Rosenegg Castle (Steyr)

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Rosenegg Castle today

The Rosenegg Castle is located in the district Pergern the municipality of Garsten in Steyr-Land District of Upper Austria (Steyr-Unterhimmel).

history

In the middle ages

The origins of Rosenegg Castle go back to the Middle Ages; it was first mentioned in a document in 1383, but it can be assumed that it has existed since the 13th century or perhaps well before that. Back then it was a farm called the "Baumannsgütl in der Weng". "Baumannsgütl" refers to a farm and "Weng" means "Mulde" or "Valley" in Old High German; it is about the bottom of the valley into which one descends from Tiensting, where this estate has been located since ancient times; it is also simply called "Weng auf dem Aettgraben" in the documents. It was the property of the Losenstein family. Since this family, which came from the Traungau, was ministerial of the Counts of Steyr, the Ottakare, their farm in the Weng enjoyed freedom from the bondage of the peasantry and is therefore more of a manor, i.e. a larger manor with an economy ; it was also called their "free property". Since the Losensteiners reached back into the 12th century, it is likely that the estate near Steyr had been the property of this family since the 12th century or maybe even before that. However, they did not live in this manor themselves, but gave it to various bourgeois families from Steyr as a fief. Until 1384, for example, the citizens of Steyr were the Velber feudal owners of Weng. The first document with which Rosenegg is historically secured is a deed of donation with which the Losensteiner, Hartneid and his cousin Peter handed over the estate including the Meierhof to the Garsten Monastery (see picture) on December 21, 1383 as a pious foundation for her and the salvation of their ancestors; In fact, at that time a chapel was donated in the abbey church of Garsten, which is still called the “Losensteiner Chapel” today. Garsten Abbey has been the owner of the estate ever since, and it has continued the practice of its predecessors and enfeoffed various citizens of Steyr with it. In the year after the donation, in 1384, Hans Lörlein took over the seat from the brothers Martin and Konrad Velber. According to medieval law, a feudal bearer could sell the feudal property to another himself, although the feudal lord remained the actual owner, so that after the sale it always happened the Garsten monastery enfeoffed the new fief.

In the renaissance period: turn from the farm to the castle

In the first half of the 16th century, Achaz Höhenfelder zu Aistersheim , castle keeper of Steyr , was the feudal bearer of the estate; around the year 1537 he sold it to Hanns von der Pruckhen (Latinized "de Ponte"), with the abbot of Garsten, Wolfgang Granfuss (1537–1559), making the loan again. Hanns von der Pruckhen wanted to acquire the estate from the abbot as free property in exchange, i.e. to become a liege lord himself. Von der Pruckhen had already obtained an order from Emperor Ferdinand I to exchange the property. The recommended exchange did not take place, however, as Garsten successfully defended himself. Annoyed by this, old Pruckhen handed the estate over to the Steyr citizen's son Georg Fenzl in 1565. After the death of old Hanns von der Pruckhen it was given to his son Andreas in 1567. He was a doctor and also a valet of Emperor Maximilian II (see picture). Thanks to this relationship with the emperor, in 1567 he achieved what his father had not succeeded in doing, namely the liberation of the estate from the authorities by the Garsten monastery, i.e. the transfer of feudal sovereignty to himself and thus the elevation of the estate to a privately owned noble seat : It was Emperor Maximilian II who issued a charter on April 20, 1568, in which the estate was established as a separate rule and was given the new name “Rosenegg Castle”. This liberation from the feudal rule of Garsten was possible because his abbot, Anton Prundorfer (1559–1568), himself adhered to Protestantism, lived in the monastery with a woman and therefore provoked such resistance in the monastery and pressure from Vienna has that he was deposed in 1568; It was therefore a phase of the monastery's institutional weakness that Andreas von der Pruckhen was able to take advantage of, apart from his personal relationships with the emperor.

As a result of this conversion by Rosenegg, Andreas had the old courtyard demolished in 1572 and the present-day castle built in its place, adding the two round towers that were mandatory as attributes of a castle. Unusually for a palace, they are not on the entrance or courtyard side, but on the park or rear side. This is the case because the building was erected exactly on the outer edge of a bank terrace, on the uppermost bank terrace of the Steyr . In order to prevent the risk of landslides, the foundation of the outer wall located here had been pulled down to the lower terrace. The round towers had also been raised from below, which means that the view of the castle from the river is much more impressive than from the courtyard side (see 2 pictures). So the castle was created as a narrow, elongated building with a hipped roof and two round corner towers with conical roofs. These were never used for defense, but for residential purposes.

