Moyland Castle

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South-east side of the main castle, July 2011
Aerial view of the castle, July 2016

Moyland Castle is a moated castle near Bedburg-Hau in the Kleve district and is one of the most important neo-Gothic buildings in North Rhine-Westphalia . Its name is derived from the Dutch words mooi land , which means "beautiful country". The name was probably coined by Dutch workers whom the then owner Jakob van den Eger had brought to the Lower Rhine in order to have the wetlands around his property drained.

Nowadays, Moyland Castle houses the extensive collection of modern art of the van der Grinten brothers as a museum and is a popular destination on the Lower Rhine .

description

View from the south (2013)
Moyland seen from the north tower

Castle complex

The castle complex consists of a closed, four-wing main castle, with farm buildings in front of it to the southeast. The latter is now home to a museum café, the museum administration and library as well as rooms for temporary exhibitions. The two-storey main building made of brick presents itself in the historicizing Tudor style with a crenellated crown on corbels . The four floors of the former keep at the southeast corner of the main castle have been crowned by a polygonal helmet with a lantern since 2008 . At the other three corners of the castle there are horseshoe-shaped towers with three floors.

The south-eastern side of the castle is formed by a gate , which is flanked on the outside by two polygonal turrets with pointed helmets and on the courtyard side by two slim round turrets. The so-called Zwirnersaal is located on the upper floor of the wing and is used for concerts, among other things.

The figures of the staircase
Pug figure on the staircase

The banisters on the stairs to the portal of the main castle are decorated with various animal figures. Until 1996/1997 there were still two older original figures of lions on the staircase. At the ends of the railings, the original lion figures have been replaced by a wolf and a pug, among other things. The wolf was placed in memory of Voltaire's visit . The figure was chosen in order to capture the “bitterness” of the French philosopher in the discourse with Frederick II for posterity. The pug, on the other hand, is reminiscent of Sir Winston Churchill . He visited Moyland Castle during the Second World War as part of Operation Plunder to observe the British army's crossing of the Rhine. He was probably one of the last to visit the rooms in which the Prussian King and Voltaire had held their discussions and the 200-year-old furnishings of which had remained intact from the war until then. Shortly after Churchill's visit, the castle was looted and devastated. The four stair dogs from 1996/1997 were made by the German metal sculptor and art professor Hans Karl Burgeff .

Castle Park

In the period from July 1995 to May 1997, under the direction of Gustav and Rose Wörner, the palace park, including its old trees and avenues of oak and linden trees, was restored so that it now reflects its appearance from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The originator of the original designs is unknown, but they were made by the Steengracht family in the 1830s and 1840s. Today there are sculptures by contemporary artists from all over the world in the park, including James Lee Byars , U We Claus , Hans Karl Burgeff , Eduardo Chillida , Huub Kortekaas , Kubach-Wilmsen , Joseph Jaekel , Heinz Mack , Gerhard Marcks , Holger Runge and Antoni Tàpies .

Since 1997, the community of Bedburg-Hau and the Foundation Museum Schloss Moyland have been holding a large artisan Christmas market with over 100 artisans from all over Europe around the third Advent. The market is one of the largest handicraft markets on the Lower Rhine.

history

Residents and owners

Alexander von Spaen was lord of the castle from 1662.
Moyland Castle 1746
Moyland Castle around 1860, lithograph
West elevation of Moyland Castle in August 1990

In 1307, a fortified courtyard called Moyland was first mentioned in a document. In that year, the minister and later took Archdeacon of Liege, Jacob van den Eger, the investment of Count Otto of Cleves in leasehold . The teacher of the count's children called himself von Moyland several times in the following years .

15 years later, the farm was sold to Roland von Hagedorn, against whom Dietrich VIII. Von Kleve renewed the fief in 1339. A Moyland Castle is mentioned for the first time in the relevant document .

Until the second half of the 17th century, inheritance led to frequent changes of ownership, which did not end until 1662 when the Brandenburg General Field Marshal Alexander von Spaen bought the medieval complex.

His descendant Friedrich Wilhelm von Spaen sold it (meanwhile converted into a castle ) in 1696 for 150,000 thalers to the then Brandenburg elector and later King of Prussia, Friedrich I. He used Moyland primarily as a hunting lodge, but also as a "love nest". His affair with the 17-year-old Emmerich bourgeois daughter Katharina Ryckers (also Rickers) made a name for itself at the Prussian court.

