Rottenstein Castle (Carinthia)
Rottenstein Castle is located on a hill about one kilometer east of St. Georgen am Längsee . The historicist ensemble with park was built in the last third of the 19th century according to plans by the Viennese architect Rudolf Bayer . It is a listed building .
history
The origin of the property is largely in the dark due to the large number of places with the same name in Rottenstein and the difficult geographical allocation of the old documents. The property was first mentioned in 1373, when there is talk of an inherited farm belonging to the Wucherer family at "Rotenstain pey sand Görgen" . This farm is believed to have fallen into disuse. It was not until 1580 that the property was mentioned again in a document from Abbess Afra von Staudach of the St. Georgen nunnery .
Today's Rottenstein Castle goes back to a building that the Carinthian iron industrialist and tradesman Maximilian Thaddäus Graf von Egger had built towards the end of the 18th century as a widow's residence for his wife Gabriele Oktavia Maria Josepha, née Baroness von Pinelli. The Counts of Egger were one of the best-known trade families in Carinthia . They owned extensive estates throughout southern Austria, including several castles and estates as well as hammer works in Lippitzbach , Treibach and Vordernberg in Styria .
The castle remained in the family's possession and passed through the inheritance to Gustav Graf von Egger , the grandson of Maximilian Thaddäus. In 1868 Gustav Graf von Egger had a country seat built in the style of the time based on plans by the Viennese architect Rudolf Bayer . The result was a total work of art in the style of historicism : a spacious English landscape garden and a remarkable ensemble of outbuildings such as the bathhouse, chapel and crypt were laid out around the castle .
After the death of Count Gustav von Egger on June 11, 1884, his daughter Gustava Aloisia Gorton , née Countess von Egger, inherited the entire property. After her death on June 17, 1920, the castle was inherited by her son Karl Gorton . He married the daughter of the well-known field marshal lieutenant Ludwig Hülgerth . Hülgerth died on August 13, 1939 on the estate of his son-in-law and was buried in the crypt chapel. The castle is owned by the Gorton family, who still live there today. Thanks to the continuous use as family residence of the Egger and Gorton families from the time it was built until today, the castle and its outbuildings with the uniform interior fittings from the construction period have been preserved almost completely and largely unchanged.
Building description
main building
The castle is a two-storey building with a rectangular floor plan with a flat hipped roof . The nine-axis main façade and the three-axis side facades are side and center risalits and horizontal cornices plastically divided. The openings on the ground floor close with a round arch, those on the upper floor with a straight lintel, straight and triangular window roofs. Statues of the goddesses of the hunt and of fertility, Diana and Ceres, stand in a wall niche on each of the narrow sides of the ground floor . An outside staircase leads from the garden over a terrace on the garden front facing the Längsee into a representative hall. This opens up to the other rooms in three large arches. A bust of Countess Maria Aloisia von Egger, the client's aunt, is placed under the central arch . The Viennese painter Carl Eichmüller created the magnificent decorative paintings in the stairwell and in the living rooms. Anton Dominik von Fernkorn made the sculpture of St. George fighting the dragon , standing on a pedestal in front of the castle . It is a model for a former group of fountains in today's Reitersaal of the Viennese Palais Montenuovo in Strauchgasse.
Outbuildings within the castle walls
The castle park, which was laid out in the style of an English landscape garden, is surrounded by a 1100 meter long wall. Cast iron lions bearing coats of arms stand on the stone pillars of the park gate. In the northeast, a veranda directly on the castle wall offered a view of the entire area.
The bath house was built at the same time as the main building opposite. It is an elaborately designed, small, two-story building. The biaxial front side with three richly decorated three-quarter columns is crowned by a triangular gable. A statue of the goddess Hygieia in the basement indicates the purpose of the building. On both sides of the building, open staircases, guarded by two fully plastic Hermes pilasters, lead to the rooms richly decorated with decorative paintings.
The stable building to the southeast of the main building consists of two two-story side wings, which are connected by a lower middle wing. The ornaments on the wood-paneled gable fields and the half-timbered constructions on the upper floors are influenced by romantic historicism.
In 1871, in the middle of the park, a palace chapel was built with a square central area divided by Ionic pilasters ; it is dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo . To the northwest of it is the crypt chapel of the Egger and Gorton families, decorated with a marble relief .
Meierhof
From 1870 to 1884, a meierhof belonging to the castle, a remarkably uniform late-classical ensemble of residential and farm buildings, including a large brick lattice barn, was built southeast of the castle, outside the park walls. This listed agricultural model property has been a branch of the Klagenfurt prison since 1953, where petty criminals are housed and working. The Klagenfurt prison kitchen is supplied with the products made here.
literature
- Dehio Carinthia 2001 . Verlag Anton Schroll & Co., Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-7031-0712-X , pp. 694f.
Web links
- Entry via Rottenstein (St. Georgen / Längsee) to Burgen-Austria
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Entry via Rottenstein (St. Georgen / Längsee) on Burgen-Austria
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Dehio Carinthia, p. 694f.
- ↑ 60 years in prison without bars. MeinBezirk.at, September 24, 2013.
Coordinates: 46 ° 47 ′ 3 ″ N , 14 ° 26 ′ 37 ″ E