Brick lock

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brick's castle in the middle, on the left the St. Georg cemetery church

The brick castle is in the Upper Palatinate market town of Schmidmühlen (Kreuzbergstrasse 4).

history

The brick mansion was not a noble residence, but was built by Josef Georg Felsner , a son of Schmidmühlen, in 1757 at the cemetery outside the market in the area of ​​a former brick factory.

Life story of Josef Georg Felsner

The Felsner family came from Kastl . The brick maker and grandfather of the builder of the brick castle Johann Felsner moved from Kastl to Schmidmühlen in 1668. The reason was his marriage to the Schmidmühlen brewer's daughter Anna Johann Kolb . He died in 1718. His son Balthasar (born as the fourth of eight children in 1697) married the daughter of a citizen, Elisabeth Riedhammer . This marriage resulted from Johann Georg , the later builder of the castle. The godfather was the papermaker Georg Mittelstraßer from the Vischbach paper mill .

The brick factory in Schmidmühlen was originally owned by the municipality. In 1687 the market sold it to Lorenz Hammer von Velburg . From this, Felsner, who had moved from Kastl, acquired the property in 1692, which apparently did not yet have a residential building. In the purchase letter the permission to build one is mentioned. In 1721 the widow Anna des Johann Felsner transferred the brickworks with "hearings" to her son Balthasar , the father of Johann Georg . It is not possible to determine when it was owned.

Josef Georg Felsner was born on December 17, 1727, the fourth of six children. It left Schmidmühlen at the age of 16, wandered through half of Europe, but stayed mainly in France. There he learned the art of making snuffboxes . These cans were an indispensable device for everyone at the time. In 1757, almost 30 years old, he returned to Schmidmühlen. In the same year he started building the brick mansion , the cost of which was a considerable 18,000 florins .

Josef Felsner also founded a factory for the production of tobacco boxes in Schmidmühlen. Initially, Felsner employed around 50 workers, later around 20. The tobacco boxes were manufactured using a secret method that he had brought with him from France. The Schmidmühlen production developed into considerable competition for his French teachers. That prompted one of them to send Felsner a box. Unsuspecting, he had the shipment opened by a locksmith on the floor. That was his luck, because the box contained several loaded pistols that would have discharged if the lid had been opened.

Josef Felsner's life in Schmidmühlen was marked by a deep hostility between him and the market town. This opened a number of lawsuits against him, his construction and his company. As early as 1796, a district court ruling banned the use of the sink or lavatory pits in his new building, making it uninhabitable. Pits that were dry-walled and provided with a stone or wooden frame were previously referred to as shrinkage pits. Wooden planks were placed on top to cover it. In these either rain or other water was collected that was not allowed to be discharged onto the street. Such water should "dwindle" (= dry up) in a sink or it had to be used up. From then on he lived near his factory in Brunnlett (house number 88).

Johann Georg Felsner married the baker's daughter Maria Regina Riedhammer in 1779 , she died in childbed in 1783; on July 23, 1793 he married Margareta Weigl . A few weeks later, Johann Georg Felsner died on September 7, 1793 at the age of 66. Felsner had also set up a can factory in Amberg in 1793 , but this company brought him into great financial difficulties, and when he died there was nothing left of his once considerable fortune.

Further owners of the brick castle

Felsner's brother-in-law, Leonhard Hofmann, bought the brickworks castle with brickworks and brick kiln in 1793 . He probably gained the means for this by selling the trade secret in 1794 to the leather manufacturer Fleischmann from Amberg. He moved production there and produced around 24,000 tobacco tins a year for 20 years, which he sold at a profit. The trade secret was that the tobacco boxes were simply made of paper. The Fleischmann's documents say that he produced “cans with French lacquer” with six to ten people and sold for 2 to 2 fl. 45 kr. sold. I.e. the boxes were made of paper, painted and coated with varnish. Production there ran until at least 1808. After the death of his can painter JB Schmid , Fleischmann was no longer able to find a suitable artist, so that sales fell and eventually he had to cease operations.

Brick Castle Schmidmühlen

Exterior

The building is a three-story structure. On the east side there is a continuous central projection and on the north side there is a bay window that extends over two floors. The yellow building has white pilasters and window frames. It was built on the model of a French country castle.

On November 26, 1896, there was a fire disaster. The Bavarian Volksbote reported in its edition of December 3, 1896: “On the morning of the 26th of the last month at 5½, this castle, an adornment of the market, was destroyed by flames. The same thing burned every nook and cranny at almost the same time, which leaves much room for the assumption of arson. Nothing remained of the beautiful building but the brickwork. ” So it was suspected arson, but the origin of the fire could not be clarified by the initiated police investigations.

The brick castle was rebuilt and changed several times in the 20th century. It has been in the family for four generations.

literature

  • Georg Hager: The art monuments of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Second volume. Administrative regions of Upper Palatinate and Regensburg. Issue 5: District Office Burglengenfeld. Oldenbourg Verlag , Munich 1906, p. 125.

Web links

Commons : Zieglerschloss  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Lochgässchen in Augsburg in Augsburg-wiki

Coordinates: 49 ° 15 '59.3 "  N , 11 ° 55' 8.1"  E