Stedten on the Gera

Stedten State capital Erfurt Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 42 "  N , 10 ° 58 ′ 57"  E
Height :	212–227 m above sea level NN
Incorporation :	April 9, 1923
Incorporated into:	Bischleben
Postal code :	99094
Area code :	0361
Location of Stedten in Erfurt

Stedten an der Gera is part of the Bischleben-Stedten district of the Thuringian capital of Erfurt . The Stedten Castle of the Counts of Keller and the manor were demolished in 1948/49. This changed the character of the village radically.

geography

Stedten is located in the southwest of the city, embedded in the foothills of the Fahner mountain range and the Steigerwald in the Gera valley .

history

As early as 1290, Stedten was mentioned in a document as being owned by Rüdiger von Stedin. In 1400 Stedten went to Rudolf von Ziegler, a feudal man of the Counts of Gleichen . In 1613 Stedten belonged to the Principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen , the fiefdom at that time was held by a von Greave family. In 1667 the place, which belonged to the lower county of Gleichen , changed to the Duchy of Saxony-Gotha , to which it belonged until 1918. Between 1667 and 1735, Stedten belonged to the von Fensterer family, the windows' grave slabs are still in the Bischleben church today.

St. Elisabeth Church in Stedten ( Location → )

Stedten Castle and Estate in the 1930s

Stedten Castle before it was demolished in 1948

In 1735 the court marshal and minister of state Christoph Dietrich von Keller , who came from Württemberg, acquired the manor. In 1737, the year he was raised to the nobility, he had a baroque castle built and a church in 1745. The castle had a previous building in the form of a water castle, the location in the Gera floodplain and traditional drawings speak for this. The baroque palace was a large two-storey plastered building with a high central projection. It was architecturally emphasized on the courtyard side by the main portal, a balcony and a coat of arms. The large hall was adorned with a stucco ceiling with a monumental painting, beautiful furniture and oil paintings in the other rooms. In contrast to the castle, the small baroque church at the foot of the Stedten forest survived the Soviet occupation undamaged. The son Christoph Dietrich von Kellers was raised to the rank of count in 1789, his family maintained friendly relations with Wieland and Goethe with visits to the castle and correspondence with the two personalities. Stedten Castle developed into a “place of the muses”. Count Dorotheus Christoph von Keller sent three of his sons into the field on the Russian side against Napoleon, one of them carried the black, red and gold flag of the fraternities to the Wartburg Festival in 1817 .

In 1844 the construction of the Thuringian Railway from Erfurt to Gotha began , which also ran through the Stedten district. Stedten received a train station together with Bischleben, and Gustav Graf von Keller became the first Thuringian railway director. In 1848 he represented Erfurt at the Frankfurt National Assembly . Due to his obligations in the service of Emperor Wilhelm II, his son, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von Keller, leased the manor to a bailiff Beck († 1931) in 1901. In 1913, the Erfurt merchant Tettenborn acquired the land of the Count along Geratal-Strasse for the purpose of residential development; However, due to the First World War and the ensuing economic crisis, this was not started until the end of the 1930s.

The son of Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von Kellers, Alexander, the last male heir, died at the age of 17 in the First World War. His uncle Franz Graf von Keller took over the castle and manor after the old Count's death in 1938. The unmarried daughter of Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Keller, Lolo, continued to run the Rural Housekeeping School of the Reifensteiner Verband founded in 1925 in the castle . Her sister Marie was known in the surrounding towns as a courageous nurse. The two sisters raised three nephews / nieces with themselves in the 1930s. The family took in bombed-out people and refugees in the castle and estate during the Second World War.

On April 9, 1923, the previously independent town of Bischleben was added. The latter stayed with the district of Gotha before coming to the city of Erfurt on July 1, 1950.

