Rötha Castle
The Roetha Castle was a noble residence in the Saxon country town Roetha south of Leipzig . It was owned by the von Friesen family for over 350 years . For the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig it was the headquarters of the allies against Napoleon . After the expropriation in 1945 it fell into disrepair and was blown up and demolished in 1969.
location
The castle was on the western edge of the city at the transition to the Pleißenaue . The distance to the Georgenkirche as an architectural counter component was about 200 meters. In between, the grounds of the manor belonging to the castle spread out, which was flanked on its sides by farm buildings and a residential building known as the "Small Castle". Branches of the Kleine Pleiße ran around the castle, but their location was changed several times. To the north of the castle was the castle park, to the south a forest area and to the west meadow area. A memorial stone marks the former location of the castle.
The lock
The Rötha Castle, which has only changed little since it was rebuilt after the Thirty Years' War , was a four-wing complex with nine window axes on the 26 meter long narrow side and eleven on the long side of 34 meters. The complex was three-storey apart from the corners, which each had one storey more with a pyramid roof over three window axes and thus formed four corner towers. The central part of the east and entrance side facing the city was slightly indented.
At the back of the entrance wing there was a 28-meter-high tower with a baroque dome and lantern . The weather vane was carried by an oversized golden angel of peace with a laurel wreath and palm branch, a reference to the Peace of Westphalia . An inscription in Latin on the client and his family was placed under the clock tower.
The four wings of the building enclosed a very small inner courtyard, which made up less than 5% of the area of the complex.
Larger and representative rooms in the palace were, for example, the table chamber on the ground floor of the west wing, the great hall (later library with 10,000 volumes) on the second floor of the east wing with a length of 22 meters and a ceiling height of six meters by including the upper mezzanine and the billiard room (later dining room ) on the first floor of the east wing. All these and other rooms were furnished to a high quality with wall coverings, furniture, decorations and pictures, according to the taste of the time, for which artists and craftsmen who also worked for the Dresden court were active.
There were two large panel paintings by Samuel Bottschild from 1669, each measuring 2.45 × 2.45 m, depicting the male and female part of the Carl Freiherr von Friesen family. In the 18th century, the family gallery was expanded to include works by the Dresden court painter Louis de Silvestre , Antoine Pesne , Rosalba Carriera and the well-known portrait painter Anton Graff .
The dining room on the first floor acquired particular historical importance as a meeting room for the allied monarchs before the Battle of Leipzig, for which the name "Allied Room" became established. Here, Emperor Franz I of Austria, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, both of whom stayed in the castle, and the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III, discussed . , the Commander-in-Chief Prince Karl Philipp zu Schwarzenberg and other officers the action of the allied troops against Napoleon.
history
The origin of Schloss Rötha is assumed to be a moated castle , to which a Heinricus de Rotov is mentioned in 1127, but whose descendants later left Rötha when Heinrich von Rötha received Castle Dohna as a Bohemian fiefdom around 1150 and the family took the name Burgraves of Dohna . In the 14th century, a von Birkigt family appeared as a writer and was replaced by the Pflugk family in 1480 . A feudal letter from 1533 mentions Nicol Pflugk, a son of Caesar Pflugk . During the active construction work of the Pflugks, the former moated castle already took on the character of a palace, as was concluded from the discovery of older components in later construction phases. A four-wing system with three floors is assumed as early as the beginning of the 16th century.
Christoph Pflugk, a son of Nicol Pflugk, had to declare his bankruptcy in 1579, and the estate and palace were transferred to the city of Rötha. In 1592 Carl von Friesen took over the property from her and established the rule of the von Friesen family over eleven generations on Rötha, which lasted more than 350 years.
The lords of the castle on Rötha were after Carl von Friesen (1551–1599) , Heinrich d. Ä. Freiherr von Friesen (1578–1659), Carl Freiherr von Friesen (1619–1686), Otto Heinrich von Friesen (1654–1717), Christian August von Friesen (1674–1734, nephew of the previous one), Johann Friedrich Ernst von Friesen (1725 –1768), Johann Georg Friedrich von Friesen (1757–1824), Friedrich von Friesen (1796–1871), Friedrich Otto Heinrich Freiherr von Friesen-Rötha (1831–1910, nephew of the previous one), Ernst Friedrich Carl von Friesen (1865– 1929) and Otto Heinrich von Friesen (1889–1982), who was expropriated in 1945.