However, the work in this regard stalled all the time during which the von der Pruckhen family owned Rosenegg in a very eventful way (1537–1625). Nevertheless, this Rosenegg family brought their rise to power, so their time is the decisive phase in the history of the castle. Andreas's wife, Barbara Klara de Ponte, née Eisengreinin von Richtenfels, continued to rule Rosenegg after her husband's death († 1584) - she had given birth to a daughter named Anna Maria. Around 1587 she married Wolf Christoph Seepacher von Seebach († 1590), court judge in Mondsee , and gave him a son, called Wolf Christoph. When her second husband also died in 1590, around 1593 she married Melchior Ster, the court servant of Archduke Matthias. She also gave him a daughter who was baptized Maria Elisabeth. For her rule in Rosenegg she received on November 4, 1597 from Emperor Rudolf II a confirmation of the charter previously issued by Emperor Maximilian II. However, on April 28, 1608, she and her third husband sold the property to Dr. Veit Spindler von Hofegg , so that that crucial phase of the von der Pruckhen-Ster family's presence in Rosenegg came to an end temporarily. But when Dr. Spindler sold the rule to the imperial court and war paymaster Hans Rossner in the same year 1608, financial disagreements arose and a legal dispute broke out between him and Barbara Ster's family over the property claims of Rosenegg. In the course of this legal dispute, the new owner, Spindler, died in 1615, and through a court settlement, Rosenegg went to Wolf Christoph Seepacher von Seebach, the son of Barbara Ster from their second marriage. However, this was heavily in debt, and so he had to sell the property to the Garsten monastery on October 7, 1621, whose abbot was Anton Spindler (1615–1642, then Scots abbot in Vienna). The actual rulership of Rosenegg as a free noblemen's seat was extinguished with this return of Rosenegg into the lap of the rulership of Garsten.

The Rosenegger subjects were relieved of their duty to their former Lord Wolf Christoph von Seebach by the iron steward Hanns Kherzenmändl on behalf of the governor Adam Freiherrn von Herberstorff and handed over to the Abbot von Garsten. But on August 9, 1622 Maria Elisabeth, the third daughter of Barbara from her marriage to Melchior Ster as well as the wife of the captain and chief sergeant Albrecht Sokolowsky on Sokolaw, with the governor in Austria ob der Enns because of her brother to the abbot of Garsten 3100 Fl sold outdoor seating Rosenegg, and the Sokolowskys remained in possession of the country estate until the final decision in 1625 and also lived in it. It was only when Abbot Spindler was able to make another monetary sacrifice on April 11, 1625, that the Sokolowsky couple waived all claims in exchange for a severance payment of 150 fl. After a 60-year hiatus, Garsten was once again in possession of the Rosenegg estate, including the castle that had not been expanded.

The baroque Rosenegg of Garsten Abbey in the 17th and 18th centuries

In the course of the 17th century, the castle remained in its unfinished state, probably because of the troubled times of the Thirty Years' War and the subsequent Turkish threat for all of Austria, which did not allow the monasteries to develop their baroque construction activities. So it was only after the end of the Turkish threat (1683) that the castle was actually completed, now in the Baroque style. In fact, both the palace and the park were designed in the style of the early Austrian Baroque, as can still be seen on an engraving that can be found in the Chronicle of the Garsten Monastery. Abbot Anselm Angerer von Garsten (1647–1715), who was a typical prelate in the sense of the Austrian baroque, educated and at the same time patronizing, can be regarded as the great patron of Rosenegg. He completed the palace between 1691 and 1693 and also furnished a new chapel. This chapel extended over both floors and was disproportionately large for the castle. It was paved with hexagonal marble slabs by the Linz stonemason, Christoph, and had a public entrance, and from the upper gallery the windows of the side bedrooms were built into the oratory.

For the altar, consecrated in 1691, von Garsten's monastery painter, Johann Carl von Resslfeld (see picture), painted a picture of the Holy Family, who perhaps also adorned the vault of the chapel with frescoes. The abbot planned to build a place of study in the castle for theology students in 1691 so that they “would not disturb the peace of the elderly with their cheerful goings-on”. In addition to building the castle, he had a museum built, including the school, then a dormitory, a bedroom, and a conference room for the professors. He wanted to elevate the school, which he had chosen as a temple of the Muses, to an academy in the spirit of Aristotle and Doctor Angelicus (St. Thomas Aquinas). He also sent numerous alumni there, who were taught by learned professors in all branches of knowledge, which the abbot had primarily appointed from the University of Salzburg, because in addition to his capacity as abbot, he was also rector of the University of Salzburg. His great influence in the academic world enabled him to start this company, and it was his intellectual profile as a university professor that explains why he was able to plan such an ambitious project for Rosenegg. Unfortunately, he had to give up his plan to further expand this institution and finally cease it entirely, as he had to return the scholars who had been withdrawn from Salzburg University to the Lyceum (in Salzburg or Linz). Rosenegg continued to serve as a beautiful tuskulum for his conventuals.

