Söder Castle
The Schloss Söder is a baroque moated castle in Holler district Söder , Hildesheim , which evolved from an agricultural property.
description
The palace complex is surrounded on three sides by a moat and consists of the actual palace building as well as simple farm buildings to the north and northwest, which delimit an inner courtyard. The castle has a square central building that protrudes like a risalit from the ocher plastered facade , and two side wings of equal length adjoining it to the west and east, the rear corners of which are closed off by rectangular pavilion towers. The central building is symmetrically structured by seven window axes, of which the three central ones are particularly emphasized by a risalit.
While the four floors of the corner pavilions are closed off by mansard roofs , the other wings of the building have hipped roofs . The high roof of the four-storey central building has a roof turret with a bell as an additional decorative element , while the three-storey side wings are only crowned by very low hipped roofs.
A two-flight flight of stairs leads to the portal , which is located exactly in the center axis of the castle building.
Castle Park
The design of the palace park began in the Baroque period. Since the second half of the 18th century at the latest, the park has included the surrounding landscape of fields and mountain heights in the overall design. This becomes clear in the almost two-kilometer-long avenue of summer and winter linden trees that connects the palace complex with the Turmberg. Originally a simple lawn parterre (parterre á l'angloise) could have existed, which was taken over from 1790 without extensive changes in the newly created English garden. During the Enlightenment, the intention was to design the area around Söder in the manner of an ancient landscape. Well-known models of English landscape parks were followed, such as Stowe, Rousham, etc.
The "Friendship Temple", which was erected around 1790 and designed by Erdmannsdorff, formed the "center" of this landscaped park zone, visible from the castle, in which the remains of the path and solitary large trees show the original image. The friendship stamp - presumably used by the castle society as a tea pavilion - served primarily as the foreground of a "landscape painting" or image in the park concept. The castle in the valley was seen more as a staffage - as a "country house" in the sense of the legendary Horazschen estate. In the inner castle district of Söder, the forecourt design and the surrounding moats have essentially been preserved from the baroque open space concept.
The numerous rare tree species are a particular attraction of the garden. In the extension of the residential wing there has been an orangery since 1905, probably the largest of its kind in northern Germany and probably one of the largest privately used orangeries in Germany. In the park there is an oak tree with a chest height of 6.95 m (2016).
history
Already in the Middle Ages there was a small castle with associated agricultural property in Söder, a fief of the Hildesheim Monastery, which belonged to the Lords of Bortfeld . After the von Bortfeld family died out in 1686, the Hildesheim prince-bishop Jobst Edmund von Brabeck enfeoffed a branch of his Brabeck family with the property.
His great-nephew Jobst Edmund (III.) Von Brabeck had the old Bortfeld castle laid down in 1740 and a castle built in its place from 1741 to 1742. His son Friedrich Moritz von Brabeck had the building expanded and converted into a representative residence over the course of several years, giving the castle its present-day appearance. The completion of the work was marked in 1791 by the construction of the access bridge and the entrance gate as well as the construction of two pavilions on the north-west and north-east corner of the castle grounds. In the same year work began on creating a castle park in the English landscape style .
As an art lover, Friedrich Moritz von Brabeck compiled an extensive art collection, which he exhibited in the palace for study purposes from 1788. It comprised around 400 works, including many paintings by well-known artists such as Raffael , Leonardo da Vinci , Rubens , Titian and Rembrandt . This collection, worth around 500,000 thalers, drew many visitors to Söder and made the castle the cultural and spiritual center of the duchy of Hildesheim .
Friedrich Moritz 'daughter Philippine von Brabeck (1796–1821) married Count Andreas Otto Heinrich zu Stolberg-Stolberg (1786–1863) in 1817. In 1819, the year he died, Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg was a guest at his son's in Söder. He wrote the Söderlied here in view of the miraculous image of the Immaculate . A fire in 1845 severely damaged the palace building, but it was rebuilt by 1848. Andreas Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg, whose only son died in 1840, first sold the art collection in 1859 and finally the castle in 1862.
Boguslav Graf von Schwicheldt became the new owner . Curt von Schwicheldt had extensive renovations and conversions carried out inside the building and the current farm buildings were built on the west side of the area. Through his heir, Sigrid, Söder Castle came to the family of her husband Eberhard Graf von Hardenberg in the first quarter of the 20th century and to the Lampe family through their daughter.
After the castle had served as a backdrop for the film Du mein Stilles Tal with Curd Jürgens and Winnie Markus in 1955, it was comprehensively renewed and modernized by Carola von Hardenberg in 1968 while maintaining the baroque style.
Todays use
Söder Castle is privately owned and can therefore only be viewed from the outside. The Lampe family now operates a horse breeding business on the castle grounds.
literature
- Walter Achilles: Söder Castle - Notes on the building history . In: Alt-Hildesheim . No. 58, 1987, pp. 57-74.
- Hermann Blume: Söder Castle . In: Alt-Hildesheim . Issue 1, 1919, pp. 64-75.
- Hermann Blume: Supplement to “Schloß Söder” (issue 1) . In: Alt-Hildesheim . Issue 2, 1920, p. 48.
- Manfred Klaube: Castles and palaces in Ambergau . 2nd revised edition. Lax, Hildesheim 1996, ISBN 3-8269-0300-5 .
- Hans Adolf Schultz : Castles and palaces of the Braunschweiger Land . 4th edition. Orphanage, Braunschweig 1984, ISBN 3-87884-012-8 .
- Heinz-Joachim Tute: Historical gardens in the Hildesheim district. In: Yearbook 1996 of the district of Hildesheim. Pp. 149-150.
- Rainer Schomann (Ed.), Urs Boeck : Gardens of Söder Castle in: Historical Gardens in Lower Saxony, catalog for the state exhibition, opening on June 9, 2000 in the foyer of the Lower Saxony state parliament in Hanover . Hannover, 2000, pp. 140-141.
- Margret Zimmermann, Hans Kensche: Castles and palaces in Hildesheimer Land . Hildesheim, 2001, pp. 153-156
Web links
- Entry by Gudrun Pischke about Söder Castle in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Söder Castle on the website of the municipality of Holle
Individual evidence
- ^ Entry in the directory of monumental oaks . Retrieved January 10, 2017
- ↑ Stolberg, the counts too. In: New Prussian Nobility Lexicon. Second supplement to the first and second edition. Reichenbach brothers, Leipzig 1843, p. 107 ( digitized version ).
Coordinates: 52 ° 3 ′ 23 ″ N , 10 ° 5 ′ 22 ″ E