Stolzenfels Castle

Stolzenfels ruins around 1830

The Stolzenfels Castle is a castle in the Middle Rhine Valley in Koblenz . It towers on the left side of the Rhine over the Stolzenfels district , for which it was named, opposite the mouth of the Lahn . The complex, which was only expanded into a castle by the Prussian crown prince at the beginning of the 19th century, goes back to an electoral Trier customs castle from the 13th century, which was destroyed in 1689. The neo-Gothic castle is the most outstanding work of the Rhine romanticism . The complex also includes a hermitage in the Gründgesbachtal, the former staff residence, and a landscape park.

history

Stolzenfels Castle

Aerial photograph 2007

In the years 1242-1259 the Archbishop of Trier erected Arnold II. Von Isenburg , the castle Stolzenfels as hillside castle . Opposite it is Lahneck Castle , built in 1232 on the Lahnsteiner side , which marked the Kurmainzian territory as the northernmost outpost . The five-page last surviving keep was built around 1244 and was subsequently increased twice, most recently in Prussian times. The name of a knight Walter Burggraf von Stulzenvels was mentioned in 1248. Under Archbishop Balduin of Luxembourg around 1300 the castle was expanded into an electoral customs castle and connected to the place on the banks of the Rhine by walls. Stolzenfels Castle was expanded by the Archbishops Kuno and Werner von Falkenstein between 1388 and 1418 with a residential tower and the Palas on the Rhine side. Werner von Falkenstein transferred the role of customs castle in 1412 to Kunostein Castle , built by Kuno in 1371, located downstream from the Rhine , which stood on the site of Engers Castle , which was later built .

During the Thirty Years War , Stolzenfels Castle was first occupied by the Swedes in 1632 and then by the French for two years (1634 and 1646). After being destroyed by the French in 1689 during the War of the Palatinate Succession, the ruins fell into disrepair over the next 150 years. During the French period (1794-1814) the ruins were transferred to the city of Koblenz as property in 1802. The city of Koblenz made it to Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, later King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. And son of King Friedrich Wilhelm III. , as a gift. However, he did not accept the donation until 1823 under Mayor Abundius Maehler shortly after his marriage to Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria . This decision was carried by his enthusiasm for the romantic Rhine landscape and inspired by the beginning of the reconstruction of Rheinstein Castle by his cousin Friedrich von Prussia .

Stolzenfels Castle

Castle from the south

In the years 1826 to 1833 Friedrich Wilhelm IV had the classicist - neo-Romanesque parish church of St. Menas in Stolzenfels built by the architect Johann Claudius von Lassaulx . He then rebuilt the castle as a Prussian summer residence on the Rhine. From 1836 to 1842, with the help of Karl Friedrich Schinkel , and after 1841 under the direction of Friedrich August Stüler , today's classicist palace was built. The existing old structure of the castle ruins was integrated at the express request of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The local construction work was in the hands of the Ehrenbreitstein fortress builders W. Naumann and Carl Schnitzler , coordinated by the fortress commander Philipp von Wussow . The influences of English neo-Gothic and Schinkel's romantic style are unmistakable .

The rooms of the summer residence were furnished with valuable medieval furniture, works of art and paintings based on the Middle Ages. The interior was created by the master carpenter H. Rhode from Trier , Johann Wilhelm Vetter from Neuwied and C. Gerstenkorn, Ferdinand Gerber and G. Mündenich from Koblenz. The garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné designed the romanticizing surroundings of the castle (e.g. with a riding arena) as a landscape and hunting park.

