Siegelsbach Castle

Siegelsbach Castle in Siegelsbach in the district of Heilbronn in northern Baden-Württemberg goes back to the older Hirschhorner Hof and was expanded into a palace complex by the Counts of Wiser in the early 18th century . After several changes of ownership, the facility was briefly operated as an inn with a brewery from 1841, which was called Badischer Hof . After further changes of ownership, the facility was divided up in 1862. The castle building came into the possession of the Protestant parish, which has since used it as a parsonage and since 1960 also as a kindergarten.

history

Hirschhorner Hof

Siegelsbach had been a fiefdom of the Lords of Hirschhorn since the 14th century , who were represented there by a bailiff who had his seat in the Hofgut known as the Hirschhorner Hof . After the Hirschhorns died out, the fiefdom fell back to the Electoral Palatinate in 1632 . In 1634, Siegelsbach was burned down by Swedish troops in the Thirty Years' War , but the Electoral Palatinate had the official buildings repaired after the end of the war. The former Hirschhorn fief came to the electoral court chancellor Franz Melchior von Wiser in 1699. The castle in Friedelsheim , which belonged to his fiefdom, was destroyed by the French in 1694, so that Wiser also took up residence in the recently restored Hirschhorner Hof in Siegelsbach.

Castle of the Counts of Wiser

Siegelsbach Castle 1799

After the death of Franz Melchior of Wisers in 1702 whose three sons entered the for Fideikommiss certain heritage initially together on, after the death of the brothers, however, the surviving brothers split in 1709 ownership among themselves so that Siegelbach with Friedelsheim and parts of Ober- and Untergimpern came to Franz Joseph von Wiser , who founded the Wiser-Siegelsbach line (also known as Schwarz-Wiser). The count's family did not live permanently in Siegelsbach, but also in other places, but in the early 18th century they nevertheless expanded the estate into a castle in keeping with their status. The corner buildings were covered with pointed, pyramid-shaped roofs, and a walled castle park with a garden pavilion was created around the building. Several generations of Count Wiser lived temporarily in Siegelsbach. The local Catholic rule led to great and long-lasting tensions in the traditionally Protestant town, especially since the counts pursued an aggressive re-Catholicization, as a result of which the church and the rectory came back into the possession of the Catholic minority. Franz Joseph von Wiser's grandson Joseph Johann sold large parts of Wiser's property from 1814. His son Joseph Carl Georg von Wiser lived in the castle until 1833 and then moved to Mosbach and in 1835 to the Upper Castle in Stein am Kocher, which he acquired . He sold the castle in Siegelsbach to the grand ducal bailiff and from Gemmingen-Guttenberg consultant Karl Stein († 1834) from Wimpfen .

Change of ownership in the 19th century

Stein's son Karl Friedrich junior immediately had a brewery built in an older cellar on the property , but after the early death of their father in 1834, he and his brother sold the property in 1838 to the later mayor of Siegelbach, Georg Friedrich Holoch, from whom it was passed on to his son-in-law Johann in 1841 Karl Fischer came. Fischer was a cooper and beer brewer and ran the Zum Badischen Hof inn in the castle , but moved to Gaggenau in 1844 and emigrated from there to America, so that the property came back to Georg Friedrich Holoch. His widow sold the castle in 1849 to Johann Ott († 1852), who played a key role in the construction of the Rappenau salt works and contributed a lot to the preservation of the Siegelsbach castle. A formerly existing garden pavilion in the southeast corner of the garden and the pointed tower roofs seem to have ceased to exist at this time. Otts son, the Dürkheim salt works director Hermann August Heinrich Ott, sold the plant in 1855 to Baroness Antonie von Schlern, widowed von Oberkamp, who married Carl Robert von Meisrimmel there in 1858. For health reasons, the couple moved to the Munich area in 1862 and put the property up for sale again.

Owned by the Protestant parish from 1862

In the sale offer of 1862, the property comprised the two-story castle building with six rooms, a kitchen, pantry and laundry room in the basement and eight rooms plus storage rooms on the upper floor, as well as the brewery, various farm buildings, the castle garden and 15 acres of goods in the Siegelsbach and Rappenau districts. A consortium of Protestant parish and school community as well as Siegelsbach citizens finally brought the purchase sum of around 25,000 guilders, so that on March 14, 1862 a purchase agreement was concluded, according to which the castle, along with the economic buildings and a large garden, were sold to the evangelical parish for 9045 guilders Brewery with a garden part behind it for 4,000 guilders to the Protestant school community and the agricultural goods for a total of 11,925 guilders to 25 Siegelsbach citizens.

The parish made the castle the parsonage of the newly founded Protestant parish. However, the brewery building quickly turned out to be too big to be used as a schoolhouse, so that the parish separated the brewery from the castle in 1864 with a building breakthrough and a garden wall and sold it to Jakob Grötzinger, who set up a storage space for his oil trade there. When his sons started producing their own fats in 1885, there was a long quarrel with the neighboring parish because of the unpleasant smell. The Grötzinger brothers therefore moved to another property by 1909 and then sold the former brewery to the farmer Gustav Hofmann. In 1912 the parish sold most of the castle gardens to the Siegelsbach community, which built the Siegelsbach schoolhouse there in 1923.

The castle was renovated in 1928 and in 1939 it was given a separate apartment for a nurse. Towards the end of the Second World War, the castle served as an alternative location for the already severely damaged army ammunition facility. After the end of the war, the palace quickly became a parsonage again, before a major renovation took place in 1960, through which a kindergarten was set up in the south wing. From 1994 to 1996 event rooms were set up in the north wing, older farm buildings were demolished. The former brewery building, which was separated from the castle in 1864, has been used for residential purposes for a long time.

Siegelsbach Castle
Former brewery

literature

Rudolf Petzold: 300 years of Siegelsbach Castle . In: Bad Rappenauer Heimatbote No. 14 . Bad Rappenau 2003.

Web links

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

49.267444444444 9.0907222222222Coordinates: 49 ° 16 '2.8 " N , 9 ° 5' 26.6" E