Hesserode moated castle

Hesserode moated castle
Former moated castle and today's mansion in the left edge of the picture with an adjacent farm yard
Creation time :	around 1300
Castle type :	Niederungsburg
Conservation status:	Parts of the moats
Standing position :	Local nobility
Place:	Hesserode
Geographical location	51 ° 5 '26.5 "  N , 9 ° 25' 41.2"  E Coordinates: 51 ° 5 '26.5 "  N , 9 ° 25' 41.2"  E
Height:	288  m above sea level NHN

The moated castle Hesserode was a lower castle in the village of Hesserode , today's district of Felsberg in the north Hessian Schwalm-Eder district .

Geographical location

The moated castle was located on the southeast edge of Hesserode at 288  m above sea level, on the road "Zur Wasserburg" (district road 32) leading to Mosheim . Their moats were fed by groundwater and a small spring stream of the Frasenbach, a tributary of the Rhünda .

Current condition

The manor house with its half- hipped roof , which was built in 1665 after the castle was destroyed in 1636 and has been renovated several times since then, has two floors , with a partly ornate half-timbered upper floor on a mostly stone and plastered ground floor. Immediately southwest of the house is a small ornamental garden . The farm buildings are to the north and west of the manor house.

history

Around the year 1300 "Wederholdus dictus famulus", landgrave Hessian castle man of Homberg , and his wife Kunigunde built a moated castle on the southern edge of the village. How long the two of them stayed in possession of the complex is uncertain: at least the village of Hesserode was pledged to Heinrich von Meysenbug before 1368 , and a list of the Homberg castle fiefs made around 1368 names the sons of Wiegand Holzsadel as owners of property in the village, whereby however, it is not known what the goods were. In 1403 the landgrave's village came into the pledge and fiefdom of the Homberg patrician family Holzsadel, whereby the moated castle - according to the Hesseröder village chronicle - was probably included.

The wood nobility remained in the possession of the castle until 1514; their pledging of a farm "in front of the church hall" in 1416 obviously did not refer to the castle property, and in the case of the 1465 recorded property of those of Baumbach zu Binsförth and Hans von Wallenstein in Hesserode - they also became patron saints of the local church that year referred to - were other farms that had come to them through marriage with Holzsadel daughters and inheritance. In 1514 Werner Holzsadel bequeathed his entire fiefdom and allodial property to his brothers-in-law Reinhard II von Baumbach and Hans von Wallenstein, who had married his sisters Marie and Else. With his death in 1526, the male line died out.

In the period that followed, the owners of Hesserode Castle and Hof changed quite frequently. In 1585 the lords of Wehren are named as the feudal owners of the manor and six other farms in Hesserode; the Wasserburg estate is referred to as "freyer Lehenshoff". From 1600, when the defenses in the male line were extinguished, a branch of the Hess von Wichdorf castle and estate lived and managed . During the Thirty Years' War in the first of the two notorious "Croatian Years " in Niederhessen , 1636, the castle and several houses in the village were destroyed by Croatian riders from the imperial army . It was not until 1665 that the Hess von Wichdorf were able to rebuild the moated castle. A mansion with a half-timbered upper floor was built on the stone basement , as it is basically still preserved today. The 5 m wide moat was renovated and crossed by two bridges, one to the north and one to the south.

In 1690, the landgrave's privy councilor and later chancellor Nikolaus Wilhelm Goddaeus took over the "free Lehnshoff Rittergut Wasserburg" and managed it until his death in 1719. His nephew Regnerus Keil bought the "Hofgut Wasserburg" in 1720 from Goddaeus' heirs, but sold it in 1734 to the Huguenot Henrich Grandidier. In 1778 a document noted that the landlords of the "freyen Hof" were the Ries ' heirs, and in 1779 the Hessen-Kassel Chamber Assessor Herbert Adolf von Oeynhausen acquired the estate. It remained in the possession of various members of the von Oeynhausen family until 1877. The lying next to the mansion brandy distillery , the bakery and the chaises remise were discontinued. 1864

From 1877 the property changed hands several times through purchases, whereby the agricultural use increasingly pushed the representative aspects of a former moated castle aside. In the 1960s, large parts of the historic moat were filled with soil and leveled; today there are only two short parts in the east and south as ponds.

Footnotes

1. ↑ List of pledged landgrave goods in the Homberg / Efze court (Regest no. 993). Regest of the Landgraves of Hesse. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on October 7, 2019 . 
2. ^ Directory of the Homberg Castle Fiefs (Regest No. 995). Regest of the Landgraves of Hesse. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on October 7, 2019 . 
3. ^ Descendants of the Schauenburg family with ancestral castle Wallenstein
4. ^ Johann Philipp Ries (1693–1768) was a councilor in Kassel. His son Franz Benjamin Ries (born June 7, 1750 in Kassel, † December 2, 1823 in Marburg) became director of the Hesse-Kassel government in Marburg.

literature

• Oskar Breiding: Castles in the Schwalm-Eder district, 12: The Hesserode moated castle. In: Knüll-Gebirgsbote , Knüllgebirgsverein, 2010, issue 4, p. 11.
• Folkhard Cremer (edit.): Handbook of German Art Monuments, Hessen 1: Government districts of Giessen and Kassel. New edit., Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich, 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03092-3 , p. 411
• Rudolf Knappe: Medieval castles in Hessen; 800 castles, castle ruins and fortifications. 2nd edition, Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen, 1995, ISBN 3-86134-228-6 , p. 81

Web links

• Entry by Stefan Eismann zu Hesserode in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
• Hesserode Castle, Schwalm-Eder district. Historical local lexicon for Hesse (as of February 27, 2013). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on September 25, 2019 . 
• Hesserode and its history , local website