Windhausen Castle

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Windhausen Castle (northwest side)

The Windhausen Castle is the central building of the manor Windhausen in Heiligenrode in northern Hesse Kassel district . It is located in the Germanic Garden of Windhausen Castle , the only romantic-sentimental Germanic landscape garden in Germany .

The castle was built from 1769 onwards by converting a mansion built around 1750 as a half-timbered house . Like the entire Windhausen estate, it is a cultural monument (KD) due to its cultural-historical and artistic importance and protected under the Hessian Monument Protection Act.

Geographical location

The castle stands east of Heiligenrode, a district of Niestetal, on the southern flank of the Mühlenberg ( 351.8  m above sea  level ), a western branch of the Kaufunger Forest , within the framework of the estate at around 266  m above sea level. The district road  5 leads a little west past the castle, which branches off in the north from the K 4 coming from Heiligenrode and leading in the direction of Nieste and runs south to Niederkaufungen . To the south the landscape slopes down to the Diebachsgraben , a north-eastern tributary of the Losse .

history

Gutsteich and Windhausen Castle

Already in the Middle Ages , a good Windhausen, which was mainly owned by the Hessian landgraves , was mentioned: In 1241 it was first mentioned in documents as a village in Hessengau , then called Windehusen .

The estate had been in the possession of the Lords of Berlepsch since at least 1340 , presumably as a Landgrave-Hessian fief or in part ownership. In 1368, now called Wynthusen , the Hessian Landgrave Heinrich II. Revoked his part in Windhausen to his grandson, Duke Otto I of the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg . Parakeet von Berlepsch ceded the estate (or its share) to Hesse in 1461. In 1539 the landgrave's court was owned by a Johann Homberg.

In 1747 a Huxhold zu Cassel took over the property, ran a Meierhof there and had a two-story half-timbered house built as a mansion around 1750. In 1764 the Hessian Minister of State Martin Ernst von Schlieffen (1732–1825) acquired the entire estate and from 1769 had the existing manor house converted into a palace in the classical style. He lived in the palace - next to his official residence in Kassel - until he switched to the Prussian civil service in 1789 and again from 1792 in retirement until his death in 1825.

The von Schlieffen family then received the estate as a majorate foundation until 1921. After several changes of ownership, it became the Hessian state domain in 1963 . Since 2010 Gut Windhausen has been privately owned again and is used as a residential building.

Building history

The original two-story half-timbered mansion already had a hipped roof and a large dwelling at the front and rear of the building. Instead of tearing down the 14-year-old building and having a new one built, von Schlieffen preferred an extensive renovation, as he wanted to continue to live on the estate during the entire construction phase. He chose the Kassel court architect Simon Louis du Ry , who also designed the city residence on Kassel Königsplatz with von Schlieffen's official apartment, as the architect.

The renovation measures included, among other things, the complete basement of the house with a vaulted cellar , the walling of the half-timbered outer walls with a shell made of masonry bricks and the addition of protruding central risalites on the two short sides of the building. The outer facade was given, as classicist style elements, circumferential cornices , pilasters on the building edges and plaster niches on the upper floor. A new, centrally arranged entrance area received a wooden entrance door with a skylight, also in the classicistic style. Inside the building, walls were moved in order to achieve a floor plan that was adapted to the needs of the new owner. In addition, the rooms have been embellished and partly decorated with paintings by the Kassel artist Johann Heinrich Tischbein .

From around 1781 the Germanic Garden of Windhausen Castle was built around the castle according to von Schlieffen's ideas and wishes . There he had a mausoleum built 51 years before his death in 1774 , in which he also found his final resting place.

In the late 19th century, brick barns were built to the north and south of the castle, and settlement houses and an administrator's house in the 1920s.

Attractions

  • Oak at the monkey pond with a chest height of 7.08 m (2014).

literature

  • Heinrich Reimer (editor): Historical local dictionary for Kurhessen . 1st edition: Marburg 1926, unaltered reprint: Verlag Elwert, Marburg 1974, ISBN 3-7708-0509-7 , p. 521
  • Kerstin Möller: Manor and landscape park of the State Minister of Schlieffen on Gut Windhausen . Master's thesis at the University of Frankfurt am Main, 1992

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Gut Windhausen with information about the landscape garden, on the website of the Eco path Archeology Sensenstein , on eco-pfade.de
  2. ^ "Windhausen (homestead group), District of Kassel". Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  3. ^ Georg Landau : Description of the Hessengau , Halle 1866, 2nd edition, p. 81; in: General Association of German History and Antiquity Associations: Description of the German Gaue , Kassel 1850
  4. ↑ oak on monkey pond at Gut Windhausen directory monumental oaks . Retrieved October 28, 2016

Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 19.4 ″  N , 9 ° 36 ′ 46.9 ″  E