Zinnitz Castle

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Classicist belvedere tower of Zinnitz Palace (Photo: 2008)
Philipp Ludwig Siegmund Bouton des Granges († 1801)
Pauline Countess Nostitz , b. des Granges (1801–1881)
Robert von Patow (1804-1890). ( Adolph Menzel : Study for the coronation picture of Wilhelm I, portrait pencil, watercolors and opaque colors, on gray-brown paper 29.4 × 22.3 cm, 1865)
Zinnitz Castle around 1869, Alexander Duncker collection
Maxim-Gorki-Theater (former Sing-Akademie zu Berlin)
Zinnitz Castle central projection north side (Photo: 2008)
Palais am Festungsgraben, Berlin (2009)
Zinnitz Castle, as it was in 1993
Zinnitz Castle (Photo: 2003)
Zinnitz Castle (Photo: 2013)

The Zinnitz Castle (today's appearance from 1860 to 1864) is a neoclassical building in Zinnitz , a district of the city Calau south of the Spree Forest . It is one of the architectural monuments in Calau and is used today, among other things, as an architecture office and residential building.

history

Legends and Origins

According to Heinrich Berghaus , Zinnitz is “one of those places in Lower Lusatia that are mentioned earliest in history, as early as the 11th century in the Chronico of Bishop Thietmar von Merseburg as one of the country's permanent castles”. The village with the manor "Ciani, Zizani or Sciciani" is said to have been the residence of the Polish Duke Bolesław I for a time and is also said to have been the starting point of a fruitless attack on the German army moving to Poland in 1014. However, more recent research seems to refute Berghaus' statements or to relativize them to the effect that today's Zinnitz is not supposed to have been the location of those events. Rather, archaeologically documented remains of a larger Slavic castle wall have been found 2 km away from Zinnitz not far from the former village of Presenchen (south of the Luckau district of Schlabendorf ), the dendrodata of which refer to the period in question

Around 1255 the family v. Appears with a Gebhard. Cynnitz in Lower Lusatia. This letter from Doberlugk Monastery is considered to be the earliest written record of the place. On August 3, 1301, Margrave Dietrich the Younger sold the Lausitz region to Archbishop Burchard of Magdeburg , including the “curia Zcinnitz” among the associated courts.

The Bocksdorf era

Then the manor comes into private ownership. The von Buckinsdorff, Buckenstorf de Czymricz or Bocksdorf , Buxdorf family owned it for over 300 years. Among them, Dietrich III earned . von Bocksdorf special mention: around 1425 he was enrolled at the University of Leipzig "to study law there". After a stay in Italy, he graduated in Perugia for Doctor of Laws, he rises 1439 in Leipzig for the professor on the head of the faculty of law, and it is for the summer semester 1439 to rector of the university chosen. At that time Dietrich von Bocksdorf was considered to be “one of the highest authorities of Saxon law”. One of his most prominent cases was the legal dispute between the Saxon Elector Friedrich II and Kunz von Kauffungen , which preceded the 1455 prince robbery in Altenburg . Bocksdorf, who advised the Leipzig lay judges, single-handedly ensured that the elector he represented was right. His high income made him a rich man, who in 1459 donated a scholarship for a family member suitable for study. The Bocksdorf family made little use of it and repeatedly refrained from letting relatives study under the favorable conditions that Dietrich had created. While Dietrich von Bocksdorf made it to the Bishop of Naumburg before his death in 1466 , the von Buxdorf family sank into insignificance in the following centuries. The decline of the von Bucksdorf family is documented by a judgment against Heinrich Apollo von Buxdorf in 1670 for a manslaughter.

Changing owners

In the following 100 years, the Zinnitz manor changed hands several times, sometimes in individual parts of the inheritance, of which the royal Prussian major Friedrich Gottlieb von Schladen should be mentioned as an example, who bought it in 1784 and only kept it until 1786 . In this short time, however, he is said to have built "a new, very modest mansion that stood until 1851 and was last used as a servants' house".

Upswing through the Granges

The former royal Prussian captain, then Colonel and eventually Major General Philipp Ludwig Siegmund Bouton des Granges , who since 1778 also became the first chief of the Feldjäger regiment set up under Friedrich II, bought Zinnitz and Berlinchen from him . He came from a family who came from Switzerland .

