Hirschwald hunting lodge

Hirschwald hunting lodge from 1928 based on a pen drawing by Anton Dollacker

The lost Hirschwald hunting lodge was located in the Hirschwald district of the Upper Palatinate municipality of Ensdorf . The palace building was demolished in 1972, but the late Gothic gatehouse leading to Ensdorf (Hirschwald 4) was preserved; this is a listed building .

history

Gumpenhof used to be on the site of today's Hirschwald . A Marchwart by Gumpenhof appears for the first time in 1112 . This place is also mentioned in 1143 and 1149, at that time a Gebehardus and a Walricus de Gumpenhofen appear as witnesses of the Ensdorf monastery in a document. So Gumpenhof was a noble estate that probably only consisted of a farm. In 1359 the desert of Willmannshof is mentioned datz (= near) Gumpenhof and in 1407 an estate at Gumpenhof . Towards the end of the 15th century the local nobility seems to have given up their seat there, because in 1493 a Hans Gumpenhofer is mentioned as a citizen of Amberg. The settlement developed into a place with 12 properties, most of which were subject to interest after the Ensdorf monastery.

In 1454, the Ensdorf monastery left the use of a property to the Elector Friedrich I. The statutes (= probably pledge) for the Gumpenhofe ; presumably the sovereign stayed here because of the hunt. In 1513, Count Palatine Friedrich II became administrator of the Upper Palatinate with the seat of government in Amberg . In the 16th century, the Ensdorf monastery was abolished in the course of the introduction of the Reformation in the Upper Palatinate and Gumpenhof , like the other properties of the monastery, came to the Electoral Palatinate .

Under the governorship of Count Palatine Friedrich, later Elector Friedrich II., Gumpenhof was converted into the electoral hunting lodge Hischwald with several outbuildings in 1513 . This consisted of a two-story house surrounded by a curtain wall. For this purpose, all existing buildings were amicably acquired and demolished, only the church remained. The new building must have been completed before 1538, because in that year Count Palatine Friedrich came with a large retinue and 128 horses for several days to hunt deer in Hirschwald; at that time there was already a Vogt for the deer forest . In 1543 , a year before he became elector , he even withdrew to Hirschwald for a long time in order to live peacefully and cheaply there. The hunting lodge is reported in 1569: it was previously a village, then also a parish church (!), Then 3 farms and 7 estates and was called zum Gumppenhoff .

Hirschwald hunting lodge from 1737 (front and side view) after a pen drawing by Anton Dollacker (1928)

On July 5, 1578, an official inventory was made "for the deer forest", according to which the following were found:

a) in the castle itself the court room with 2 tables and 2 benches, a silver room and next to it the house tailor's vault, made for the most gracious gentleman, whose room on it has a four-poster bed (the window went into the room), the table room, in which one eats 2 tables and 4 arm-chairs, a chamber next to it with a can holder, a chamber next to it, the kitchen, the young Fraulein's room with 2 tables and 1 bedstead; the Jungfrau Stube with 1 table and 1 bed, a little room next to it with 1 bed, the tailor's shop and a room opposite. b) in the upper room on the church a room with 1 table and 1 bench, a chamber next to it with 1 bed, the office with 1 table and 1 bench, two other chambers with 1 bed each.

As the palace building soon turned out to be much too small for the purpose of the Count Palatine, additional living spaces were created in the attic of the neighboring church early on by inserting transom walls, to which one can go from the attic of the palace by means of a covered corridor and dry feet into the church could get down. Although the living conditions were cramped, the daughter Christine, later Countess Palatine of the Palatinate (1573-1619), of Elector Ludwig VI came here on January 6, 1573 . and his wife Elisabetha von Hessen . Elector Ludwig VI. came to Hirschwald one or the other time, but since the beginning of the Thirty Years War it was no longer used by the royal family.

The hunt in the deer forest

In Hirschwald the cherished there came red and black game to shoot down. Because of this, the local farmers had to do extensive hunting equipment (transport of hunting equipment, driver services, removal of the game). In the course of the Thirty Years' War, predatory game had also spread here, which became a threat to the game population to be kept and also to the population.

The first big wolf hunt took place in the deer forest in 1650. For this purpose, the individual electoral care offices had to call up the necessary hunting helpers from the population; the Amberg caste management office had to provide 60 and Ensdorf monastery 30 men, but there were a total of 400 men from several nursing offices. In the previous autumn were bitch places and directional paths created on which to attract the wolves animal carcasses were designed. The eight-day hunt was carried out with fresh snow to better read the wolves' tracks. The landlord Hans Rubenbauer von Gärmersdorf had to set up the nets for the wolf hunt , for which he received a daily allowance of two guilders . The wolves were driven into a cauldron, but not shot down there, but killed with the stabbing weapon.

