Salzdahlum Castle

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The Castle Salzdahlum was a former pleasure palace with an extensive baroque garden , which in Salzdahlum between Braunschweig and Wolfenbüttel in today's Lower Saxony was. Duke Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel had the Versailles- like palace complex built between 1688 and 1694 according to plans by the master builder Johann Balthasar Lauterbach under the execution of Hermann Korb . For reasons of cost, the buildings were almost exclusively made of wood , with the cladding giving the impression of a structure made of sandstone . In 1813 the castle was demolished because it was in disrepair; today there are almost no building remains left.

Castle with baroque garden, 1721

purpose

The palace was planned to satisfy Duke Anton Ulrich's absolutist need for baroque splendor. Anton Ulrich had a pleasure palace in mind that would overtake Versailles . Salzdahlum Castle was not intended to be the permanent residence of the Duke, who resided in nearby Wolfenbüttel , but as a summer residence for the ducal family.

More specifically, the intention of the Wolfenbüttel line of the Guelphs was to demonstrate their superior rank over the Hanoverian line of the Guelph house with the splendor of the palace and baroque garden . The dispute over supremacy was resolved in 1692 - while the building was still in progress - when Duke Ernst August von Calenberg was awarded the title of elector .

Furthermore, the ducal art collections, especially the picture gallery, should be given a representative ambience with the castle. The village of Salzdahlum was chosen as the location because it was located between Braunschweig and the then royal seat of Wolfenbüttel and could thus be reached in a short time from both directions.

Emergence

Ground plan of the park and palace, around 1710

In 1672, the duke acquired the Salzdahlum domain , which was to serve to manage the later castle. As a forerunner of the castle, the Lusthaus Salzthalen was built between the acquisition of the property and the start of construction in 1689 , of which no description has survived. The wedding of Duke Anton Ulrich's daughter Auguste Dorothea to Prince Günther von Schwarzburg was celebrated in the Lusthaus in 1684 .

In 1687 Anton Ulrich returned from a trip to Italy and wanted to create a summer residence based on French and Italian models. The French pleasure palace Marly-le-Roi is named as a model. In 1689 construction began on the castle project southwest of the village, where the manor garden, meadows and fields extend today. First of all, a drainage system was laid to dry out the moist soil. It soon became apparent that the cost of building materials alone would far exceed the assets of the Duke and his wife. So Anton Ulrich and his master builder Hermann Korb agreed to build the palace in half-timbered construction from wood; only individual elements such as columns, stairs and foundations were made of stone. However, the facades were so cleverly clad that the overall impression of a solid sandstone building was created. The costs during the six-year construction period amounted to around 55,000 Reichstaler . In later years there were additional costs for the equipment. In Salzdahlum what was probably the largest wooden structure in Germany was built, mockingly it was said: The greatest "wood monstrosity" in the world. On May 30, 1694 - the 60th birthday of Duchess Elisabeth Juliane (wife of Anton Ulrich) - the castle was inaugurated at a four-day ceremony ( Salzthalischer Mäyen-Ende ). Georg Caspar Schürmann composed the inauguration cantata . Soon after the completion of the main palace building, extensions to the ducal art collections were necessary. Several additions were made until the end of the 18th century.

Building description

Salzdahlum Castle around 1715

The first building description, which also contained view and floor plan drawings of the complex, was published in 1710 by the princely court painter Tobias Querfurt . The castle, which no longer exists, was enclosed on two sides by a moat and separated on one side by a wall. Access was through a guard house. Floor plans of the room layout in the castle still exist today, although the exact dimensions are unknown. The central rooms of the castle were - unlike the Bel-Etage of other castles on the first floor - here on the ground floor. The castle had numerous representative rooms, several inner courtyards, cavalier's house , riding arena, opera house, an orangery and chapel. The staircase goes back to plans by Andrea Palladio from the 16th century and is an aesthetic expression of the competition to the palace in Herrenhausen of the Hanoverian Guelph line, which was built at the same time. The Great Gallery of the Palace was the first large building built for this purpose in Germany. It took up the painting collection on around 800 m². Art collections with Venetian glass, dishes and enamel were kept in other rooms .

