Reckenberg Castle

View of Reckenberg Castle

The Reckenberg Castle is a castle-like mansion , built on the site of a former water castle , in the interturn and rock rich water gap Örksche Switzerland of Eder influx Orke in the church today Lichtenfels , Waldeck-Frankenberg , Northern Hesse ( Germany ).

The castle and the associated farm buildings are part of a privately owned farm and are not accessible to visitors.

Geographical location

Reckenberg Castle is located on the Kellerwaldsteig around 1.5 km (as the crow flies ) south of the Lichtenfels district of Fürstenberg in the wooded and winding valley of the western Eder tributary Orke below the Dalwigksthal district . It is located around 300 m west of the 275  m above sea level. NN the confluence of the Heimbach coming from the north into the Orke and was built at the entrance of the then important Edertalstrasse into the upper Orketal.

history

Since the early Middle Ages , the area of ​​what would later become the county of Waldeck was under the influence of the Imperial Corvey Abbey , which acquired extensive property in the area through donations and acquisitions. She sought to secure and expand this property by building castles ( Lichtenfels , Reckenberg), founding places (e.g. Fürstenberg , Sachsenberg ) and cloister foundations ( Schaaken ), in particular towards the Counts of Waldeck. Ultimately, however, she was defeated in the dispute with the Waldeckers, and of her formerly considerable fiefdom only Reckenberg remained at the beginning of the 19th century.

The first mention of built from the Abbey Corvey Wasserburg Reckenberg In 1350 and 1369 it was Dietrich von Eppe to fief given his family since 1214 in Eppe (on the road Korbach - Medebach ) is expressed. He and his descendants, who held Reckenberg as a fief until the family died out in 1785, expanded the complex several times.

In 1671 Major General Philipp Elmerhaus von Eppe had the old moated castle demolished except for the two round towers and the current castle and dairy building were built using the cellar vaults and the two towers. The last male offspring of the house, Florence Anthon von Eppe, died in 1785 without an heir, and Reckenberg was given as a fief to Franz Dietrich von Ditfurth .

The turbulence of the following decades had a significant impact on Corvey and thus also on Reckenberg. First, Corvey, which had become an exemte territorial abbey in 1779 , was converted into a prince-bishopric in 1792 . Eleven years later, in 1803, this was lifted in the course of secularization . The clerical diocese of Corvey remained in existence until 1825, but the Corveyer territorial possession fell to the Counts of Nassau-Dietz , in 1807 to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Westphalia , and in 1815 to Prussia .

For Reckenberg, the end of the duchy of Corvey meant that in 1811 the fiefdom was converted into allod ownership, i.e. freely available and inheritable property, of the previous fiefdom holder Franz Dietrich von Ditfurth. His nephew, who inherited the estate in 1813, sold it to his estate manager, Johann Georg Wagener , in 1815 . Later, his son Georg Wagener inherited it . Thereafter, the owner changed repeatedly through sales. In 1861, Baron Ludwig von Elverfeld zu Canstein bought the Reckenberg castle and estate, and then sold it to Friedrich von Forcade de Biaix in 1873 . In 1935, after the death of the last of Forcade , it was bought by Kratz, a mountain assessor from Essen . In 1953 it was acquired by Josef and Elvire Karlheim from Duisburg , who inherited it in 2003 from their nephew Christian Heesen, who ran the estate as an organic farm raising Scottish highland cattle . In 2016, the entrepreneur Dirk Meier Westhoff from Rheda-Wiedenbrück acquired the Reckenberg estate, including all of the associated agricultural and forestry land.

investment

Today's complex consists of the manor house with two round corner towers on the western facade, both of which were part of the former moated castle, as well as the farm buildings behind, including the barn and administrator's house.

The mansion is an elongated quarry stone building from Grauwacken , with gables on the west facade and two-armed outside staircase . The left, northern, corner tower extends to the eaves and above it has a high pan-roofed octagonal pointed roof. The castle chapel was once on its ground floor. The other tower is slimmer and one storey higher and has a crenellated wreath. Both towers have narrow windows in the tower walls that were subsequently broken into.

The elongated commercial building, which is laid out at right angles to the manor house and also made of greywacke, is also flanked on the north side by round, three-storey corner towers, which probably date from the 17th century. The third tower still shows the approach of a spiral staircase . The caretaker's house is made of half-timbered houses and leans against the surrounding wall. In addition, a brick well with a wooden gable roof and, in the park in front of the manor house, a round well tower made of quarry stone have been preserved.

Others

The estate is on the edge of the second stage Oberorke - Herzhausen of the Kellerwaldsteig .

literature

• Rudolf Knappe: Medieval castles in Hessen. 800 castles, castle ruins and fortifications. 2nd Edition. Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 1995, ISBN 3-86134-228-6 .
• Rolf Müller (Ed.): Palaces, castles, old walls. Published by the Hessendienst der Staatskanzlei, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 3-89214-017-0 , p. 236.

Web links

• Reckenberg Castle, Waldeck-Frankenberg district. Historical local dictionary for Hesse (as of June 30, 2014). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on January 26, 2016 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gut-Reckenberg pasture project , accessed on November 29, 2016
2. ↑ Scottish highland cattle in the idyllic Orketal near Gut Reckenberg , accessed on November 29, 2016
3. ↑ Kellerwaldsteig Stage 2: Oberorke - Herzhausen , accessed on November 29, 2016

Coordinates: 51 ° 9 ′ 19.4 "  N , 8 ° 49 ′ 54.1"  E