The Landsberg Castle is a castle in the Ruhr valley in the city of Ratingen near the castle Hugenpoet
The Landsberg Castle is a castle in the Ruhr valley in the city of Ratingen near the castle Hugenpoet . It stands near the Kettwiger district before the bridge about one kilometer southwest of the center of Kettwig on the road to Mulheim an der Ruhr -Mintard middle of a English landscape parks with vast forest area.
The complex goes back to a medieval hilltop castle from the end of the 13th century, which was built by Count Adolf V von Berg . At that time it was mainly used to secure the important nearby bridge over the Ruhr that connected Kettwig with Ratingen. Since 1288 at the latest, the castle has belonged to the Lords of Landsberg , who had their ancestral seat until 1903, with an interruption of 120 years.
Modified several times during the 17th and 18th centuries, the complex was given its current form in the historicist style by the industrialist August Thyssen , who acquired it in 1903 and had it converted into his representative residence. The former Gut Landsberg has been called Schloss Landsberg since these structural changes . It has been owned by the Thyssen family since 1926 . After changing uses after the Second World War , it has been leased to thyssenkrupp AG as a seminar and conference venue since 1992 . It is also one of several themed routes on the Route of Industrial Culture .
History
Residents and owners
Lords of Landsberg
The builder of Landsberg Castle and its first liege lord was Count Adolf V. von Berg. The first documented resident of Landsberg, however, was Philipp von Werden (documented 1259– † 1297) from the family of the Lords of Werden . As early as 1288, Philipp called himself Philippo de Landsberg . At that time he was also ministerial officer of the Werden monastery . Philip's descendants, the lords of Landsberg , later became one of the richest and most respected families in the county. Over the next 500 years, numerous men were of Landsberg with the castle invested , of which but a few as " robber barons operated or desert highway robbers". For example, Philip's son Wessel (also Wezzel ) was condemned by his sovereign to leave Duisburg citizens unmolested. The raids involving the brothers Ludwig and Reinhard von Landsberg around 1400 were so serious that the city of Cologne and the Archbishop of Cologne declared the feud together with many other Bergisch aristocrats , because almost all of the trade in the area was due to the raids came to a standstill (see Kalkumer feud ).
On November 4, 1548, Duke Wilhelm von Jülich-Kleve-Berg transferred the castle and the associated office to Bertram von Landsberg as a hereditary fief. In return, the complex was an open house of the Bergisch dukes from this date .
At the end of the 16th century, Spanish troops led by their general Francisco de Mendoza, on behalf of the Archbishop of Cologne, Ernst von Bayern, plundered the Landsberg district. They were probably the first in 1589 and 1597 to conquer the castle, which had been considered invincible until then.
After the Jülich-Klevische Succession dispute ended in 1614 with the Treaty of Xanten and the Duchy of Berg fell to Pfalz-Neuburg , the Thirty Years' War broke out three years later , during which imperial troops conquered and devastated Landsberg Castle in early 1633. In the summer of 1633, however, the imperial family were chased away by Hessian troops, so that the castle was occupied by Protestants from then on. After Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm's diplomatic efforts to get his property back were unsuccessful, his troops were able to take back Landsberg Castle in a coup d'état on an autumn night in 1635 .
Changing ownership
The complex, meanwhile converted into a castle, remained in the possession of the Landsbergs until the beginning of the 18th century. After the male family with Vitus Arnold von Landsberg died out in 1705, the castle came to Baron Sigismund von Bevern in 1713 through the marriage of the heiress Anna Wilhelmina . The widow of his descendant Gottfried von Bevern sold the property to the royal Prussian chamberlain Freiherr Gerhard von Carnap in 1825 after the feudal system in the French Rhineland had been abolished in 1809 on the orders of Napoleon and Landsberg Castle had become the property of the von Bevern family. In 1837 Gerhard von Carnap sold the facility again for 50,000 thalers . The new owner was the imperial baron Alexander von Landsberg-Velen zu Steinfurt, who came from a Westphalian branch of the Landsbergs created by division around 1300. He and his successors primarily use the castle as a summer residence.
