Rheda Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rheda Castle (northeast)
Rheda Castle (southeast)
Emswehr and Rheda Castle Mill
Orangery in the palace garden

The Rheda Castle is a former moated castle in Rheda-Wiedenbrück , Gütersloh district ( North Rhine-Westphalia ). Rheda Castle is internationally known for its double chapel from the Staufer era and the valuable music library .

Rheda Castle is one of the mighty early moated castles in Westphalia , which were at the same time the focus of imperial rule and underwent the change from fortification in the Middle Ages to the baroque residence of the sovereign. Under the protection of the castle , the city of Rheda was founded in the 14th century as the economic center of the small rule of Rheda .

The castle has been the ancestral seat of the princes of Bentheim-Tecklenburg since 1557 .

Vorburg and Steinweg

With its half-timbered buildings , the outer bailey of Rheda Castle, which is surrounded by the Ems , largely retains the image of the 18th century.

The farm building ( economy ) from 1732 in the south follows on the west side in a long two-storey straight wing of the stables from 1760 with horse stable and coach house . The timber-framed guard and office from 1780/81 on the side of the driveway in the north corresponds to the Komödienhaus on the south side, built in 1790 as a court theater . With the wide overhang of their roof hips , they frame the stone pillars with the rich wrought iron wings of the castle gate.

The Kornmühle (castle mill), a stately half-timbered building from 1772, and opposite the oil mill once used, use the power of the dammed water. Further west on Steinweg is the orangery in the middle of the palace garden, which was laid out in 1623. In 1988 it was restored according to plans from the 19th century and reflects the neo-baroque garden design . The simple brick building of the orangery in classicist strict forms is emphasized by the double-winged door in the gabled risalit and divided on both sides by three high windows.

In the Carriage Museum in the Marstall , which opened in 1988, a large number of carriage wagons , sleighs and the fire engine built in Gütersloh in 1788 for Rheda Castle are on display. The museum in the Komödienhaus, opened at the same time, shows a collection of toys and costumes.

Building description

Reheda 1647 (Matthäus Merian)

Rheda Castle or today's Rheda Castle is located on a sand dune in the middle of the swampy valley of the Upper Ems near the road from Münster to Paderborn . The artificially elevated earthfill raises the upper castle with the castle square , which is steeply sloping towards the graves, more than six meters above the water level of the Ems. The height and mass of the excavated soil indicate the development from a mighty high moth , a particularly stately mound castle . It offered the defenders standing behind wooden - earth - ramparts or walls safe protection against the weapons of the time and was difficult to conquer with the means of that time. Their large area is likely to have been expanded by the subsequent removal of the originally much higher cone of the earth.

The chapel tower, the combination of gate tower, double chapel and residential tower in a single building, is an important testimony to the 13th century . This mighty, almost square tower with a side length of about 16 meters stands on the western edge of the elevated upper castle. As with almost all moated castles, a bailey with farm buildings on its own island in a loop of the Ems protects the access to the main castle . And the weir of the Emsmühle (castle mill) regulates the dewatering of the additionally dug wide trenches. The loosely grouped buildings with the mill only go back to the second half of the 18th century and only hint at the former security of the driveway. The upper castle has also shed its defensive wall mantle. The new gate passage from 1719 and a Renaissance wing from 1612 adjoin the chapel tower in a wide arch on the edge of the embankment to the southeast . An elongated two-storey baroque palace from 1745–47 follows at a right angle to the northeast . It leans against a high residential tower (library tower), which corresponds to the size of the chapel tower. The two-storey baroque kitchen wing is attached to the left of the residential tower or library tower on the courtyard side . This means that the chapel tower and the substructure of the eastern residential tower, last known as the library tower, remain the only remaining structures from the Romanesque period.

The Rheda Castle is surrounded by an extensive park .

Oberburg

Chapel tower

Rheda Castle - driveway to the upper castle with chapel tower (left)

The block-like high construction of the gate or chapel tower with pilaster strips made of humpback ashlar on the outer front is faced on three sides with rubble stones, while the fourth side facing the courtyard shows brick walls . The original passage is now walled up on both sides. Today it houses the archive . Stately circular windows on the front sides of the third floor are reminiscent of a sacred building and do not seem to fit the defensive character of the tower. The fourth floor shows a certain ledge and stone cross windows from post-medieval times, which also return to the courtyard side on the second and third floors.