In 1842 the expansion and renovation of the castle was completed. On September 14th, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV finally moved in with his companion, dressed in historical costumes. The hermitage planned as a staff apartment was completed in 1843 by Naumann and Schnitzler on the driveway to the castle. The neo-Gothic chapel on the Rhine side was built between 1843 and 1847 according to plans by Stüler and Schnitzler. Stolzenfels Castle received a high visit in 1845 from the British Queen Victoria , who began the remodeling of Osborne House that year and three years later with the construction of Balmoral Castle . Immediately before the renovation of Stolzenfels, from 1832 to 1837, the Bavarian Crown Prince Maximilian , a nephew of Friedrich Wilhelm's wife Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria and since 1842 the husband of his cousin Marie of Prussia , had Hohenschwangau Castle rebuilt in a similar style. From 1850 to 1867 the reconstruction of Hohenzollern Castle followed , with which Friedrich Wilhelm IV also commissioned Stüler.

Original steel engraving after Tombleson , around 1830

Painting by Carl Daniel Freydanck , 1847/48

Stolzenfels Castle around 1860, Alexander Duncker collection

Stolzenfels Castle from the southeast, around 1900

Stolzenfels Castle from the north, around 1900

1938

Development of the castle after 1918

After the First World War and the end of the monarchy in Prussia in November 1918, Stolzenfels Castle came into the possession and the management of the state castle administration. Today the castle is managed by the Castles, Palaces and Antiquities Directorate of the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate .

Since 2002, Castle Stolzenfels part of the UNESCO excellent World Heritage Upper Middle Rhine Valley . A digital model was created for the Rheinromantik exhibition in the Landesmuseum Koblenz in 2002, which reconstructs the state from 1845, based on restoration studies. Seamless comparisons are possible between the ruin, as shown by a cork model around 1830, the building photographs and expansion plans by the architects von Lassaulx, Schinkel, Stüler and others. a., also the artistic representations in watercolors by Caspar Scheuren u. a., and finally the building that was completed and inaugurated in 1845. Up to 250,000 visitors come to the castle every year.

Before the 2011 Federal Horticultural Show in Koblenz, extensive renovation measures began at Stolzenfels Castle under the leadership of the State Office for Property and Construction Management. Then the castle, which is an outstanding cultural monument in Germany, as it has been completely preserved including the interior, was integrated into the Federal Garden Show. The plans for the major project of a general renovation go back to the year 2000 and were specifically followed up from 2004. In a first construction phase, the external appearance was restored in the original colors, a light ocher yellow, and the gardens were redesigned according to the old plans of the horticulturist Peter Joseph Lenné. In addition, wall anchors were set to ensure the castle's stability . Another construction phase followed until 2015, during which the keep (completed in November 2014), including the stairs and the gate system, were restored. The wall painting by August Gustav Lasinsky and the canopy on the palas above were extensively repaired by 2014. At the same time, building research was carried out, in which mainly the remains of the castle ruins were examined. Up until 2016, the last construction phase was to carry out renovation measures on the west side of the castle. By then, 21 million euros from state funds will have been used for extensive restoration. Work on the interior and the renovation of the neo-Gothic chapel are planned afterwards.

Gatekeeper House
Castle chapel
Pergola garden
Keep
Adjutant Tower

Construction and equipment

Stolzenfels Castle

Elisabeth Tower

The mural on the Palas in front of the Zwinger

The castle courtyard towards the Arkardenhalle

Stolzenfels Castle is located on a ridge that slopes steeply to the east to the Middle Rhine Valley and to the north to the Gründgesbach valley. On the south side, the castle is closed off by a ditch . At the request of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV., Some parts of the medieval castle have been preserved and integrated into the new palace. Schinkel rebuilt the existing buildings and added to them. He created a classical castle out of the castle ruins and unified the Rhine front in a way that was inspired by the English neo-Gothic. All wall ends in front of the flat roofs were therefore provided with circumferential battlements . The entire facade was covered with a smooth, light yellow plaster .

