Werdorf Castle

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Coordinates: 50 ° 35 ′ 58 ″  N , 8 ° 25 ′ 4 ″  E

Werdorfer Castle

The Werdorf Castle (also Werdorfer castle called) is a baroque castle in Werdorf , a district of Asslar in central Hesse Lahn-Dill-Kreis . It was built between 1686 and 1690, is a cultural monument for historical, artistic, urban and scientific reasons and has been used as a local history museum and for weddings since 1981 .

history

A previous building, a permanent house first mentioned in a document in 1344 and presumably surrounded by moats , was probably not far west of today's castle, but its exact location is not known. This small castle was built by Count Philipp von Solms-Königsberg († 1364) before 1344, probably to secure his property and as a customs office . A document from 1349 mentions that it was destroyed in the meantime. In 1355 Count Philipp transferred the property to his second wife, Elisabeth von Solms-Braunfels, as Wittum . In 1367 this building was mentioned for the last time as the "castle". It is not known when it was abandoned.

The Solmser Hofgut in Werdorf was then owned as a Solmser fief by the local noble family von Werdorf, which died out in the 17th century with Philipp von Werdorf in the male line , with which the estate fell to Count Wilhelm II von Solms-Greifenstein (1609–1676). This determined it to the Wittum of his second wife, the Countess Ernestine Sophie von Solms-Greifenstein, geb. von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (1618–1701). Wilhelm II had married her after the death of his first wife, Johannette Sibylle zu Solms-Hohensolms (1623–1651). The count's widow had today's castle built there between 1686 and 1690. The result was a system closed off by a wall facing the street with two mirror-inverted buildings with almost the same floor plans, the castle and the coach house . The most striking features of the complex are the two corner towers on the north side of the castle and the two corner tower stumps on the south side of the coach house. Michael Reis and Jacob Heylandt are verifiable as builders.

Ernestine Sophie moved into the castle with her two youngest and unmarried daughters, Eleonore Sabine (1655–1742) and Anna Johanna (1659–1727). After the Countess's death in 1701, her two daughters set up a Fideikommiss over the castle and the estate and determined that the castle and estate should be reserved for unmarried daughters of the Solms-Braunfels family for lifelong usufruct, but in the absence of such women the ruling count should serve for benefit. However, it was never used in this sense, but after the death of Eleonore Sabine in 1742 it was repeatedly used as a summer residence and as a hunting lodge for the Solmser. Even the members ("Cameralen") of the Reich Chamber Court in Wetzlar used it for their land games , at least while Friedrich Ernst zu Solms-Laubach (1671–1723) was Protestant President of the Reich Chamber Court.

From 1895 the castle was then used by changing educational institutions, initially by an "educational institution for kindergarten teachers " and a secondary school for girls of the Evangelical Diakonie Association founded in 1894 , moved here from the Klunderburg in Emden ; Both were moved to Kassel as early as 1896 . From 1899 the "Anna Eleonoren-Heim" of the German Aristocratic Association was housed in the castle, a boarding school for the "training of daughters of the German aristocracy for practical life". A basket weaving school and a box for the Good Templars were also temporarily located on the property. After the boarding school for girls was closed in 1912, an educational institution for boys followed from 1913 to 1931.

From 1933 to 1937 the painter and art historian Paul Stolz (1877–1952) had his studio in the castle. As early as 1932, parts of the beautiful castle park , once 9,300 m² in size, were sold as building land , and in 1938 the 19 rooms in the castle were turned into nine small apartments. In 1941 the municipality of Werdorf bought the castle. After the Second World War , the castle initially served as refugee accommodation , and social housing was later set up in it. With the Hessian territorial reform , the castle came into the possession of the municipality of Asslar on January 1, 1977, which received city ​​rights in November 1978 . The "Association for Local History 1980 Werdorf", founded in 1980, achieved in negotiations with the city that apartments in the castle that became vacant were no longer rented. These rooms were renovated from 1981 and set up as museum rooms by the association in 1982 .

