Ulrichskirchen Castle
The Castle Ulrichskirchen is a west to open three wings from the 16/17. Century in an elevated position on the south-eastern outskirts of Ulrichskirchen ( Mistelbach district ) in Lower Austria . The castle has been a listed building since 2019 ( list entry ).
history
A permanent house on the site of today's church came to the Heiligenkreuz Abbey , which had this small medieval fortification demolished. Heinrich von Ulrichskirchen built a new castle in a meadow in 1195, which Hermann von Wolkersdorf received as a fief from the provost of St. Pölten in 1256 . After Hermann's descendants had died out around 1300, the defense structure came into the possession of Hermann von Kronberg (Hermannus de Chranperch), who had it demolished around 1320 and built a significantly larger fort in its place , the model of which is the castle in Wiener Neustadt , the Pottendorf Palace or the Hofburg in Vienna could have been. After completion of the castle, Hermann von Kronberg moved his residence from Kronberg to Ulrichskirchen.
In 1328 King John of Bohemia invaded the Weinviertel and also conquered Ulrich's churches. After the Lords of Kronberg should have died out around 1340, Duke Albrecht III enfeoffed. in 1371 the brothers Wolfgang and Hans Streun zu Schwarzenau with the rule.
Ulrichskirchen came to the Nikolsburg line of the Liechtensteiners in the 1880s and fell in 1399 through marriage to Reinprecht II von Walsee , followed by the Dachsberg, the Pottendorfer and the Starhemberg .
In 1460 Ulrichskirchen was during the fighting between Emperor Friedrich III. and his brother Duke Albrecht VI. attacked by the troops of the Bohemian King George of Podebrady , but they did not manage to take the well-fortified complex.
As a marriage property, the rule fell to Christoph von Zelking in 1544 , who presumably had it converted into a Renaissance moated castle . It is possible that three of the four corner towers were demolished in the course of this expansion, because they can no longer be seen on the Vischer engraving from 1672, but the demolition could not have occurred until 1626.
The ownership changed several times in the 17th century. Moravian troops invaded Lower Austria in 1620 and burned Ulrichskirchen as well. Hans von Kollonitz inherited the rule in 1624 and immediately began to rebuild. He enlarged the castle, surrounded it with massive earth fortifications and had the western wall largely torn down.
A new inheritance brought Ulrichskirchen in 1645 into the possession of Seyfried Christoph von Breuner . Philip Ignaz von Breuner transformed the renaissance castle into an 18th century country house between 1713 and 1723.
In 1734 the lordship came into the possession of Margarethe Countess Dietrichstein . In a major fire in the living rooms in 1782, the baroque furnishings were destroyed, the exterior damaged and later restored in simpler forms. In 1786 Walpurga inherited the rule, Countess Salm.
The castle served as a field hospital during the coalition wars in 1797, 1805 and 1809 and because French soldiers were also cared for here, the occupiers did not suffer any major damage.
The Bartenstein family bought the manor in 1810 and restored the castle. Sophie von Bartenstein had the palace chapel renewed in 1854 and donated the neo-baroque altar. Around 1860, rule over Ludovica von Bartenstein came to the Gudenus family . Leopold von Gudenus , who was appointed Land Marshal of Lower Austria in 1893, documented this event by installing a corresponding ceiling stucco in a room in the south-east tower. His coat of arms and the count's crown, which are attached to the neo-baroque ornamental gable above a portal of the south wing, point to his elevation to the count's status in 1907.
In the first half of the 20th century, the palace was owned by Theresia Countess Hardegg and in 1952 it came to the Count Bulgarini d 'Elci by marriage, who renovated the building in 1971 and had the façades re-plastered.
Building description
Outside
The castle, which is still partially surrounded by a green area, is located on a small hill southeast of the town center. In front of the earth wall there were deep trenches on both sides, the outer one of which was later partially filled in. The inner wall of the moat has been largely preserved and renewed. Three of the four small horseshoe-shaped roundels with which it was reinforced at the four corners are still preserved. Before 1820, part of the western wall and the south-western roundabout were demolished.
