Rotenturm Castle
The Rotenturm Castle in the Austrian Burgenland in Rotenturm an der Pinka is one of the most important historic country castles .
history
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Already in the Middle Ages there was a moated castle in the northwest corner of the extensive area , which was protected by the pinka and moats . In 1523 a castle in Ruttenthuren is mentioned in a document . In the course of the property disputes over the rule , Peter Erdődy took Rotenturm by force in 1532 . In 1540 the castle was destroyed by the opposing Stubenbergs .
Towards the end of the 17th century, the "Old Castle" was built, which was demolished at the beginning of the 19th century. To this old castle belonged a zoo with 799 yoke ground, in which fallow deer and roe deer were kept.
Around 1830 was in the southwest corner of the palace gardens , the castle built by the construction of the new castle Old Castle tract or servants' quarters was called. This building in the central driveway, which was extended in 1835, was demolished in 1972 because it was dilapidated. Around 1840 the baroque palace park was transformed into an English landscape garden.
Head stable master Stephan Graf Erdődy (1813-1896) tried around 1860 to win over the leading Hungarian architect of historicism , Miklós Ybl , to build an extension for representative purposes. Ybl refused, but recommended the Budapest builder Antal Weber (1823-1889), a student of Pietro Nobile at the Vienna Academy . According to his plans, the current castle was built in Romanesque- oriental shapes, with bright decorative elements on a red-plastered ground, under the direction of the master builder Johann Lang (1822–1900) from 1862 to 1864 .
In the following period, Rotenturm experienced its heyday: until 1929, the castle housed the valuable collections of the art-loving count couple Julius and Emilie Erdődy, née Countess Széchenyi . Under the successor Ludwig Count Erdődy, the manor house declined. In 1924, a fire destroyed most of the interior furnishings, including the Erdődy family archive and the secret archive of the Hungarian freedom hero Prince Franz II. Rákóczi (1676–1735), leader of the Kuruc War (1704–1711), kept in the tower . After the death of Ludwig, the last descendant of the Rotenturm Erdődy line, the heavily indebted property was taken over by the closely related Count Nikolaus Szechenyi. In 1929 the collections in Rotenturm were auctioned off; For a short time the castle was taken over by the Czech violin virtuoso Jan Kubelík . In 1971 the building came into the possession of the Province of Burgenland. It has been privately owned again since 2008 and has been renovated with the expert support of the Federal Monuments Office. The renovation was completed in 2016 with a total cost of two million euros.
description
The front with a campanile - like four-story tower on the eastern corner faces the palace gardens. The two-storey castle chapel is located on the west corner, identifiable from the outside through the semicircular apse . A wide risalit protrudes from the north corner , the gable of which is accentuated by a dwarf gallery and a rising crenellated wreath . The facade, which grazes back between the tower and the side elevation, is preceded by a wide balcony, under which the main entrance of the castle is located. The parapet, dissolved in winding keel arches and openwork rosettes , rests on slender pillars. The gable elevation of the southeast front is similar to that of the north front. The ornamental shapes, richly framed simple and linked arched windows , a lighted dwarf gallery under the eaves , crenellated paneled corner towers and open galleries recur on all fronts. The richness of the bright decorative elements on the red plastered wall surface is characteristic of the entire building. They are taken from different stylistic epochs: Romanesque and Moorish forms are used as well as those of the Gothic and Renaissance .
Inside, the castle has been largely devastated since it was destroyed by the occupation after the Second World War . From the wide vestibule you get to the right into the chapel , which was originally decorated with frescoes by the history painter Károly Lotz , a student of Carl Rahl at the Vienna Academy. From the original furnishings only a Madonna figure made of Carrara marble by C. Steinhauser (1875) has been preserved, which is currently in the parish church of Rotenturm . After the First World War , the royal coronation chair, on which the last Hungarian King Charles IV of Habsburg knelt when he was crowned in 1916, was placed in the chapel. It is currently under the pulpit of the Rotenturm parish church. It had come into family ownership through Thomas Count Erdődy, brother of the last Rotenturm Erdődy, the secretary and adjutant of the last Austrian Emperor Karl I.
Next to the chapel is the upper vestibule, with fragments of frescoes originally created by Károly Lotz. Above the entrance is the dining room with a balcony, in which the coffered ceiling from 1850 from the former Lower Austrian insane asylum in Vienna - Alsergrund was installed in 1976. Fragments of the original furnishing elements have been preserved in the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest - two over- portals from the salons, which represent personifications of spring and summer.
A small intermediate building was created as a connection with the fort built in the 1830s . There were a total of 70 rooms in the two structures, of which only the castle part has survived.
The castle is the most important example of early historic monumental architecture in Burgenland. A comparable example of historicism would be the former cadet school , today Martinkaserne , in Eisenstadt .
See also
Web links
- Entry via Rothenturm to Burgen-Austria
- Rotenturm Castle on photo homepage Ms. Hoffmann
- www.schlossrotenturm.at - history, renovation and today
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rotenturm Castle in its old splendor on ORF on January 9, 2017, accessed on January 9, 2017
Coordinates: 47 ° 15 ′ 3.2 ″ N , 16 ° 14 ′ 41.4 ″ E