Bonfeld Lower Castle

Lower Bonfeld Castle, seen from the garden to the west. Lithograph, 19th century.

The Lower Castle in Bonfeld , a district of Bad Rappenau in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg , was a castle built by the Barons of Gemmingen from 1784 to 1787 . It connected to older mansions to the south. The main building burned down in 1956, the ruins were blown up in 1971. Today the Bonfeld Castle Park is located on the site of the castle as a public green area. The park was the venue for the Folk Festival in the Schlosshof from 2001 to 2012 .

history

Construction in the late 18th century

The castles in Bonfeld around 1900. Blue the upper castle on the site of the former castle, green the dairy, red the lower castle.

Wappenstein from 1564 on one of the preserved barns

View of the Bonfeld Castle Park. In the center of the picture was once the lower castle, on the left are preserved outbuildings.

In Bonfeld, which had belonged to the lords of Gemmingen-Guttenberg since 1476, there was originally a medieval castle . A Renaissance palace was built south of the castle from 1564 to 1568. After this was devastated in the Thirty Years War, it was largely demolished in 1718 and a new building (later called the Old Castle ) was built in its place under Franz Reinhard von Gemmingen . In 1748 Reinhard, Philipp and Karl Reinhard von Gemmingen began building the Upper Palace on the site of the medieval castle. After Reinhard's death in 1773 and the dissolution of the previous condominium , Reinhard's son Ludwig Eberhard von Gemmingen-Guttenberg (1750–1841) built the Lower Castle south of the Old Castle on an area of ​​lake filled in 1780 from 1784 to 1787 , while the one between the Upper and Lower Castle The old castle from 1718 was opened in the dairy of the upper castle .

The main building of the lower castle was a rectangular, two-storey building in the classicism style with eleven axes and a mansard roof . In the middle of the long sides of the building, portals led over a few steps to the west into the large garden of the palace, to the east into the palace courtyard formed by farm buildings. The castle became the headquarters of the Bonfeld-lower castle family line of the barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg.

Memorial plaque on the Bonfeld cemetery for Captain Grossmann, who shot himself in the palace garden in 1849

Baden Revolution 1849

During the Baden Revolution , turbulent scenes occurred in the castle in May 1849 when Baden soldiers fleeing from rebels were admitted to the Bonfeld castles. The Baden artillery captain Grossmann shot himself on May 16, 1849 in the garden of the lower castle from disgrace over the disbandment of his troops. The next day, insurgents occupied the courtyard of the palace in order to force the surrender of the Baden officers. After the officers escaped under the protection of the Heilbronn vigilante under Bernhard Nickel , the rebels ravaged the castle.

The lord of the castle at that time was Karl Friedrich von Gemmingen (1779–1871), a son of the builder. Together with his brothers Ludwig Reinhardt and Philipp Albrecht von Gemmingen , he owned the castle as a condominium . Philipp Albrecht's son Ludwig Moritz von Gemmingen (1817-1883) cleared the nearby Breitlochwald from the lower castle in the 1850s and created the Eichhauser court there , that of his son Ernst Karl Friedrich von Gemmingen (1863-1939) and later from the lower castle whose son Reinhard von Gemmingen (1908-2001) was farmed.

Fire in 1956 and demolition in 1971

The portal fragments in the Eichhäuser Hof are the last remains of the lower castle

Reinhard von Gemmingen was a Wehrmacht officer in World War II and not in Bonfeld. During the war years, bombed out families moved into parts of the palace. After the end of the war, former, mostly Polish forced laborers were billeted in the lower castle by the American occupation forces. Reinhard von Gemmingen therefore took up residence on the Eichhäuser Hof, while Anna Maria von Gemmingen († 1958) was the only member of the owner family who lived in the castle.

On the night of August 16-17, 1956, the lower castle burned down due to a rapidly expanding chimney fire. The ruin and the associated area then came to the Bonfeld community, which, due to a lack of intended use and investors, had the ruin blown up on August 21, 1971. The building was completely demolished, the rubble was used to fill a ravine in the direction of Treschklingen. After the demolition in 1971, Reinhard von Gemmingen had fragments of the two portals of the castle brought to the Eichhäuser Hof, where they are now part of the garden design.

Today's condition and usage

Several of the farm buildings of the Lower Castle have been preserved, including the large, massive fruit barn along Kirchhausener Strasse with magnificent wooden gates and the former tenant apartment, which is now used as a residential building again after extensive restoration. The granary to the north with half-timbered floors and the striking wooden roof structure was built in 1928 by the Heilbronn sugar factory.

The former palace park is now used as a public green area, where the Bonfelder Kerwe takes place every summer . The castle park was also the venue for the Folk im Schlosshof festival from 2001 to 2012 and has been the location of the follow-up Blacksheep Festival since 2014 .

literature

• Hans-Heinz Hartmann: Last witnesses of an important castle in Bonfeld . In: Bad Rappenauer Heimatbote No. 17, Bad Rappenau 2006
• Rudolf Petzold: The Bonfeld castles . In: Bonfeld. Local history contributions from the past and present of a former imperial knighthood village . City of Bad Rappenau, Bad Rappenau 2000, ISBN 3-929295-62-8

Web links

Commons : Unterschloss Bonfeld  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 49 ° 12 '43.4 "  N , 9 ° 5' 32"  E