Schrattenthal Castle

Schrattenthal Castle
	Schrattenthal Castle, east facade
Creation time :	1435
Conservation status:	Receive
Place:	Schrattenthal Austria
Geographical location	48 ° 42 '52 " N , 15 ° 54' 21" E Coordinates: 48 ° 42 '52 " N , 15 ° 54' 21" E

Schrattenthal Castle is a former moated castle in the south of the Schrattenthal municipality in the Hollabrunn district in Lower Austria . The castle and the former fortifications are under monument protection .

Remains of the fortifications

The privately owned, approximately 4.5 hectare complex with castle, outer bailey and castle park consists of various residential and farm buildings, the castle chapel and former fortifications and defenses and can be visited.

The palace complex goes back to a defensive system that was first mentioned in a document in 1220. The late Gothic new moated castle built in 1435 was part of the medieval fortifications of the city of Schrattenthal and was redesigned in Baroque style between 1660 and 1719 . It received its present appearance through several renovations and extensions in the 19th century.

The castle was used as a location for the 1998-2002 television series Julia - An Unusual Woman .

history

Towards the end of the 11th century, the border with Bohemia in the north-western Weinviertel was secured by a chain of fortifications , including a wooden tower on the Rittsteig in Schrattenthal. This was in a document of Duke Leopold VI. first mentioned in a document from 1220. The Rittsteig was a long-distance route that led from Krems to Znaim . A Meierhof was first mentioned in Schrattenthal in 1230.

The manorial rule was sovereign and was given as a fief to ministerials . First fief taker was in 1245 the steward of Duke Frederick II. , Drusigerus de Schretentale, followed in 1291 by Fuchs Schretentale and later the Count of Schaumburg in. In 1382 the Counts of Maydburg-Hardegg acquired the rule and passed it on as a fief.

In the first half of the 15th century the Hussites came to Schrattenthal, among others. In 1425 the area was fought over, as the vineyard names Hussen in front of the castle and the second name Hussitenturm for the hunger tower remind of.

In 1427 Tobias von Rohr, the owner of Ottenstein Castle , was a fiefdom holder . On April 4, 1434 Ulrich von Eyczing followed him , who made Schrattenthal his headquarters.

Coat of arms of the Eyczinger over the portal of the press house

Ulrich von Eyczing feared another advance by the Hussites, which prompted him to build a new moated castle in 1435 , which was included in the fortifications and had to cover the south side of the settlement. The water for the moat was obtained by draining the surrounding swamps .

In 1439 Ulrich von Eyczing was raised to the baron status by the emperor and became master of the trade under King Albrecht II . Between 1451 and 1458 Schrattenthal was during the dispute between the Lower Austrian estates with Emperor Friedrich III. repeated the meeting place of the rioters. In 1457 the future King George of Bohemia and the Bishop of Passau stayed at Schrattenthal Castle. Ulrich von Eyczing died of the plague on November 20, 1460 at the age of 62 and was buried in the parish church of Schrattenthal. After him, his brother Stephan managed the property. Since the emperor owed considerable debts to the family, Stephan received numerous rights for Schrattenthal, such as the town elevation on September 18, 1472.

In 1479 Stephan von Eyczing divided the property between his four sons, with Schrattenthal going to the two eldest, Martin and Georg. After the rulership changed hands several times in the following years, it finally passed to Michael Freiherr von Eyczing . On July 10, 1522, he was charged with rebellion and high treason and executed; all his goods were confiscated. His son Ulrich IV. Freiherr von Eyczing and his brother Christoph finally managed to regain the family property.

During the Reformation , Schrattenthal Castle was from 1567 to 1620 a main base and meeting place for the Protestant estates, which set up a Protestant church in today's barn in 1570. Until 1620 Schrattenthal remained in the possession of the Eyczinger, who were ostracized in the course of the Counter Reformation , which led to the confiscation of the property. The new owner was Eleonora Gonzaga , wife of Emperor Ferdinand II. The last Eyczinger was Philipp Christoph Freiherr von Eyczing , with whose death the Eyczinger died out. A large part of the inheritance and the family coat of arms went to Christoph Freiherr von Bräuner , a relative of the Eyczinger family.

From 1620 to 1660, the Counts of Strozzi owned the rule that the Empress's Chief Chamberlain, Countess Octavia von Strozzi, had received from her. In 1645 Schrattenthal was conquered by the Swedes, who stayed in the city from March to October 1645 with their general Lennart Graf Torstensson and set up their headquarters in the castle.

