Röttgen Castle

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Main gate with Rentamt on Eiler Straße
The entrance gate

Röttgen Castle is a complex with a castle and stud in the Cologne districts of Eil and Rath / Heumar .

The manor (until 1790)

The castle was built from the 9th to the 13th century as a knight's seat; It is conceivable that it was a water-reinforced castle, especially since the area contains the depression of an old arm of the Rhine. In 1402 Johann Kreuwel von Gimborn was enfeoffed with the Hoff zome Roetgine by Count Wilhelm von Berg ; the name, like that of Rath , indicates clearing as the origin of the word. One of Wilhelm's three sons was Adolf von Berg († 1437), whose reign was marked by numerous armed conflicts in which Johann Kreuwel was actively involved as Adolf's henchman. However, it is reported that he fled cowardice with 400 horses during the battle on the Wahner Heide on July 16, 1415 between Adolf and the Archbishop of Cologne ( Dietrich von Moers ) and thereby caused Adolf's defeat. Two years later he is said to have burned down two mills in Cologne because the Cologne people did not want to support Adolf financially.

In the following centuries the house was inherited from the von Bourscheidt and von Harff families , until it fell to Bertram von Gymnich in 1660 , whose wife Maria von Harff brought Haus Röttgen into the marriage. It is not known how the buildings on the Röttgen site were made at that time, apart from the fact that there was a house chapel.

There were inheritance disputes within the family that lasted for decades, culminating in violence and numerous lawsuits up to the Reich Chamber of Commerce, which lasted at least until 1704. Bertram's son, Franz Dietrich Beißel von Gymnich, canon of Hildesheim and a true “warrior”, hit his nephew Maximilian von Bourscheidt “bloodthirstily” with a rifle in the course of these disputes. In 1674 the canon apparently got into financial difficulties, as he signed over his "free noble house and seat, called zum Röttgen, located in the Porz office" as a pledge for a loan. Since he apparently did not meet his payment obligations, the tenant of the property, Beißel's secretary Johann Jakob Cremerius, had to deal with the creditors. This led to an argument between the two men, in the course of which Bertram Beißel von Gymnich shot Cremerius.

After the canon's death in 1706, his brother Wilhelm sold the “allodial free estate to Röttgen” to the Cologne painter Johannes Justus Borchers. Heinrich Ferdinand von Bernau contested the estate, who cited his relationship with the von Beißel family. Again there were legal proceedings that lasted for years, which the then sovereign of the Duchy of Berg, Johann Wilhelm ( Jan Wellem ), influenced in favor of Bernsau. In 1709 Borchers was actually expelled from Röttgen. He brought an action for damages: “The wine and beer were spoiled and drained” and “movables and inventory books were thrown into the bushes in the rainy weather at the time”. Since he did not get any rights in the Duchy of Berg, he finally sued the Imperial Councilor in Vienna . The latter decided that Röttgen should be returned to Borchers. After Borcher's death († after 1730), his daughter Maria Agnes Dorothea and her husband Wilhelm Friedrich Wolfgang von Kaas inherited the property that was leased to Halfen . In 1776 the size of the property was listed as 150 acres (37.5 hectares = 0.375 km²) as part of a survey by the French army .

After the death of Wilhelm von Kaas († 1768), his daughters sold Röttgen to the royal Prussian official Friedrich Rappard; The handover was delayed, however, because Rappard did not want to pay the full purchase price after it had emerged, among other things, that he was neither allowed to hunt nor fish in the neighboring Königsforst . After Rappard's death in 1790, Kornelius Josef Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg acquired the Röttgen house from his heirs in a public auction. He had the manor demolished; it is not known when exactly; one manor house, however, remained standing. In 1798 he sent a list of the damage that Austrian and French troops had caused in Röttgen during the occupation (1793–1798) and put it at 5,972 Reichstaler .

The new lock

Location of Röttgen Castle (1893)

In 1832, Kornelius inherited Geyr's daughter Agnes Röttgen, who had visited it in 1830 and found it “delightfully beautiful”. For her husband Maximilian Freiherr von Geyr, however, it was too far from Cologne; the couple took their residence in the Sternengasse from 1834 and leased the property. Their son Franz, who had obviously been a member of the Heumar municipal council from 1863, inherited Röttgen in 1889 after the death of his mother, who had had a new Röttgen house built there for him in 1866 . The manor house, which still exists today, was built as a brick building in the romantic style with Gothic shapes and using stone parts of various origins.

Around 1900 the art historian Edmund Renard wrote :

"Inside is rich, mostly older furnishings [...] In addition, the house has a large collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain [...] Finally, the large number of furniture from the 18th century should be mentioned."

