Rethmar Castle
Rethmar Castle is a castle that is located in the village of Rethmar near Sehnde, east of Hanover . The forerunner was a castle from the 12th century, first mentioned in a document in 1332 . The renaissance building , erected around 1540, forms today's west wing. Around 1700, today's main house and an east wing were built on the foundations of the castle, which together form a baroque three-wing complex.
history
Established as a castle
Builders of the small castle, the "solid house to Rethmare" was the wealthy and influential family clan those of Rautenberg or Rutenberg whose Turmhügelburg , the castle Rautenberg in the village Rautenberg near Hildesheim in a feud against the bishop of Hildesheim went down.
The von Rautenberg family then withdrew from the control of the Hildesheim bishop across the diocese border to the neighboring Guelph area in the village of Rethmar. Extensive investigations and measurements in the cellars of Rethmar Castle showed that they were built between 1150 and 1200.
In 1332 the first written reference to the “solid Hus to Rethmare”, which was surrounded by swamp and water, appears. At that time, an assault was announced as a result of a feud about the successor to the Hildesheim bishopric. The son Albrecht des Feisten , Duke of Wolfenbüttel, was elected as Bishop Heinrich III by some of the cathedral capitulars . However, Pope Johannes XXII appointed the son of the Count of Schaumburg as counter-bishop . With this the Rautenbergs allied themselves and concluded an assistance pact with the council of the city of Hildesheim , which was also opposed to their incumbent bishop.
Around 1300 the small castle in Rethmar consisted of a defense tower with two to three adjoining buildings. Rethmar stands on a thick layer of clay, which - inclined slightly to the south - leads all surface water into a depression, the "dune floodplain", which at that time also comprised today's palace gardens. Only a short stretch of moat had to be digged here. A long bridge made of wooden planks, a "covered walkway", led from the north to the castle, on the land side it was secured by a second tower as a bridgehead. This is today's church tower, the basement foundations of which (according to the thermoluminescence dating of the Fraunhofer Institute) date from the castle era, while the church is younger. Presumably the early courtyard buildings of the Rautenbergs were also on the site of today's rectory.
Only when the disputes against Bishop Heinrich III ended with his death in 1348, a castle courtyard could develop to the south into the marshy march to a bailey . The outer bailey later became an agricultural estate, which today houses a catering company.
Over the centuries, the old castle became more and more angled through renovations and additions, and around 1530 work began on a completely new structure, today's west wing. At that time it still had a stair tower and its western walls reached up to the moat. A sandstone portal with Hermen pilasters, the alliance coat of arms Rutenberg- Steinberg and the year 1575 has been preserved towards the courtyard .
In addition to the Rethmar family, the von Rutenberg family temporarily owned large estates in the entire region and had considerable influence over the Hildesheim bishops and the Guelph courts in Braunschweig, Celle and Lüneburg. In Hildesheim, she owned the Rautenbergschen Hof, built around 1509 on the corner of Michaelisplatz and Langer Hagen, a high-tier half-timbered building that was destroyed in the air raids on Hildesheim in 1945 .
With Barthold von Rutenberg auf Rethmar, royal Brunswick governor in the service of Duke Friedrich Ulrich , privy councilor, chancellor and chief miner , the male line of those from Rutenberg died on February 11, 1647. House Rethmar then fell to his daughter Amalie and her husband Philipp Samson Edler Herr von und zu Eltz in 1647 , who, together with his brother, the temporary Wolfenbüttel Chancellor Johann Eberhard zu Eltz , had moved from the Moselle to Lower Saxony in the Thirty Years' War . Johann Eberhard later became General Wallenstein's right-hand man as Chancellor of Mecklenburg . It followed Rethmar Amalie and Philip's son as landlord, the mining captain Friedrich Casimir zu Eltz (1634–1682) and then his son Philipp Adam zu Eltz (1665–1728).
Conversion to a castle
Due to his court and government offices as Grand Voyage of Celle, Philipp Adam zu Eltz had the means to expand the elongated Renaissance building along with some remains of the Romanesque castle of his ancestors into a palace, a baroque three-wing complex typical of the time. In 1710 the new main house was built on the cellars of the old castle; this year is located next to the Eltz coat of arms in sandstone above the main portal. The west wing had been modernized, with the stair tower being demolished and the high pitched roof replaced by a flatter hipped roof. The east wing was rebuilt along the length of the Renaissance wing, so that a courtyard was created.
