Sandegg Castle

Sandegg Castle, copper engraving by Matthäus Merian , before 1650

The Sandegg castle stood in the municipality Salenstein in the district of Kreuzlingen in the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland .

According to sources from the 15th century, the Frankish bailiff Sintlaz to have lived in the 8th century castle Sandegg, a "highly noble lantvogt the kron Frank Rich's" , an envoy of the Frankish king Charles Martel . The Reichenau Monastery is said to have been founded from Sandegg .

Sandegg Castle has been documented as the property of the Reichenau Monastery since the middle of the 13th century. After 1272 the castle was the preferred residence of Abbot Albrecht, whose monastery was still in ruins after the fire of 1235. Around 1260 the castle is said to have been sold to the Teutonic Knights by the then owner Eberhard von Steckborn ; however, the controversial deal was reversed a few years later. From 1350 onwards, the impoverished monastery had to pledge Sandegg Castle, and numerous changes of ownership followed.

In 1402 a castle chapel is mentioned for the first time, which was looked after by the pastor of Ermatingen . In 1497 the Sandegg was pledged to a wealthy citizen of Constance, apparently the monastery was still in financial difficulties.

Entrance gate with the coat of arms of the Muri monastery, around 1810
Sandegg 1817
Sandegg Castle, gouache by Hans Jakob Schmidt , 1834

Louise Cochelet

In 1575 the Sandegg went "completely ruined and overgrown" as a fiefdom to a Hans Ulrich Herter. The monastery waived the tithe for a decade if Herter only repaired the castle. In 1586 it is said that Herter had to put significantly more into it than planned.

In 1603 Dietrich Erckenbrecht from Reichenau had the most urgent renovation work carried out and the collapsed tower restored, but by 1663 the complex was pretty much at its end again, several buildings partially collapsed. Sandegg then went to the Constance canon Johann Julius Kröll as a fiefdom with the obligation to rebuild it. This seemed to be successful, because in 1670 it is said that the new Sandegg was "built like a noble house before ..." . In 1671 it went at a good price to the Jesuits in Konstanz, who sold it to the Aargau Monastery of Muri in 1693 . Its abbot, Plazidus Zurlauben , expanded the castle into a beautiful complex. In 1807 the farmer Johannes Eigenmann from Homberg acquired the Sandegg. He sold the castle to the Delisle merchants from Constance, but kept the farm.

Ten years later the last era began for Sandegg. Louise Cochelet (1783-1835), a lady-in-waiting of the former Dutch Queen Hortense de Beauharnais , who lived nearby at Arenenberg Castle , bought the castle. In 1819, Hortense's brother Eugène de Beauharnais acquired the Sandegger estate from Johannes Eigenmann, albeit without the castle, which still belonged to Louise Cochelet. He had Eugensberg Castle built on his land , which was ready for occupancy just two years later.

In 1822 Louise Cochelet married the former officer in the service of Napoleon Denis-Charles Parquin (1786–1845), who sold the Sandegg to the Parisian banker Hans Konrad Hottinger (1764–1841) from Zurich . This subjected it to a thorough renovation. When the castle's oven was heated particularly hard to dry the new paints, the building burned down completely on the night of September 2nd to 3rd, 1833. The owner of Eugensberg Castle at the time, Heinrich von Kiesow, bought the ruins one year after the fire and had them removed.

In 1915 the Arbon industrialist Hippolyt Saurer bought the ruins and had a garden terrace built on the rubble at the northwest corner, which collapsed in autumn 2006. The ruin has not been allowed to enter since 2005 because there is still a risk of collapse.