Inside the chapel tower, the ground floor is expanded on both sides by two barrel vaults across the former passage. The next two floors accommodate the castle chapel . In its basement, the second of the tower, it is restricted to the south, east and north by a circumferential connecting corridor. From the north side of this corridor, a rich portal with flanking columns provides access to the chapel room. The corresponding outside portal reveals itself as a subsequent ingredient through its neo-Manic forms. At the end of this northern corridor, there is a spiral staircase in the corner of the wall between the outer and inner portal as the only access to the fourth floor. Inside, a three-arch position in front of the west wall on tall, slender columns supported by lions frames the double-flighted staircase to the upper floor of the chapel, the third of the tower. Here the space above the corridor offers a loft-like expansion of space to the east and to the sides. Bundle pillars give the chapel the inner hall-like subdivision into two central nave bays with domed cross vaults , which are separated from the narrow, barrel-vaulted sides by rectangularly profiled longitudinal chords. Semicircular templates and round corner services on the pair of pillars show the formal language of the late Romanticism , which also recurs in the two large circular windows with four-pass in the west and six-pass in particularly rich framing in the east and in the rest of the building sculpture. The preferred place for the lord of the castle above the so-called sacristy lacks the architectural emphasis that other double chapels offer in the axis of the upper room opposite the altar . The sculptural decoration of the chapel is limited to building sculptures . The portal and the upper altar niche of the chapel show the same flanking groups of three pillars that appear similarly in the church of Marienfeld Abbey .

The chapel is followed by a fourth floor, which is only accessible from the corridor on the second floor via the spiral staircase mentioned above. It gets its inner structure from two pillars, which end approximately at the height of today's wall crowns without any termination. The window shapes, flush with the outer surface and closed with pointed arches, and a chimney on the east wall, which is now removed, point to post-medieval times. But the fourth floor was already planned up to this height in the planning. This is shown by the spiral staircase in the north-west corner and a toilet shaft that is also recessed in the wall thickness . The age of his glasses can be set dendrochronologically by comparing the annual rings in the wood with other woods that can be reliably determined at the same time, probably 1273/74. Narrow, walled-up openings on the outside of the south wall of this storey and the east wall can only be interpreted as entrances to a wall wreath with battlements reaching up to this height .

All the filling walls of the tower and the vaults are made of bricks, while the corners of the wall and architectural elements are made of the yellow sandstone of the nearby Teutoburg Forest . This early use of the brick in Westphalia and the restriction of its use to plastered walls has the chapel tower in Rheda in common with the nearby Marienfeld abbey church . This is where both differ from the pure brick buildings in northern Germany . In view of the close ties between the lord of the castle in Rheda and the monastery, it is generally assumed that after the monastery church was completed in 1222, he took over the builders from there and built the tower in the third decade of the 13th century. In it, the gate and chapel, defense structure and sacred space are united in a system of floor plan and elevation that has been carefully considered down to the last detail .

The chapel tower in Rheda is one of the great buildings of the late Staufer period .

Renaissance wing

Rheda Castle (Renaissance wing ) Country tour "Spring in the Park"

The simple Renaissance wing in the southwest of the upper castle from 1612 follows the castle hill with a slight bend. It probably extends beyond the former defensive wall , points to the remains of a broad foundation in the cellar, and shows a three tiered gable with a chimney head in the ridge to the south . The decoration is concentrated on the courtyard side, where a small two-storey bay window with a coat of arms frieze between the lower and upper floors emphasizes the central buckling of the front. Six portals with pillars - both of them covered by the baroque castle to the south - and the ribbon-like, alternating wide and narrower windows, structure the front and emphasize the horizontal with a ledge between the floors. In front of the third floor, a stone gallery extends under the protection of the wide roof . The world of forms of the Bauzier and above all the gallery on wide corbels use motifs from the Weser Renaissance , without allowing a closer classification.

As an oil painting by Rheda from the time before the great fire on August 8, 1718 shows, between the Renaissance wing and the eastern tower, at the site of the baroque castle, there was a probably still medieval two-storey building with a half-timbered gable; the eastern tower had a steep top with corner turrets and the chapel tower had a tall lantern on a curved hood .

According to the minutes of the council, the fire had broken out in the old bakery :

"And the old and new buildings are laid in ashes with the temple Heren Thurm, the top of which is completely fused with the two bells."

Now the Topographia Westphaliae ( see picture above ) by Matthäus Merian from 1647 shows a third tower of the same size, which for all the inaccuracy of the depiction must have been on the outer bailey. Its heavy rectangular structure with round towers on the corners, still Romanesque window openings, looks like one of the residential towers known as donjon , taken over from France.

Baroque wing

Rheda Castle (Baroque wing) Country tour "Spring in the Park"

The fire of 1718 was probably the reason to replace the building on the south side with a new Baroque building . While plans from the 18th century in contemporary splendor often went to the limits of economic possibilities or beyond, the sovereign Count Moritz Casimir I von Bentheim-Tecklenburg had a strikingly simple two-storey brick building built here. According to the plans of the engineer officer Treu, a long courtyard front is only structured by a five-axis central projection with a segment-shaped gable. The main entrance is emphasized by a wide flight of stairs and a large clock in the gable. The large hall (white hall) on the ground floor has an exit with a loggia and terrace on the park side .