During one of his numerous stays in the castle, the Prussian King Frederick II met the philosopher Voltaire there on September 11, 1740 and together with him developed the idea of ​​the "Truth Manufactory", a philosophy academy to be set up at Moyland Castle. However, Frederick's meeting with Voltaire was not the only reason to visit Moyland at the time, the king also intended to commission the armed executive corps under Major General Georg Heinrich von Borcke to the Dutch town of Maseyck on the Maas on September 14, 1740 to conquer. On the way back, Friedrich II is said to have drafted and drawn up the plan for Sanssouci Palace in the Kamper terrace garden .

In 1766 the complex came into the possession of the Dutch von Steengracht family. Adrian von Steengracht had received the castle from the Prussian royal family as compensation in kind for loans granted during the Seven Years' War .

Moyland remained in the possession of the Steengrachts before they donated it to the Museum Schloss Moyland Foundation , which was founded on July 11, 1990 and whose goals were to rebuild the complex and use it as a museum. Before that, the owners had been looking for suitable financing options for a reconstruction for a long time. The decisive impetus for establishing the foundation came in 1987 from the brothers Franz Joseph and Hans van der Grinten, who were looking for a location for their private collection of modern art . On May 24, 1997, the building, which had been completely renovated until then, was reopened, including the gardens.

Building history

Roland von Hagedorn had the former fortified courtyard redesigned from 1345 to 1355 into a classic Gothic fort with a square floor plan. In addition to three round, shell corner towers, it had a larger fourth round tower on the north corner, which served as a keep. Accessible from the inner courtyard via a high entrance on the third floor, it offered all kinds of comfort inside, such as a fountain, toilet and light niches and a fireplace. The western side of the complex formed at that time a great hall , the other fronts consisted of walls with battlements . To the south of the main castle was a bailey through which the castle gate of the main castle could be reached.

In the 15th century, new wings were built in the inner courtyard and a chapel was installed in the east tower.

From 1662 Alexander Freiherr von Spaen had the medieval fortification built into a baroque palace by Pieter Post based on the models of buildings from the royal seat of Kleve . Since he was only able to complete the renovation work on his Ringenberg Castle a year earlier , the two complexes still show architectural parallels today. The basement rooms were given new vaults and the floor heights were changed. As a result, the window axes of the main castle were arranged symmetrically and the driveway was relocated in such a way that from then on it led axially towards the main building.

Under Nikolaus Johann von Steengracht, the exterior of the palace was redesigned in the neo-Gothic style between 1854 and 1862. The baroque interior remained largely untouched during the work under the Cologne cathedral builder Ernst Friedrich Zwirner . The main castle was walled with red bricks and the three corner towers were equipped with battlements and pointed arch windows. A historicizing pointed helmet was put on the keep. The gate building was also redesigned and was made accessible via a newly built stone bridge. In the course of this work, the outer bailey was also rebuilt on the foundation walls of its predecessor buildings.

In addition, the builder had the parks rebuilt in a "mixed style" at that time. They contain parts in the style of an English landscape garden as well as typical baroque structures of the so-called "architectural garden". Because of its special importance, the park was included in the street of garden art between the Rhine and the Maas in 2004 .

The castle survived the last fighting of the Second World War until the Allied invasion on February 25, 1945, relatively unscathed. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery took up quarters in the castle with his staff. During this time Winston Churchill also came to Moyland. After Montgomery left, almost all of the precious interior was lost to robbery and vandalism by Canadian soldiers, and the castle was badly vandalized. Lord of the castle was Ribbentrop's State Secretary Gustav Adolf Steengracht von Moyland , who was later convicted in the Nuremberg war trials. A provisional repair in 1954 was then destroyed by a fire in the western roof structure in 1956, so that the buildings gradually fell into disrepair, despite the emergency roof.

In 1987, the debris removal and securing work began to restore the system. From 1990 to 1997, the newly established Museum Schloss Moyland Foundation was responsible for the restoration and expansion of the castle, whereby the historical structure of the interior had to give way to a modern redesign of the rooms for the museum purpose.

museum

The palace building now houses the art collection of the brothers Hans van der Grinten and Franz Joseph van der Grinten , which they have brought together over 50 years and brought to the Museum Schloss Moyland Foundation. The extensive collection contains exhibits from the 19th and 20th centuries, including works by Erwin Heerich , Willem den Ouden , Rudolf Schoofs and Hermann Teuber . One of the main focal points of the collection is the almost 5,000 works and thus the largest in the world of works by Joseph Beuys .

In the specially managed Joseph Beuys Archive , which is an affiliate of the Düsseldorf Art Academy , well over 200,000 archive items and documents on the life, work and work of the artist are stored.