After a fundamental renovation and redesign in the years 1990 to 1992, during which the original interior layout of the castle was restored as far as possible, the entire castle area with its outbuildings and the agricultural shed became the official "local history museum of the city of Asslar in the castle of Werdorf". The museum is looked after by the Association for Local History 1980 Werdorf and comprises approx. 900 m² of exhibition space. In addition, the so-called “Prince's Room” was made into a branch of the registry office in Asslar, where weddings have been taking place ever since.

The attachment

The castle (Bachstrasse No. 48) is a three-storey, five-axis building over three barrel-vaulted cellars, with a rectangular floor plan about 22 m long and 12 m wide and covered with a hipped roof . The north facade is structured by a gabled central projectile (a former latrine building ) and two corner towers crowned by hoods . Both towers each have three narrow windows on each of their three floors, loopholes between the windows and three windows in the attic of their hoods. The south side with the outside stairs leading up to the entrance portal was changed in 1914 by a two-storey, arbor-like porch with pilasters and a gable roof . The two side fronts are biaxial, and in the attic there is a dormer in the middle above the south facade and both side fronts. The rectangular lattice windows originally had triangular roofs.

The one-story remise building opposite the castle (Bachstrasse No. 44-46) has - in mirror image - practically the same floor plan as the castle. At the corners of the south side there are two two-story tower stumps with flat conical roofs that do not protrude over the hipped roof of the building.

From the original park in the east of the property, today only about 3600 m² in size, apart from a few individual trees and the open spaces themselves, no noteworthy remains have been preserved.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Werdorf Castle, Aßlar community. Castles, palaces, mansions (as of March 13, 2017). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on October 25, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Friedrich Kilian Abicht: The district of Wetzlar, presented historically, statistically and topographically. First part. Wigand, Wetzlar 1836, p. 199
  3. ↑ Friedrich Kilian Abicht: The district of Wetzlar, presented historically, statistically and topographically. Second part. Wigand, Wetzlar 1836, p. 161
  4. ^ Rudolph Graf zu Solms-Laubach: History of the Count and Princely House of Solms. Adelmann, Frankfurt am Main 1865, p. 72
  5. ↑ Eckehard Zühlke, June 2015/2018: Remember, reflect and align yourself; For the 125th birthday of the Evangelical Froebel Seminar
  6. ^ The Anna Eleonorenheim of the German aristocratic cooperative in Werdorf Castle near Wetzlar. In: Deutsches Adelsblatt , year XVII, 1899, p. 394; Deutsches Adelsblatt , year XVII, Berlin 1899, p. 54; Deutsches Adelsblatt , Volume XVIII, Berlin 1900, pp. 741–742; Deutsches Adelsblatt , year XIX, Berlin 1901, pp. 21–22; Boarding school for the training of daughters of the German nobility for practical life , in: Deutsches Adelsblatt , year XXI, Berlin 1903, pp. 177–178
  7. ↑ Werdorfer Castle. In: website. City of Asslar, accessed May 2019 .
  8. ↑ It is highly doubtful that these towers and the two tower stumps at the Remise go back to the four corner towers of the presumed water-fortified castle from the 14th and 15th centuries.
  9. ^ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Werdorfer Schloss In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hesse

literature

  • Georg Dehio , edited by Folkhard Cremer, Tobias Michael Wolf and others: Handbook of German Art Monuments, Hesse 1, Gießen and Kassel administrative districts . Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich, 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03092-3 . P. 939f.
  • State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.): Cultural monuments in Hessen; Volume 2: Lahn-Dill district. 2003, ISBN 3-8062-1652-5 . P. 93ff.
  • Rudolf Knappe: The most beautiful palaces and castles in North and East Hesse. Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen, 1996, ISBN 3-86134-237-5 . P. 295.

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