace was used by Emperor Franz II as a summer residence from 1803 to 1811 . In 1805 it was occupied by French soldiers. In 1811 the wood flood was discontinued. Furniture from this period has been preserved in the nearby Artstetten Castle .

Republic of Austria

The fund was expropriated in 1919 in favor of the Republic of Austria without compensation. The property was transferred to the War Damaged Fund. In 1939 ownership went to Austria. It was later taken over by the Reich Forest Administration of the German Empire. In 1946 the facility returned to the ownership of the Republic of Austria. Until 1990 the buildings were used by the administration of the Austrian Federal Forests .

Use 1990 - 2002

Count Romée de La Poëze d'Harambure ( Harambure and La Poeze d'Harambure ), who owned the nearby Artstetten Castle and ran the museum there, decided in 1990 to acquire Luberegg. With the help of the monument office, the complex was renovated and made accessible to the public. A museum about “Emperor Franz and his time” was built in the main building, an exhibition area in the former chapel, a restaurant next to it and a few apartments in the nearby manor house. In the course of the renovation, the buildings were connected to one another by the architect Hans Hoffer. After Luberegg was flooded during the severe Danube floods in 2002, the walls had to dry out for years. The museum has been closed since then.

Renovation and current use

In 2003 the hotel owner Josef Pichler from Emmersdorf bought the property and in 2005 built a flood protection system. Luberegg Castle has been serving gastronomy for a number of years, so the western corner house has been home to a Heuriger since 2003. In the years 2007 - 2008 the roof landscape of the three middle buildings was re-covered with larch wood shingles and the historical building fabric was well protected for the next few years. At the same time, all parts of the facade badly damaged by the Danube flood in 2002 were renewed and the windows were renovated in the old box-frame style. In the years 2016–2019, the palace garden was laid out in a modern, traditional style. The renovation of the individual buildings themselves began in 2017. In the main building, a restaurant area was set up on the ground floor.

Building description

Lighting tower, federal road, farm buildings

The elongated palace complex is very modest for an imperial summer palace. The row of buildings, almost a hundred meters long, consists of five early classicist cubic buildings arranged side by side . The main house has twelve axes and is only two-storey in the middle part. Elongated buildings adjoin to the right and left, with a three-axis corner house attached to each end. The facades are undecorated, the roofs covered with gray wooden shingles. At the main entrance in the central axis there are two free-standing herms that support a balcony with a wrought iron grille.

In front of this west-east running line on the south side is an approximately 20 m wide strip of green, partly still designed with park paths, partly fenced today as a guest garden. The federal highway 3 leads along the fence . The alignment of the row of buildings follows about 100 m from each side to the west, i.e. on the left when viewed from the front, the two-storey approximately 30 m long farm building.

Landmarks are formed by two compact, cylindrical stone-walled towers about 20 m in front of the building. They are roofless, a good 6 m high, 4 m in diameter and each have a door opening. One is 70 m west of the row of houses and just south of the B3 , the other 50 m east, but north of the street. Before this road was built, the two formerly wood-clad towers were structurally connected to the castle. With fires burning above, they were used to illuminate the nightly loading of drifted wood onto ships on the nearby banks of the Danube, so they are lighting towers .

Web links

Commons : Schloss Luberegg  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ HKA Camerale No. 418, Fasz. 9, Reg No. 296, (year :) 1787.
  2. ↑ HHStA, AH Familienfond Güterdirektion Kart. 20 Fasz. 1, f. 185-192.
  3. ^ Anton Friedrich Reil : The Emperor's Donauländchen. royal Patrimonial rule in the Obermannhartsberg district in Lower Austria. Described geographically and historically. Vienna 1835, p. 4 ( online in the Google book search).
  4. ^ Family archive, Hofreisen, box 14.
  5. ↑ Law of April 3, 1919 StGBl. No. 209/1919.
  6. ↑ StGBl. No. 501/1919.
  7. ^ Journal of Laws of Austria No. 311 and 694/1939
  8. ↑ Federal Law Gazette No. 156/1946 .

Coordinates: 48 ° 13 ′ 57.4 ″  N , 15 ° 18 ′ 50 ″  E