Tiefenau Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Access to the old estate (2017)

Tiefenau Castle is a listed castle complex in Tiefenau , a district of the municipality of Wülknitz in the Saxon district of Meißen .

The former palace or manor complex, built in the baroque style at the beginning of the 18th century, can be found with a park, the former palace chapel and an adjoining cemetery right next to Bundesstraße 169 . The Tiefenau Castle itself was blown up in 1948.

While the old manor is largely left to decay, the park and chapel are in a well-tended condition and form tourist attractions.

Building description and history

The old baroque castle

Site plan of the Tiefenau Castle

  • Ground floor plan of the castle

  • Cross section lock

  • Castle park side

  • Middle room

  • Manor building courtyard side

Tiefenau is one of the oldest German bases in the then Slavic region. The place was first mentioned in a document in 1013 as Difnouuocethla . Originally the place belonged to the Naumburg bishops , who also laid out the later aristocratic seats in Frauenhain and Saathain in the vicinity . During the Thirty Years War , the castle and estate were devastated and burned down by Swedish troops in 1637.

The rebuilt palace complex was expanded at the beginning of the 18th century. The castle itself was a two-storey building, which was provided with central projections and a mansard roof. Its location was north of the farm yard and was only separated from the adjacent park by a moat.

From 1710 the client was the Electorate Court Marshal Count Ferdinand August von Pflugk (1662–1712) who acquired the Tiefenau estate in 1704. The noble family von Pflugk , wealthy in Bohemia and Saxony and in the nearby Frauenhain , had already been resident since the late 14th century. The interior of the palace was also furnished in a baroque style with stucco ceilings, works of art and pflugk family pictures. Stylistically, the castle was similar to the castle chapel that is still in existence today.

At the end of the Second World War , the facility was badly damaged, and vandalism and looting occurred in the post-war period . A little later, the castle was blown up and completely removed. The command 209 of the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD) from 9 September 1947 it had become fatal. Although this included measures to be taken to create new farms, it was also used as an opportunity to destroy numerous smaller aristocratic residences in order to obtain the necessary building materials. In the vicinity of Tiefenau, the old aristocratic residences in Frauenhain, Strauch and Grödel were also affected.

  • Further buildings of the manor

  • Castle courtyard (1914)

  • The remains of the old brewery (2017)

  • Brewery (1914)

Modern re-use plans

The area northwest of the castle park with the old sheep farm (2017)

The entire palace complex with its outbuildings, chapel, parks and other farms, such as the old sheep farm to the west, has been a listed building since the fall of the Wall . The farm buildings and the grounds of the old manor were in use by the local LPG until 1990 , but have since largely fallen into disrepair. In contrast, the park, palace chapel and the grounds of the property's former brewery in the vicinity are in a well-tended condition.

Torhaus Ost during the renovation in early 2020

For years, efforts have been made to upgrade, renovate and make accessible to the public the property, which is conveniently located along the Elsterwerda-Grödel-Raft Canal, in terms of traffic technology via the federal highway 169, the Riesa-Elsterwerda railway line and the cycle path along the Elsterwerda-Grödel raft canal . A private investor from the Netherlands took over the entire site in 2017 . According to the latest plans and visions, renovation and expansion work on site could create a large holiday resort. The central component here would be the complex of the historical manor.

Park and garden area

Historical views of
the park from 1914
Garden shed
Castle Bridge
Castle park side
Castle Bridge

The Tiefenau Baroque Garden was laid out between 1705 and 1710 north of the castle and was only separated from it by a moat. It is characterized by a three meter high wall that surrounds the area on three sides. There are also four single-storey garden pavilions with mansard roofs. The grotto pavilion, in which there is a structured grotto room, is remarkable. The garden was laid out symmetrically with axes of paths, five fountains with sandstone sculptures are integrated into it. An orangery was the northern end of the main axis of the castle. Today parts of the former central wing of the orangery are preserved as a gate system.

In the mid-1950s, work began on transforming the garden into a rose garden. Around 6,500 roses were planted. The wells were exposed and put back into operation. They were later affected by a lack of care and were in poor condition after the fall of the Wall. In 2017, the Dutch entrepreneur Henry de Jong managed to acquire the park. A start has been made to clear the area from uncontrolled growth and illegal waste dumps. Restoration work on the wells began in mid-2018. All side wells could be put into operation after summer 2019. In the course of the renovation in 2019, research by the State Office for Monument Preservation revealed that the central fountain was probably redesigned in the 19th century and increased by adding different elements, such as a pedestal with faces and a capital stone. A gardener's pavilion, which was converted into an apartment around 1840, was restored from 2018 to 2019. During the renovation work, valuable wall paintings were found in the living room.