The oldest preserved and highest part of the complex is the keep , which was built in the middle of the 13th century. In the middle of the 14th century the pentagonal keep, the so-called "Raue Turm", was increased. The pointed side points towards the mountain, the attack side. The defensive tower, which has been preserved almost completely in height, protrudes in the upper third by stone width and ends with reconstructed battlements above a protruding round arch frieze . Entrances to the two lower floors are on the west and east sides. The original entrance is on the floor above on the courtyard side. The keep has only a few windows, on the top floor there are balconies from the expansion period on the north and south-west sides . A shield wall is in front of it at the same angle.

The northern tip of the rock spur was built under Archbishop Baldwin of Luxembourg in the 14th century. The north-east building ( Palas ) on the Rhine side, the circular wall around today's pergola garden including the adjutant tower in the north and the adjoining arched wall on the west side, which is now the west wall of the north-west building, were built in the years 1336 to 1338. The two buttresses on the north-west corner of the north-west building testify to the problems that the rocky subsoil caused the medieval builders. The four-story adjutant tower stands on a round floor plan on the two lower floors and is heptagonal on the upper floors. Almost all of its medieval substance has been preserved.

The basement of the Palas is open to the Zwinger and the Rhine in front of it and accommodates the summer hall, in which a ribbed vault is supported by two octagonal pillars . Above is the great knight's hall , in which slender pillars support a net vault . When designing this room, in which old knight armor is exhibited, Schinkel based himself on the Great Rempter of the Marienburg Order Castle in East Prussia , which he had recently restored. On the outside wall of the palas, between the Gothic cross- frame windows, there is a large mural that was completed by August Gustav Lasinsky in 1844. It shows how "Archbishop Werner of Trier receives the newly elected King Ruprecht ". On the east side of the Zwinger, the remains of an entrance tower, to which a path led from the village up to the castle, have been converted into a viewing terrace. This was later built over by the chapel .

The residential tower (1381) south of the palace and the adjoining inner gate (1382/83) were built by Archbishop Kuno II von Falkenstein. The three-storey residential tower, which is essentially medieval, stands on a square floor plan and has four polygonal corner bay windows . In the basement, a central support supports a ridge vault . On the floor above is the small knight's hall with a reconstructed star vault and with scenes of the knightly virtues , which were painted by Hermann Stilke from Berlin . The gate has a polygonal stair tower on the northwest corner and a polygonal bay window on the Rhine side, which Schinkel had reconstructed using the consoles that were still in place .

The Elisabeth Tower is located in the southeast corner of the palace complex. From this still preserved old tower a wall led down into the valley to a customs tower that bordered Kapellen (today's name Stolzenfels) to the south. In the south, a bridge leads over the neck ditch to the gatekeeper's house, the main entrance to the palace complex.

In the second construction phase, according to plans by Naumann and Schnitzler, the buildings on the Rhine front were mirrored inwards and a second wing of the building was erected on the west side of the castle courtyard facing north. In the north, both wings of the building were connected by an open three- bay arcade hall, through which a staircase leads from the castle courtyard down to the pergola garden.

The Protestant chapel on the Rhine side in front of the residential tower was the last building to be erected on the viewing terrace in 1843–1847. It stands on a cross-shaped ground plan and has octagonal needle-shaped choir towers. In the 5/8 choir , which faces east , lancet and rose windows are built in. Inside, the chapel has an early Gothic shape with a colored cross-ribbed vault. The painter Ernst Deger created twelve Nazarene murals in bold colors on a gold background, which depict the story of humanity's redemption. A swallow's nest organ was created in 1846 by the Johannes Adolph Ibach company . A baptistery is set up in an octagonal room with a ribbed dome and octagonal windows under the choir in the basement . The roof of the chapel is a viewing terrace and can be reached via the small knight's hall.

The private rooms of the king and queen were housed on the upper floors of the Rhine and the rear valley tract. Both areas for the royal couple met in the shared bedroom above the arcade hall. The representative rooms were housed on the ground floor of the Rhine wing and the kitchen, administrator's apartment and warehouse on the ground floor of the valley wing.

