Tusculum over the Alb

The Tusculum over the Alb, watercolor drawing around 1800

The Tusculum over the Alb is an abandoned pleasure house over the Alb in St. Blasien in the southern Black Forest , which Prince Abbot Meinrad Troger had built in 1761.

Emergence

After his election in 1749, the prince abbot of St. Blasien Meinrad Troger began an extensive renovation and construction program, for which he engaged the master builder Johann Caspar Bagnato . Presumably his son and successor Franz Anton Bagnato built a summer and pleasure house for the Benedictine monks a few hundred meters from the monastery with the smaller Tusculum above the Alb in 1761, about twenty meters below the two-tier waterfall, which was named Tuskulum waterfall after the building . The one-story building was erected on rocky terrain. The stone arch that supported the building had a span of about eight meters.

description

Construction plans have not been preserved. A watercolor drawing attributed to Hans Thoma in the local tradition shows the hall erected on an arch with slightly widened rear parts of the building. An onion dome over a bent hip roof in the drawing can be interpreted as the tower of a chapel at the rear. The remote location of the pleasure house and the prescribed prayers speak for a possible chapel . The building itself was about ten meters high and had an onion-shaped roof top. A reported picture room, presumably similar to the room at the same time on the upper floor of Bürgeln Castle , provided a view of the waterfall from three arched windows.

use

The name Tusculum , derived from the ancient summer residence of Cicero in the Alban Hills south-east of Rome, suggests its use as a summer conference hall. The building was also used by Troger's successors. The Freiburg sculptor Johann Christian Wentzinger stayed in the building on July 16, 1782 at the invitation of Martin Gerbert . Beat Fidel Zurlauben thanked Gerbert on August 20, 1785 for staying with his daughter in the "délicieux Tusculum". After the secularization of the monastery, the Tusculum was temporarily used as a dance and ballroom for the workers of the Baden rifle factory, which was located in the monastery complex from 1809 .

cancellation

By order of the factory director David von Eichthal , the building was demolished down to the foundations in 1824 on the grounds that it was in disrepair. The material was used elsewhere. However, the reuse of closed components has not been proven.

literature

• Ludwig Schmieder: The Benedictine Monastery of St. Blasien , Augsburg 1929, p. 136f. with an illustration

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cf. Thomas Mutter, Why was the Tuskulum not a pleasure house? , in: Badische Zeitung , March 9, 2015 ( online at www.badische-zeitung.de )
2. ^ Ingeborg Krummer-Schroth : Johann Christian Wentzinger: Sculptor, Painter, Architect, 1710–1797, Schillinger, 1987, note 20 on p. 262.
3. ↑ Letters and files of Prince Abbot Martin II. Gerbert von St. Blasien 1764–1793, Volume 2, p. 197.

Coordinates: 47 ° 45 ′ 31.6 ″  N , 8 ° 8 ′ 17.2 ″  E