The current forest stands "which form a wildlife park based on the model of an English landscape garden" probably originate from this time. There are also a large number of old, exotic wood species in the garden. In 1899 the land belonging to the estate covered 227 hectares in the Heumar, Rath and Eil districts . Franz von Geyr's son, Josef, initially lived in Röttgen, but moved to Bonn in 1909 and later to Arff Castle in the north of Cologne, and his mother and sister, who had lived there, also left Heumar. The property was leased.

Even in 1911 procured Freiherr von Geyr in the Cologne district government renamed the estate house Röttgen in Castle Röttgen , "although only a moat of a former mounting this aristocratic domain is known." As a result, however, the name Schloss Röttgen prevailed, also because the later owner Rudi Mehl attached importance to this name. For example, he succeeded in getting the motorway filling station on the edge of the stud farm to be named "Schloß Röttgen".

Röttgen under Mülhens

Gate guard house on the mouse path
The wall that encloses the stud over a length of about eight kilometers

The new leaseholder was Peter Mülhens , owner of the Kölnisch-Wasser company 4711 , who also moved there; At the end of 1918 he bought the estate. From 1910 he had started to acquire additional areas in the Heumar district.

In 1924, Mülhens founded the Röttgen thoroughbred stud . For this purpose the stud buildings were designed by the Cologne architect Ludwig Paffendorf ; while he leaned on the German Renaissance . In March 1921 he planned the gate guard house on the Mauspfad, and the entire area was surrounded by an approximately eight kilometer long, two meter high wall ( Mühlens' wall ) "based on the Irish model" . Further buildings for the stud were built until the 1930s. In 1927 Mülhens also bought the Leidenhausen estate and had a 2100 meter long training track built there for the racehorses. He also took over the Maarhäuser Hof on the other side of Eiler Strasse and had all the courtyard buildings in the western part replaced by new buildings based on plans by Paffendorf, except for the residential and farm buildings.

During the Second World War , around 1000 explosive bombs were dropped on the Röttgen site; however, the buildings were only slightly damaged. As recently as 1975, ten aircraft bombs were found and defused in the area of ​​the stud. Peter Mülhens died on August 5, 1945 without having found out that his son Hans had died shortly before the end of the war.

From 1945 to 1949 the castle served as the seat of the British military administration for North Rhine-Westphalia and the residence of Major General Alexander Bishop , then as the residence of the British High Commissioner in the Allied High Commission . General Brian Robertson initially resided in this function at Schloss Röttgen , and from June 1950 Ivone Kirkpatrick . The decisive factor for choosing the location of the residence, instead of Birlinghoven Castle near Bonn, which Robertson preferred , was the proximity to the headquarters of the British High Commission on the Wahner Heide . In the rooms of the palace, Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer negotiated the Germany Treaty (1952) with the victorious powers .

In 1953 the site was returned to the Mülhens family. After Maria Mehl-Mülhens' death in 1985, the property passed to the Mehl-Mülhens Foundation . When planning the Cologne airport loop , the foundation sued the route. As part of an out-of-court settlement, the Schloss-Röttgen tunnel was extended to its current length. The entire site lies between Eiler Strasse, the A 59 , Hirschgraben, Heumarer Mauspfad and (Alte) Forststrasse. So that the racehorses can safely cross the Hirschgraben to the training racetrack, a traffic light was set up especially for this purpose, which is operated by hand.

The castle and the approximately two square kilometers (250 hectares) site (roughly the size of Monaco ) are not open to the public. In 1970 a new forest law came into force in North Rhine-Westphalia , according to which every citizen should have access to all forests "for the purpose of recreation" and "at their own risk". As a result, NRW Agriculture Minister Diether Deneke tried in vain to have the wall dismantled; he considered it a "permanent provocation". The Mehl-Mühlens couple invoked the exception paragraph, according to which "zoos and such forest areas are subordinate to special ... commercial purposes" may remain blocked. If you open the wall, you have to close the stud. The SPD parliamentary group in the Cologne council decided not to extend the lease contract for the cycling track at Gut Leidenhausen, which in the meantime belonged to the city again, in order to exert pressure, but this was not carried out.

