Heisingen Castle
| Heisingen Castle | |
|---|---|
 Heisingen Castle gatehouse | |
 Interactive map of Heisingen Castle | |
| 51°24′01.7″N 7°4′27″E / 51.400472°N 7.07417°E | |
| Location | Essen-Heisingen, Germany |
| History | |
| Built | 12th century |
Heisingen Castle (German: Haus Heisingen) is a former Rittergut, or manor estate, on the right bank of the Ruhr in the Heisingen district of Essen, Germany. Its oldest surviving components date to the 12th century.
As a fief of Werden Abbey, it was held for more than two centuries by the barons Staël von Holstein starting in 1458, before being rebuilt in the early 18th century as a summer residence for the abbots of Werden. The complex today contains rental apartments.
Description
[edit]The complex consists of a manor house and a two-winged L-shaped farm building, both dating from the 18th and 19th centuries.[1] A rubble-stone wall bounds the site.
The manor house is the oldest component. Above its entrance are the arms of the Werden abbot Coelestin von Geismar, once accompanied by a Latin inscription recording that he incorporated the castle into the abbey of St. Ludger in 1709 and restored it from its decayed state.[2]
The Baroque round-arched portal bears the arms of Benedikt von Geismar, who had the gate erected in the 1740s. Near the entrance, a structural survey uncovered the foundations of a round tower 6.20 meters in diameter, part of a medieval predecessor and probably demolished in 1779.[1]
History
[edit]
The importance of the castle is reflected in the coat of arms of Heisingen, which shows the castle's round-arched stone gateway beneath red roundels, taken from the arms of the Staël von Holstein family.[3]
Heisingen Castle developed out of an Oberhof, or principal farm, of Werden Abbey; by the 11th and 12th centuries it had been fortified into a small castle, and from the early 13th century it was a Mannlehen, or male fief, of the abbey. On 31 May 1458 Ruprecht Staël von Holstein, Vogt and steward of the abbey, purchased the estate.[4]
The Staël von Holstein held the property until 1709, when the dilapidated complex was sold for 23,000 Reichsthaler to the Werden abbot Coelestin von Geismar, who rebuilt it as a summer residence, reconstructing the manor house, adding an L-shaped farm range and, under his successor Benedikt, a Baroque portal.[5]
Through secularization the estate passed to France in 1803 and, by the Congress of Vienna, to Prussia in 1815. Prussia sold it in 1842 to a mining company, and on 2 July 1890 the Heisingen merchant Johann Sonnenschein acquired it; his family remains the owner today.[4]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 Stefan Leenen: "Haus Heisingen". In: Kai Niederhöfer (ed.): Burgen AufRuhr. Unterwegs zu 100 Burgen, Schlössern und Herrensitzen in der Ruhrregion. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0234-3, pp. 175–178.
- ↑ Clemen, Paul, ed. (1893). Die Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt und des Kreises Essen. Die Kunstdenkmäler der Rheinprovinz (in German). Vol. 2, part 3. Düsseldorf: L. Schwann. p. 64.
- ↑ Busch, Johann Rainer (2009). Kurt Schweders Wappen der Essener Stadtteile (in German). Essen. p. 95.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - 1 2 "Die Berghöfe Heisingens" (PDF), heisingen.de (archived 30 April 2018).
- ↑ Ilse Cram: "Heisinger Geschichte. Die Bauern – die ersten Bergleute in Heisingen", museum-heisingen.de.
External links
[edit]
Media related to Haus Heisingen at Wikimedia Commons
