Seehof Castle

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Front with main entrance

Seehof Castle is the former summer residence and hunting lodge of the Bamberg prince-bishops . The castle, located about five kilometers northeast of Bamberg, is now part of the Memmelsdorf community . It is surrounded by a large garden, which was formerly designed in the Rococo style. The area of ​​the plant covers about 21 hectares. In the immediate vicinity there is pond farming for carp breeding.

The interior was designed by Rococo artists such as the fresco painter Giuseppe Appiani , the cabinet maker Ferdinand Hundt , the plasterer Franz Jakob Vogel and the painter Johann Joseph Scheubel the Elder. embossed. The garden art was mainly created by Ferdinand Tietz .

history

White hall

As early as the 15th century, a hunting lodge was built on the site of today's facility. The four-winged castle building with the striking angular towers was commissioned by the Bamberg Prince-Bishop Marquard Sebastian Schenk von Stauffenberg . The plan came from Antonio Petrini , construction began in 1687 and completed in 1696. The castle is also called Marquardsburg after the client ; its four-wing complex resembles Johannisburg Castle in Aschaffenburg .

Under Prince Bishop Johann Philipp Anton von und zu Frankenstein , the prince-bishop's living rooms and the ballroom were designed and furnished with furniture from 1746 to 1753. Console tables, seating and wall-mounted carvings were made by external cabinet makers, the most prominent of whom were the ornamental carver Ferdinand Hundt (1703–1758) and the fresco painter Giuseppe Appiani (1706–1785), who was already active in the Würzburg Residence .

Arcade in the castle park

Ferdinand Hundt carved some items of equipment in the Corps de Logis for Seehof Castle. These include the chimney mirror and supraport frames in the White Hall, the season tables, a console table with hunting problems, the supraport frames in the bedroom and audience room and the treillage set.

Fountain

Prince-Bishop Lothar Franz von Schönborn had the garden in its current size added and equipped with fountains , fountains , bosquets and a hedge theater . The height of garden art was reached under Prince-Bishop Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim , who between 1757 and 1779 had a labyrinth that no longer existed, built water features and provided rich sculptural decorations. The figures were made by the Bamberg court sculptor Ferdinand Tietz , who also worked for the garden in Veitshöchheim . Sculptures by Ferdinand Tietz also adorn the rose garden of the Bamberg Residence.

The gardens of Schloss Seehof and Schloss Gaibach , founded by Elector Lothar Franz, were among the most attractive in Franconia at the time of their creation , along with those of the Würzburg Juliusspital .

Aerial photo, 2013

After the secularization (1803), the castle and garden came into the possession of the Wittelsbach family . In 1840/41 it was sold to the Prussian hussar colonel Friedrich von Zandt. In the following decades the area was changed significantly. Around 1870 the cascade was transformed into a garden terrace, the eastern part of the garden was separated and taken under the plow. After the death of Baron Franz Joseph von Zandt, who drowned in the castle pond in 1951, the castle came into the possession of the von Heßberg family . This was followed by a systematic sale of the palace furnishings and the park sculptures, which led to the extensive loss of Seehof Palace's inventory. In the course of this sale, pieces from Seehof Castle were scattered around the world, found in private hands or in various museums. Holdings can be seen today, for example, in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art . In 1975 the Free State of Bavaria acquired the property . After extensive renovation of the main building, which lasted until the 1990s, ten showrooms within the palace are open to the public. Seehof Castle has been looked after by the Bavarian Palace Administration since 2003 . Gradually, former works of art and furnishings could be bought back.

The entire complex is now a rectangular garden, which is divided into six rectangles separated by paths. The castle is centrally located, the paths are designed as avenues . The original garden design is no longer recognizable, most of the areas are covered with lawn, in the middle rectangles there is a loose tree population, in another a bosquet area .

Cascade, aqueduct and tunnel

Cascade, the Hercules group by Ferdinand Tietz in the center
Park side

Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim arranged for a representative cascade to be built, the planning by Johann Michael Fischer began in 1761, and Ferdinand Tietz took over the artistic design . Construction began in 1764 and commissioning in 1771. In order to ensure an adequate water supply with sufficient head for the castle and the water art in the garden, a water pipe and later a tunnel was created. Several sources were used; the water pipe, which was partly designed as a pressure pipe, had a length of about six kilometers. In 1764, the construction of an accessible tunnel through the Stammberg began. The construction was carried out in a mining method using the counter-site method with the aid of an orientation shaft. The tunnel leads through the adjacent rock, in other places a vault walling was necessary. The water flow took place in a covered channel on the tunnel floor. The tunnel is 640 meters long.