The lords of Friesen mainly served at the Saxon court. They were chancellors, ministers, secret councilors, court judges and high military officials. This made the Frisians one of the most influential personalities of the Saxon nobility at court. This meant that they often stayed in Dresden and often only used Rötha Castle as a summer residence, also for the family. It was only under Johann Friedrich Ernst von Friesen from 1751 that the castle became the family's permanent residence.
While the first two of Friesen's owners did little to build on the castle, Carl Freiherr von Friesen was obliged to almost rebuild the castle due to the damage caused by the Thirty Years' War, partly using old building material. The master builders Johann Günter from Dresden and Christian Bodenstein from Weißenfels were involved in the planning and execution . The construction took place from 1666 to 1669. Later construction activity was limited essentially to repair work. The baroque interior was replaced by a classicist one around 1800 under Johann Georg Friedrich von Friesen. The great hall was converted into a library in 1872.
After the expropriation in 1945, the castle became an apartment for refugees and displaced persons. The town's local history museum and a kindergarten also came to the castle. The precarious construction situation of the castle, which had arisen in the 1940s due to the lowering of the groundwater as a result of lignite mining in the area, due to its oak pile foundation, was exacerbated by the fact that no repair measures were taken. The castle deteriorated more and more and was finally blown up in 1969, the grounds were handed over to the LPG in Rötha and built over by them in 1982. This construction has now been removed.
The castle park
Castle with baroque garden and estate around 1730
In the Röthaer Schlosspark 2012
A plan from 1681 shows that after the castle renovations by Carl Freiherr von Friesen there was an enclosed garden north of the castle. Under Christian August von Friesen, this was redesigned and expanded into a baroque garden in the French style with a parterre , bosket and sculptures in the 1720s . The castle, garden and manor were each separated by moats. An orangery formed the northern end of the parterre . Around 1750 the garden was extended to the north and an oval water basin was created there.
In 1839 the facility was fundamentally redesigned. An English-style park was created . The orangery and strictly structured flower beds disappeared. Curved paths led through groups of trees, and the water basin was transformed into a natural-looking pond. The north-south avenue pointing towards the castle was retained. Friedrich Otto Heinrich von Friesen-Rötha expanded the park around 1900, including species such as copper beech , plane tree and tulip tree .
After 1945 the park was seriously neglected and lost its structural reference with the demolition of the castle. The renovation of the park has started. The first stage with maintenance measures and new planting was completed in September 2013.
reminiscence
Because of the historical importance of Schloss Rötha, efforts began in the run-up to the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Nations to make the historical events around Schloss Rötha permanently recognizable. That is what the "Förderverein Rötha - Gestern.Heute.Morgen" e. V. and the Leipziger Land cultural and environmental foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig.
Before the castle was blown up, parts of the furnishings, in particular the Allied Room, were salvaged, some of which could be seen in the Gnandstein Castle Museum from 1973 . In 2013 parts were able to return to Rötha and were presented in a cabinet exhibition in the patron's box of the Marienkirche .
The ally room, along with other exhibits, is to find a permanent home in a museum building to be built on the former site of the castle. For this building and the design of its surroundings, the city of Rötha carried out an architectural competition at the suggestion of the Friends' Association in 2013, from which a winning design and a second and a third place were determined. The establishment of a foundation for the construction and operation of the museum pavilion is now being sought.
As early as 2013, in connection with the meeting of the descendants of the monarchs and generals in Rötha in 1813, an installation was set up near the former location of the castle, which is intended to symbolize the headquarters in the Ally Room. In a square covered with text fields is a table on which a map of the Battle of Nations is shown.
In addition, a 3-D model of the former Rötha Castle in its shape from 1669 was created.