In 1795 he sold it on to his son Ludwig Philipp Karl des Granges . His daughter Pauline , who would later become Countess Nostitz- Rieneck, was born in 1801 and was married to the natural scientist Johann Wilhelm Helfer , with whom she undertook research trips through the Middle East along the Euphrates and to India . These travelogues have also been published by her. In her childhood memories she reports, among other things, that her father never had the castle heated before November 1st and about the encounters with French troops during the Napoleonic wars . So she went for a swim in the nearby castle pond in winter "to drive away the cold with the cold". During the des Granges era, a more stately new mansion was built - probably around 1818/19. His heirs sold it in 1837 to Sofie Henriette Isabella Countess zu Lynar , who sold it on in 1842.

Country seat of the Prussian finance minister

In 1842 the property finally passed to the royal Prussian secret finance councilor , later finance minister and chief president of the province of Brandenburg , Erasmus Robert Freiherr von Patow . He has extensive construction work carried out that transform the existing mansion into a late classicist palace complex with spacious parks and water areas. The art gardener Johann Gottlieb Handschick cleverly integrates the vault fragment of a previous building as a “rose hill” with a pavilion into the overall complex.

Patow survived his children and died in 1890. The estate fell to his nephew Egon von Patow , who finally sold it to Ilse Bergbau AG in 1917/18 . From 1929 the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft was named as the owner.

The times of National Socialism and the GDR

On June 27, 1933 the " Reichsautobahn ", a subsidiary of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft, is founded. Construction of the Berlin-Dresden autobahn begins and touches the castle in just 3 km as the crow flies. From 1939 to 1944 it served as a National Socialist labor maiden camp and after the turmoil at the end of the war, the castle was owned by the municipality of Zinnitz from 1945. In the GDR era it was first used as a school ("Maxim-Gorki-OS"), then as a council for the community , the headquarters and canteen of an agricultural production cooperative and for residential purposes. In individual renovation phases, damage to the façade is repaired, but all historical windows are also replaced and the wooden main staircase is replaced by a precast concrete staircase. the installations of a large kitchen lead to further substance damage. The rose hill is leveled while the school is in use. The surrounding area is severely impaired by the nearby lignite opencast mines until 1990; the water table drops dramatically, trees in the remainder of the park are dying.

Recent development

In 1993, the architect Robert Viktor Scholz bought the castle, which was badly damaged at the time, from the community and began carefully repairing and reconstructing the heavily damaged facades, interiors and parks in several stages. The aim of his creative endeavors is to restore the appearance of Patov's time.

building

Previous buildings no longer preserved

Unfortunately, no pictorial representations are known of the buildings before 1860. Except for a few measuring table sheets (which only existed after the Buxdorf dynasty ), which show the entire location of Zinnitz at different time intervals, there is no more precise information about the location and size of buildings in the castle area. The first at least written descriptions appear at the time of Gottlob von Schladen, about whose new building a “modest mansion” Berghaus says “that the front was adorned by a row of wooden columns in the style of the Propylaea in Athens ”. Since this is said to have been a "very modest mansion" that "stood until 1851" and "was last used as a servants' house" 2, it probably did not stand on the site of today's castle, especially since the later owner Ludwig Philipp Karl des Granges built a stately new mansion around 1818/19 (see above). The latter is finally remodeled by Robert von Patow - and not replaced in substance by a new building, as came to light during the facade renovation: under the classicistic plaster of the building from 1860/64, bricked-up window openings vaulted with arches emerge refer to the previous building.

Today's late classical appearance

The late Classicist appearance of the palace today shows the major changes and additions that Robert von Patow had carried out in the years 1860–1864. He followed the ideals of classicism and the Italian Renaissance . Alexander Duncker recorded this in his contemporary work around 1869. Patow had a whole series of models that were created at the same time:

role models

Between 1858 and 1862 Patow was Minister of Finance and had his office in Berlin in the Palais am Festungsgraben right next to the Singakademie built by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Carl Theodor Ottmer , which in the summer of 1848 was the meeting place of the Constituent Prussian National Assembly - and thus trusted the politician Patow very well. was. In 1863 and 1864 the building of the Prussian Ministry of Finance was rebuilt according to plans by Georg Heinrich Bürde and Hermann von der Hude . Exactly at the same time - namely from 1860 to 1864 - Patow had Zinnitz Castle extensively rebuilt and gave it its characteristic classicist facades that still shape it today. It is likely that he sought the collaboration of the architects mentioned and that - if you compare the central elevation of Schloss Zinnitz with the facade of the Singakademie - he was also inspired by the latter (he always had it in view from his workplace ). In addition, Patow had a belvedere tower added to the west side. This, in turn, could be inspired by another building project from that year: the Belvedere on the Pfingstberg . The twin tower complex, based on the models of the Italian Renaissance , experienced two construction phases, the second of which took place after a long break from 1860 to 1863. The architects Ludwig Persius , Friedrich August Stüler and Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse were commissioned to carry out the construction based on drafts by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV . Similar belvedere towers can also be found on numerous other buildings and villas of that time in Potsdam and Berlin.