The high game population in the deer forest was a constant nuisance for the farming population, as it put the seeds and harvest at risk. On July 11, 1797, 27 municipalities complained to the secret council in Munich about the damage caused by game . It was also felt as an undue burden that a forest closure was imposed from May 15 to June 24 and the farmers were unable to drive wood or rake straw. This was confirmed to them by a certificate from Ensdorf monastery judge Johann Mathias Gartner dated June 7, 1797, who also indicates the burden of the French troops and a rampant cattle disease. Even the Baron of Aretino , a Minister and deputy in feudal terms commissioner in Amberger government advocated the entry and closed his letter with the Bedmerkung: "These people are already extremely damnificirt by the French invasions and livestock cases; if the thwarting of their annual Lebesucht is added, it is easy to imagine what would have to happen in the end. "

Buildings by Hirschwald

The “Hirschwalder Jagdhaus”, also known as the Schlössl , was a stone building in rural style with a continuously vaulted ground floor and an upper floor initially made of half-timbered construction, but without a basement. However, there was a large usable vault under the church, which was originally the ossuary for the cemetery and in which the unearthed bones were kept. The hunting lodge was surrounded by a curtain wall and a moat. Before the Bering , two Meierhöfe and several outbuildings were built. In 1569 Mathes Wetzstein had his own forester (1605 a forester widow named Gruber is named) with an official residence in Hirschwald. He had to oversee the large deer forest game reserve, which the keeper of Rieden spoke of as the main game drive in the Upper Palatinate in 1786 .

The castle was protected from the outside by the Bering and the buildings inside. But you needed two gates for the through country road to get a town that could be locked from the outside. In Gumpenhof, the country road coming from Ensdorf and continuing via Garsdorf, Ursensollen and Poppberg crossed and the iron road from Amberg to Schmidmühlen .

For the entrance from Amberg as well as for the exit towards Ensdorf, a stone gate was built and a courtyard wall between the first and the northeast corner of the old castle ring near the oven (removed). The Ensdorfer or lower gate with the house No. 4 built on and next to it still stands (so-called gatehouse), the Amberger or upper gate has disappeared except for its barely visible foundation walls.

The hunting lodge was held for high-profile visits until 1628, but became increasingly dilapidated during the Thirty Years' War. According to the specification of the electoral houses of November 6, 1628, the Hirschwald hunting lodge was "accommodated in such a way that only an electoral person with a small comitat could make do with an emergency" , but also "during times of war and there the princely apartments are empty stand something declining and become dilapidated " .

As a result, it was only inhabited by families of day laborers. First, in 1673, the Amberg government sold the two existing courtyards with all their affiliations and outbuildings to forester Hans Adam Donhauser , including the property at number 4, the current gatehouse. The “Schlößl”, church, forester's house, Zehentstadel and two palace gardens remained in state ownership. His successor Carl Huber took over the property in 1733 and bought the castle, including the Schöngarten and Kittengarten , and the associated cellar under the church , for cheap money , and rebuilt it. According to him, the castle building was without a roof and actually just a pile of rubble. The stone set into the wall above the front entrance door with the inscription CHF 1737 comes from him . During the renovation, the upper floor of the castle building was now permanently made of stone. During this renovation, the corridor to the church floor disappeared, because even after the renovation the Schlössl only served day laborers as an apartment and has become a "place of poverty" (also in the property tax register as a "day laborer's house").

Only the church and the forester's house of the Hirschwald settlement remained in state ownership. In 1803, in the course of the Bavarian forest organization, the Hirschwald forester's office was abolished and in 1807, forester Franz Josef von Huber , the ennobled grandson of his predecessor Karl Huber , was transferred to Vilseck ; a district forester remained as his successor. Because of his departure, Franz Josef von Huber smashed the estate in 1816, and together he achieved a purchase schilling of a little over 12,000 fl . The castle was spatially divided into four parts by four different owners and part of the ground floor was converted into a cowshed with a door from the outside.

The dilapidated castle building was demolished in 1972.

Gatehouse of the former Hirschwald hunting lodge (2014)

Gatehouse of the former Hirschwald hunting lodge (2018)

Gatehouse of the Hirschwald hunting lodge

The gatehouse is a two-story quarry stone building with a gable roof , stone walls and a round arched gate passage. A small road leads through the gate. The gatehouse was built in the middle of the 16th century as part of the castle wall. It is the last structural testimony to the farm complex built after 1513 for the Wittelsbach family in the Upper Palatinate. In the times of the Electoral Palatinate, a forge was housed in the gatehouse, and today's barn was the associated stables. After 1795 a peasant family lived there.

After a fire in 1916, the interior and roof of the building were rebuilt. The hallway with floor tiles is covered by a barrel vault.

The repair of the gatehouse is funded by the German Foundation for Monument Protection (DSD) with € 30,000. The new owners Birgit Rieger and Willi Schmid, who have been new since 2013, are planning a restaurant on the ground floor of the gatehouse, a so-called Hutzastub'n , for visitors to the Hirschwald Nature Park and overnight accommodation on the upper floor of the gatehouse. The adjacent Steinstadel is also part of the historical ensemble and is to be used for cultural purposes. The realization of these plans is still pending (2018).