After some disfiguring interventions, which also impaired the stability of the structure, the cascade was in a desolate state at the time of the acquisition of Seehof by the Free State. The parts of the cascade that can no longer be preserved can be viewed with other sculptures in the Ferdinand Tietz Museum in the western orangery of the palace. After years of restoration work by a team of stonemasons and restorers, the restored cascade was put back into operation on July 22, 1995.

Orangery

Orangery
Memmelsdorfer Tor, inside

The orangery building with the Memmelsdorfer Tor and the later added greenhouses on both sides are among the most important orangery buildings in Franconia . Lothar Franz von Schönborn had the original orangery built around 1723. From 1733 under Friedrich Karl , Prince-Bishop of Bamberg since 1729, the orangeries on the north side of the pleasure garden were renewed with the planning of Balthasar Neumann . The construction work was carried out by Justus Heinrich Dientzenhofer . The spacious area served as a wintering house for the orange trees and other exotic plants. The Ferdinand Tietz Museum has been in the western orangery since 1997.

Monument protection

patio

The castle, its equipment and the surrounding park with enclosure are cultural monuments according to the Bavarian Monument Protection Act . This also applies to the gardener's house, the fig house and two pomeranian houses built by Johann Jakob Michael Küchel , two orangery buildings built by Justus Heinrich Dientzenhofer , the west gate surrounded by two gatekeeper houses, the north gate surrounded by two small circular buildings and the east gate with two sandstone posts . A garden sculpture by Ferdinand Dietz and stone benches from the 18th century are also entered in the list of monuments.

administration

After the acquisition of the castle by the Free State of Bavaria, the building will be used by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation (BLfD) and administered by the Bavarian Palace Administration.

Regular events

  • Beginning of June: Spring in Seehof Castle (chamber music festival)
  • Beginning of August: Summer serenades at Seehof Castle (chamber music festival)

literature

  • Berthold Fiedler: The cascade in the park of Seehof Castle. Restored 1983–1995 . Festschrift on the occasion of the ceremony on July 22, 1995. Landbauamt Bamberg, Bamberg 1995.
  • Klaus Grewe : The cascade of Seehof Castle in Memmelsdorf and its elaborate water pipe . In: Frontinus-Gesellschaft eV (Ed.): Water in the Baroque (= history of water supply 6). von Zabern, Mainz 2004, ISBN 3-8053-3331-5 , pp. 133-147.
  • Uta Hasekamp: The palaces and gardens of Lothar Franz von Schönborn. The engraving after Salomon Kleiner (= Green Series. Sources and research on garden art 24). Wernersche Verlagsanstalt, Worms 2005, ISBN 3-88462-192-0 , pp. 48–51.
  • Michael Petzet , Emil Bauer: Seehof Castle. Summer residence of the Bamberg prince-bishops . Verlag Fränkischer Tag, Bamberg 1995, ISBN 3-928648-17-9 .
  • Alfred Schelter, Michael Petzet: Seehof Castle and Park. Bamberg, Memmelsdorf. Official leader . Bavarian Palace Administration, 2nd edition Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-941637-05-4 .

Web links

Commons : Schloss Seehof  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sigrid Sangl: The Bamberg court joinery trade . Munich 1997, p. 106-107 .
  2. ↑ Reiner Schulz: Ferdinand Hundt's activity in Seehof Castle under Prince-Bishop Johann Phillip Anton von Franckenstein . In: Historischer Verein Bamberg (Hrsg.): 153. Report of the historical association Bamberg . 1st edition. tape 153 (2017) . Verlagdruckerei Schmidt, Bamberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-87735-218-2 , p. 211 to 240 .
  3. ↑ Stefan Kummer : Architecture and fine arts from the beginnings of the Renaissance to the end of the Baroque. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes; Volume 2: From the Peasants' War in 1525 to the transition to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1814. Theiss, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8062-1477-8 , pp. 576–678 and 942–952, here: pp. 645 and 948.
  4. ↑ Daniëlle O. Kisluk-Gros Heide: The Garden Room from Schloss Seehof and Its Furnishings. In: Metropolitan Museum Journal , Vol. 25, 143. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1990.
  5. ^ Furniture from Seehof Castle in the inventory of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved December 25, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Memmelsdorf monuments ( PDF , 131 kB ; 141 kB), page 6.

Coordinates: 49 ° 55 ′ 37 ″  N , 10 ° 56 ′ 52 ″  E