Villa Franck (Murrhardt)
The Villa Franck at Hohenstein 1 in Murrhardt was designed by the architects Georg Staehelin and Paul Schmohl as a summer residence for the industrialist Robert Franck and moved into in 1907. Franck ran the company Heinrich Franck Söhne , founded by his grandfather Johann Heinrich Franck , which manufactured coffee additives. Most of the property, which includes a spacious park, is a listed building .
history
Robert Franck, whose wife came from Murrhardt, bought a former vineyard of the secularized Murrhardt Monastery next to the property of Professor Heinrich von Zügel in 1897 . The plants had perished from downy mildew in previous years . From 1904 the future summer residence of the Franck family was built on the property in the south-facing slope. The building files have been preserved in the Murrhardt City Archives; the parts of the buildings that have been preserved do not correspond to the drawings in every detail. The Villa Franck offered its residents 1200 square meters of living space in 42 rooms.
After Robert Franck's death in 1939, the property, which was very expensive to maintain, was sold. In 1951 it became the property of the Christian Community Social Welfare Service, which operated a “residential community for the elderly” there until the 1990s and later set up the Haus Hohenstein nursing home . Since 2001 the Villa Franck has been used and restored by the conductor of the Stuttgart salon artist Patrick Siben. It contains a café and is used for banquets and events.
description
The main building, initially also called Villa Hohenstein , had its main entrance on the north side. On this side of the villa, visitors could drive up by car and get inside via a few steps, while on the south side a huge flight of stairs had to be overcome. Above the door of the main entrance there was a relief with the seven Pleiades , above it the large window of the winter garden, above which the name "Hohenstein", surrounded by roses, was carved. The south side of the historically designed property was set in scene in the manner of Palladio : Behind the entrance portal, the long flight of stairs with a fountain platform awaited those entering. Both the steps and the cheeks of these stairs were carved from Maulbronn red sandstone , while the facade, the entrance portal and parts of the fountain pedestal were decorated with stone carvings in Crailsheim shell limestone from the Yellow Bank. The work was probably carried out by the Schön & Hippelein company from Satteldorf .
For the balcony to the south, Schmohl and Staehelin had used Solitude Castle and recreated its balusters and arches. In front of it was a rock garden with Mediterranean plants. A shady walkway delimited the rose garden on the south side.
A second building on the property was the Cornelia house . It was named after the favorite horse of the Franck family and was used as a stable, garage and accommodation for servants. It also provided space for a holiday apartment for the daughter of the house, Marianne, and her children. The Cornelia house was designed in the Black Forest style. It was demolished in the 1960s so that St. Michael's Church could be built.
park
The art gardener Albert Lilienfein and his son laid out the 7 hectare park around the villa. While the facilities in the immediate vicinity of the house appeared well-ordered, the more distant parts were kept in the style of untouched nature. The park was interspersed with numerous architectural elements and buildings. The rose parterre, for example, to which the walkway and pergola adjoined, was designed as a “garden room”. This outdoor room adjoined the pool room on the ground floor of the villa. Bounded in the south by the walkway, in the west by the pergola and in the north by thick bushes, it was neither visible from the outside nor exposed to extreme weather conditions.
There was a tennis court and a riding arena, a garden hall at the tennis court, a mock ruin and numerous pavilions, two of which, the temple of love and the Michaelsburg, have been preserved, as well as numerous bridges.
Many elements of the original park design have now disappeared or have been greatly changed. The gatehouse, for example, was converted into a hospice in the 1950s; a little later a reconstruction followed with a clear extension to the west. The linden spot on the east side of the villa existed until the 1980s and then had to give way to parking spaces. The open staircase with its 132 steps, which had been laid on reinforced concrete, was closed in the 1980s because it posed a safety risk. It was restored in the 2000s and is now accessible again. The walkway as a weather-independent connection to the Cornelia house has been preserved.
