Witwenpalais (Eutin)
The ducal widow's palace in Eutin in Schleswig-Holstein is a former aristocratic city palace right on the city's market square. After various failed usage concepts, the building is currently empty.
The ducal widow's palace on the Eutin market
History of the palace
The palace was built from 1786 to 1787 for the Duchess Ulrike Friederike Wilhelmine von Hessen-Kassel as a retirement home. She was the wife of Duke Friedrich August I , with whom she resided in the nearby Eutin Castle and who died in 1785. The duchess could no longer use the palace; she died two years after her husband in 1787 before the building was completed. The Widow's Palace, which never served this purpose but kept its name, served various purposes in the centuries that followed. It served Johann Heinrich Voss as a residential building, temporarily housed the court library and the town hall of the city, contained storage rooms and holding cells and was repeatedly empty.
From 2000 the building was extensively renovated by a private investor. The city of Eutin contributed to the costs with 500,000 DM. The old room sequences were renewed, the roof re-covered and freed from sponge infestation , the stucco of the interior restored and stylistically matching ovens purchased. The work lasted until 2003. The palace was then to be used for commercial and public purposes. Among other things, an antique market should be offered, a restaurant was set up and seminar rooms were offered for rent. However, the concept failed and the house came under administration. It is currently (2009) empty, new uses could not be realized. The city of Eutin is considering buying back the building.
The construction
The widow's palace was built by the Eutin court architect Peter Richter from 1786 to 1787. Richter also built the neighboring town hall and designed a classicistic development plan for the Eutin Palace Square, which, however, was not implemented. The palace is not a completely new building, it contains an older residential building from 1695, which served as the Eutin town hall from 1773 to 1786. The palace is an almost two-winged, angular building with an eleven -axis front facing the market square. The courtyard was once flanked by smaller farm buildings. The building was erected at the transition from late baroque to classicism and is considered - after the Eutin Castle and next to the town hall - the most artistically important secular building in the city. The interiors are partly lined up en filade and provided with decorative elements of the plait style .
literature
- Hans Maresch, Doris Maresch: Schleswig-Holstein's castles, manors and palaces. Husum Verlag, Husum 2006, ISBN 3-89876-278-5 .
- Dehio: Handbook of the German Art Monuments Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-422-03033-6
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bürgergemeinschaft Eutin e. V., Report on the vacancy of the Palais' ( Memento of the original from January 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Lübecker Nachrichten of March 23, 2009 ( 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.
Web links
Coordinates: 54 ° 8 '11.9 " N , 10 ° 36' 58" O