Rastede Castle
The Schloss Rastede is a country castle in Rastede , Ammerland , near Oldenburg .
The lock
The castle in Rastede was the residence of the Counts and Grand Dukes of the House of Oldenburg for a long time and is still owned by the family today. The building is exemplary of the Oldenburg classicism , which was brought to Oldenburg by Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig , and is also the most important secular building in the Ammerland . The castle, which is not open to the public, is located in the middle of an English-style park landscape. Opposite the castle is the community-owned Erbprinzenpalais, which is used today for cultural events and houses the community archive.
history
From monastery to castle
In the course of the Reformation , Rastede Monastery lost its spiritual foundation. Through pension payments to the monks, Count Christoph von Oldenburg , canon in Cologne and brother of the incumbent Count Anton I , succeeded in becoming provisional ( administrator ) of the dying order. After the last monk had left the monastery in 1529, Christopher compared himself to his brothers and built himself a "comfortable apartment" at the monastery. With the death of the former canon in 1566, the building also lost the last appearance of a church function.
The horse lover Count Anton Günther (1583–1667) had a large stables built at the monastery in 1612 . In 1643 the old abbey was demolished and the count had a hunting lodge built there, which he liked to use as a summer residence. With a central stair tower with an onion roof and two-storey side wings, right and left, each with four window axes, the castle had the typical shape of the baroque regent seats in the 17th century. In 1657 the former Mönchshof was transformed into a "pleasure garden".
The Danish era
With the death of Count Anton Günther in 1667, the County of Oldenburg and thus Rastede Castle fell to the royal Danish line of the House of Oldenburg. The Danes were not particularly interested in Oldenburg, and for more than four decades from 1701 to 1744, on the orders of the Danish King Friedrich IV. , The castle was only used as a place of exile for the disgraced Princess Sophie Eleonore of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck .
In 1750 the Danish governor Rochus Friedrich Graf von Lynar sold the castle to the judicial councilor Christoph Römer in bourgeois ownership. This had the castle from the Dutch architect Cornelis Redelykheid Dutch style in a three-wing building wing with many baroque typical Verkröpfungen and projections rebuild. He had the garden laid out in the French style.
Peter Friedrich Ludwig
In 1777 the later Grand Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig acquired the palace and had it redesigned from 1780 to 1791. First of all, the agricultural inspector Heinrich Gottlieb Becker and later under his successor Joseph Bernhard Winck , who also oversaw the classicistic redesign of the Oldenburg Lambertikirche , managed the renovation work, which did not, however, liberate the palace from its baroque character. The palace gardens were laid out by Carl Ferdinand Bosse , who was appointed garden architect in 1784 . Bosse also brought the rhododendron to Ammerland, which would later become the district's landmark.
After the occupation of Oldenburg by Napoléon Bonaparte's troops and the return of Peter Friedrich Ludwig from Russian exile in 1813, the plans for the current classical style of the palace matured. In 1816 the north wing was redesigned under the direction of Carl Heinrich Slevogt and Otto Lasius and the attic was changed. The sculptor Eduard Demitrius Högl provided the palace hall with stucco . The central building of the residence burned out in 1968 after renovation work had just been completed and was then immediately restored to its original state.
The Erbprinzenpalais
The Erbprinzenpalais is now on the opposite side of the country road that runs in front of the castle. It was acquired in 1822 by Peter Friedrich Ludwig from the ducal travel marshal Schmettau , who had previously used it as a country house. The Duke had the building rebuilt for his son, Hereditary Prince Paul Friedrich August , based on the classicist model and had an English landscape garden laid out.
In 1882 Paul Friedrich August's son, the then Grand Duke Nikolaus Friedrich Peter , had the building rebuilt in the style of historicism in the second half of the 19th century, in keeping with the spirit of the times . This stylistic appearance has been preserved to this day. After a restoration in the 1980s, the municipality-owned palace serves the citizens of Rastede as a cultural center and event location ( Palais Rastede ). Among other things, it houses the community archive.
The daughter of Friedrich August II , Sophie Charlotte von Oldenburg , who was married to Eitel Friedrich Prince of Prussia , the second eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II , after she separated from him in 1926, also lived here. It was also known as the Palais House.
The cavalier house
The Kavalierhaus is on the right in front of the castle. It was used as a guest house by the ducal family. After the death of Friedrich August II in 1931, his second wife Elisabeth Alexandrine, Princess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, lived in the Kavalierhaus .
The deer gate
The stately entrance to the Rastede Palace Park was built in 1870 under Grand Duke Nikolaus Friedrich Peter. The reproduced deer on the gate represent the red deer (and later, because of the damage to the forest, fallow deer ) that were to be found in the fenced area of the castle park at that time.
After the Second World War , the original deer were dismantled in 1945 and disappeared without a trace. The gate system fell into disrepair in the following decades. In 1983 the Hirschtor support group was founded, and in 1988 the restoration of the damaged and disintegrated parts began after the Rastede municipality had agreed to assume the costs. All the balustrades and end pillars had to be replaced. The deer couple was added to the gate in 1995 and financed by private donations. In 1996 the vases were placed on the end pillars, and a year later the decorated lattice gate could be installed.
Personalities
In the castle were born:
Died in the castle:
- Count Anton Günther (1667)
- Grand Duke Nikolaus Friedrich Peter (1900) ( Palace )
- Friedrich August II.
On the night of February 24, 1931, the castle administrator Theodor Beenken heard the bell in the official apartment, which was rang from the Grand Duke's bedroom. Friedrich August II., The last Grand Duke to rule until 1918, died in his arms before the doctor who had been summoned from Oldenburg arrived. His son, Hereditary Grand Duke Nikolaus Friedrich Wilhelm von Oldenburg , later used the castle mainly as a summer residence.
literature
- Rainer Schomann (Ed.), Urs Boeck : Park of Rastede Castle in: Historical Gardens in Lower Saxony, catalog for the state exhibition, opening on June 9, 2000 in the foyer of the Lower Saxony state parliament in Hanover . Hannover, 2000, pp. 122-123.
- Margarethe Pauly: The Rastede summer residence . In: Jörgen Welp (Red.): Dedicated to the well-being of Oldenburg: Aspects of the cultural and social work of the House of Oldenburg, 1773–1918 (= publications of the Oldenburg landscape . Vol. 9). Edited by the Oldenburg landscape, Isensee, Oldenburg 2004, ISBN 3-89995-142-5 , p. 41 ff.
- Christiane Segers-Glocke (Hrsg.): Schlosspark Rastede: cultural monument of landscape garden art . Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation , Hanover 2001. Evidence of inventory in association catalogs: GBV , BVB , SWB
Web links
- Rastede Palace
- Draft for the Rastede hunting lodge, 1643 on kulturerbe.niedersachsen.de
- Reconstruction drawing by Wolfgang Braun
Coordinates: 53 ° 14 ′ 32.6 ″ N , 8 ° 12 ′ 6.8 ″ E