Castle makers

View from the east of the castle

The castle makers is a moated castle built plant in the same location makers in the district of Leipzig . The oldest parts are most likely from the 16th century. The moated castle was accidentally "drained" permanently in 1838 while the railway was being built by the nearby Macherner Höhe.

In addition to the orangery, the castle park, designed as an English landscape garden , with the 5.7 hectare alluvial pond, artificial knight's castle ruins, pyramid, temple of Hygieia , Agnes temple and Wilhelms Ruh, various sculptures such as the thinking muse, goddess Hygieia and Herculean belong to Machern Castle Vestal Virgin and Apollo and game reserve with fallow deer.

description

Pond and castle

According to an inscription on a lintel, the once two-winged building was erected in 1566. The groin- vaulted rooms on the ground floor and the round stair tower in the courtyard at the bottom refer to this time. When the castle was built, however, an older predecessor was already included.

Machern Castle was built as a moated castle. In the course of the construction of the first German long-distance railway from Leipzig to Dresden in 1838, an approximately three-kilometer-long incision was made through the Macherner Höhe. In the process, water-bearing layers in the ground were cut, and the water surface around the castle dried out permanently.

Over the centuries it has been rebuilt and expanded several times. After the Thirty Years' War it was given its present form as a three-winged baroque complex. According to an inscription on the large castle tower bell, reconstruction work was completed in 1733, after which the castle received its present shape. The stair tower was increased to 21 meters.

history

Schloss Machern on a lithograph from 1841

The castle from the northwest

Temple of Hygieia

The von Lindenau period

The older Machern line or the Heinrich line of the von Lindenau family had been at home in Machern and Zeititz since 1465 in seven generations for 200 years and died out in 1665:

Heinrich von Lindenau († 1505)
Albrecht von Lindenau († 1533)
Heinrich von Lindenau (1496–1561) and brother Wolff von Lindenau († 1530 or 1536)
Wolff von Lindenau (1519–1589)
Friedrich von Lindenau (1563–1634)
Wolf Friedrich von Lindenau (1600–1642)
Ernst Joachim von Lindenau (1607–1665)

The younger Machern line or the Wolf line has been at home in Machern in four generations for 137 years and goes back to Wolf von Lindenau:

Wolf von Lindenau (1634–1710)
Gottfried Anshelm von Lindenau (1693–1749)
Heinrich Gottlieb von Lindenau (1723–1789)
Carl Heinrich August Graf von Lindenau (1755–1842)

The rule of von Lindenau directed the fortunes of Machern until 1802. The last imperial count Carl Heinrich August von Lindenau was inspired by his numerous trips abroad and at the end of the 18th century laid out the gardens in the east and north of the palace in the English style.

The Schnetger time

In 1806 the merchant Gottfried Schnetger acquired Machern Castle and the Machern and Zeititz manors from Freifrau von Wylich, b. Countess Stolberg-Wernigerode, who bought it from Carl Graf von Lindenau in 1802 . Afterwards the Schnetger family successfully farmed there for 140 years until 1945. Specifically, these were Gottfried Wilhelm Schnetger (1770–1861), Wilhelm Eduard Schnetger (1799–1873), Wilhelm Eduard Heinrich Schnetger (1825–1903) and Paul Theodor Schnetger (1859–1952) with their wives. The Schnetger grave complexes are to this day (2016) in the Machern cemetery.

During the von Lindenau period and the Schnetger period there are other unique art and sacred history items in the St. Nikolai Church in Machern and the historic cemetery.

The time from 1946

When the Schnetger family had to leave the castle in 1946, it became community property and a cultural center with a restaurant and apartments, as well as a community office and village school. In 1981 a fire destroyed the roof structure in the east wing, and decay due to lack of maintenance was also evident. In 1982 monument preservation reconstructions began - these were continued with public funds after the German reunification from 1990.

present

Today the castle has a new look and is a versatile meeting place where cultural events such as theater, concerts, exhibitions and other festivities take place regularly. The castle has also established itself as a romantic wedding castle with the registry office set up in the historic knight's room.

A large and a small bell hang in the castle tower - the large one strikes on the hour, the small one every quarter of an hour. They were restored in 1988. It was made by bell founder Johann Christoph Hiering from Leipzig in 1733 on behalf and at the expense of Gottfried Anshelm von Lindenau and his wife.

Castle pictures

Bridge over the former moat
Glance into the entrance hall
Coat of arms on the castle tower
The octagonal spire with a copper-clad lantern
The gilded tower knob

literature

sorted by year of publication

Michael Niedermeier (editor): The landscape park by doers - Pückler's gardener JH Reder. Published by: Pückler Society , Berlin 2009.
Rolf Affeldt, Frank Heinrich: On the trail of the Rosicrucians. The castle park to doers. MdG project group Leipzig 2001.
Roland Dix, Katrin Franz, Petra Puttkammer, Gutborg Stephan: The landscape garden to makers. Sax-Verlag, Beucha 1995, ISBN 3930076217 .
Rolf Affeldt, Frank Heinrich: The Machern Palace Park reveals its secret - "from night to light". Leipzig 1994.
Park Directorate Machern (ed.): Castle and landscape garden Machern. A small guide through 975 years of Machern history. Machern 1991, without ISBN.
Katrin Franz: Some investigations into the planting of the early landscape garden with a view to the restoration of the Macher Garden. In: Die Gartenkunst 1 (2/1989), pp. 247–265.
Thomas Topfstedt : The landscape park makers. Leipzig 1979.
Council of the municipality of Machern (ed.): The Park to Machern - A monument of sentimentality and romance in deer garden art. Edited by the local group of the Kulturbund Machern under the direction of Joachim Bergmann. Makers 1956.
Cornelius Gurlitt : Makers. In: Descriptive representation of the older architectural and art monuments of the Kingdom of Saxony. 20. Issue: Amtshauptmannschaft Grimma (2nd half) . CC Meinhold, Dresden 1898, p. 168.
Ephraim Wolfgang Glasewald (ed.): Description of the garden to makers with special consideration for the types of wood in the same. Berlin 1799 - also available online as a PDF download at doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.43346 . An abridged reprint edition appeared in Machern in 1975.
Anonymous: views of the most exquisite parts of the garden to be makers. Berlin 1799 ( digitized version ).
Ludwig Thiele: A trip to Machern or a paperback and guide for those who want to see the garden there from Leipzig. Leipzig 1798.