Various gardens were laid out on the area of Stolzenfels Castle according to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné , Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe and Wilhelm August Weyhe . In the north lies the pergola garden between the arcade hall and the adjutant tower. The central element is a flowerbed in the form of a Gothic rose window, which is framed by a wooden pergola with arched arcades. In the center of the bed is a cast iron fountain with a goblet-shaped fountain bowl that stands in an octagonal basin. The adjutant tower opens as a belvedere to the Rhine and as a tea hall to the pergola garden. On the Rhine terrace in front of the summer hall there is a central fountain with an eagle column, designed by Christian Daniel Rauch , and bordered by lawn and flower borders. A kennel garden is located south of the chapel. Next deeper in the southeast direction of a plane Elisabeth tower in the moat is the Hirsch kennel with a vineyard and a gazebo . In the north and west of the curtain wall, there is a surrounding garden with a path, resting places and flowers and bushes.

hermitage

The Klause in the Gründgesbach valley

The hermitage ( 50 ° 18 ′ 7.1 ″ N , 7 ° 35 ′ 25.2 ″ E ), also called Cluj-Napoca, is located in the valley of the Gründgesbach on the way up to Stolzenfels Castle . It was built in place of an already existing smaller building and accommodated the servants' and guest apartments as well as the horse stables and coach houses . The building complex was built in two phases, first the front Klausen building in 1842/43 according to plans by Naumann, which was expanded in 1845 according to plans by Schnitzler. At the same time the rear Klausen building was built. 50.301972222222 7.5903333333333

The hermitage is a picturesque assembly of slate rubble with building parts of different heights. It stands in a bend in the path to the castle, which crosses the stream over a bridge and then leads through the ground floor of the pentagonal five-storey east tower. Behind the tower there is a building complex, which is slightly pivoted and equipped with gables and stair towers and accommodated the horse stables on the ground floor. The western part is a transverse building with a two-aisled rib-vaulted passage to the courtyard of the rear Klausen building. This slightly bent two-storey building is stretched narrow and equipped with a hexagonal stair tower on the inner kink side. On the ground floor there are eight horse stalls with dividing walls and racks . There is a continuous hall on the upper floor. As with the castle, all buildings of the hermitage are provided with a surrounding battlement. At the western edge of the courtyard is a wall fountain made of red sandstone .

Landscape park

viaduct

The Stolzenfels Castle is surrounded by a 9-hectare landscape park, which includes the Schlossberg, the Gründgesbachtal and the Dreisäckerberg. Originally it was even bigger to the south. It was created as a landscape and hunting park at the same time as the palace was built according to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné. It is considered one of his main works.

The landscape park follows the ascent path, planted as an avenue, along the Gründgesbach, which is dammed into small fish ponds and whose slopes are wooded. At the end, the stream overcomes an artificially created rock wall as a waterfall. At the lower end of the path, the main path leads over a monumental viaduct , created by Friedrich August Stüler . From the main path you have a view of the castle, the Rhine and the opposite mouth of the Lahn. Many Roman and medieval architectural poles were set up along the paths . To this day, pieces of cornice from a dismantled castle have served as benches.

At the end of the winding path you come to a seat with an octagonal bench built around a tree. Below the adjutant tower is a lava grotto. On the Dreisäckerberg is the oval riding arena, which was intended for medieval equestrian games. It is bordered to the west by rows of seats dug into the slope and opposite to the valley by a row of linden trees .

The park and gardens of Stolzenfels Castle are now part of the route of the World Heritage Gardens in the UNESCO World Heritage Upper Middle Rhine Valley .

tourism

Shortly after completion, the castle was open to visitors in the absence of the king. The gate building, Gothic residential tower, palas with vaulted knight's hall, pergola garden and keep can still be visited today . In the knight's hall there are collections of historical weapons and drinking vessels. The visitors are led through the living rooms in felt slippers . In the medieval residential tower there is a room with wall paintings by the Berlin painter Hermann Stilke . Today they are among the most important works of Rhenish high romanticism. In addition to southern influences (e.g. fountains in the pergola garden), the visitor encounters a colorful interior that was created through the passion for collecting of Friedrich Wilhelm IV.

