Ortenburg Castle

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Ortenburg Castle
Ortenburg Castle - west view (March 2007)

Ortenburg Castle - west view (March 2007)

Alternative name (s): Alt-Ortenburg Castle, front lock
Creation time : Castle 1120, Castle 1562–1575
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: Castle completely preserved
Standing position : Imperial Count
Place: Ortenburg
Geographical location 48 ° 33 '1.5 "  N , 13 ° 13' 49"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 33 '1.5 "  N , 13 ° 13' 49"  E
Ortenburg Castle (Bavaria)
Ortenburg Castle

Ortenburg Castle ( Alt-Ortenburg , Vorderschloss ) is the eponymous castle of the Ortenburg market in the Passau district . From around 1120 to 1805 it was the residential palace of the Counts of Ortenburg, who were directly part of the empire . In its present form it reflects the state of construction from the years 1562 to 1575. Except for a few outbuildings, the castle has been completely preserved to this day.

history

The first hilltop castle on a hill above the Wolfach valley from 1120 was built by Count Rapoto I von Ortenburg. From then on, it formed the center of the Ortenburg county, which was immediately part of the empire . Due to the power of the Ortenburg house, there were several conflicts with the county's neighbors at the end of the 12th century and beginning of the 13th century. The castle was destroyed during a feud with the Counts of Bogen and the Dukes of Austria in 1192. Then the castle was rebuilt. When this happened, however, is unknown, but the castle and the neighboring Neu-Ortenburg are mentioned again in a document in 1249 .

The medieval castle was looted in the Landshut War of Succession in 1504 and burned down almost completely. The incumbent Count Wolfgang could only poorly renovate and repair the burned fortress. Count Joachim von Ortenburg , who introduced the Reformation in his imperial county in 1563 , built a new castle between 1562 and 1575. The remnants of the medieval outer bailey were demolished in 1568 and gave way to the new outbuildings and stables of the castle. The interior was only completed by Counts Friedrich Casimir and Christian. Friedrich Casimir personally designed a richly furnished ancestral hall in 1628. In 1697, when the outer bailey was rebuilt and the chapel there ceased to exist, this was converted into a chapel in which the wall fittings (ancestral gallery, open fireplace and tiled stove in the form of a life-size elephant) - except for two magnificent portals - were removed, but those with coffers and the splendid Renaissance wooden ceiling made of painted maple veneer, adorned with the family crest. An altarpiece with the Descent from the Cross, a pulpit and a gallery were added. Count Christian completed the remaining rooms and the magnificent painting of the inner courtyard.

The castle, the market and the rear castle was pledged in 1600 by Count Joachim after his death his widow. The following counts tried for a long time to redeem the county. Friedrich Casimir tried it in 1628, but could not raise the required sum of 25,000 guilders. His financial means were only sufficient for the Alt-Ortenburg Castle. It was only Georg Reinhard who managed to redeem the remaining property of the imperial county in 1658.

In the course of mediatization , the counts exchanged their heavily indebted rule over Ortenburg in 1806 for the former Tambach monastery office, which came from secularization funds . The Bavarian Kingdom then set up a rent office in Ortenburg Castle . However, after the Griesbach Castle was rebuilt after a major fire in 1818, the Rent Office moved back. From then on the castle served as a granary for the rent office in Griesbach. Furthermore, there were considerations to break off the lock. Worried about losing the landmark of their place, the citizens of Ortenburg turned to the old dynasty of counts. On April 17, 1822, Count Joseph Carl finally turned to the government of the Lower Danube District to purchase the castle. The sales negotiations dragged on until April 30, 1827. On that day, the castle was handed over to the counts as compensation for the loss of their civil rights in Tambach and included in the total with a value of 10,000 guilders. Thus the count family got their ancestral castle back. It remained in his possession until 1971, before Count Alram , the founder of the wildlife park at the castle, sold it to the Orttenburger family. This is not related to the count family. A year later, Heinrich Orttenburger carried out major renovation work on the palace.

Since May 1, 2013, the castle has been owned by Schloss Ortenburg Immobilien (SOI) GmbH, which in turn belongs to the investor Fritz Hofbauer from Abu Dhabi. In November 2018, the municipality of Ortenburg decided to buy the castle. As of January 1, 2019, the facility is owned by the municipality, which aims to extensively renovate it.

Large parts of the castle have since been accessible as a museum and restaurant. The former palace garden serves as a wildlife park, and jousting games and concerts take place on the former tournament ground next to the palace.

