Neunhof Castle

Neunhof Palace, south side (2007)

Neunhof Castle is a former manor on the southern edge of the village of the same name, Neunhof , which is now a district of Nuremberg .

It is a culturally and historically valuable ideal type of a pond house from around 1500, which was later only slightly changed and the original furnishings were retained. The surrounding baroque park was reconstructed in 1964 and 1978/79. The castle is still privately owned, but since 1959 it has housed a branch of the Germanic National Museum (original castle inventory and hunting collection). The ground floor with the kitchen, the first and second floors as well as the stables of the outbuildings are accessible to the public.

The castle has been closed since 2013 due to renovation work.

history

Landscape around Neunhof Castle (" Knoblauchsland ")

North side (2003)

South side

Neunhof is mentioned for the first time in 1246 when Heinricus de Nova Curia (who named himself after the place, but this does not require a fixed seat) and his wife Mechthild von Braunsbach donated a meadow near Neunhof to the predecessor of the Nuremberg Clarisse monastery . Further documents from 1258 onwards reveal various fiefdoms and ownerships, with Hohenlohe-Brauneck playing an important role as heirs to the Reichsministeriale von Gründlach . From the middle of the 14th century, the Kreß knights (later Kreß von Kressenstein ) also appear for the first time as owners of individual farms and estates who had owned the neighboring Kressenstein manor in Kraftshof since around 1300 .

During the First Margrave War in 1449, the courtyard at this point was badly damaged. The current building was rebuilt around 1479 by Hans Kreß and provided with a moat . The framework is dated to the year 1479 according to the methods of dendrochronology . The manor was given its present appearance at this time; it corresponds to the building type of the Nürnberger Weiherhauses with massive lower and upper floors made of half-timbered . In 1482, Hans Kress committed himself to “ open ” his dwelling at Neunhof (which he had “raised and pawed” with the approval of the Nuremberg Council ) to the imperial city . H. to make them available in the event of war, and also to sell them only to Nuremberg citizens.

After the death of Hans Kreß in 1500, the childless widow Neunhof sold in 1503 for 800 guilders to the rich Nuremberg merchant Georg Fütterer , who had a new roof with a gable and the year 1508 put on. According to the deed of purchase, it included a brewery next to a well, farm buildings and a garden. The Fütterer family, who came from the artisan class, had managed to achieve considerable prosperity in the course of the 15th century through financial transactions and publishing. The acquisition of a “befitting” seat should presumably facilitate further social advancement. In fact, Georg Fütterer was accepted into the Small Council as Young Mayor in 1504 , and in 1521 the family was accepted into the Nuremberg patriciate , incidentally the only former family of craftsmen at all.

A letter of complaint from the margrave from 1507 shows that Georg Fütterer had considerably expanded the fortifications after the acquisition. When a Nuremberg commission then inspected the seat, they stated in their report that at the time of purchase it was only insufficiently secured by a “bad liechtzaun” (simple palisade) and a “little grave” against the forest side. Fütterer had therefore started to “build a wall around the castle house” and to create a kennel , but according to the owner “not for his special consideration, but for the house and the cellar too good ... and so he also eats fish at times do possible ". According to another letter of complaint from the margrave from 1526, Fütterer is said to have built the seat “with a stone foot of quarter pieces at 30 shoes high and 25 above mid-level”, “built two floors on it and raised it up” , “also made good shooting holes in it and one lined dig made about it ” . These dimensions, which may only be estimated from a distance, cannot be reconciled with the existing building. Freitag-Stadler traced the two gables so characteristic of Neunhof back to Georg Fütterer, which the (probably not original) year 1508 in one of the half-timbered gables seems to indicate. However, dendrochronological studies date the framework, at least in part, to the building by Hans Kreß from 1479.