Coat of arms plaster from Adlersthurm above the portal of the bulk box

In 1660 Markus Putz Freiherr von Adlersthurm acquired the property and had the militarily insignificant moated castle, which was partially destroyed in the Thirty Years' War, rebuilt in the Baroque style from 1670 into today's residential palace.

His daughter Maria Theresia Esther (born September 13, 1686 in Schrattenthal; † April 27, 1740 in Prague ), who had been married to Ludwig Reichsgraf von Hartig since November 24, 1705 , completed the construction by 1719 and left a park in the north of the palace with Fasanengarten , hunting lodge and summer pavilion invest. The entire renovation was completed in 1750.

In 1797 Johann Jakob Freiherr von Chartard bought the castle, but sold it to Anton August Reichsgraf von Attems as early as 1803 , who had some alterations made. The garden gates and the staircase date from the time of his reign. After the French Wars , the palace park was redesigned and expanded in the English style .

In the years 1822 and 1826 Nikolaus Lenau was a guest in the left wing of the castle at the invitation of his brother-in-law Anton Xaver Schurz , who was the administrator of the estate at the time. A plaque at the entrance to the gate tower commemorates these visits. After Lenau's death, Schurz wrote a biography of the poet (1855, 2 volumes), which is an important source work for Lenau research.

When the manors were abolished in 1848, the citizens of Schrattenthal elected Hermann Graf Attems, the last ruler, to be mayor. He was succeeded as lords of the castle by Friedrich Steininger (1869–1871) and Theodor Freiherr von Offermann, who had several conversions and modernizations carried out. Between 1911 and 1917 the castle was owned by Prince Friedrich von Schönburg-Waldenburg , who maintained a racing stable on the site . He was followed by the Schumpeter family, who first leased the property to Erwin Schubert in 1924 and sold it in 1932.

In 1945 a Russian military hospital was set up in the castle . A year later the crew withdrew and the hospital was abandoned.

The castle is currently owned by the Schubert family. Brigitte Schubert, the wife of the owner Karlheinz Schubert, has been busy restoring the individual buildings on the site since 1986. Most of the buildings in the outer courtyard house apartments.

Plan of the palace complex

Description of the objects

The extensive complex takes up the entire south side of the urban area of Schrattenthal. It consists of residential and farm buildings as well as fortifications. A simple defense system was first mentioned in a document in the 13th century. The late Gothic town castle, which was built in 1435, was converted to Baroque style between 1660 and 1719 and expanded and rebuilt several times from the 19th century onwards.

The complex is about 300 × 150 meters and is supplemented by a quarry stone wall reinforced with bastions from the mid-15th century. Part of this wall had to be rebuilt after a partial fall in 2010. Around three fifths of the total area is accounted for by the spacious outer bailey, which is secured by deep trenches carved out of the rock.

Southern access to the outer bailey at the Hunger Tower

The way out of the city leads via a bridge access first to the area of the outer bailey, which consists of several buildings. A stone bridge over the now dry moat is flanked by statues of St. John Nepomuk and St. Anthony of Padua . It replaced the original drawbridge and leads from the outer bailey to the semicircular gate tower before the courtyard of the castle is reached. In 1991 the two statues and the parapet of the bridge were renovated. A total renovation of the driveway was started in 1997 with a leveling and the production of a new paving and was completed in 2001.

A second access to the outer bailey is in the south in the area of the hunger tower, where a bridge over the moat leads to a gate in the fortification wall. Next to this gate is a small hatch .

lock

The castle, which dates from the 14th and 15th centuries, is a two-storey, irregular two-wing complex. It is located south of a large farm yard in the urban area, from which it is separated by the former moat.

Outside

Castle chapel with battlements and castle with part of the walled-in arbor on the ground floor

The main wing (north wing) of the castle is an elongated building with a hipped roof and circumferential grooved eaves cornice from around 1700. The facade is structured by pilaster strips and windows framed with plastering flaps with grooved sills .

The core of the residential palace comes from the late Gothic period and emerged from the former moated castle by overbuilding the Zwinger . In the 17th century it was made Baroque by the barons of Adlersthurm.

On the south façade of the north wing, three barred late Gothic windows have been preserved on the ground floor. The initially existing three-axis, open, ogival arbor was later walled up.

Access through the gate tower

On the east side, an extension to the gate tower and the protruding head of the elongated north wing created a courtyard-like terrace entrance with a balustrade .