The village of Stedten survived the Second World War structurally unscathed. It was occupied by US troops around April 10, 1945 without a fight . On Ascension Day 1945 (May 10th) roofs, doors and windows in the village, including the castle, were destroyed in the explosion of an ammunition train. At the beginning of July 1945, Stedten, like all of Thuringia, was handed over to the Red Army by the Americans . This made it part of the Soviet Zone and, from 1949, of the GDR . In mid-August 1945 the occupying forces moved into the central part of the palace. On October 8, 1945, the 51 residents of the castle, refugees and the von Keller sisters had to vacate the castle for the Red Army within 12 hours and some lived in the castle park for more than three days. The castle was expropriated without compensation, the property (210 hectares) divided, the manor buildings demolished, Stedten Castle demolished and blown up in 1948/1949. The basis for the latter process was the notorious Soviet order 209 for the removal of German aristocratic seats. Parts of the building material were used to build resettlers' houses, others as filling material for the dam reinforcement at the Bischleben mill. Valuable cultural assets, paintings, porcelain, library and archive (going back to the 16th century) passed into unknown possession, at best ended up in neighboring museums or were destroyed. In the former park area of ​​the manor house, the aforementioned resettler houses and a commercial enterprise are now located. After 21 new farmer positions were created with the division of the estate, the LPG "Thomas Müntzer" was formed in the 1950s . In 1949, Stedten had 154 inhabitants, also due to the influx of expellees.

A "Freundeskreis Schloss Stedten" founded in 1999 took care of the restoration of the neglected cemetery and the clarification and presentation of the castle's history.

Since the fall of the Wall in 1990, Stedten has developed into a district with high residential and recreational value. An oversized development could be prevented due to restrictions in connection with a drinking water protection zone.

Attractions

• Baroque church from 1745, built as a Protestant church under the Counts of Keller. Since 1976 in the possession of the Catholic community as St. Elisabeth Church.
• Old churchyard with historical graves, the last resting place of the Counts of Keller for many generations. Neglected during the GDR era,
  

  Gravestone Counts von Keller
  Today restored and listed cemetery is one of the oldest of its kind in Thuringia. The citizen and tradition association Bischleben-Stedten takes care of him.
• Old oak (natural monument) and the memorial stone in front of it with a removed plaque. The sessile oak was planted after the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon around 1814/15. It was later called "Imperial Oak". According to the memory of Friedrich-Karl von Keller, the metal plaque removed after 1945 bore the inscription from the “Three Emperor Year” 1888: “Three emperors chosen, two emperors lost”.
• Margarethe-Reichardt-Haus , based on drafts by the Bauhaus artist Konrad Püschel , in which the textile designer, graphic artist and master weaver Margaretha Reichardt , who came from the Bauhaus school, lived and worked. Today it houses a museum that is a branch of the Angermuseum .

Plaque

Commemorative plaque for the removed poets' meeting place at Schloss Stedten

Since 2011, a memorial plaque at the former entrance to the palace and estate area has been commemorating: “Goethe and Wieland meeting place. They were friends of the Keller family and went in and out of Stedten Castle. On New Year's Eve 1775, Goethe presented his Urfaust here . Citizens and Traditions Association Bischleben-Stedten eV "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Municipalities 1994 and their changes since January 1, 1948 in the new federal states , Metzler-Poeschel publishing house, Stuttgart, 1995, ISBN 3-8246-0321-7 , publisher: Federal Statistical Office
2. ^ Margaretha Reichardt House. From: www.erfurt.de, accessed on March 19, 2019

literature

• Johannes Biereye : Stedten Castle . In: Erfurter Burgenwelt , Kühn, Weimar-Buttstädt 1932.
• Hans-Peter Brachmanski : Church in Stedten. For the 260 year anniversary of its inauguration 1745-2005 . Eigen-Verlag, Erfurt 2005.
• Hans-Peter Brachmanski (eds.) And Friedrich-Karl von Keller: Stedten Castle near Erfurt: Events and memories. Self-published, Erfurt 2010.
• Hans-Peter Brachmanski (Ed.): Rediscoveries of the Stedten Castle near Erfurt. Selected writings . Rockstuhl Verlag, Bad Langensalza 2012. ISBN 978-3-86777-448-2 .
• Hans-Peter Brachmanski (ed.): The fall of the castle in Stedten (based on notes by Hanna Althof 1944/45). New Erfurt Stadtbote, No. 3/2019. Erfurt, 2019
• Harald Hübner: moated castle and fortress Stedten . In: City and History - Magazine for Erfurt , No. 36, 2007.
• Werneburg, Thomas "Historische Vermessungsschriften", In: Allgemeine Vermessungsschriften (AVN) 1/2001, ISSN 0002-5968

Web links

Commons : Stedten an der Gera  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Page about Bischleben-Stedten at erfurt.de