Mochental Castle

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Mochental Castle

Castle Mochental is a castle in Renaissance style near the district town Ehingen in southeastern Baden-Württemberg .

The castle is located above the Danube in the Kirchen Valley, around eight kilometers west of Ehingen on the southern edge of the Swabian Alb . Directly below the three-winged castle is an agricultural estate which, together with the castle, forms an almost closed square.

history

Mochental Castle
court
North side

Around the year 1000, the Counts of Mochental built Mochental Castle and a chapel. This was in 1049 by Pope Leo IX. consecrated to St. Nicholas . In 1192 Count Ulrich I von Berg donated the castle with the chapel to the Zwiefalten monastery . Mochental became its provost .

From the middle of the 16th century to the middle of the 17th century, instead of the crumbling castle, the provost's office and the Nikolaus chapel were renewed and expanded several times. In 1730 the main building of the provost's office was destroyed in a fire. In the following three years, the brothers Joseph and Martin Schneider under Abbot Augustin built the castle with its 365 windows in its current form.

In 1734 the church painter Franz Josef Spiegler painted the chapel with pictures from the life of St. Nicholas. In 1737 the Riedlingen painter Joseph Ignaz Wegscheider painted an oriental feast in the Hubertussaal. As part of the secularization , the Zwiefalten monastery and thus Mochental fell to the Duchy and later Kingdom of Württemberg on November 25, 1802 . In 1816 the last abbot of Zwiefalten died at Mochental Castle.

Between 1822 and 1976 the castle was used in various ways. It served as a forest office, as accommodation for labor service, then as the administrative seat of the French military government and later as a boarding school. After a privately financed interior renovation, the Schloss Mochental art gallery was opened in 1985, which is managed by the curator and art Karlsruhe founder Ewald Karl Schrade .

Usage today

In the rooms of the castle, changing exhibitions of classic modern and contemporary are shown. Concerts and readings take place in the Nikolauskapelle and in the Hubertussaal. Brooms from all over the world have been exhibited in a broom museum since 1985.

literature

  • Günter Schmitt : Castle Guide Swabian Alb, Volume 2 - Alb Middle-South: Hiking and discovering between Ulm and Sigmaringen . Biberacher Verlagsdruckerei, Biberach an der Riß 1989, ISBN 3-924489-45-9 , pp. 113-122.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. Harriet Brinkmöller-Gandlau:  SPIEGLER, Franz Josef. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 10, Bautz, Herzberg 1995, ISBN 3-88309-062-X , Sp. 984-985.

Coordinates: 48 ° 15 ′ 54 ″  N , 9 ° 36 ′ 17 ″  E