The late Gothic gate building in the axis of the bridge divides the long south-east wing that adjoins the north wing at right angles. This was probably used as a pouring box and expanded into a residential building in the 16th century. The tower from the middle of the 15th century has a rounded baroque top floor above a wide cornice and a mighty portal wall with a profiled segmental arch. There is a man gate to the side. The portal walls were restored in 1997, and in 2009 the vault in the gate entrance was repaired. The part of this wing to the north of the gate has a gable roof, the part to the south has a crooked roof . The roofs were re-covered with shingles in 2002 . The tower apartment was renovated in 1994; On the occasion of another complete restoration in 2000, sanitary rooms were installed.

To the south of the gate tower, barrel-vaulted casemates form the basement of the southern residential wing, the facade, roof and chimneys of which were repaired in 1998. Another fireplace was made in 2003 and the facade was restored in 2010 and 2012.

To the west, this part of the building is adjoined by a former baroque horse stable in mixed masonry with a stitch cap, probably from the 16th century . It was converted into a garage in 2009 .

To the west follows the so-called Mehltürml , which was built in the late Middle Ages as a semicircular shell tower and converted into a neo-Gothic two-storey garden pavilion in the 19th century . The facade was restored in 1988.

In the main axis of the north wing, which continues as an avenue to the west, an outside staircase with vase-crowned gate pillars from the second half of the 18th century leads to a park portal with remains of the Bering Wall . To the right of it, at the northwest corner of the chapel, the knight's staircase leads to the northwest corner of the former fortification.

In 1987 the roof of the castle was renovated, two years later glazing and painting work was carried out and the windows were renovated. The laying of all power lines on the castle area as underground cables took place in 1995. The facade, the window and door frames and the Gothic pointed arches were restored in 1999. In 2005 the walls below the knight's staircase were repaired, and in 2006 the stairs were repaired. A wood chip heating system has been heating the castle premises since 2008. The restoration of the baroque park pillars, the balustrade and the vases on the Ritterstiege took place in 2011.

Inside

Gothic spiral staircase

Stitch cap on the ground floor

Pillar hall on the upper floor

The outer hallway

The rooms of the main wing are entirely Baroque, only a spiral staircase with a handrail is from the late Gothic period. The rooms on the ground floor are vaulted with stitch caps, the upper floor has flat ceilings. Some of these ceilings have stucco mirrors from the second half of the 17th century. In the longitudinal axis there is a central corridor vaulted with a horseshoe barrel on strong cornices. The doors of the outer hallway have frames from 1911/1917. A baroque staircase with a square-vaulted pillar hall on the upper floor from around 1700 is located in the northeast corner.

In 1986 electrical lines were laid, the floors and the painting were renovated and a kitchen was set up. The restoration of the floors, the painting, the windows and doors, the Lamperie, the electrics and the heating in the great ballroom took place in 2001; In 2007, the floor in the guest suite and in the catering room was repaired and toilet facilities were installed in the hall.

In the gate tower there are seating niches from the middle of the 15th century with profiled segmental arches separated by small columns on both walls of the barrel-vaulted entrance . Both floors are vaulted with stitch caps, presumably from the time of the expansion in the second half of the 17th century.

On the upper floor of the southern residential wing, which can be reached via a spiral staircase from the construction period, there was originally a ballroom with one from the 16th / 17th century. The coffered ceiling dates back to the 19th century and was restored in 1999. Under this runs a painted gallery with figures from all walks of life, which was made in the third quarter of the 18th century and restored in 1999/2000. In 2003 a restoration took place after the demolition of baroque installations and the exposure of a Renaissance coffered ceiling. A total restoration of the Red and Green Salon was carried out in 2004 and in 2008 a new interior restoration was necessary. The repairs to the floors in various rooms and in the 27 meter long corridor followed in 2009. Two years later, the Renaissance coffered ceiling and the tram ceiling to the attic had to be secured. After a dry rot infestation had been found, the damage that had occurred had to be repaired and precautions had to be taken to prevent it from occurring again.

The former horse stable has a paved floor with a liquid manure channel running centrally over the entire length . A stone drinking trough has been preserved on the long rear wall .

The upper floor of the flour tower, which served as a coachman's apartment in the 19th century , has been developed as a groin-vaulted tower room .

Furnishing

The premises of the castle are used by the owners as private living spaces and are not open to the public, so a description of the furnishings is not possible.

Castle chapel

The St. Martin consecrated until 1438, built by Ulrich von Eyczing in the years 1436 geostete chapel closes west slant on to the castle. The patronage was confirmed by the Council of Basel .