Many buildings on the grounds of Röttgen Castle are listed, including the castle itself, the wall, the gate guard house on the Mauspfad, the sawmill, the rent office, the stable buildings, the observation tower and the stable buildings planned by Wilhelm Koep in 1935 , as well as the surrounding one Forest and the garden. Karen Künstler-Brandstädter wrote in 1998 as an employee of the Cologne city curator: “As an incomparable total work of art, which meets high technical and design standards and is presented in an almost completely preserved, original substance, Schloss Röttgen is not only important for Cologne, but also has a national focus outstanding monument of European standing. "

literature

  • Jürgen Huck: Röttgen Castle and Durchhausen in Heumar . In: Our Porz. Contributions to the history of the office and the city of Porz . Edited by Heimatverein Porz eV in connection with the Porz city archive. Issue 16. Porz 1974. pp. 9-125.
  • Jürgen Huck: Röttgen and the Mülhens family . In: Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine. Yearbook for history and regional studies . Edited by the Heimatverein Porz and other Cologne heritage associations on the right bank of the Rhine. Volume 2. Cologne-Porz 1976. pp. 159-174.
  • Karen Künstler-Brandstädter: Röttgen Castle in Cologne (1995) . In: Der Stadtkonservator (Ed.): Cologne: 85 Years of Monument Protection and Preservation 1812–1997 . Vol. 9.II: Texts from 1980-1997. JP Bachem Verlag Cologne. 1998. pp. 206-211. ISBN 3-7616-1388-1 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Huck, Röttgen Castle and Durchhausen in Heumar , p. 124
  2. ^ Künstler-Brandstädter, Schloß Röttgen in Cologne , p. 206.
  3. ↑ Huck, Röttgen Castle and Durchhausen in Heumar , p. 14
  4. ^ Vincenz Jacob von Zuccalmaglio: History and description of the Altenberg monastery. Falkenberg, 1836, p. 165 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  5. ↑ Huck, Röttgen Castle and Durchhausen in Heumar , p. 15
  6. ^ Huck, Röttgen Castle and Durchhausen in Heumar , p. 64
  7. ↑ a b Huck, Röttgen Castle and Durchhausen in Heumar , p. 59
  8. ^ Huck, Castle Röttgen and Durchhausen in Heumar , p. 66
  9. ↑ a b Huck, Röttgen Castle and Durchhausen in Heumar , p. 67
  10. ^ Huck, Castle Röttgen and Durchhausen in Heumar , p. 92
  11. ^ Huck, Castle Röttgen and Durchhausen in Heumar , p. 98
  12. ↑ a b Huck, Röttgen Castle and Durchhausen in Heumar , pp. 102/103
  13. ^ Huck, Castle Röttgen and Durchhausen in Heumar , pp. 115/116
  14. ↑ a b Entry on Röttgen Castle (Röttchen Castle, now Röttgen thoroughbred stud, seat of the Mehl-Mülhens Foundation) in the " KuLaDig " database of the Rhineland Regional Association , accessed on February 15, 2017.
  15. ↑ Jochen Hild: The great adventure: Scientia amabilis. Parks and gardens d. Knights and manors in the Rhein.-Berg. Circle. In: Rhein.-Berg. Calendar 1973. Heimatjahrbuch fdRhein.-Berg. Circle . 43rd year Bergisch Gladbach. P. 77
  16. ^ Huck, Castle Röttgen and Durchhausen in Heumar , p. 119
  17. ↑ a b Stud Röttgen: A stud bigger than Monaco. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . September 24, 2016. Retrieved September 24, 2016 .
  18. ↑ a b Huck, Röttgen and the Mülhens family, p. 162
  19. ↑ Krebbers Cologne: Gestüt Röttgen , from June 22, 2013. In: wdr.de (local time from Cologne) , uploaded on youtube.com
  20. ^ Mehl-Mülhens-Stiftung: Gestüt Röttgen - Mehl-Mülhens-Stiftung -. In: mehl-muelhens-stiftung.de. Retrieved September 24, 2016 .
  21. ↑ Huck, Röttgen and the Mülhens family, p. 163
  22. ↑ Huck, Röttgen and the Mülhens family, p. 173
  23. ↑ The mess was yesterday. In: koelnarchitektur.de. March 31, 2014, accessed September 24, 2016 . Today there are offices in the complex.
  24. ↑ Huck, Röttgen and the Mülhens family, p. 167
  25. ^ City of Bonn, City Archives (ed.); Helmut Vogt : "The Minister lives in a company car on platform 4." The beginnings of the federal government in Bonn 1949/50 , Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-922832-21-0 , p. 78.
  26. ^ Helmut Vogt: Guardians of the Bonn Republic: The Allied High Commissioners 1949–1955 , Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-70139-8 , pp. 59–60, 95.
  27. ↑ Some pressure. Der Spiegel , November 5, 1973, accessed September 24, 2016 .
  28. ↑ State Conservator Rhineland - List of Monuments 12.6 - Cologne District 7 and 8 (Porz and Kalk) . Rheinland Verlag Cologne. 1980. p. 12
  29. ↑ Künstler-Brandstädter, Schloß Röttgen in Cologne , p. 211.

Coordinates: 50 ° 54 '33.1 "  N , 7 ° 5' 33.3"  E