Stedten Castle

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Stedten Castle and Estate in the 1930s
Stedten Castle before it was demolished in 1948

Stedten Castle was a baroque castle in the Bischleben-Stedten district of Erfurt , which existed from 1735 to 1948.

history

1735 purchased Christoph Dietrich Keller , the Good Stedten and left here instead of an older water castle for his family build a baroque castle. Two years later he was by Emperor Charles VI. ennobled as imperial knight.

His son Dorotheus Ludwig Christoph Graf von Keller was on friendly terms with Christoph Wieland and Johann Wolfgang Goethe . In 1775 Goethe read to the von Keller family from his Urfaust in the castle . In 1789 Christoph von Keller was raised to the rank of count .

In 1844 construction began on the Thuringian Railway from Erfurt to Gotha , which also ran through the district of Stedten. Gustav Graf von Keller became the first Thuringian railway director. Four years later he represented Erfurt at the Frankfurt National Assembly .

In 1938, after the death of the old Count, Franz Graf von Keller took over the castle and manor in Stedten, which had belonged to Bischleben since 1923. During the Second World War, up to 130 refugees from the eastern regions found accommodation in the castle and estate. The count was temporarily interned in the Gräfentonna prison.

On September 10, 1945, land reforms came about through the ordinance of the Thuringian state administration of the SMAD . The Counts of Keller were expropriated and driven out without compensation. A few meters from the village they were attacked and robbed. The property was then divided up and the manor buildings were first removed.

In 1948, on the basis of the Soviet order 209 for the removal of German aristocratic residences, Stedten Castle was also blown up and demolished. Valuable cultural assets, paintings, library and archive (these reached back to the 16th century) passed into unknown possession or were destroyed. For years there had been resistance to the demolition from citizens of Stedten, personalities from culture and churches and, last but not least, from refugees and displaced persons. The Stedten Manor Archive was handed over to the Erfurt City Archive by the Thuringian State Archive in Gotha in 2003 .

In 1999, a “Freundeskreis Schloss Stedten e. V. ”, to maintain the memory of the castle and its inhabitants.

literature

  • Hanna Althoff: The fall of the castle in Stedten 1945. Chronicle of Stedten Castle near Erfurt, written from September 1944 to July 1945 and an afterword in 1950 . Edited by Hans-Peter Brachmanski. New Erfurter Stadtbote 3/2019. 13th year
  • Hans-Peter Brachmanski : Rediscoveries of the Stedten Castle near Erfurt . Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2012, ISBN 978-3-86777-448-2 .
  • Hans-Peter Brachmanski: Excerpts from the guest book of Stedten Castle from 1868 . Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2004, ISBN 3-937135-70-7 .
  • Hans-Peter Brachmanski: The business contacts of the manor Stedten with the Stellmacherei Braun in Erfurt-Bischleben based on their order books 1889-1945 . New Erfurter Stadtbote 3/2016
  • Hans-Peter Brachmanski: The pearls of the empress. Treasures from Stedten Castle . New Erfurter Stadtbote 3/2020
  • Mathias Thüsing: The disappeared Stedten Castle should receive more attention . In: Thüringer Allgemeine , Erfurt, October 3, 2014.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Display board in front of Stedten Church (2020)
  2. ↑ Inventory adjustment and submission of duplicates to the Gotha State Archives. , accessed May 20, 2016

Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 38.6 ″  N , 10 ° 59 ′ 3.3 ″  E