The master builder Schrader from Gildehaus in the county of Bentheim corrected the proportions and gave the front with the portal a contemporary accent with the crowning lettering cartouche . The large-scale staircase with double oak staircase, which shows itself in the design language of the late 19th century, offers the same simplicity.

The stucco work in the large hall, which was completed in 1754 by Joseph Geitner from Münster and a colleague of Johann Conrad Schlaun , reflects the elegant taste of the time. Very good stucco ceilings from this period have also been preserved in the living rooms to the east. A stucco ceiling in the cove shows moving rocailles , another ceiling shows Saint Elizabeth in a wreath of roses . In this way, the reformed builder reminded the viewer that he was related to the Landgraves of Hesse and thus also to them.

The four living rooms adjacent to the large hall have retained the ceilings, but were given new furnishings with wallpaper , stoves and furniture at the beginning of the 19th century . During the interim use of the castle as a home for children in need of care, they were carefully dressed. One of these wallpapers, which shows alpine landscapes with the Matterhorn and Devil's Bridge under the theme “vue de la suisse” from around 1810, is unique of its kind. It was in the factory et Zuber Cie in Rixheim in Mulhouse ( Alsace ) by the chef dessinateur AB Mongin designed.

The special charm of the rooms lies in the unity that the brightly colored wallpapers form with the cast iron stoves and furniture of the time. In spite of all the classical severity of the forms, the ingenuity of the ornaments is surprising .

Library tower

Rheda Castle - Baroque wing with library tower (right)

This tower on the east side of the upper castle was mostly dated to the 14th century because of its late Gothic upper floors. However, the completely undivided core with two arched entrances from the courtyard to the ground floor, which is more than half a meter below the current level of the square, is much older. More recent fixtures in the northern half of the ground floor and wooden ceilings in this core, which is dark except for sparse slits of light, reveal only a heavy, vertical wooden stem inside. In the middle it supports the wooden ceilings that run from wall to wall. The ground floor is followed by a lower intermediate floor and above it a higher, windowless room that is now accessible from the castle. The core of the tower towers over the eaves of today's castle building and undoubtedly dates back to the High Middle Ages , but because of its simplicity, it cannot be dated any closer.

The two upper floors of the tower must be dated to the time of the late Middle Ages . Above the high, unstructured Romanesque stump , with their storeys set off by water hammer and slender stone cross windows , they reveal the residential building from the time without heavy firearms . The lower one, accessible from the attic of the baroque palace, has housed the library since the end of the 18th century . The deep window niches have stone benches on the sides. In the north-west corner, five stone steps in the niche lead to a door that today leads into the pointed roof of the attached kitchen, but is ultimately evidence of the early battlements at this height. While the stone chimney lintel in this room shows the forms of the early 17th century, the wood-carved one in the room above with its ornamentation points to the middle of the 16th century. It is the time of Count Konrad von Tecklenburg and his heir Anna , who also brought the rule of Rheda to the Counts of Bentheim through marriage .

At the end of the 18th century, the music library was housed in the old residential tower ; the valuable collection has been on loan from the University and State Library of Münster since 1966 .

history

Family coat of arms of the Counts of Bentheim

A castle complex was first mentioned in 1170. The rule goes back to the Freigericht Rheda with bailiwick rights to the monasteries Liesborn and Freckenhorst , which were in the hands of Widukind von Rheda around 1170 . Widukind built a moated castle at the Ems crossing between Münster and Paderborn, today's Rheda Castle. After Widukind's death on Barbarossa's crusade , rule came after 1190 to the noblemen of the Lippe under Bernhard II of the Lippe . Bernhard's successor, Hermann II , built Rheda Castle into one of the largest castles in northern Germany. At the same time he moved the seat of the barons to Lippe from Lippstadt to Rheda.

After the death of Simon I. zur Lippe in 1344, Rheda came to Bernhard V. zur Lippe in the second division of the Lippe . After his sonless death in 1364, a feud arose between the actual heir Simon III. zur Lippe and Bernhard's son-in-law Otto VI. von Tecklenburg , who seized the rule. The feud was finally settled by paying a sum of money in 1491, but the rule of Rheda remained under the rule of the Counts of Tecklenburg since Otto .

By marriage in 1557 , Burg and the rule of Rheda came into the possession of the Counts of Bentheim . The castle is still used today as a residence by the family of Prince zu Bentheim-Tecklenburg and is partially accessible as a museum.