Changes to the GDR era

As already described in the “History” chapter, there were gradual changes between 1945 and 1990, some of which give the castle a use, but all of which restore the original classicist state. If the colonnades in front of the south facade and the pavilion on the rose hill (see Duncker view) as well as some sculptures on the roof had already disappeared or badly damaged by 1945, further new facts were created after the end of the war: demolition of the rose hill, demolition of part of the Castle parks for lignite extraction (accompanied by lowering the groundwater level and the destruction of surface water), demolition of the wooden interior staircase, partial destruction of interior doors, parquet floors and historical wall and ceiling paintings, complete replacement of historical windows (around 1969), removal of stucco friezes and consoles on the Belvedereturm and much more. In addition, the area was broken up into small parcels in the course of the GDR land reform and the original outdoor facilities were destroyed.

Reconstructions since 1993

After purchasing the castle, the architect Robert Viktor Scholz has now supplemented or extensively renewed the lost classicist decorative parts of the facades by 2002. Witnesses from earlier decades - including descendants and members of the Granges and von Patow families - were able to provide valuable information on this. In 2003, the LMBV restored parts of the castle park in a new concept, creating a new system of paths and planting trees. This was preceded by the extensive dismantling of daytime facilities from lignite mining . A restoration of destroyed surface waters did not take place. Since 2013, Robert Viktor Scholz has been maintaining and restoring parts of the palace gardens and the outdoor areas according to the historical model.

literature

  • Vinzenz Czech and Nicola Riedel: Zinnitz . In: Peter-Michael Hahn, Hellmut Lorenz (eds.): Mansions in Brandenburg and Niederlausitz. Commented new edition of Alexander Duncker's (1857–1883) works of views . 2 volumes, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-87584-024-0 , volume 1, p. 145 and volume 2, p. 664 ff.
  • Jens Eschrich: Zinnitz. In: Dehio . Handbook of German Art Monuments. Volume Brandenburg, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-422-03054-9 .
  • Gerd-H. Zuchold, Bernd Maether: Paths to castles and mansions in Lower Lusatia. Published by the Landesheimatbund Brandenburg, Berlin 1995, p. 64 f.
  • Rudolf Lehmann : Historical local lexicon for Niederlausitz. Hessisches Landesamt für Geschichtliche Landeskunde, Marburg 1979, 2 volumes, ISBN 3-921254-96-5 .
  • Theodor Schulze: The von Buxdorf family on Schlabendorf. In: Nied.Mitt. 6.1901, p. 116.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Heinrich Berghaus : Land book of the Mark Brandenburg and the Margrave of Lower Lusatia. Volume 3, Brandenburg, 1856: p. 574 f.
  2. ↑ Helmut Jentsch, local researcher, Zinnitz
  3. ↑ a b Diehnel Ch., Chronicle of the community of Zinnitz with Bathow, Groß Jehser, 1995
  4. ↑ Joachim Henning and Alexander T. Ruttkay, early medieval castle building in Central and Eastern Europe, Bonn, 1998, p. 9–29, illus. P. 11
  5. ^ Worbs , 1834: 19, No. 48.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Götz von Houwald : The Niederlausitzer manors and their owners. 1992, p. 606 ff.
  7. ↑ a b c Marek Wejwoda: Dietrich of Bockendorf (1405 / 10-1466). A Niederlausitzer as a legal scholar and university professor. In: Niederlausitz Studies. Issue 35, p. 26 ff. Or 43 f.
  8. ^ Heiner Lück : Dietrich von Bocksdorf. In: Concise dictionary on German legal history . Volume 1 (2nd, completely revised and expanded edition, third delivery 2005), Sp. 625.
  9. ^ Pauline von Nostitz : Johann Wilhelm Helfer's travels in the Middle East and India. Appendix: My experiences and memories after Helfer's death. Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1877.
  10. ^ Architect Robert Scholz, Zinnitz

Web links

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

Coordinates: 51 ° 47 ′ 28.2 "  N , 13 ° 50 ′ 58.1"  E