Extract from the list of castle rooms:

  • Audience room
  • Porcelain kitten
  • Bet Cabinet
  • Antichambre
  • Triumphal hall
  • Corner cabinet
  • Japanese cabinet
  • Green cabinet
  • Green Dammast room
  • Dutch cuisine

garden

Hedge theater

Behind the palace there was a park in the style of a baroque garden with paths that created geometrically divided quarters. The gardens were equipped with a hermitage , pagoda , water art with fountains , Parnassus, around 160 sculptures, a hedge theater, a maze and several ponds. Historical sources give a park size of around 14  hectares with a maximum length of around 400 m. The last extensions to the garden were completed in 1713. Under Duke Charles I , the garden was redesigned as a rococo garden around 1750 . The palace and gardens were later exemplary in the expansion of Hundisburg Palace in Saxony-Anhalt and Thiergarten Palace near Schrattenhofen in the Principality of Oettingen , which also gradually fell into disrepair after a brief heyday and has now completely disappeared.

Court life

The castle was a representative object in which a glamorous court life took place with sumptuous court celebrations. In retrospect it was referred to as the “ Versailles of the Guelphs ” or the “German Versailles”. Many operas from the Baroque era were premiered here . At times Elisabeth Christine von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel , the mother of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, lived here . At the inauguration ceremony in 1694, the nobility were not present, but prominent guests such as Countess Aurora von Königsmarck and the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz . In 1713, Tsar Peter I visited the Wolfenbütteler Herzogshof on a state visit to the pleasure palace. The Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich (later King Friedrich the Great ) married Elisabeth Christine von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern here on June 12, 1733 . In 1784 the poet Goethe visited the castle to see the picture gallery.

Decline and end

Garden side of the castle around 1706

The light wood construction of the castle did not withstand the weather in the long run. The damp subsoil caused the walls to rot and maintenance was costly. During the reign of Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand at the end of the 18th century, the ducal treasury was no longer sufficient for entertainment. Court life died out and the buildings fell into disrepair. The gardens were also overgrown, sculptures were overturned, and the orangery collapsed in 1797. At the end of 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte's director Dominique-Vivant Denon had the 250 most valuable pieces of the art collection moved to the Louvre in Paris . In 1810, when the area was part of the Oker department , King Jérôme von Westphalia donated the unused castle buildings to the city of Braunschweig for disposal in order to compensate the city for the large sums it had to raise for the extensive expansion of the Braunschweig castle . On November 24, 1810, the inventory and the last art treasures - including 800 paintings - of the Salzdahlum Palace were auctioned. Some of the pictures came back after the liberation from French rule and later found their way into the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig. In 1811 the city of Braunschweig wanted to sell the castle for demolition in order to save on running maintenance costs. However, she did not find anyone interested in the estimated value of 30,000 thalers . Then she had the castle demolished herself and auctioned the building materials. In 1813 the demolition work was finished.

present

View over the former castle park (today field area), on the left the former Vorwerk, about in the middle of the picture at the height of the buildings was the castle
Former gatehouse, to the right of it is the former riding school
Baroque gate pillars made of Lutter sandstone with attached vase and capital on the pilaster in front of Mönchevahlberg , originally on the castle

Today nothing is left of the palace complex except the "old guard", once the gatehouse , as well as the riding track next to it, which was once a storage shed . At the end of the 20th century, these half-timbered building remains , which are listed as historical monuments, were privately owned. The purchaser restored the gatehouse in an exemplary manner, even repairing the existing clay walls. In the riding arena there are still vaults and individual rooms about 6 m long and 8 m wide. The original structures of the castle were reconstructed here as early as 1988 and well-preserved stucco vaults were exposed. Countless remains of the castle ( capitals , columns, furniture, pictures, sculptures, gate pillars) can still be found in parks, courtyards, apartments and museums in the area. A baroque gate entrance stands at the monastery courtyard in Mönchevahlberg , the cavalier house was rebuilt on the estate of the von Münchhausen family in Groß Vahlberg .

Hans Pleschinski gives a humorous description of the palace and its builder in his story “Der Holzvulkan”, published in 1986. In 2007, a digital reconstruction of the castle was made in an animated film, which was sold on DVD under the title “Where Rome / Pariss and Hague shows itself in a concept” and enables a virtual tour of the former summer palace.