Until the beginning of the 19th century, the Stroetrecht (from "Stroet" for shrub, bushes, thickets) also belonged to the house. This was the right to keep wild horses in the forest between Duisburg and Düsseldorf, which apart from the Duke of Berg only had a few nobility seats ( Broich , Heltorf , Böckum , Haus zum Haus , Groß-Winkelhausen , Oefte and Landsberg).
August Thyssen and Thyssen Foundation
In 1903 August Thyssen acquired the facility, including the surrounding forest, from Baron Ignatz von Landsberg-Velen and Steinfurt . According to Thyssen's will, after his death on April 4, 1926, the castle and all properties belonging to it were transferred to the August Thyssen Foundation Schloß Landsberg , a family foundation of the Thyssen entrepreneurial family , which is still the owner today; the family's burial place is in the crypt of the keep.
During the Second World War, Landsberg, together with the neighboring Hugenpoet Castle, was the seat of the Rohland staff , a planning staff for the war economy. The castle was also the location of Albert Speer's meetings with representatives of the Rhenish-Westphalian coal and steel industry, which aimed to undermine Hitler's Nero order , which provided for the destruction of industries. It was occupied by British troops on June 26, 1945 and was used to house engineer staff until the end of the occupation in March 1947.
From June 1, 1947, the city of Mülheim operated a children's recreation home at the castle - in the first few months with the support of the British Save the Child Foundation - but ceased operations in February 1952, among other things because of inadequate hygienic conditions. From May 15, 1952 to the end of March 1966, the Raphaelhaus children's home then used the thoroughly renovated building to accommodate children whose relatives were employed by the Thyssen company. Since the maintenance costs clearly exceeded the income, the home had to close after almost 14 years.
From May 1, 1967, the castle was given to the General Association of Evangelical Churches in Essen for use. He subsequently used the facility as a leisure home and meeting place. Since the churches were also in financial difficulties with ongoing usage, the usage contract was terminated on December 31, 1984.
Thyssenkrupp AG (formerly Thyssen AG) has rented the castle since 1989 and uses the premises as a seminar and conference venue.
Building history
Beginnings
Landsberg Castle has its roots in the 13th century. To protect the nearby bridge over the Ruhr, Count Adolf V von Berg probably had a castle built on a mountain spur south of the Ruhr between 1276 and 1289. In addition to the control of this important Ruhr crossing, it also had a function to protect the county borders from the neighboring territories of the Reichsabtei Werden and the Reichsstift Essen . This first defense system, surrounded by a ring wall, consisted of a keep, a gate and an adjoining hall. In the middle of the 15th century, the family of the Knights von Landsberg, who held the castle as a fief, had the curtain wall repaired. In the course of this work, it was reinforced on the Ruhr side with a three-storey round tower.
Thirty Years' War
At the end of the 16th century, the castle was captured by Spanish troops and razed , but then rebuilt. Thirty years later, she met the same fate again during the Thirty Years' War. Occupations and looting by imperial and Hessian troops hit them badly. After troops of the Bergisch Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm von Pfalz-Neuburg had recaptured the castle in autumn 1635, the Landsbergers had the damaged walls repaired during the war and the destroyed round tower rebuilt in 1639, as evidenced by an inscription with the year in the lintel of the tower is. At the same time as these repairs, the battlements of the keep were replaced by a brick parapet and the stair tower was raised.
Conversion to a castle
In 1652 Arnold Friedrich von Landsberg was enfeoffed with the castle. Together with his wife Katharina von Meschede , he had extensive renovations carried out, which transformed the old fortification into a renaissance castle. On the north corner of the palace they built a new, elongated two-storey residential wing by 1656. They then had a new manor house built on the foundations of the old palace by 1666 with curved gables that were horizontally divided by pilaster strips. While it only had narrow light openings on the outside, it opened into five window axes on the courtyard side. Today's gate construction also dates from the time of the couple, who at the same time had the medieval drawbridge replaced by a stone arch bridge.
The baroque gardens are laid out
After Sigismund von Bevern came into possession of the palace complex through marriage to Anna Wilhelmina von Landsberg in 1713, he initiated further construction measures. The parapet walkway on the north side was probably built over on two floors. However, these buildings were demolished again in the middle of the 19th century, because a lithograph from 1860/61 shows the castle from the southwest again without these buildings.
