Steinsches Castle (Barchfeld)

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The Steinsche Schloss is a former aristocratic residence in Barchfeld in the Wartburg district , Thuringia . It is located on the "Schlossweg 5" property on the western edge of the historical location on the site of a former moated castle in the Werra floodplain . The castle is a ruin and a protected monument . It was acquired by the municipality in 2012 and is now being gradually renovated, including for use as a meeting and ballroom.

The castle ruins (May 2012)
Partial view of the north facade (2014)
Sign to the castle dungeon

history

The Steinsche Schloss was the seat of the Barchfeld-based Stein-Liebenstein zu Barchfeld family , who owned the place until 1387 as a fiefdom of the Counts of Henneberg and sole court lords . Then they sold three quarters of their moated castle and the village , located on the Schweina and mentioned for the first time in a document, to Landgrave Hermann II of Hesse . The castle was then initially the joint seat of those von Stein and the bailiffs appointed by the landgrave. When it gradually fell into disrepair, the castle courtyard was divided, and around 1555, Asmus von Stein had a three- story, square-plan stone residential tower built on its part with a dungeon in the basement, which architectural historians considered the stump of a defensive tower because of the 2.55 m thick walls is interpreted.

Today's castle was built in 1571–1581 at the instigation of Georg Ernst von Stein, including the residential tower on its southeast corner; the remains of the ruined moated castle were removed beforehand. It was a three-story, five-axis building with a rectangular floor plan and five attic windows in the attic. This central section was flanked at both ends by a four-storey protruding corner pavilion , which did not protrude from the facade of the central section, but was higher. They each had a door on the ground floor and two large lattice windows on the three upper floors and ended in beautiful volute gables . In the middle of the north facade was a spiral staircase tower.

In the immediate vicinity of the Steinschen Castle, Wilhelmsburg Castle was built between 1690 and 1732 on behalf of the new sovereign as a three-winged Baroque castle , which from 1721 became the residence of the paraged Landgraves of Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld .

In order to reflect this upgrading of the place, Daniel Raban von Stein had the windows on the north facade of his castle enlarged and a large staircase with stone balusters installed, which replaced the previous stair tower. In 1768, the palace complex was enlarged by adding a side wing in order to relocate the representative rooms and halls, which were permanently in the shadow of the landgrave's palace located in front of it to the south. In total, the palace now had over 30 heated rooms. The landscape park, which extends almost to the banks of the Werra, used a group of old tree veterans on the banks of the Werra as a backdrop.

The structure of the castle, made of soft sandstone , was thoroughly renovated in 1840 and again in 1845. In the process, a forgotten coat of arms stone was exposed in the plastered facade, which was assigned to the builder Georg Ernst von Stein and his wife Anna (from the Hundt von Wenckheim family). This coat of arms stone was moved several times in the following period. A second coat of arms stone refers to Raban von Stein and his wife Sophie Dorothea von Webern.

In the course of the land reform that took place in the former Soviet zone of occupation in 1945/46 , the castle was expropriated and made public property and it began to decline steadily. The building initially served as accommodation for displaced resettlers and was therefore subjected to structural changes inside. The last tenants moved out in 1978, but the vacancy rate, which had been increasing since the mid-1970s, resulted in a considerable decline in the building fabric and interior fittings.

From 1990 the building was under the administration of the Treuhandanstalt . In 1992 the outbuildings were demolished and the castle itself gutted, but otherwise left to its own devices. Only after the renaissance gable of the western pavilion collapsed in 1994, after careful documentation, the remaining remains of the two gables were removed and the castle secured by a protective roof.

Current condition

In 2012, the community of Barchfeld-Immelborn acquired both castles with the intention of preserving them and making them more sustainable. The Barchfelder Schlösser Association, founded in 2012, is actively involved.

The castle was in ruins until 2013 with unsecured dark window caves. Of the main building, only the outer walls with the portal and the alliance coat of arms of those von Stein and von Webern as well as the former residential tower in the southeast with the cellar dungeon remain. There are a number of relief representations and incised figures as sights, which were probably incorporated by prisoners. The side wing added in 1768 and the magnificent gables of the two corner pavilions have disappeared. Likewise, the entire interior including the interior walls, the oak false ceilings and the stairs disappeared over the years, sometimes even in 1992. The farm buildings that stood in a semicircle in the north and east along the south bank of the Schweina no longer exist.

In the meantime, the building has been secured to such an extent that it could at least be used for various public events: exhibitions, readings, summer concerts, Christmas markets, etc. A concept for permanent use has not yet been drawn up.

literature

  • Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments: Thuringia. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-422-03050-6 , p. 107.
  • Karl Volkmar: A thousand years of Barchfeld (Werra). Depicted on the basis of the collection of documents belonging to Baroness Frieda Stein-Schlotheim. Self-published by the community, Barchfeld 1933. (also published as a reprint)
  • Klaus Schmidt: Nature and homeland book Barchfeld / Werra. A representation of nature, landscape and historical development. Self-published by Naturschutzbund Germany, Barchfeld 2008.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barchfeld, with the rule of Schmalkalden , fell to the Landgraves of Hesse in part with the inheritance contract of 1360, and in 1583 completely.

Coordinates: 50 ° 48 ′ 0 ″  N , 10 ° 17 ′ 47.8 ″  E