Regular events

Rhine in flames - large fireworks and ship convoy on the 2nd Saturday in August along Spay , Braubach with the Marksburg , Brey , Rhens , Koblenz-Stolzenfels with Stolzenfels Castle, Lahnstein with Lahneck Castle and the mouth of the Lahn to the fireworks display from Ehrenbreitstein Fortress in Koblenz .
Drama performance "The Muse von Stolzenfels", a scenic tour through the castle and its history.

Monument protection

Stolzenfels Castle is a protected cultural monument according to the Monument Protection Act (DSchG) and entered in the list of monuments of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate . It is located in Koblenz-Stolzenfels in the Stolzenfels Castle monument zone .

Stolzenfels Castle has been part of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002 . Furthermore, it is a protected cultural asset according to the Hague Convention and marked with the blue and white protection symbol.

reception

The newly founded Bremen shipping company Deutsche Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft “Hansa” christened its first cargo ship in 1882 in honor of the castle with the name Stolzenfels . In the following years three other ships of the shipping company were given the same name. Today the passenger ship Stolzenfels of the Cologne-Düsseldorf Deutsche Rheinschiffahrt cruises on the Rhine. In addition, an Intercity with the train name Stolzenfels runs on the left Rhine route .

literature

Caspar Scheuren : Stolzenfels album. o. O., o. J. ( digitized ).
Heinrich Beyer: Stolzenfels Castle: a souvenir for travelers on the Rhine . Coblenz 1842.
Simon Feistel: The history of the royal Stolzenfels Castle in Capellen on the Rheine . Coblenz 1842.
Heinrich M. Malten: Stolzenfels Castle on the Rhine . Brönner, Frankfurt a. M. 1844.
Karl Brandenbusch: Remembrance of Stolzenfels: a short history of the castle and the town of Coblenz, with a cantata festival dedicated to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV . Coblenz 1850.
Robert Dohme : Description of the Stolzenfels Castle. As a reminder for travelers on the Rhine . Kühn, Berlin 1850 ( digitized version ).
- Description of Stolzenfels Castle . Reprint of the font written by Robert Dohme in 1850. Introduced and edited by Georg Poensgen. Berlin 1930
- Reprint of the State Office for Monument Preservation Rhineland-Palatinate, Administration of State Palaces, Castles and Antiquities, Mainz 1986.
Werner Bornheim called Schilling : Stolzenfels Castle (= leader of the administration of the state castles of Rhineland-Palatinate, issue 4). Mainz 1975, 102 pp., Ill.
Andreas Pecht: Stolzenfels Castle. Photographer: Ulrich Pfeuffer. Edited by the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate. Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-1974-5 . (Edition castles, palaces, antiquities Rhineland-Palatinate, booklet 2)

Doris Fischer, Armin Henne, Iris Ketterer-Senger: Insights - Outlooks. The park and gardens of Stolzenfels Castle. Published by the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate - castles, palaces, antiquities. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2473-2 . (= Edition castles, palaces, antiquities, guide booklet 27)
Uwe Baur: Queen Victoria's Rhine journey in the summer of 1845. - In: Landeskundliche Vierteljahrsblätter 58 (2012) issue 4, pp. 101–112. ISSN 0458-6905
Doris Fischer: Stolzenfels Castle. - Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner 2014 (= Edition Burgen Schlosser Antiquities Rhineland-Palatinate, guide booklet 4). ISBN 978-3-7954-1568-6
Ulrike Weber (edit.): City of Koblenz. City districts (= monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . Cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate. Vol. 3, 3). Werner, Worms 2013, ISBN 978-3-88462-345-9 .