The most lasting testimony to von Bevern's redesign measures, however, was the creation of several terraced gardens to the east and south of the palace. The prerequisite for this was the erection of a 100 meter long and eight meter high retaining wall in 1717, which ran parallel to the residential building on its east side, as well as the filling of the moat in front of the gate. In this way, a narrow plateau was created between the manor house and the retaining wall, which was taken up by an axially structured tree garden. Located a little higher than this and connected to it by a flight of stairs, a Baroque ornamental garden with symmetrical shapes and fountains joined the tree garden to the southwest. The spacious landscaped park surrounding the castle and the orangery probably go back to Sigismund von Bevern. Drawings by the Walloon painter Renier Roidkin from around 1730 show the appearance of the time in detail.
August Thyssen's residence
During the time when the von Landsberg-Velen family owned the property, they only used it as a summer residence. Due to the infrequent use and the associated poor maintenance, the buildings became very dilapidated. Renovations and renewals were planned again around 1870, but they were never carried out.
Ignaz von Landsberg-Velen sold the dilapidated complex in 1903 to the entrepreneur August Thyssen, who had the castle redesigned until 1904 in order to then use it as a representative residence. Thyssen commissioned three Hanoverians with the architect Otto Lüer , the painter Oscar Wichtendahl and the garden planner Julius Trip to renovate and convert the entire complex. As early as 1900, the two had jointly planned and built the Harderode house and its garden in what is now Coppenbrügge . In the interior of the Landsberg residential buildings, almost all the partition walls were removed in order to make large rooms out of the numerous small rooms. With a few exceptions, their equipment has been completely renewed. Only a few chimneys and coat of arms stones were reused. In addition, equipped Thyssen castle with a variety of art objects from, for example, six marble statues by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin . The new lord of the castle also had the external appearance of the complex significantly changed by completely redesigning the facades of the buildings, erecting additional buildings and adding a winter garden to them. In addition, all roofs were given a uniform covering with slate shingles. The time of the red roof tiles on the manor house and the Remisentrakt was over.
The outdoor facilities designed by Trip took up the basic design elements of the existing gardens and continued them. The former tree garden east of the residential buildings was divided by a long path along its central axis and planted with strictly cut topiary trees. The path ended in the north at a round flower parterre , which was followed by a garden pavilion . Along the retaining wall ran a fabricated wood and iron, white painted portico , but who in 1930 was removed. From the flower parterre, a path turned at right angles to the west to the newly created tennis court north of the round tower. It was surrounded by a stone balustrade and had a small spectator seat under a pergola . Just like the arcade, the pavilion and tennis court no longer exist, but their locations can still be seen in the garden.
Restorations and current use
After August Thyssen's death, his heirs had the first floor of the keep converted into a mausoleum for him and his descendants. In 1928 he found his final resting place there.
The first restorations on Thyssen's Castle took place in 1956 and 1966/67 in the outdoor area of the complex. Among other things, the curtain wall and the bridge to the gate were repaired. From 1980 the sandstone elements of the facades and the winter garden as well as the paintings in the former chapel were restored.
After the decision was made at the end of the 1980s to use Schloss Landsberg as a seminar and conference venue in the future, three-year renovation and restoration work began in 1989 under the supervision of the Rhenish Office for the Preservation of Monuments , during which not only the entire interior was restored to its condition from 1904, but also the round tower and Remisentrakt were structurally repaired. The measures were so far-reaching that they even included the reproduction of furniture based on old images.
The future type of use also meant that overnight accommodations had to be created for guests. The owner decided to build a new building in the area of the former kitchen garden opposite the former orangery, which was then torn down and replaced by a new building based on the original. Until 1992, the foundation was the so-called new residential tower building, largely based on the design language of medieval keeps and up to 30 overnight guests can accommodate.
https://de.zxc.wiki
Gratis
- Schlosspark
- Wanderwege
- Erholungsgebiete
- Das Schloss wird als Konferenzsaal genutzt
- Nur außerhalb zu besuchen