The castle can be reached from the west via a heaped dam. The large rectangular court of honor is bordered by the three wings of the three-storey castle, which are covered with hipped gable roofs. The former square corner towers in the northwest and southwest are the oldest components, with the original fixed house forming the core of the southwest corner tower.
Dendrochronological studies of remains of the shuttering boards in the cellar vault suggest that the 18 x 18 m Gothic residential tower was built around 1320. The particularly thick walls of the tower are around 3.6 m thick on the base and decrease significantly with increasing height. The wall edges with humpback blocks occupied, which are no longer visible through the plaster. The residential tower is shown on the Vischer engraving as four-storey, the towers are only clearly visible today in the floor plan because they are built into the castle. They were connected to one another by a circular wall more than a meter thick, which is still present as an outer wall and which, due to its strength, suggests a great age. The area is likely to have been built in the 13th century.
The relatively large castle has only simple facade decorations. Only the former residential tower was spared from the new baroque facade; only the baroque statue of St. Benno was placed in front of it on the courtyard side .
The building fronts are divided horizontally by simple cornices and the building edges are emphasized by a plastered corner cuboid. The windows with sandstone walls have just roofs . The castle had a portal in the east and west, each secured by drawbridges. A pillar-supported arbor protrudes from the eastern garden front above the gate passage. These arbors and the staircase were added in the 19th century.
In front of the southern garden front of the palace, which is surrounded by a park, there are allegorical stone figures on plinths from the first half of the 18th century.
East wing
The clearly weaker courtyard wall indicates that the east wing dates from the 16th century. Previously there were probably no massive buildings here, just simple wooden stables or a boundary wall. On the ground floor of the wing of the building, there are six open pillar arcades from the 17th century, which are closed off by groin vaults . Under this arcade is a stone sculpture of a knight with a falcon.
In the Renaissance period , the courtyard fronts were expanded into a square courtyard , which was not restored after the west wing was destroyed by a fire in 1620. Since then, the palace has had a court of honor-like appearance.
North wing
At the west end of the north wing is the square palace chapel, which was built around 1626 after a sacred building in the former north-west tower can be proven in Gothic times. The chapel, consecrated to Saints Philip and Jacob, was redesigned in Baroque style by Philipp Ignaz von Breuner after 1713 and has served as a public house of worship since 1726. In the 19th century its furnishings were renewed and in the 20th century baroque sculptures of St. Maria Immaculata and St. Florian were erected on both sides of the stone-walled portal .
The mansion gallery of the two-storey chapel is accessed via an adjacent portal and a stone spiral staircase. The three rectangular portals of the north wing date from the early 18th century.
South wing
The delicate Tuscan columns of the two-storey arcades of the south wing, which were later walled up, were uncovered during a restoration and re-walled in between the windows of the two upper floors.
In the eastern part of the south wing is a rectangular portal dated 1626 that leads to the cellar. It has a triangular blind gable and a double coat of arms in the gable field.
Inside
The rooms on the first floor have barrel vaults .
The castle chapel is a one-bay baroque room with square vaults from the 18th century and furnishings from the same period. The high altar is composed of different parts. The altar table has a multilevel gilded structure decorated with bands . The oil painting of the Man of Sorrows, held by carved angel figures, is above a Madonna picture in a delicate rococo frame . A baroque reliquary , baroque carved figures of Saints Jude Thaddäus and Johannes Nepomuk , a baroque votive image of Saint Notburga and a wrought iron grille from the first half of the 18th century complete the furnishings.
literature
- Evelyn Benesch, Bernd Euler-Rolle a . a. (Arr.): Dehio manual . The art monuments of Austria. Lower Austria north of the Danube. Anton Schroll & Co, Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-7031-0652-2 , p. 1191.
Web links
- Ulrichskirchen Castle at burgen-austria.com , accessed on February 23, 2016
- Chronicle of Ulrichskirchen on the website of the municipality , accessed on February 23, 2016
- Ulrichskirchen Castle on fortifications in Austria , accessed on February 23, 2016
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chronicle on the church's website , accessed May 19, 2016
- ↑ a b Chronicle of Ulrichskirchen on www.burgen-austria , accessed on May 19, 2016
- ↑ Dehio p. 1191
Coordinates: 48 ° 23 ′ 57.6 " N , 16 ° 29 ′ 43.4" E