Wingertsbergschlösschen

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The Wingertsbergschlösschen around 1930

The Wingertsbergschlösschen was a neo-Gothic castle above the spa park in Bad Homburg on the edge of the Taunus foothills, Hardtwald. It was built around 1860 by the Homburg government councilor Wiesenbach on the former "Nacktberg" - also called Wingertsberg . Grapes were grown on this mountain until the 18th century .

The original owner was Privy Councilor Dr. Müller, who used the Wingertsberg as a garden. He had a small wooden temple built here around 1840, from which the view stretched from the Taunus to the Rhine-Main plain. The fantastic view was the reason why Government Councilor Wiesenbach fulfilled his dream of having his own castle at this place around 1860. The colorful mix of styles of bay windows, turrets, battlements and pointed arched windows was due to the zeitgeist.

On the site, which extends into the valley of the Kirdorfer Bach , there was also a greenhouse and a building for the staff under the magnificent trees . At the foot of the Wingertsberg, an innkeeper ran the “Wingertsberghof” with a dairy farm and carriage rental .

In 1888, an American businessman named Reggio bought the land and buildings and sold everything to the Giulini family just twelve years later. From 1911 to 1959, Lieutenant Colonel a. D. Heinrich Hübsch and his wife Anni visit the Wingertsbergschlösschen, as the guest book stored in the Bad Homburg city archive attests. Hübschs were relatives of the Giulini and so the Wingertsbergschlösschen came back to this family by inheritance . From 1960 they gradually sold parts of the site as building land on which small villas were built in prime locations.

The castle itself looked ailing at the time and urgently needed renovation. In 1964 the danger of collapse could still be countered with emergency supports. Reports of heavy cracks in buildings, falling battlements and roof tiles, launched by City Planning Officer Mühlmann (who also wanted to tear down the entire old town of Bad Homburg at the time) impressed the Hessian state curator , who saw no "historical or architectural value" in the upcoming ruins. The Federal Insurance Institute for Salaried Employees bought in 1966, a 10,000-square-meter part of the site, the castle demolished and instead a twenty-four-meter-high Sanatorium block in the seventies style building. The promise that the system should be developed in such a way that the backdrop of the Hardtwald forest behind it rises above the tallest buildings was not kept.

A detailed residential building on Wingertsbergweg on an L-shaped floor plan is considered to be the former outbuilding of the Wingertsbergschlösschen.

literature

  • Jörn Koppmann: Older people still think wistfully of the battlements , Frankfurter Rundschau of October 10, 1992
  • Eva Rowedder: Cultural monuments in Hessen. City of Bad Homburg vdH Theiss, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8062-1597-9 , p. 61 ( Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany ).
  • Gerta Walsh: The Wingertsberg through the ages - temple, castle and clinic, Taunus-Zeitung from June 9, 1992
  • Taunusbote from November 23, 1966
  • Frankfurter Rundschau from November 25, 1966

Individual evidence

  1. Johannes Latsch: "Human, homely, attractive" - ​​30 years of the Prognos report in Bad Homburg - urban planning between theory, citizens' will and reality in: From the city archive - Lectures on Bad Homburg's history, Volume 13. 2002/03
  2. ^ Frankfurter Neue Presse, November 12, 1966
  3. Eva Rowedder: cultural monuments in Hesse. City of Bad Homburg vdH Theiss, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8062-1597-9 , p. 390; State Office for Monument Preservation Hesse (Ed.): Wingertsbergweg 16 In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hesse .

Coordinates: 50 ° 13 '57.67 "  N , 8 ° 37' 42.57"  O