To the north of the park there is a redesigned English landscape park and a managed fish pond area connected with a network of paths.

  • Tiefenau Castle Park IMG 7285 b.jpg
  • Tiefenau Baroque Park P1100601 c.jpg

  • Northwest Well

  • Wall painting in the Tiefenau gardener's pavilion from around 1840

  • Triton fountain

Castle chapel

Historical interior views
from 1914
Silbermann organ
Interior view of the palace chapel (1914)
Grand Lodge (1914)

The church, built in the baroque style in 1716, can be found with an adjoining cemetery in the east of the site.

The building was exposed to vandalism and looting towards the end of the Second World War, but the lack of maintenance measures visibly affected the building in the period that followed. Only towards the end of the 1980s and after the fall of the Wall was the historic building extensively restored with the help of the German Foundation for Monument Protection and the Hildegard Seyffardt Foundation.

The inventory of the interior richly furnished and decorated chapel includes an organ created by Gottfried Silbermann in 1728 , which was restored at the end of the 1990s.

  • Tiefenau Castle Chapel

  • Gravestones of the von Pflugk family

  • West portal

literature

  • Cornelius Gurlitt : Official Authority Grossenhain (Land) . Dresden 1914, p. 423-444 ( Scan  - Internet Archive ).
  • Helmuth Gröger: Tiefenau Castle in castles and palaces in Saxony . Heimatwerk Sachsen, Dresden 1940, p. 116 to 117 .

Web links

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

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ a b List of Monuments of the State of Saxony , accessed on September 15, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b c d Cornelius Gurlitt: Amtshauptmannschaft Grossenhain (country) . Dresden 1914, p. 423-444 ( Scan  - Internet Archive ).
  3. ↑ Tiefenau. In: Digital Historical Directory of Saxony. accessed on September 14, 2017.
  4. ↑ Friedrich Scherzer: The pearl of Tiefenau . In: 250 years of the Grödel – Elsterwerda raft canal 1748–1998 . 1997, OCLC 174701250 , pp. 91-92 .
  5. ↑ a b The Tiefenauer Schlosskapelle on the homepage of the church district Meißen-Großenhain, accessed on September 15, 2017.
  6. ↑ Luise Grundmann, Dietrich Hanspach: Der Schraden. A regional study in the Elsterwerda, Lauchhammer, Hirschfeld and Ortrand area . Ed .: Institute for Regional Geography Leipzig and the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig (=  Landscapes in Germany . Volume 63 ). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-412-10900-2 , p. 187–190 ( preview in Google Book Search).
  7. ↑ Eric Weser: Investor wants to open holiday resort in 2019. In: Saxon newspaper . August 10, 2016
  8. ↑ Eric Weser: This is a milestone for the resort. In: Saxon newspaper. 13th September 2017
  9. ^ Monument Preservation in Saxony, Yearbook 2019, Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2020, pp. 35, 38–39
  10. ↑ Yearbook Monument Preservation 2019, Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2020, p. 48
  11. ↑ The Tiefenau Baroque Garden at www.heideboegn.eu , accessed on November 12, 2017
  12. ↑ a b c Georg Dehio: Handbook of the German art monuments - Saxony. I .: Dresden district . Arranged by Barbara Bechter, Wiebke Fastenrath et al. 2nd edition. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 1996, ISBN 3-422-03043-3 , p. 529 .
  13. ↑ a b The Tiefenauer Silbermann organ on the homepage of the municipality of Wülknitz, accessed on September 15, 2017.
  14. ↑ Data sheet of the Tiefenauer Silbermann organ on the homepage of the church district Meißen-Großenhain, accessed on September 15, 2017 (PDF; 292 kB).
  15. ↑ The Hildegard Seyffardt Foundation on the homepage of the German Foundation for Monument Protection , accessed on September 14, 2017.
  16. ↑ The Tiefenauer Silbermann organ on the homepage of the Gottfried Silbermann Society, accessed on September 15, 2017.

Coordinates: 51 ° 23 '28.1 "  N , 13 ° 23' 54"  E