Vechelde Castle

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Vechelde Castle, copper engraving by Anton August Beck , around 1760

The Castle Vechelde was a hunting and pleasure palace in the former Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in Vechelde in Braunschweig . The place is today the administrative seat of the municipality Vechelde in the district of Peine in Lower Saxony . The castle has not been preserved; the formerly baroque palace garden is freely accessible to the public.

history

Around 1340 the court of Duke Otto der Milde (1292-1344) was mentioned in Vechelde. At that time, however, the place only consisted of an estate. At the end of the 14th century, a moated castle was built on the grounds of the manor. The castle was supposed to secure the important trade route between the cities of Braunschweig and Hildesheim , today's Bundesstraße 1 , and the Braunschweig dukes as a counter-castle to the western border castle Steinbrück of the Hildesheim monastery .

As early as 1392, the dukes of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel pledged the castle and estate to the city of Braunschweig for an amount of 900 silver marks . When the city gained urban independence in the following decades, the city council expanded the moated castle as an upstream city ​​fortification . As early as 1420, the garrison was charged with firearms equipped and in 1445 a new dungeon built. In 1492 troops of Duke Heinrich the Elder (1463-1514), in a feud against the city of Braunschweig, were able to take the castle after a brief siege, but the duke had to surrender it to the city again after a settlement concluded on June 4, 1494 .

The castle remained under the administration of the city of Braunschweig until 1671, when its status as an independent city was ended by the reconquest of the princes of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel.

Duke Rudolf August, around 1650 Raisin Elisabeth Menthe, 1686
Duke Rudolf August, around 1650
Raisin Elisabeth Menthe, 1686
Prince Christian August von Anhalt-Zerbst, 1725 Princess Johanna Elisabeth, around 1752
Prince Christian August von Anhalt-Zerbst, 1725
Princess Johanna Elisabeth, around 1752

Princely country residence

Duke Rudolf August (1627–1704) had the moated castle converted into a baroque country palace and the palace gardens laid out in 1695, probably by the master builder Hermann Korb (1656–1735) .

Prince Ferdinand of Braunschweig, 1721

In 1681 the duke married the just eighteen-year-old raisin Elisabeth Menthe (1663–1701), daughter of a barber and surgeon, in a morganatic marriage . The ducal wife, also known as “Madame Rudolfine”, chose the castle as her summer residence and gave her name to the Madamenweg . She and the Duke used this street, which still leads from the Braunschweig inner city area to the Raffurm , to get from the former Brunswick town courtyard of the Riddagshausen monastery, in which they lived, to the country palace in Vechelde.

Duchess Elisabeth Sophie Marie, 1747

From 1712 the palace served as the residence of Princess Elisabeth Sophie Marie (1683–1767), the third wife of Duke August Wilhelm (1662–1731). For this purpose, the princess had the castle expanded and, probably again by Hermann Korb, another wing of the building and a castle chapel built. There, Prince Christian August von Anhalt-Zerbst and Johanna Elisabeth von Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf married on November 8, 1727 . From this marriage, Sophie Auguste Frederike von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg emerged on May 2, 1729, who later became Tsarina Katharina the Great . For the farm workers of the castle estate, the duchess had a day laborer settlement built about one kilometer north of the castle complex , from which today's Vechelder district of Vechelade developed.

In 1766 Prince Ferdinand von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1721–1792), the non-ruling Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, made the castle his residence. Ferdinand was previously Field Marshal General in Prussian and electoral Hanover or British services and military leader of the Seven Years' War . Ferdinand had the garden expanded and transformed into an English landscape garden. He had fish ponds created and the plantings supplemented with trees and shrubs from Italy and North America. Friedrich II, King of Prussia , a brother-in-law of Ferdinand, visited the Duke here at least four times between 1772 and 1782.

The duke died in Vechelde and was buried in a crypt in the palace garden in 1792. Instead of his princely title , he only had the title “Landsherr von Vechelde” engraved on his coffin .

Johann Peter Hundiker

The philanthropist

In 1804, Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand (1735-1806) left the building to the educator Johann Peter Hundiker (1751-1836), who set up the Philanthropin , a school based on the model of Johann Bernhard Basedow's Philanthropinums Dessau .

Conceived as an educational institute for “higher classes” and always described as such by Hundiker, the teaching content was aimed specifically at students of the bourgeoisie and students of foreign origin. The institute was also visited by students from Russia, England, Sweden and other countries.

After the Duke's death on November 10, 1806, the kingdom of Westphalia created by the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte followed . When the Westphalian government intended to sell Vechelde Castle, and Hundiker saw the existence of his school at risk as a result, he bought the building with his own funds.

