Pretzsch Castle
The listed Pretzsch Castle is located in Pretzsch , a district of the city of Bad Schmiedeberg in the Wittenberg district in Saxony-Anhalt . Already in 981 there was a castle site in place of the castle , which from 1325 was a fief of Magnus von Rehfeld-Löser.
history
In 1380 a new castle was built on the old castle site, of which no visible remains can be found today. Under Hans Löser between 1571 and 1574 a two-wing renaissance castle was built in place of the castle . At the end of the Thirty Years' War , which the building survived almost unscathed, the facility was sold to Wolf Christoph von Arnim in 1647 . His sons exchanged ownership in 1689 with the then Elector Johann Georg III. against three manors.
From 1694 until her death in 1696, the castle was the seat of Johann Georg IV's widow , Eleonore von Sachsen-Eisenach , who lived here with her three children from her first marriage. Her brother, Augustus the Strong , gave the castle in 1697 his wife Christiane Eberhardine as jointure , after the birth of Prince Elector Friedrich August . Christiane Eberhardine, who did not accept the change of denomination of her husband and later her son, from then on lived mostly at Pretzsch Castle. Although she was a Polish queen, she never set foot on Polish soil. The spatial separation deepened the marital alienation from the elector and led to a rift with the only son. In the solitude of Pretzsch she devoted herself to the works of charity and an ascetic existence in order to atone for what she saw as injustice in her house. Christiane Eberhardine was nicknamed "the prayer column of Saxony" by Protestants as a name of honor and by Catholics as a mockery. So she had Protestant prayer books printed and distributed free of charge for fear of a re-Catholicization of the Saxons. In the eyes of her subjects, she became the guardian of the Lutheran faith. Numerous construction works were carried out on the palace complex up to her death in 1727. Until 1717 her mother-in-law Anna Sophie , also a devout Protestant with whom she got on well, lived with her sister Wilhelmine Ernestine von der Pfalz, only a few kilometers up the Elbe at Lichtenburg Castle .
From 1783 the castle served as an apartment for the then forest and game master. Between 1829 and 1923 the building was used as a girls' orphanage and was part of the Great Military Orphanage in Potsdam. Afterwards the castle was used as an organ and harmonium factory , restaurant and accommodation for spa guests of the mud bath. During the Second World War it served as a border police school until 1941 , then as a military hospital and reception center for resettlers. A children's home has been located here since 1947.
Building description
building
The castle is a plastered brick building in the form of the Saxon Renaissance , which was supplemented and rebuilt in the era of the Dresden Baroque . Today's appearance dates from around 1700, when the attic was also expanded. The palace complex, originally surrounded by moats, consists of two wings and has three floors. Connected to the west is a two-storey gatehouse with a two-part Doric column portal. The pillars stand on diamond-coated pedestals . The coats of arms of the then builder Hans Löser and his wife Agnes von Bünau are placed between winged putti . In the middle of it is the alliance coat of arms of Wolf Christoph von Arnim and Catharina Dorothea, née Countess von Hoym, from 1647. A square stair tower is located between the north and east wings. There is a building inscription above the entrance to the tower.
Furnishing
Since the facility was used as an orphanage from 1829 onwards, only a few pieces of the original furnishings are left in the building. These include, among other things, ornamented consoles from 1574 , a stucco ceiling from 1720 or 1727 and some steamed doors. In the local history museum, three cassettes with arabesque paintings on a wooden ceiling of the castle are on display. These are dated to the year 1574. There is also a cast iron stove plate with a view of Dresden in the local history museum. Another furnace in the castle is now in the Luther room of the Luther House in Wittenberg.
Castle Park
The design of the palace park, which was laid out in 1702 and designed as a baroque pleasure garden, presumably came from Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann . From 1727 the unfinished park was used as an orchard and kitchen garden. The formerly elongated park buildings are now only partially preserved. These are single-storey solid buildings that framed the garden areas. The four buildings, which today stand separately, were originally connected in pairs in the middle by pavilions and served as a habitable garden house and orangery . Of the sculptures formerly located in the park, only a putto made of sandstone and playing a flute in a fool's costume has survived. There are sandstone portals to the park at the former pier on the Elbe and at the entrance from the city to the castle courtyard. In 1798 it was transformed into a landscape park.
literature
Hans-Joachim Böttcher : Pretzsch - The castle is lovely ..., in: Quiet and full of austere beauty ... Palaces and their gardens in the Dübener Heide, Bad Düben 2006, pp. 187–206, ISBN 978-3- 00-020880-5 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Udo von Alvensleben , Visits before the fall, aristocratic seats between Altmark and Masuria , compiled from diary entries and edited by Harald von Koenigswald, Frankfurt / M.-Berlin 1968, p. 20
- ^ Pretzsch chemists: History of Schloss Pretzsch , accessed on September 26, 2013.
- ↑ Schloss Pretzsch history ( Memento of the original from June 22, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Georg Dehio: Handbook of German art monuments, Saxony Anhalt II, administrative districts of Dessau and Halle. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-422-03065-4 , pages 682 and 683.
Coordinates: 51 ° 42 ′ 58 " N , 12 ° 48 ′ 28" E