literature

  • Karl Brandes: The former princely pleasure palace Salzdahlum and its remains. History outline and description. With 9 woodcuts from A. Probst's xylographic studio in Braunschweig. Edited by the local association for history and antiquity in Braunschweig and Wolfenbüttel. Zwißler, Wolfenbüttel 1880, digitized version of the Braunschweig University Library.
  • Karl Steinacker : The Princely Pleasure Palace in Salzdahlum. In: Yearbook of the History Association for the Duchy of Braunschweig 3 (1904), pp. 69–110 ( digitized version of the entire volume (PDF; 15.3 MB) of the Braunschweig University Library).
  • August Fink : The builders of Salzdahlum Castle. In: Zeitschrift für Kunstwissenschaft 4 (1950), ISSN  0721-958X , pp. 183-202.
  • Gerhard Gerkens : The princely pleasure palace Salzdahlum and its builder, Duke Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel . In: Braunschweigischer Geschichtsverein, Braunschweig 1974 (Ed.): Sources and research on the history of Braunschweig, Volume 22 . University, Göttingen 1967 (dissertation).
  • Hans-Henning Grote: The former princely pleasure palace Salzdahlum . Ed .: Salzdahlum Castle. Heckner, Wolfenbüttel 1996.
  • Peter Albrecht, Simon Paulus (ed.): Hermann Korb and his time - Baroque building in the Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel . Appelhans, Braunschweig 2006, ISBN 3-937664-51-3 (published by the Museum im Schloss Wolfenbüttel and the Department of Building History at the Technical University of Braunschweig).
  • Hans Adolf Schultz : Castles and palaces of the Braunschweiger Land The castle Salzdahlum . 4th edition. Orphanage, Braunschweig 1984, ISBN 3-87884-012-8 (first edition: 1957).
  • Werner Spieß: History of the city of Braunschweig in the post-Middle Ages. From the end of the Middle Ages to the end of urban freedom 1491–1671 . Braunschweig 1966 (2 volumes).
  • Alfred Walz: Rarities of nature and art - the art and natural history chamber at Salzdahlum Castle . Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig 1994, ISBN 3-922279-31-7 (exhibition in the Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum from September 8 to October 30, 1994).
  • Holger Wittig: The princely pleasure palace Salzdahlum . Wolfenbüttel 1996.
  • Holger Wittig: The Princely Pleasure Palace Salzdahlum - Volume I: The Palace and the Collection Buildings . Norderstedt 2004.
  • Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The pleasure palace Salzdahlum. In: ders .: If stones could talk. Volume 2, Landbuch-Verlag, Hannover 1992, ISBN 3-7842-0479-1 , p. 159 f.
  • Rainer Schomann (Ed.), Urs Boeck : Garden of the Salzdahlum 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. 114-115.

Web links

Commons : Schloss Salzdahlum  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Salzdahlum  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adolf Glaser : The wedding of Frederick the Great on the pleasure palace at Salzdahlum. In: Westermannsmonthshefte . Vol. 31, 1871, pp. 103-107, here p. 106 .
  2. ↑ Tobias Querfurt: Kurtze Description Des Fürstl. Lust-Schloss Saltzdahlum. Zilliger, Braunschweig [1710], digitized version of the Braunschweig University Library.
  3. ↑ Hans Reuther: The staircase in the Salzdahlum pleasure palace. In: Low German Contributions to Art History 16 (1977), pp. 53–68.
  4. ↑ Inventories: Anton Konrad Friedrich Harms: Designation of those artificial and precious paintings which are in the galleries and cabinets of the Princely Lust = Schloss Salzthalen. [Braunschweig] 1744; Christian Nikolaus Eberlein : Description and directory of the ducal picture gallery in Salzthalen. Brunswick 1776.
  5. ↑ A plan from the middle of the 18th century illustrates the layout and plans for it; Digitized version of the graphic museums in Kassel.
  6. ↑ Adolf Glaser : The wedding of Frederick the Great on the pleasure palace at Salzdahlum. In: Westermannsmonthshefte . Vol. 31, 1871, pp. 103-107 (digitized version ) , further digitized version . See also Heinz Grunow : The Prince's Wedding or the story of the wedding of the later King Frederick the Great with Princess Elisabeth Christine in Wolfenbüttel and Salzdahlum on June 12, 1733 (= writings on local history. Vol. 16). Wolfenbüttel 1981.
  7. ↑ Georg Oswald Cott: Goethe visits the Salzdahlum Castle. Braunschweig, on August 23, 1784. In: Braunschweigischer Kalender 2010, ISSN  0343-0316 , p. 56 f.
  8. ↑ Adolf Glaser : The wedding of Frederick the Great on the pleasure palace at Salzdahlum. In: Westermannsmonthshefte . Vol. 31, 1871, pp. 103-107, here p. 105 .
  9. ↑ August Fink : The end of the picture gallery of Salzdahlum. In: Yearbook of the Braunschweigischen Geschichtsverein (1936), pp. 5–25.
  10. ↑ Where Rome / Paris / and Haag in one concept appear. The princely pleasure palace in Salzdahlum in the 18th century. Edited by the Förderverein Museum im Schloss Wolfenbüttel. Basic planning: Holger Wittig. Building history revision / conceptual advice: Elmar Arnhold; Hans-Henning Grote. Excerpts from the reconstruction film.

Coordinates: 52 ° 11 ′ 32 "  N , 10 ° 34 ′ 58"  E