Obergimpern Castle

Obergimpern Castle

Obergimpern Castle is a mansion in Obergimpern , a district of Bad Rappenau in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg, which emerged from the management building of an older castle . The castle got its present form through several building measures by the Counts von Yrsch , whose descendants still own the property to this day.

history

Obergimpern Castle 1860

In Obergimpern one in the valley of been held since the 13th or 14th century cancer Bach as lowland castle scale water castle as the seat of the early local lords. The castle was probably just a fortified wooden house with a wall and moat . The associated farm yard was on a hill southeast of it. Under what circumstances and when the moated castle was abandoned is unknown. Already under the rule of the Lords of Helmstatt , whose Obergimpern side line died out in 1685, the castle was probably deserted. Instead, the main building of the farm yard served as a mansion or tenant apartment. When the fiefdom of Obergimpern from the Electoral Palatinate was given to the Barons von Yrsch after the Helmstatt became extinct , the property was already referred to as a castle in 1709 , although at that time it was probably only the size of a farmhouse and not mostly in Bavaria and Germany South Tyrol living rulers was inhabited, but only became the seat of their bailiff.

In a document from 1740, the main building is described as a two-story well-built house , the accessories included barns, stables with vaulted cellars and various lands. Baron Johann Carl von Yrsch (1695–1766) lived in Mannheim, but from that year had an estate built on the nearby Eulenberg near Obergimpern. When his property was divided among his sons in 1762, Bernhard (1727–1778) received the Eulenberg farm, while the place Obergimpern with the official residence came to Johann Nepomuk von Yrsch (1736–1811). After the reconstruction of the neighboring church in 1764, he initiated a significant enlargement of the castle in 1765/66 by lengthening the structure and having it covered with a half- hip roof . When the residence of the Electoral Palatinate was relocated to Munich, Johann Nepomuk was also recalled there in 1779, so that the newly built palace was left to decay again in the following period.

In 1862, Sigmund August Carl von Yrsch-Pienzenau (1808–1899), the grandson of the previous owner of the castle, came to Obergimpern. Sigmund August Carl took the castle out of military service as a retirement home and had it renovated in the 1860s in the classicism style, adding heights to the castle and a very flat hipped roof over a mezzanine . Plan drawings provided for some decorative elements such as battlements and turrets for this renovation, but these were not implemented.

The castle was about the wedding of Yrsch-heiress Luitgard (1922-1993) with Götz von Bulow (1911-2003) to the family of Bulow , who continue owns the building. The building was modernized in the 1960s, with the mezzanine removed again in order to achieve a greater slope of the roof surfaces. The associated castle property was leased for most of the time and the castle often only served as the summer residence of the owner family. It has only been permanently inhabited and maintained since 1991.

description

Yrsch coat of arms above the balcony on the north side

The main building is a rectangular, three-storey plastered building with a hipped roof, which is accessed via an outside staircase to the north. There are three vaulted cellars of roughly the same size under the building. The oldest parts of the castle building are the northern vaulted cellar and the two lower floors of the northern third of the building. These components essentially correspond to the structure of the caretaker's building, which already existed in the first half of the 18th century, which was then gradually expanded into today's castle by lengthening and adding heights, whereby the original eaves side initially became the gable side before the castle had a hipped roof until around 1880 received. The balcony attached to the north over the outside staircase also comes from the renovations around 1880. Above the door to the balcony there is a large coat of arms of the Barons von Yrsch in the form that has been in use since the late 18th century.

On the east side of the castle there is a long, old cow and pigsty built into the steep slope. To the south-west of the castle is a group of buildings consisting of an old washing and baking house, tenant house and gardener's house. To the west of the castle there was once also a dairy building.

To the west of the castle and separated by a retaining wall because of the hillside location, the relatively small castle garden, which was laid out around 1766, is attached. There are no documents about the original appearance of the palace garden and the few historical images are probably more idealizing with regard to the garden or otherwise do not correspond to reality. However, it can always be assumed that the garden, which extends west to the Schlosswiesenbach, was representative and formal, especially since the castle estate still had its own gardening facility in the area of ​​the former moated castle. The nursery, which was also responsible for maintaining the palace garden, was given up at the beginning of the 1960s, and the Obergimpern kindergarten was built on the site in 1965. The castle garden was converted into a lawn with a loose tree population in the 1960s for easier maintenance.

Components of the old moated castle have probably been incorporated into the retaining walls towards the palace garden and probably also into the palace expansion around 1766. In the garden wall remains of patterns and inscriptions can no longer be seen.

literature

• Xaver Maxein: The history of the Obergimpern castle . In: Rappenauer Heimatbote No. 11 , 1999, pp. 38–43.
• Rudolf Petzold: The Counts of Wiser and the Counts of Yrsch - two Electoral Palatinate vassal families in the eastern Kraichgau with an excursion to Obergimpern Castle. In: Rappenauer Heimatbote No. 17 , 2006

Web links

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

Coordinates: 49 ° 15 '14.2 "  N , 9 ° 2' 28.1"  E