- Castle library
In 2014 Heinrich Freiherr von Friesen, the last male descendant of the von Friesen family, transferred his ownership rights to the restituted volumes of the castle library, which once comprised up to 10,000 works, to the Leipzig Land Cultural and Environmental Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig. The library was one of the most valuable holdings in Rötha Castle. It was considered the largest private library in Saxony and was known nationwide. In October 1757, Frederick the Great stopped in Rötha on an express march from Silesia towards Roßbach . He stayed overnight and toured the library. A large part of the books, including a Schedel World Chronicle from 1493, are considered lost.
To consolidate the restituted holdings, the foundation has concluded a cooperation agreement with the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) and the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Saxony . This stipulates that the 4,000 volumes that are probably still in existence in the former palace library will be brought together in the SLUB.
literature
- Förderverein Rötha - Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. eV (Ed.): Castle Rötha - Remembrance & Vision . ProLeipzig, 2013, ISBN 978-3-936508-87-1 .
- GA Poenicke: Album of the manors and castles of the Kingdom of Saxony - Leipziger Kreis. Leipzig 1860, pp. 4–6 (digitized)
- Richard Steche : Rötha Castle. In: Descriptive representation of the older architectural and art monuments of the Kingdom of Saxony. 15. Issue: Amtshauptmannschaft Borna . CC Meinhold, Dresden 1891, p. 106.
- Sabine Schneider: The “allies room ” from Freiherrlich Friesen's castle Rötha - historical place 1813 or fiction? In: Leipziger Blätter, 62 (2013), pp. 20–22.
Web links
- Rötha manor with Trachenau. In: State Archives Leipzig. Retrieved June 7, 2015 .
Individual evidence
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↑ Text of the inscription on the tower in German: In eternal memory of Carl, son of Heinrich, grandson of Carl, Baron von Friesen, court master of the most illustrious and powerful Elector of Saxony, privy councilor and president of the Upper State Consistory, with the most dutiful wife, Justina Sophia von Raben, below In order to protect the happy peace, he led this castle, which had been inherited and desecrated by unlawful and heinous wars, with the grace of God through times past, in the memory of his ancestors and their tradition restored it from its ruins in this splendor. 1668
(in: Mittheilungen des Königlichen Sächsischen Altertumsverein 21 (1871) p. 27) - ↑ Determined from floor plans in “ Schloss Rötha - Remembrance & Vision ”, p. 41.
- ^ Rötha in the Digital Historical Directory of Saxony
- ↑ Martina Schattkowsky (ed.), Adlige Lebenswelten in Sachsen, Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Cie, Cologne Weimar Vienna, 2013, pp. 27, 32
- ↑ t-online.de/regionales
- ^ Website of the friends' association
- ^ LVZ-Online: Concept for the palace park - LVZ - Leipziger Volkszeitung. Retrieved April 5, 2017 .
- ↑ The entire text of the installation can be found in the image description.
- ↑ Schloss Rötha - Memory & Vision , pp. 134–144
- ↑ 3D animation model (please click!). (No longer available online.) In: Kultur- und Umweltstiftung Leipziger Land. Archived from the original on April 5, 2017 ; Retrieved April 5, 2017 .
- ↑ The "Freiherrlich von Friesen'sche Schlossbibliothek Rötha" - an important Saxon cultural monument. (No longer available online.) In: Kultur- und Umweltstiftung Leipziger Land. Archived from the original on April 5, 2017 ; Retrieved April 5, 2017 .
- ↑ Thomas Mayer: The castle library is to return from the Dresden SLUB to Rötha. In: Dresdner Latest News . July 9, 2014, accessed October 9, 2017 .
- ^ Jana Kocourek: Saxon noble libraries in the SLUB. The "Baron von Friesen'sche Castle Library in Rötha" . In: BIS: The magazine of the libraries in Saxony . No. 10 (1) , 2017, pp. 17-18 .
- ^ Klaus Graf : Rötha Castle Library. In: Archivalia. October 6, 2017. Retrieved October 9, 2017 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 11 ′ 44.8 " N , 12 ° 24 ′ 23.9" E