Building description

Not much is known about the medieval castle. In front of the castle there was the outer bailey with the farm buildings, of which only parts are left today. Nothing is known about the appearance of the castle, which dates from the High Middle Ages , only conclusions can be drawn from the current building stock. The city wall is consistent due to the dominant position on a mountain ridge above the Wolfachtal, except for the north side, with the irregular outline of the castle. The main building, the so-called Palas , was on the east side, while the west side was just a crenellated wall with a small defense tower . The easily attackable north side of the castle was separated from the outer bailey by a ditch . This was overcome with the help of a drawbridge . In front of the drawbridge there was a particularly strong shield wall with the keep right next to the gate. Parts of the former castle can still be seen today, especially on the west side with the small defense tower and on the foundations of today's castle.

The building that still exists today, a three-storey and irregular four-wing complex, which is grouped around a trapezoidal courtyard, is the former front castle. The former neighboring castle Neu-Ortenburg was destroyed by French troops in the Napoleonic Wars . The ruins were completely torn down at the end of the 19th century. Only the name of the place Hinterschloss is reminiscent of the old castle complex. Both buildings were connected to each other via a widely branched tunnel system, which was used as a shortcut between the districts until the 1960s. In the Second World War these were used as hiding places. In the 70 years the tunnel entrances were buried and the tunnel network was declared unusable.

The oldest representation of Alt-Ortenburg Castle after a copper engraving around 1650; it shows the castle with outer bailey and the earliest depiction of the castle garden.

Construction of today's castle began in 1562. First, work began on the north wing, right next to the old gate construction. Work on the south wing also proceeded. After work on it had progressed well in 1567, the east wing, the medieval hall, was torn down to the foundation walls. This was then rebuilt in the style of the time. In 1574, the old medieval shield wall including the keep was finally torn down in order to provide more space for the further expansion of the north wing. The courtyard was also reduced in size. The aim was to expand the north wing enough to create space for a large representative hall. However, the medieval fountain was left. At the same time, another residential wing for the staff and the court administration was built on the western wall. A second hall for festive occasions was accommodated in the south wing. In 1575 the construction work was finished with the completion of the south wing. At the same time as the palace was being built, the count had a water pipe built using wooden pipes via Rauscheröd and Schlott to the palace. This was intact and in operation until the beginning of the 19th century.

Count Joachim planned to frame the newly built castle in 1576 with a new and steadfast curtain wall . This should be secured in the south by two roundels at the corners and in the north with two bastions and a deep ditch. Furthermore, another bastion in the middle of the east side was supposed to secure this flank. Due to the continuously deteriorating financial situation of the count in the struggle for imperial immediacy, these defenses were not built. However , he was able to equip the knight's hall in the north wing with a richly painted coffered ceiling decorated with a coat of arms . The coats of arms were Joachim's and his wife Lucia von Limpurg's coat of arms and their respective relatives. Parts of the interior were built by the sculptor Hans Pötzlinger . The completion of the hall in the south wing was refused to Joachim.

The heart of the castle ceiling, the Ortenburg coat of arms

Count Friedrich Casimir completed the hall in the south wing in 1628 by installing a wooden coffered ceiling in the style of the Renaissance , which he designed, was extremely richly structured and richly decorated with inlays made from five types of wood . In the middle of the wooden ceiling is the splendidly designed and painted coat of arms of the Ortenburgers. This room was initially used as a banquet room. For a long time it was assumed that the ceiling came from connections to the Fuggers and that it was possibly built by masters of the ceiling in the Fugger Castle in Kirchheim . New research has shown that the prototype of the wooden ceiling is probably located at Trostburg Castle in South Tyrol, where the Counts of Ortenburg also had family connections at that time. Around 1630 Friedrich Casimir had a splendid ornamental garden built on the Italian model east of the palace. A zoo was housed in the southern part of the complex .

Alt-Ortenburg Castle with a magnificent garden from the 17th century on an engraving by Michael Wening

It can be assumed that it was Count Christian who redesigned the magnificent banquet hall into a chapel at the end of the 17th century. He also had other embellishments made in the palace and the courtyard. The precious wall paintings in the knight's hall, which represent a pseudo-architecture with the gods of Olympus, can either be traced back to him or to Count Georg Philipp . It was the latter who beautified the ornamental garden around 1695 and adapted it to the Baroque style . The expansion to the castle was thus completed.

After the counts moved away in 1806, the ornamental garden was left fallow. When the rent office moved back to Griesbach in 1818, the castle was only used as a granary for the court. The frescoes in the knight's hall were badly damaged. Even if Count Joseph Carl bought the castle again in 1827, it was no longer inhabited or managed. The castle and the ornamental garden fell into disrepair. It was not until the palace was sold that extensive renovation work took place between 1971 and 1991, which subsequently made some rooms accessible to the public as a museum. A restaurant was set up in the vaults and there was a guesthouse in the east wing for a long time before the owners closed them for reasons of age. In 1974, Count Alram von Ortenburg founded the Ortenburg wildlife park on the former site of the ornamental garden, east of the castle.

