Wilhelmsthal Castle (Gerstungen)

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Classicist west facade of the palace complex

The Wilhelmsthal Castle is a castle - and gardens in the district Eckardtshausen the community Gerstungen in Wartburgkreis in Thuringia . The former residence and hunting lodge is located about seven kilometers south of Eisenach in the Elte valley . The building complex was built in numerous construction phases from 1709 to 1913. Wilhelmsthal Palace is considered to be the last preserved secular premiere location of the composer Georg Philipp Telemann .

history

The original place was first mentioned in 1349 as "Wintershusen". The forests and meadows rich in game along the Elte were popular hunting grounds for the high nobility . Starting from the Eisenach castles and the Marksuhl hunting lodge , comfortable hunting lodgings and stables were built. They were created on the Rennsteig ( Hohe Sonne hunting lodge ) and on the Glöckner near Ruhla. The Prunftau hunting lodge was built in Eltetal , where Duke Johann Georg I died on September 19, 1686 during the hunting season.

View of the baroque complex around 1710

Since the constant business and noise of the village population of Wintershusen frightened the game, the few forest farmers who had returned after the Thirty Years' War had to relocate to neighboring villages, only the inn and the forestry department were tolerated. Since 1699 the place has been named Wilhelmsthal in honor of Duke Johann Wilhelm . Between 1709 and 1715, the builder Johann Mützel converted the complex into a summer residence with animal enclosures and terraced gardens. From 1698 to 1719, 16 multi-storey pavilions in the Baroque style were built along a path axis and an oval festival and concert hall, now known as the Telemann Hall , opened in 1714 . The concert hall is one of the oldest free-standing concert halls in Europe. The water of the Elte was dammed into a lake and a direct connection from Eisenach via the Hohe Sonne was created for better accessibility , which is still followed today by the federal highway 19 .

The baroque corps de logis of the palace complex

The buildings, which are kept in a simple baroque style , were fundamentally redesigned in the 1740s by his court architect Gottfried Heinrich Krohne on the orders of Duke Ernst August . Several of the pavilions had to give way to new buildings in the Rococo style, a stables was built at one end of the pathway and an orangery was built at the other . Around 1780 the Waldhaus was built in the Biedermeier style as a guest house.

The Prinzengang connects different sections of the complex

The landscape garden , which was laid out around 1800, was redesigned into a nature park from 1852 to 1855 according to the ideas of Duke Carl Alexander and Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau with the assistance of the garden designers Hermann Jäger and Eduard Petzold . Pückler's plans to extend the park across the Thuringian Forest to Eisenach were not implemented. The stables were also affected by the rest of the renovation work, which was expanded to include another wing and a coach house . The “Swiss House” and farm buildings also belonged to the ensemble. In 1912, Karl-August , the last Hereditary Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, was born in Castle . The classicist pavilion was expanded by the architect Littmann until 1913 and housed modern living spaces for the grand ducal family.

The facility was in the ducal possession until 1941 before it was sold to the Thuringian Ministry of Finance. The German Wehrmacht confiscated the site in 1942 and used it as a military hospital until 1945 .

After the end of the Second World War , the castle was used as a children's home until 1993 . During this time, the facility was redesigned according to its use, in particular through extensions and the construction of new buildings. The Telemann hall served as a dining room. In addition to the children's home, not far from the palace complex, the bungalow village opened in the summer vacation of 1964 as a holiday camp for the young pioneers Maxim Gorki . In the years after 1945, the castle was also given its differently colored (yellow, white) facade for the first time.

With the abandonment of use in 1993, the now vacant palace complex increasingly fell into disrepair. The area of ​​the holiday camp now houses a vocational training center, which was also a brief tenant of the castle. The lake served as a gondola pond for recreational purposes.

The stables during the renovation

Since 2001, the listed castle complex has been unsuccessfully advertised for sale by the State of Thuringia. In June 2009 the property was taken over by the Thuringian Palaces and Gardens Foundation , which initiated steps to secure and restore the monument. In 2011, a sub-area of ​​the landscape park between Corps de Logis and the Flower Island was thoroughly restored with funds from the economic stimulus package II . Despite the renovation efforts, parts of the palace, especially the historic stucco ceiling in the Telemann Hall , were in acute danger of collapsing.

In 2014 the central section of the Marstall with the clock tower was renovated and saved from collapse. In 2015, concrete measures to renovate the palace area were implemented. The park design progressed, an extinguishing water cistern was built, the dam of the Wilhelmsthaler See was renovated. In addition to the stables, additions from the GDR era were demolished and a parking lot created for visitors. The exterior of the New Palace with the Telemann Hall was renovated, it was given new windows with shutters and a white coat of paint in the southern part, based on the color scheme around 1910. The roof was also re-covered.

Famous guests

The interior of the Telemann hall

Numerous prominent guests stayed in the castle. Among them were the composer Franz Liszt and Tsar Alexander I. Maria Pavlovna spent the summer months here and organized literary afternoons.

Between 1716 and 1725 works by Georg Philipp Telemann were premiered in the concert hall of the palace . Wilhelmsthal Palace is considered to be the composer's last preserved secular premiere location.

Even Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a guest several times at Schloss Wilhelmsthal. According to an anecdote, while staying in Weimar in the 1770s, he knocked over stone figures that he disliked. His work The Elective Affinities was later created here . The Italianizing facades on the lake side are said to go back to him.

photos

  • The forest house built in 1780 as a guest house

  • The "Swiss House" built in 1802

  • View of the princess and prince's house

literature

  • Hans Müller: Thuringia. Landscape, culture and history in the “green heart” of Germany . 2nd updated edition. DuMont, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-7701-3848-1 , p. 85 .
  • Christian Knobloch: Too beautiful to fall silent. The Wilhelmsthal palace and park . 2nd, greatly expanded and revised edition. Resch, Meiningen 2008, ISBN 978-3-940295-01-9 , pp. 117 .

Web links

Commons : Schloss Wilhelmsthal (Marksuhl)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Restored sundial is in place. In: Thuringian General. May 10, 2012. (Eisenacher Allgemeine)
  2. ↑ a b Heiko Kleinschmidt: The New Palace in Wilhelmthal is all in white. In: Thuringian General . / Eisenacher General. December 9, 2015.
  3. ^ Wolfgang Hirsch: Splendor and Glory in Cultural Policy. In: Thüringische Landeszeitung. June 6, 2009.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Hirsch: An Arcadian place from brilliant times. In: Thüringische Landeszeitung. August 8, 2009.
  5. ↑ Renate Grumach (Ed.): Goethe. Encounters and conversations . tape IV . Walter de Gruyter, 1980, ISBN 3-11-008105-9 , p. 555 .
  6. ↑ Udo von Alvensleben (art historian) , Visits before the downfall, aristocratic residences between Altmark and Masuria , compiled from diary entries and edited by Harald von Koenigswald, Frankfurt / M.-Berlin 1968, p. 110

Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 7.6 ″  N , 10 ° 18 ′ 13.1 ″  E