Werneck Castle

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Palace complex with English garden and a new glass operating theater (bottom left)
Castle with park and garden pond
Courtyard with palace chapel
Park side of the castle

The Werneck Castle is a Baroque castle building in the Lower Franconian market Werneck in the district of Schweinfurt with an English garden and is a listed building.

history

At the site of today's castle there was originally a castle complex, which was first mentioned in a document in 1202 and at that time was owned by the von Ravensburg family . The castle complex was devastated in the German Peasants' War in 1525 and taken and burned down by Margrave Albrecht Alkibiades in 1553. In 1601 it was rebuilt by the Würzburg prince-bishop Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn (1545-1617). In 1723 the facility burned down again and was poorly repaired in 1724. On behalf of Prince-Bishop Friedrich Karl von Schönborn , today's palace complex was built by Balthasar Neumann as a summer residence between 1733 and 1745 . It is considered his most mature profane work. A large palace park is attached to it, originally a baroque park that was later converted into an English garden.

Starting in 1853, the palace was converted into a sanatorium and nursing home for the mentally ill according to plans by the Royal Government and District Medical Councilor Karl Friedrich Schmidt and the Royal Building Inspector Bernhard Mack. On October 1, 1855, the sanatorium and nursing home in Werneck began work under its first director, Bernhard von Gudden (who later became the expert on King Ludwig II, who drowned with him in Lake Starnberg ). Werneck is thus the seat of one of the oldest psychiatric clinics in Germany. In 1940 the around 800 patients of the sanatorium and nursing home were murdered as part of the so-called Action T4 on the orders of Otto Hellmuth .

Today the psychiatric clinic (sponsor: District of Lower Franconia ) is housed in a modern new building and supplies 290 beds and 59 beds for forensics in eastern Lower Franconia (city and district of Schweinfurt as well as the districts of Hassberge, Rhön-Grabfeld, Bad Kissingen and Kitzingen 500,000 inhabitants). The orthopedic clinic of the Lower Franconia district is still housed in the castle. With 153 beds, it is one of the largest specialist orthopedic clinics in Germany. The two clinics and the psychiatric and geriatric psychiatric nursing homes in the castle complex are the largest employers in the Werneck market.

tourism

The castle can be viewed from the outside. Only the former castle church and a café are accessible. In the castle grounds, the baroque castle garden and the English park with a pond can be visited.

literature

  • Georg Dehio , Tilmann Breuer: Handbook of German art monuments . Bavaria I: Franconia - The administrative districts of Upper Franconia, Middle Franconia and Lower Franconia. 2nd, revised and supplemented edition. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-422-03051-4 , pp. 1106–1108.
  • Verena Friedrich: Castles and palaces in Franconia. 2nd Edition. Elmar Hahn Verlag, Veitshöchheim 2016, ISBN 978-3-928645-17-1 , p. 177.
  • Carmen Hertz: Balthasar Neumann's Castle in Werneck. For the Prince-Bishop Friedrich Carl von Schönborn. (= Inaugural dissertation written and submitted to the high philosophical faculty of the Julius Maximilians University in Würzburg on December 5, 1917). Würzburg 1917 ( digitized in the Internet Archive ).

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation: Architectural Monuments in Werneck , accessed on February 17, 2014.
  2. ↑ Karl Treutwein: Werneck with its 13 districts. Werneck, 1982.
  3. ↑ Court and State Manual of the Kingdom of Bavaria . 1856, page 303. ( digitized version )
  4. ^ Mathias Lutz: The history of psychiatry since 1850: The institution in Werneck. Munich, 2014. ISBN 978-3656574330 .
  5. ↑ Thomas Schmelter: National Socialist Psychiatry in Bavaria. The evacuation of the sanatoriums and nursing homes. Baden-Baden, 2000. ISBN 978-3935176033 .
  6. ^ Hospital for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine Schloss Werneck , accessed on February 17, 2014.
  7. ^ Orthopedic Hospital Schloss Werneck , accessed on February 17, 2014.

Coordinates: 49 ° 58 ′ 50 ″  N , 10 ° 6 ′ 4 ″  E