After the renovation, the inner courtyard and the outer facade of the palace shone like new. The inner courtyard was designed as it was in Count Christian's times and is partially arcaded and richly decorated with frescoes . Unfortunately, most of the colors of the wooden coffered ceiling in the knight's hall are now weathered. Likewise, the precious pseudo-architecture has been visibly exposed to weathering.

In the mid-1990s, the approximately 900-year-old fountain in front of the castle portal was renovated and repaired for 5,000 marks.

In 2004 excavations took place in the wildlife park. To the surprise of all the ornamental gardens were found while a former outbuilding out that this is not a question of a suspected theater or nursery, but a "abschlagbares bitter oranges ". It belonged to the rare Lake Garda type, whose existence in Germany was first documented here. A reconstruction of the bitter orange house has been planned since then.

In 2006 and 2007, major renovation and repair work took place on the roof structure of the castle, which had become necessary due to a construction error and the resulting instability of the roof structure. Likewise, the precious Renaissance wooden coffered ceiling of the chapel was suspended from the roof structure and firmly attached. In the winter of 2007/2008, further renovation and conservation work was carried out on the ceiling.

photos

  • Detail from the magnificent wooden coffered ceiling of the castle chapel

  • Partial view of the castle courtyard, looking south

  • Partial view of the castle courtyard, looking north

  • Knight's hall with a magnificent wooden coffered ceiling and wall paintings

  • Count Rudolf Room

literature

  • Paul Huber: Ballroom architecture in Ortenburg Castle - constructed prestige in conservation. In: Toccare - Non Toccare , 2009, pp. 139–153.
  • Walter Wandling: The bitter orange house of the castle gardens of Ortenburg, district of Passau. Published in: Lectures of the 25th Lower Bavarian Archaeological Day. 2007, pp. 311-325.
  • Hermann Scheuer: A pleasure garden with a bitter orange house - the Ortenburg palace garden in the mirror of European garden art. In: Vilshofener Jahrbuch , Volume 13, Vilshofen 2005, pp. 21–32.
  • Walter Fuchs: A visit to Ortenburg Castle - Its history and sights. 3rd edition, Ortenburg 2004.
  • Friedrich Hausmann : Archives of the Counts of Ortenburg. Documents of the family and county of Ortenburg, Volume 1; 1142–1400, Verlag Degener & Co., Inh. Gerhard Geßner, Neustadt a. d. Aisch 1984.
  • Markus Lorenz: Ortenburg history books - the transition of the county of Ortenburg to Bavaria in 1805. Tradition and upheaval of a noble rule. Issue 2, Thiersbach 1997
  • Walter Fuchs: Ortenburg Castle, Ortenburg monuments and the history of the imperial county of Ortenburg. Ortenburg 2000.
  • Walter Fuchs: Ortenburg Castle - The latest findings on its building history. Published in: Donau-Bote , Vilshofen, May 5, 1987.
  • Friedrich Hausmann: New insights into the history and architectural history of the Ortenburg. Ortenburg 1974.
  • Hans Schellnhuber : Ortenburg Castle - its history and its architectural sights. Ortenburg 1924.

Web links

Commons : Ortenburg Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefan Wild, archival reconstruction of the ancestral hall of Ortenburg Castle , in: ARX (magazine for) castles and palaces in Bavaria, Austria and South Tyrol, published by the South Tyrolean Castle Institute , Bozen, 2017, issue 2, pp. 29–34: Two pen and ink drawings by hand of the count have been preserved. The coffered ceiling on the South Tyrolean Trostburg is said to have served as a model , to whose lords, the Wolkensteiners, the Ortenburgers were closely related.
  2. ↑ a b c Information from Walter Fuchs: Ortenburg Castle, Ortenburg Architectural Monuments and the History of the Imperial County of Ortenburg , Ortenburg 2000
  3. ^ Message from the Passauer Neue Presse on the purchase of the castle from November 23, 2018.
  4. ↑ a b Information from Walter Fuchs' article: Schloß Ortenburg , published in 1987 in the local newspaper Donau-Bote
  5. ↑ See: Paul Huber: Festsaalarchitektur in Schloss Ortenburg - constructed prestige in conservation. In: Erwin Emmerling (Ed.): Toccare - non toccare = booklets of the German National Committee [for Monument Protection ( ICOMOS )] 47, pp. 139–153.
  6. ↑ Source on Förderkreis-Schloss-Ortenburg.de