There are guided tours in summer. Sights include a carriage museum in the Princely Stables and a toy and costume collection in the Komödienhaus. The orangery in the historic castle garden is used for cultural events, but can also be rented. From 2003 to 2016 the country party "Spring in the Park" took place every year on the grounds of the castle . As of 2017, the event was relocated to the Clarholz palace and monastery gardens and discontinued a year later.

The Schlossmühle café , with a coffee and beer garden on the Ems , is only open in the summer months.

In addition to Rheda Castle, there is also the Bosfeld House (6 km from Rheda), Hohenlimburg Castle and the former monasteries in Herzebrock and Clarholz owned by the Bentheim-Tecklenburg Princely House .

The palace park is part of the European Garden Heritage Network .

Trivia
  • In 2012 the magazine stern reported in its article: Aristocracy in Germany - The new power of an old class. With text and pictures etc. a. also from Rheda Castle.

literature

  • Hans-Joachim Böckenholt: Castle and Lordship of Rheda. Harsewinkel 1979. (Historical short monographs of Westphalian castles, Vol. 1)
  • Horst Conrad: Comments on the building history of Rheda Castle. In: Westfälische Zeitschrift, magazine for patriotic history and antiquity. 139, 1989, pp. 239-273.
  • Dehio North Rhine-Westphalia. Volume 2: Westphalia. edited by Dorothea Kluge and Wilfried Hansmann. Munich / Berlin 1969, pp. 478-82.
  • Karl Kennepohl: The coins of the counties Bentheim and Tecklenburg as well as the rule Rheda. Frankfurt 1927.
  • Jürgen Kindler, Wolfgang-A. Lewe: The castle mill in Rheda. Rhedaer Schriften, issue 11, Rheda-Wiedenbrück 2009.
  • Hermann Maué: Rhenish-Staufer building forms and building ornamentation in the architecture of Westphalia. Cologne 1975, pp. 101-108. (Dissertation Münster 1975, 7th publication by the Architecture Department of the Art History Institute of the University of Cologne)
  • Franz Mühlen: Castle and chapel tower in Rheda, observations during the restoration work. In: Westphalia. 46, 1968, pp. 62-76.
  • Franz Mühlen: Castle and Residence Rheda. Münster 1979. ( Westfälische Kunststätten , issue 6)
  • Helmut Platte: The Bentheim-Tecklenburg House in the Past and Present. Werl 2003.
  • Hermann Schaub: The rule of Rheda and their residence city. From the beginning to the end of the Old Kingdom. Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 978-38953-461-01 .
  • Heinrich Schmidt: Hermann II. Zur Lippe and his spiritual brothers, On the relationship between aristocratic self-image and northern German peasant freedom in the 13th century. In: Westfälische Zeitschrift, magazine for patriotic history and antiquity. 140, 1990, pp. 209-232.
  • Oskar Schürer: Romanesque double chapels, a type-historical investigation. In: Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 5, 1929, pp. 99–192.
  • Bernhard Schütz, Wolfgang Müller: German Romanesque, the church buildings of the emperors, bishops and monasteries. Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1989, p. 549.
  • Ulrich Stevens: Castle chapels in the German-speaking area. Cologne 1978, pp. 176-189. (Diss. Cologne 1978, 14th publication by the Architecture Department of the Art History Institute of the University of Cologne)
  • Hans Thümmler: The importance of the noblemen to the Lippe for the spread of Westphalian architecture in the 13th century. In: Westphalia - Hanseatic Baltic Sea area. Münster 1955, pp. 161-169. (Publications of the Provinzialinstitut für Westfälische Landes- und Volkskunde issue 7)

See also

Web links

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

References and comments

  1. ↑ The collection has been on loan from the University and State Library of Münster since 1966
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Franz Mühlen: Castle and Residence Rheda. (= Westfälische Kunststätten . Issue 6). Westfälischer Heimatbund , Münster 1979, DNB 800711343
  3. ↑ Schlossmühle Rheda on: Facebook
  4. ^ Memories of Rosamunde Pilcher . The bell .online, accessed on May 18, 2020
  5. ↑ Beikircher's discoveries: 2. Der Meuchelmord Fernsehserien.de WDR 2009
  6. ↑ Dynasties in North Rhine-Westphalia - The Prince of Bentheim-Tecklenburg Tagesschau24 ARD 2010
  7. ↑ (New documentary!) The German nobility (2) From princes, castles and manners Phoenix - Documentary on YouTube March 6, 2017
  8. ↑ Stern (magazine) No. 48, issue November 22, 2012, pages 68–81

Coordinates: 51 ° 51 ′ 3 ″  N , 8 ° 17 ′ 49 ″  E