The tennis court and the high lime trees surrounding it and the ball nets that were removed in 2000 have not been preserved. It had an asphalt surface and was probably the first hard court in Germany. Traces of the surface, the edge and the service lines can still be seen. It was still used by the population in the period after the Second World War , before a tennis club was founded in Murrhardt, and then fell into disrepair after the retirement home was moved into.
The garden hall by the tennis court is said to have been shown at the world exhibition in Paris . It was kept in a country house style and had a tiled floor and a painted coffered ceiling. It offered the tennis players a washing facility. It has been preserved as a building, but has been attacked by mold and other fungi due to improper covering with a tarpaulin.
An old reed sand quarry was transformed into a sham ruin by Lilienfein. The quarry has possibly been in use since Roman times and had its greatest expansion around the middle of the 19th century, before the railway construction offered the possibility of having stones delivered from further away. A path to a grotto was laid below this quarry. A bridge led to a bark house that has not been preserved. This patio had a concrete slab decorated in Art Nouveau style, which is the only remnant of the building, and was equipped with cushions and rustic dishes. The bridge there was demolished in the 1960s; Parts of the rammed concrete foundation can still be seen. Between the parts of the park below and above the demolition wall, a so-called sky ladder was built, the lower part of which consisted of rock blocks and a stick bridge, while the upper part was carved directly into the rock. The stone traces of this ladder to heaven can still be seen, the wooden structures have been removed. A bowling alley below the bridge has also not been preserved.
Opposite the demolition wall and slightly to the south, a painted monopteros made of softwood was erected on a hill , the so-called love temple. It was covered with a copper roof. This love temple is in the line of sight of the balcony and the home owner's former bedroom. It is modeled on a similar but larger temple of love in the Ludwigsburg palace gardens. Apart from the benches, which were lost in the 1960s, the love temple has largely remained true to the original. A life-size marble sculpture of a boy was set up at changing locations, but always near the temple of love. Apparently, after the Franck family's epoch, this sculpture was overturned and forgotten. In 1957, the management of the home discovered one of the feet sticking out of a pile of leaves in the park and initially assumed they had come across a child's body. After the marble figure was brought back to light, it was sold.
In the park there was also a large swing at the edge of the riding arena; In the upper part of the park stood the so-called Echo Bank and the most beautiful viewpoint of the complex was a resting place in the form of a thatched roof mushroom . This structure was probably removed in the 1940s.
The thatched hunter's house stood above the Murrtal . It was used by Robert Franck's grandson Eberhard Zügel until the 1970s. After the property became the property of the city of Murrhardt, the building was damaged by vandals and finally demolished in the 1980s.
Almost at the highest point of the park, the Far Eastern style teahouse, the Michaelsburg, was built. Albert Lilienfein had mainly planted sand pines here to give the area a Mediterranean or Far Eastern look. The vegetation was kept low so as not to obscure the view.
A fish pond was also created near the villa, which was used for swimming, fishing and boating in summer and for ice making in winter. For this purpose it was designed as a cold air lake.
Web links
- The Villa Franck on www.murrhardt.de
- Impressions on youtube.de
- Brief description on www.denkmalschutz.de
- Patrick Pauly, report on the park with an explanation of the ownership structure
Individual evidence
- ↑ Why in Murrhardt? on www.villa-franck.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Inventory on www.villa-franck.de
- ↑ Dirk Herrmann, The fight for the Art Nouveau villa of King Caro Franck , November 1, 2013 in: Stuttgarter Nachrichten ( online )
- ↑ a b Monument - History of the Villa at www.villa-franck.de
- ↑ Restoration on www.villa-franck.de
- ↑ a b Villa Hohenstein on www.villa-franck.de
- ↑ Haus Cornelia on www.villa-franck.de
- ↑ a b Hohensteinpark on www.villa-franck.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 48 ° 56 ′ 39 ″ N , 9 ° 33 ′ 34 ″ E