Wetzelstein
Wetzelstein is a listed villa in Saalfeld, Thuringia .
history
An alum plant was opened in the Saale valley as early as 1544 . In 1546 an alum hut on the Wetzelstein was described by Georgius Agricola . According to Hieronymus Völker, these Fregian alum and vitriol works were in the immediate vicinity of the Wetzelstein. This alum hut changed hands several times until it was acquired in 1760 by the important Leipzig banker and merchant Christian Gottlob Frege , the progenitor of one of the richest banking families of the time. The Frege family only continued the business until 1850, because after 1850 chemical extraction methods gradually replaced alum shale as a source of alums. The mining facilities fell into disrepair. In 1874, Dr. Richard Woldemar Frege , manor owner and professor at the law faculty in Leipzig and great-grandson of ancestral father Christian Gottlob Frege, an older property on the Wetzelstein. Here on the steep bank of the Saale, opposite the so-called plank wall (today NSG and National Geotope ) in the district of Obernitz , he had Constantin Lipsius build a small castle in the Neo-Romanesque style from mighty sand and quarry stone blocks from 1878 to 1880 , which he and the property in 1913 bequeathed to his newly established foundation , which was based in Abtnaundorf (Leipzig). The mining properties were given to his son Dr. Arnold Woldemar von Frege-Weltzien and sold it to his father's foundation on August 26, 1916 for 5,000 marks. In 1919 it was decided to sell the property. It consisted of a six-story tower with a staircase. Inside were a dining room, four mansion rooms with rich furnishings, five attic rooms, a wooden veranda with a galvanized floor and other staff rooms, toilet, kitchen, laundry room and cellar rooms with vaults. Asphalt roofs covered the two side wings and the middle building. They contained bedrooms, a library, a cloakroom, a bathroom and a toilet. The outbuildings include: a one-storey stable building made of stone framework, a wooden stable building, an ice house and a garden house. There was also a heatable greenhouse with an 11.5 m high chimney and a glazed front. Wetzelstein was embedded in a remarkable stock of trees and parks and also had extensive land, arable land, agricultural areas, meadows, logging and pastures; a total of about 3.8 ha.
The Frege family used Wetzelstein Castle as a summer residence until it was sold in 1921. During three years of purchase negotiations in the Lipsiushaus in Leipzig at a law firm that worked with the Chief Justice Officer Dr. Lohse, the Justice Council Dr. C. Junck and the Justice Council Dr. O. Verges was occupied, the Bad Blankenburg real estate dealer E. Macheleid was commissioned to look for an interested party in Saalfeld. Macheleid had knowledge of the situation of the Mauxion chocolate factory , which was founded in 1855 and is directly adjacent to Wetzelstein , in which the businessman Ernst Hüther had entered in 1911 as managing partner with considerable funds. Hüther had completed his business apprenticeship at the Berger chocolate factory in Pößneck and then gained specialist knowledge as an employee of various companies in the confectionery industry. With this knowledge he was able to take over the company after six years at Mauxion when the former co-owners, the Mauxion brothers, left. At the Wetzelstein, other interested parties had shown a willingness to buy, among them: a Baron von Helldorf , a Countess Erbach-Erbach , a Major Freiherr von Rapport and a Baron Freiherr von der March. After sluggish negotiations, Hüther initially offered to be content with a lease and rental agreement for the transition period until a valid purchase agreement was reached, in order to provide the Frege Foundation with the funds it urgently needed. However, Hüther could not make friends with a rental agreement then submitted by the foundation. Negotiations continued throughout 1920 and 1921, the focus being on the purchase price and the taxes to be paid. Finally, on December 8, 1921, a sales contract was signed.
On February 23, 1922, Ernst Hüther, as the new owner, transferred the purchase price of 600,000 marks to the Saalfeld branch of the bank for Thuringia. Several families have lived in the castle since 1922 after various renovations were carried out to create living space. Hüther also planned to set up apartments for officials and employees here; He had already set up several emergency apartments in the garden house.
In 2000, the property was acquired by a private investor and expanded and furnished as an upscale residence and hotel by 2011. In these ten years the castle was completely renovated and restored to its original state.
The castle stands in the middle of a park. The grotto in it bears witness to the earlier alum slate mining in Saalfeld.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thuringian State Office for Monument Preservation: List of monuments of the district of Saalfeld-Rudolstadt (PDF; 632 kB)
- ↑ PDF on the cultural landscape of East Thuringia, p. 173 , accessed on June 19, 2013.
- ↑ Hieronymus Ludwig Wilhelm Völker: The Thuringian Forest Mountains are described according to their physical, geographical, statistical and topographical conditions . Verlag des Landes-Industrie-Comptoirs, Weimar 1836, p. 611 ( online ).
- ↑ P. Lange: The alum, vitriol and sulfuric acid production in Thuringia . 1989, Rudolstädter Naturhistorische Schriften 2, pp. 3-19.
- ↑ Gerhard Werner: The Saalfelder Flurnamenbuch . 2008, pp. 202-203.
literature
- Hans-Helmut Brainich (Saalfeld entomologist): Purchase negotiations for the acquisition of the "Wetzelstein" by the businessman Ernst Hütherin from 1919 to 1922 , Saalfeld Christmas booklet 2011
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 37 ′ 48.7 ″ N , 11 ° 22 ′ 44.9 ″ E