After Fütterer's death, the widow sold the complex to the brothers Thomas and Pankraz Reich for 900 guilders. After the castle's farm buildings were damaged again in 1552 and Pankraz died, Thomas Reich sold the castle to Hans Gutteter in 1557 for 1,050 guilders. As early as 1594 the property was sold again for 3500 guilders after extensive renovation. The new owners, Koler von Neunhof , continued the renovation. Through the marriage of Susanna Koler in 1615 with Johann Wilhelm Kreß von Kressenstein , the property came back to the Kreßen.

In the Thirty Years War the farm buildings were devastated in 1632 and 1634, but the castle was spared. In 1736 Johann Adam Kreß renovated the facility and had new windows broken through. The baroque house chapel on the second floor, the cabinet organ, the symmetrically laid out baroque garden with the pavilion by Conrad Schön (1740) were also built at this time . The widow of Christoph Wilhelm Karl Kreß von Kressenstein, who died in 1856, Anna Helena Katharina von Holzschuher , bequeathed Neunhof to her descendants.

In 1961 the Germanisches Nationalmuseum rented the castle property from the community of heirs after the then general director, Ludwig Grote , had suggested that the completely neglected complex be restored. According to a floor plan from shortly after 1740, the horticultural director Theo Friedrich developed a plan in 1962 for the redesign of the baroque garden in order to revive the once highly developed Nuremberg garden culture. 13 box arabesques were created on an area of ​​550 square meters, the corners of which are accentuated by sandstone platforms and buckets with cut box cones. In 1977 the city council approved the planning of the large palace garden, which was laid out in 1978/79. A grid with 5 lawns was laid out, in the center of which the octagonal sandstone pavilion from 1740 is again located. The lawns were lined with hedges, and box-shaped plane trees formed rows of trees. The walls of the trees are intended to set the garden apart from the surrounding landscape and thus bring back awareness of an essential feature of the baroque gardens. The prime example of an old Nuremberg pond house , which miraculously escaped any war damage and disfiguring alterations and also retained its original rich interior of a patrician seat from the 16th to 18th centuries, was used as a castle and hunting museum as well as a branch of the Germanic National Museum Made accessible to the public and cared for in an exemplary manner.

In 2013, however, the facility was closed due to the necessary restoration of the building and has not been accessible since then, in 2020 it is still closed; the exterior of the castle gives the impression of being renovated, nothing is known about the progress or stoppage of the interior renovation. The park is accessible and is maintained by the city of Nuremberg.

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  Southeast

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  Castle with park from the northeast (2004)

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  Baroque garden (2004)

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literature

• Dehio : Bayern I: Franconia. 2nd edition, Munich 1999; P. 662 f.
• Günther P. Fehring and Anton Ress: The city of Nuremberg. Brief inventory (= Bavarian art monuments. 10). 2nd edition, edit. by Wilhelm Schwemmer, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1977 [un. Reprint 1982]; Pp. 389-396.
• G. Ulrich Großmann: Architecture and Museum - Building and Collection (= cultural-historical walks in the Germanic National Museum. Volume 1). Ostfildern-Ruit 1997, passim and esp. Pp. 40-46.
• Irene Spille: The patrician castle Neunhof near Nuremberg. Dependance of the Germanic National Museum. 3rd, updated & extended edition, Verlag des Germanisches Nationalmuseums, Nuremberg 2001, ISBN 3-926982-75-6 .

Web links

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

• Neunhof Castle on the pages of the Germanic National Museum Nuremberg
• Tourist information on Neunhof Castle at Bayern-Online
• Neunhof Castle on Burgenarchiv.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ History and quotations in the following from: Giersch / Schlunk / von Haller: Castles and mansions in the Nuremberg countryside
2. ^ The baroque garden of Neunhof Nordbayern.de, September 27, 2010.
3. ↑ When locks slumber behind bars. In: Mittelbayerische Zeitung. August 2, 2017 ( Mittelbayerische.de ).

Coordinates: 49 ° 31 ′ 7 ″  N , 11 ° 3 ′ 3 ″  E