After the dissolution of the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1813 and the constitution of the Duchy of Braunschweig , the sale was contested under the government of Braunschweig Duke Charles II (1804–1873) and the return of the castle demanded. Hundiker accepted a court settlement, handed over Vechelde Castle to the Duchy of Braunschweig in return for an annual pension, and in October 1819, after fifteen years of existence, dissolved the educational institution in Vechelde.

Court and administrative seat

On October 1, 1825, the administrative seat of the Vechelde District was established in the Vechelde Castle, an administrative and judicial district of the Duchy of Braunschweig and the later district of Braunschweig . The office covered an area with 34 villages and around 12,000 inhabitants.

In 1880 the castle was demolished and replaced with a neoclassical building. Until January 1, 1972, it served as the seat of the Vechelde District Court. Today it is used as a community center. The park was preserved.

Attractions

The only structural evidence of the former castle that is still visible today is the castle gate, which stands as a solitary structure in front of the main building of the Vechelder Civic Center. Duke Ferdinand had it built in 1770 and provided it with his initial "F".

Local attractions of the former palace gardens include a group of figures " Hades at the rape of Persephone " of Baroque time and a sundial in classical style . In the palace gardens there is a monument in memory of Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem , theologian and co-founder of the Collegium Carolinum founded in 1745, the forerunner of today's Technical University of Braunschweig . The monument was donated by Duke Ferdinand. In 1979 bronze busts of the duke and the pedagogue Johann Peter Hundiker were erected.

  • Sights of the castle park

  • Castle gate

  • Rape of Persephone

  • Monument in memory of Abbot Jerusalem

  • Bust of Johann Peter Hundiker,
    Ben Siebenrock 1979

literature

  • Wilhelm Bornstedt (Ed.): Chronicle of Vechelde 973 to 1973. 2 volumes, Verlag Dr. W. Bornstedt, Stöckheim near Braunschweig 1973.
  • Wilhelm Bornstedt: From Braunschweig via the old "Landwehr" at the Repturm to the former Vechelde moated castle (later Baroque pleasure castle, today Vechelde District Court) to Sievershausen, the old battleground on July 9, 1553. Verlag Landkreis Braunschweig, Braunschweig 1965.
  • August Lambrecht: The Duchy of Braunschweig. A. Stichtenoth Publishing House, Wolfenbüttel 1863.
  • Hermann Dürre : History of the City of Braunschweig in the Middle Ages . Grüneberg, Braunschweig 1861 ( digitized version ).
  • Karl HG Venturini : The Duchy of Braunschweig in its past and present condition. Verlag CG Fleckeisen, Helmstedt 1847.
  • Georg Hassel : Geographical-statistical description of the principalities of Wolfenbüttel and Blankenburg . Friedrich Bernhard Culemann, Braunschweig 1802 ( digitized ).

Web links

Commons : Schloss Vechelde  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Friedrich Sudendorf : Document book on the history of the dukes of Braunschweig and Lüneburg . Carl Rümpler Verlag, Hannover 1859, p. XL
  2. ^ Wilhelm Bornstedt: The Hildesheim border castle Steinbrück - counter castle to Vechelde . Verlag Landkreis Braunschweig, Braunschweig 1970
  3. ^ Historical association for Lower Saxony (ed.): The fortification of the city of Braunschweig . In: Archive of the Historical Association for Lower Saxony , Verlag Hahnsche Hofbuchhandlung, Hanover 1850, p. 14
  4. ^ CW Sack (Ed.): Antiquities of the City and the State of Braunschweig , Verlag Friedrich Otto, Braunschweig 1861, p. XLII
  5. ↑ Uwe Flake: Westward through fields, forests and meadows . In: Braunschweiger Zeitung, July 3, 2003
  6. ↑ a b Friedrich Thöne: Wolfenbüttel. Spirit and splendor of an old residence . Bruckmann, Munich 1963, p. 140
  7. ^ Karl Georg Wilhelm Schiller : Braunschweig's beautiful literature in the years 1745 to 1800, the age of the dawn of German beautiful literature . Holle, Wolfenbüttel 1845, p. 249 ( digitized version ).
  8. ^ Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld : Theory of garden art . Volume 5, Verlag M. G. Weidmanns Erben und Reich, Leipzig 1782, p. 316
  9. ↑ Lees Knowles: Minden and the Seven Years War . Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company, London 1914, p. 56
  10. ↑ Royal Society of Sciences (ed.): Göttingische learned advertisements . Volume 3, Göttingen 1806.
  11. ↑ August Lambrecht: The Duchy of Braunschweig . A. Stichtenoth Publishing House, Wolfenbüttel 1863.
  12. ↑ a b On the history of the Vechelde court on the website of the Braunschweig District Court , accessed on May 16, 2010

Coordinates: 52 ° 15 ′ 40.3 "  N , 10 ° 22 ′ 43.5"  E