The foundation's museum library, which contains more than 60,000 media, is also available to researchers.

reception

The dilapidated castle was the model for the moated castle in Ingrid Bachér's 1975 fairy tale Ghosts are not seen . The specially made drawings by Gottfried Wiegand were shown as part of the exhibition Fairy Tales and Other Wondrous Stories , the first edition of the book was dedicated to a separate room (September 27, 2015 - January 31, 2016).

literature

To the castle in general

  • Otto Brües , Guido de Werd , Alois Puyn: Moyland Castle. From Voltaire to Beuys. Mercator, Duisburg 1988, ISBN 3-87463-146-X ( Experience the Lower Rhine ).
  • Alexander Duncker : The rural residences, castles and residences of the knightly landowners in the Prussian monarchy together with the royal family, house, Fideicommiss and Schattull goods. Volume 9, Berlin 1866/67, ( PDF; 223 kB ).
  • Ferdinand GB Fischer : Excursion destinations on the Lower Rhine. Beautiful castles, palaces and moths. Pomp, Bottrop 2000, ISBN 3-89355-152-2 , pp. 12-15.
  • Fritz Getlinger, Matthias Graß: Moyland Castle. Destruction and rebuilding. Keuck, Geldern 1997, ISBN 3-928340-08-5 .
  • Karl-Heinz Hohmann, Rose Wörner , Gustav Wörner: Museum Schloss Moyland and its park in Bedburg-Hau (Kleve district). 2nd Edition. Neusser Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Neuss 1998, ISBN 3-88094-825-9 ( Rheinische Kunststätten. Issue 346).
  • Stephan de Lange (Hrsg.): Chronicle of Moyland Castle. Boss, Kleve 2001, ISBN 3-933969-17-4 .
  • Gregor Spor: How nice to dream away here. Castles on the Lower Rhine. Pomp , Bottrop, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-89355-228-6 , pp. 8-9.
  • Foundation Museum Schloss Moyland (ed.): 700 years of Moyland Castle. Museum Schloss Moyland 2007, ISBN 978-3-935166-35-5
  • Jens Wroblewski, André Wemmers: Theiss-Burgenführer Niederrhein . Konrad Theiss , Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8062-1612-6 , pp. 110-111 .

To the museum

  • Karl Ebbers, Bettina Paust, Florian Monheim (Red.): Museum Schloss Moyland. DuMont, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7701-3947-X
  • Friends of the Museum Schloss Moyland e. V. (Ed.): Series of publications Schloss Moyland. Boss, Kleve 1990-1995
  • Friends of the Museum Schloss Moyland e. V. (Ed.): Writings. Boss, Kleve 1999 ff. (Edited together with: Foundation Museum Schloss Moyland; Van der Grinten Collection; Joseph Beuys Archive of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia)
  • Fifty years of the van der Grinten collection. Preface by Johannes Look and Ron Manheim. Contributions by Ron Manheim, Barbara Strieder, Ute Haug, Bettina Paust, Hans van der Grinten and Franz Joseph van der Grinten u. v. a. Museum Schloß Moyland, Bedburg-Hau 1999. ISBN 3-929042-22-3 .
  • Bettina Paust, Florian Monheim (Red.): Museum Schloss Moyland - Sculpture Park. DuMont, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-8321-5589-9
  • Foundation Museum Schloss Moyland u. a. (Ed.): Annual books of the Joseph Beuys Archive. Peter Lang, Frankfurt 2001 ff., ISSN  1438-1710

Web links

Commons : Moyland Castle  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The sculpture park plan of the Museum Schloss Moyland Foundation. 2011, p. 2, no. 69 ( PDF ; 2.75 MB)
  2. ^ Jens Wroblewski, André Wemmers: Theiss-Burgenführer Niederrhein . Konrad Theiss , Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8062-1612-6 , pp. 110 .
  3. ↑ Ringenberg Castle. Chronicle of the building, surroundings and residents since 1229. o. Y, o. S. ( PDF ; 237 kB)
  4. ↑ Christopher Duffy : Frederick the Great. A soldier's life. Weltbild, Augsburg 1994, ISBN 3-89350-558-X , p. 41.
  5. ^ Claudia Gronewald: A fairy tale for Moyland Castle , NRZ, September 23, 2015, accessed on April 7, 2018
  6. ^ Rhenish museums: fairy tales and other wondrous stories - ART. EMOTIONAL. 08 , accessed April 7, 2018

Coordinates: 51 ° 45 ′ 19 "  N , 6 ° 14 ′ 12.5"  E