In the 18th century, the exterior and interior were further baroque, which is still evident today in the so-called prelate's room with its wall paintings in the style of the Austrian high baroque (1730s). In the course of the fire in the town of Steyr in 1727, 34 nuns of the Steyr celestial monastery lived in six rooms of the castle for 14 months, and only on October 17, 1728 were they able to return to the newly built monastery in Steyr. Abbot Ambros von Freudenpichl (1715–1729), who made it possible for the sisters to take refuge in Rosenegg and to rebuild their monastery, spent his last days in the quiet forest seclusion of the castle and died there on October 22, 1729. From 1785 the tower room of the castle became used as a school, which was moved to Christkindl in 1787 .

The end of the Garsten monastery and frequent changes of ownership; historicist transformation

The long rule of the Garsten Monastery over Rosenegg, which had lasted with interruptions since the 14th century, came to an end with the time of Emperor Josef II . After the death of the last abbot, Maurus Gordon, in 1786 (he had been abbot since 1764), the monastery was abolished on May 1, 1787, so that Rosenegg, like other properties of Garsten, fell to the religious fund. But no buyer was found in the short term. In 1792 the paper manufacturer Michael Würz bought the castle. As a result, Rosenegg changed hands frequently, including the Hofmann and Barth families from the first half of the 19th century and above all the poet Alexander Julius Schindler (see picture) (he was named Julius von der Traun) Lawyer from Vienna, who was the last keeper of the Steyr manor on behalf of Prince Lamberg in the 1840s. He lived in Rosenegg Castle from the end of the 1840s to 1850, where he also wrote his poems and which he subsequently published in a collected volume under the title of "Rosenegger Romances" or "Rosenegger Sonnets". In the 1860s, Countess Waldstein, b. Khevenhüller († 1867), was the owner of Rosenegg. She took away Rosenegg's baroque character by redesigning it in the style of historicism; their interventions have had a lasting impact on the castle, so that it still presents itself today as it took shape under their interventions. In keeping with the taste of the times, she applied the typical Schönbrunn yellow to the outer walls (in contrast to the classic gray-pink of the Austrian Baroque). Inside the chapel was profaned and a stick pulled in halfway up; only remnants of its stucco work have survived, the entire interior of the chapel including the altarpiece by Resslfeld has been lost. Furthermore, she created an English-style window arrangement and a flood of doors on the first floor through all rooms of the castle. According to her, the owners were the Prague bankers Schlesinger (1878), who had the famous Rosenegger spring water brought to Prague in bottles.

The Werndl family; Rosenegg to this day

In 1908 Anna Schlesinger sold the property for 80,000 crowns to the children of Franz Werndl (Josef Werndl's brother), whose descendants still live in Rosenegg today. It was Franz Werndl's son, Viktor (see picture), who bought the property for himself and his sisters, especially Leopoldine, Hedwig and Alice. The descendants of the oldest sister, Leopoldine, married Hofmann, are the owners of Rosenegg to this day. She bequeathed her share to her two daughters, Friederike, married. Peller von Ehrenberg, and Anna, married. Beringer. The descendants of Friederike live in the Meierhof, the former farm wing of the castle, which is located opposite and has been revitalized. Anna Beringer's descendants live in the castle, which has been revitalized inside. Her granddaughter, Ilona von Ronay, is a painter and organizes concerts and other cultural events in the castle during the summer months. On the north side of the castle is a park stretching to the west with an old avenue.

literature

  • Herbert Erich Baumert, Georg Grüll : Castles and palaces in Upper Austria, Volume 2: Salzkammergut and Alpine Foreland . Birken-Verlag, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-85030-042-0 .
  • Norbert Grabherr : Castles and palaces in Upper Austria. A guide for castle hikers and friends of home . 3. Edition. Oberösterreichischer Landesverlag, Linz 1976, ISBN 3-85214-157-5 .
  • Oskar Hille: Castles and palaces in Upper Austria then and now . Verlag Ferdinand Berger & Sons, Horn 1975, ISBN 3-85028-023-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg Grüll: The noble country seat Rosenegg. In: Yearbook of the Upper Austrian Museum Association. 100th volume, Linz 1955, p. 193, online (PDF) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at.

Coordinates: 48 ° 2 ′ 25.9 ″  N , 14 ° 22 ′ 27 ″  E