Philipp Adam zu Eltz died unmarried and childless in 1727; he was buried in a - still preserved - magnificent coffin in the crypt Eltziana of the church. The estate and castle now fell to his nephew, Baron Philipp Adam von Hardenberg auf Wiederstedt , Canon of Halberstadt and brother of the Minister Friedrich August von Hardenberg ; he had the alliance coat of arms Hardenberg- Steinberg affixed over the garden portal of the main house, as he was married to Dorothea Louise von Steinberg . Under him and his son Georg Ludwig von Hardenberg (1720–1786), cathedral dean in Halberstadt, the estate became over-indebted. Kurhannover was also devastated by the Seven Years' War . In 1768 the property was therefore sold to the Hanoverian vice- chief stable master Friedrich August von dem Bussche -Lohe, but still a descendant of the Rutenbergs and Eltz, as his grandmother Eleonore Gottliebe von dem Bussche was a sister of Philipp Adam zu Eltz. His four sons mismanaged and embezzled the church patronage fund. The 540 hectare estate was leased from 1815 until it was acquired in 1850 by senior magistrate August Ernst after bankruptcy. This ended an over 600-year family line that existed under different names.
The economic situation improved under the Ernst family, and decorative ceiling paintings by Justus Molthan from this period are still preserved on the upper floor of the palace . However, in 1872 the widow Ernst sold the property to Rafael von Uslar , whose father had made his fortune with a mining company in Mexico. As early as 1885, Count Günther von der Schulenburg bought the estate for his youngest son Günther. He found it difficult to cultivate the heavy soils and got into trouble. In 1907 everything was sold on to Mr. Carl Sohnemann, who however died soon afterwards. His widow sold in 1918 to the Sonnenberg brothers from Peine.
The agriculture was modernized and one of the brothers renovated the empty and slowly decaying castle. After the death of the first generation, the son-in-law Fritz Voigtländer followed as a farmer. After his death, the castle complex was sold by the community of heirs , also at the insistence of the monument protection authorities .
present
The castle with a number of outbuildings was acquired in 1986 by Rüdiger Freiherr von Wackerbarth and his family. The Wackerbarths were related to the Rutenbergs as early as the 16th century. The palace and outbuildings were extensively restored, and the entire building ensemble was expanded into a preferred residential area.
The west and east wings contained large modern apartments, with beamed ceilings, carved wooden columns, seating niches, a sink and a fountain being exposed in the Renaissance wing. In the main house, the staircase adorned with paintings, unchanged for over 300 years, leads from the reception hall to the upper floor with the winter hall. This has been preserved and restored with its ceiling paintings and tiled stoves from the middle of the 19th century. Below is the garden hall, where concerts are held regularly. The small park - which is a protected nature and monument - with the baroque coach house was also taken care of. To the south of the castle opposite the old farm yard of the estate, today a restaurant, an orangery building closes the courtyard of honor. It is winter quarters for southern plants that are in the park in summer.
Across Gutsstraße, a garden courtyard ensemble with rented apartments has been created from the farm buildings to the west (cowshed, dairy, Schützenhof), which has been supplemented by new buildings (tower, Villa Bona finis ). The former horse paddock next to it on the corner of Gutsstrasse / Poststrasse was redesigned in 2016 to a park with a pond and sidewalks and was named Amalienhof (after Amalie zu Eltz, née von Rutenberg). It is flanked by the large buildings of the former young cattle barn and the horse barn, which were built around 1930 and converted into terraced rental apartments. Several single-family houses were built on the associated former harvest wagon shower.
literature
- House Rethmar, a country estate in Lower Saxony 1264–2014 , ed. v. Rüdiger Frhr. von Wackerbarth, Felicitas Huebner Verlag Lehrte, ISBN 978-3-941911-05-5
- Rethmar Castle in: Die Zeitreise Ed. Stadtarchiv Sehnde, December 2013 ( Online , pdf)
Web links
- Official website of Rethmar Castle
- Rethmar Castle on Burgen-und-Schloesser.net
- Reconstruction drawing by Wolfgang Braun
Individual evidence
- ^ The Lauenburg court marshal Hartwig Wackerbarth (1542–1602), gentleman on Kogel, Sterley and Segrahn, married Margrete von Daldorff (1540–1616) from Wotersen , granddaughter of Heilwig von Rutenberg from Rethmar , around 1565 . They are the great-great-grandparents of August Christoph von Wackerbarth .
Coordinates: 52 ° 18 ′ 47.6 ″ N , 10 ° 0 ′ 10 ″ E