Neuhof Castle
The origins of Schloss Neuhof in Neuhof and Neershof , a district of Coburg in the Bavarian administrative district of Upper Franconia , date back to the 14th century. Field Marshal Count Albrecht von Roon was the prominent owner of the castle in Neuhof in an English landscape park from 1873 to 1879 , which, after changing ownership, now houses a therapeutic facility for addicts.
history
Manor
First written Schloss Neuhof 1371 as a moated castle occupied "Newenhoff" close to the already 1,288 patch of brothers of Essel village by the name change of "nettle village to the donkey village, 'n ass village Neser village Nehrsdorf, Nehrshof" over the centuries Neershof has been. The father of the later knight Albrecht von Bach, a citizen of Coburg who gained fame and was ennobled in the Battle of Sellnitz and whose descendants provided several mayors between 1401 and 1490, can be considered the owner of the village and the castle . Dietrich von Coburg, variously named as the owner, only received tithes from Neuhof and Neershof and other places in the area. In 1441 Ritter von Bach died. An impressive epitaph was erected for him and his father in the raven tower of the Morizkirche in Coburg .
The descendants held the moated castle in a shallow hollow in the hilly terrain until 1713. It did not survive the Thirty Years War unscathed. In 1635 Wolf Philipp von Bach wrote to Duke Ernst I of Coburg-Saxony and Gotha : “The Coburgk landscape has been ruined by Freundt and Feindt and the noble castles are so rioted that for my own person, my poverty on the Neuenhof manor is not a person, much less a useful animal found ... ”Even his son Otto Friedrich Hieronimus did not succeed in completely repairing the devastated Neuhof until his death in 1691, despite the enormous dowry of his wife Ursula.
Otto's first son, Wolf Friedrich von Bach, the new owner of the manor and captain of Sachsen-Meiningen , fell in 1706 in St. Louis, USA . His reckless and dissolute brother Johann Christoph took over the property, killed the citizen Johann Nicol Guthardt at Eichhof Castle in Dörfles after a drinking tour in the Grünes Baum zu Coburg and was sentenced to death in 1708. He was able to escape execution by fleeing to Bamberg . As a result, Neuhof Castle fell to the lords of Coburg as a settled fief and was up for sale in 1713.
In 1730 Sophie von Waldsachsen bought the desolate property. Her descendants, especially Haubold von Schönberg, restored the manor to some extent and Haubold sold it in 1857 to the Antwerp merchant Albert Böcking. For the first time, the property was no longer in noble hands. After some renovations, Böcking sold the entire property in 1865 to Charles Isaac Souchay from Manchester , son of the Frankfurt cloth merchant Cornelius Carl Souchay .
Renaissance castle
The new owner began extensive redesigns of the property and its surroundings a year later. He had the building to the northeast supplemented by a new building in neo-Gothic and late Renaissance forms of historicism . As an architect, he won the Coburg building officer Georg Konrad Rothbart , who at the same time gave the Palais Edinburgh a new style and planned the Ketschendorf Palace and completed it two years later. The lake around the castle was filled in except for a pond with flamingos and storks , the wild park was converted into an English garden and received a large greenhouse for exotic plants.
Souchay only kept Neuhof Palace for eight years. Through the mediation of the Kommerzienrat Jakob Mayer (later Baron Mayer von Ketschendorf), Neuhof Palace came into the possession of Field Marshal Albrecht von Roon , who was looking for a rest from his state offices as Prussian Minister of War , Minister of the Navy and, from 1873, Prime Minister and his asthma sufferer . Roon, who is friends with August Rückert, Friedrich Rückert's son , often retired to the poet's garden gazebo on the Goldberg in Neuses near Coburg, within sight of Callenberg Castle . From Neuhof Castle he sent his letter of resignation to his employer Wilhelm I , paving the way for Bismarck . Duke Ernst II of Saxony-Coburg had the ducal forest administration create the Roon-Weg from Neuhof to Callenberg, which Roon often used with his Landauer . August Rückert set up a Rückert bench for him on the Goldberg. Roon died in 1879. His sons sold Neuhof Palace five years later to the Mannheim consul Ferdinand Ladenburg, who gave it to his daughter Johanna as a dowry when she married Rittmeister Dorff.
Domain gardening
Around 1900 a domain nursery was established not far to the west of the castle. A kitchen garden, a pump well with a round edging and a small gardener's house integrated into the wall were built on the property, which is surrounded by a high brick wall.
construction
In today's view of Neuhof Castle, which has been partially freed from the original Renaissance elements, the central building with a crooked hip roof is the oldest preserved part from the 16th century. The ground floor is made of field stones, the other two floors are made of Franconian half-timbering , which was plastered in the 18th century. On the first floor there is a hall with a beautiful Renaissance beam ceiling and next to it a room with a stucco ceiling . The ground floor rooms are cross-vaulted and formerly served as a prison.
In front of the south-western position of the main building there is an octagonal stair tower with a pointed tower, whose winding stair spindle resembles those in Ahorn Castle and Untersiemau Castle . The second tower was adapted to the existing architectural style as a stair tower for the extension from 1866 and provided with a roof turret in the form of a bell chair.
Newer usage
The entire estate remained in Dorff's possession until 1950, when the Coburg district took over the castle and park. The district had the castle expanded as a retirement home . In 1952 the residents of the abandoned Callenberg Castle moved in . Richard Hauptmann, a displaced homeland poet from Coburg , who came from the Sudeten German and who , after his death, moved the retirement home to Mönchröden in 1972, became the director of the home .
A year later, the Schwanstech couple took over the historic rooms, converted them into a restaurant and ran the property with the park, which had been transformed into an organic garden, until the mid-1990s.
In 1995, the Gesellschaft für Sozialeinrichtungen mbH, headquartered in Bischofsgrün, acquired the castle and has since used it as a sociotherapeutic facility for alcoholic men and women. A total of 39 people are cared for in the dormitory and in the attached independent apartments, as well as four people in a training apartment. All parts of the castle and the three hectare landscaped park are used by the residents. There is a barbecue area, a campfire site, many sitting areas, an animal enclosure, and a herb and vegetable garden as a setting for living and working close to nature. The work therapy facilities for the joinery and the creative area, the laundry and the caretaker are housed in separate buildings in the park, as well as the garden maintenance, kitchen and housekeeping work areas.
The Schloss Neuhof dormitory has a house with a garden in the immediate vicinity for nine somewhat more stable residents, and four places in a training apartment in the center of Coburg serve as a targeted independence and as a stepping stone to the outside.
The goals for the stay at Neuhof Castle are agreed individually for each resident. Therapy ends when the residents have regenerated so that they can leave the facility with a favorable prognosis. If someone is no longer able to live without a sheltered environment, there is the option of a permanent home until they are in need of care. The aim of the work for the residents, however, is permanent abstinence, regeneration and the use of their own resources in all areas of life and ultimately full social and professional reintegration.
A total of eleven full-time employees work in the dormitory. The team is completed by a driver service and seven night and on-call services.
literature
- Fritz Mahnke: Palaces and castles in the vicinity of the Franconian Crown . Druck- und Verlagsanstalt Neue Presse, Coburg 1974, pp. 70–73.
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 16 ′ 5 ″ N , 11 ° 1 ′ 56 ″ E