Schwanenburg: The Medieval Castle and Ducal Residence of Kleve, Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.3
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire, Margraviate of Brandenburg
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page15 sections
History
Schwanenburg is a medieval castle complex in Kleve, Germany, probably built for the Counts of Kleve in the eleventh century in the Romanesque period. It stands on a spur of the Lower Rhine hills and is one of the few hilltop castles in the Lower Rhine region. The castle became the ancestral seat of the Kleve dynasty, later a ducal residence and government center, and eventually a site of regional administration and justice.
Origins and the Counts of Kleve
Count Dietrich I of Kleve was first recorded in 1092 and probably took his name from the ancestral castle on the hill. Excavations carried out in 1999 and 2000 confirmed that a castle existed by the end of the eleventh century. An earlier fortification of late Carolingian date has been proposed, but the excavations found no evidence for the previously suggested Roman origins.
The castle received its first direct written mention in 1184, in a book of miracles from Siegburg. By the early thirteenth century, a settlement below the stronghold was gradually joining the nearby town of Kleve. Its inhabitants included servants and ministeriales, members of the medieval service nobility who performed administrative and military duties for rulers despite often having an unfree legal status.
In about 1233, the Counts of Kleve added a carbuncle to their coat of arms. This radiating heraldic device referred to the Swan Knight Helias, a legendary hero regarded as the ancestor of the dynasty. The tradition gave the tower the medieval name Schwanenturm, or Swan Tower, and later supplied the name Schwanenburg for the whole complex.
Town foundation and ducal government
Count Dietrich IV founded the settlement of Kleve west of the castle and granted it town rights on 25 April 1242. Under Counts Dietrich VII and Johann, Schwanenburg replaced Monterberg Castle near Kalkar as the permanent seat of government of the County of Kleve. The residence had returned to Schwanenburg by 1341.
When the male line of the Counts of Kleve ended in 1368, the county and castle passed by inheritance to the Counts of Mark. Adolf of Kleve-Mark was raised to the rank of Duke of Kleve by Emperor Sigismund in 1417. The castle was subsequently altered as the political status and needs of its rulers changed.
During the sixteenth century, the Dukes of Kleve reached the height of their power as rulers of the united duchies of Jülich-Kleve-Berg. They also held the counties of Mark and Ravensberg and, between 1538 and 1543, the Duchy of Guelders. The ducal court increasingly stayed in Düsseldorf, Jülich, or Hambach, which reduced Schwanenburg’s importance as a residence.
From Brandenburg residence to regional administration
After the death of the childless Duke Johann Wilhelm, Schwanenburg passed by inheritance to Johann Sigismund, Margrave of Brandenburg. Kleve then became Brandenburg’s third residence city, after Berlin and Königsberg. From 1649, the Brandenburg governor Johann Moritz of Nassau-Siegen led the castle’s last major period of prosperity. Acting for Elector Friedrich Wilhelm, he developed Kleve into a city of gardens and parks whose designs later influenced the elector’s palace gardens in Potsdam.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, Brandenburg’s residential, governmental, and administrative focus shifted to Berlin and Potsdam. Kleve and Schwanenburg consequently became regional centers for administration and justice. During the French period, the complex served as the administrative seat of the Arrondissement of Clèves. After Kleve returned to Prussia, it housed judicial administration within the Düsseldorf administrative district and functioned as a courthouse and prison from 1821 to 1917.
Alteration, destruction, and restoration
A conversion for judicial administration in 1828 adapted the buildings to contemporary requirements but destroyed several historic features. Initial restoration followed in 1893 to 1897, and further work accompanied the first archaeological investigations between 1909 and 1914.
On 7 October 1944, an Allied air raid severely damaged Schwanenburg when an aircraft struck and exploded against the Schwanenturm. The citizens’ association Bauhütte Schwanenburg carried out a partial reconstruction from 1948 to 1953. The association Freunde der Schwanenburg, founded in 1986, continued the repair and restoration of surviving fabric, including the Gothic vaults of the Spiegelturm in 1988.
Schwanenburg now houses the Kleve Local Court and Regional Court. Several floors of the Schwanenturm contain a geological collection belonging to the Kleve local museum. The complex was formerly called het slot von Cleef. Its later name refers to a large swan weather vane, whose wings formed the crest of the ducal arms, while the name Kleve derives from Cleef, meaning cliff or escarpment.
Remains
Schwanenburg occupies about 6,300 square metres on a plateau of the Hartenberg ridge. The ground falls steeply by approximately 40 metres on three sides. The complex follows the shape of this spur-like plateau, with crescent-shaped western buildings and a nearly straight eastern side extending along about half of the plateau edge. A transverse wing divides the site into northern and southern sections, each organized around an approximately triangular courtyard.
Medieval foundations and southern section
The earliest castle included a square residential tower built of tuff by around 1100. Its walls were 2.5 metres thick. From about 1150, a polygonal curtain wall, the defensive wall enclosing the complex, surrounded the castle. An eastern palas, the principal residential and ceremonial building of a medieval German castle, measured about 12 by 30 metres. Its vaulted ground floor contained the knights’ hall. The eastern gate was protected by the Johannisturm, while a neck ditch, cut across the ridge to separate the castle from higher ground, defended the southern approach.
Spiegelturm
The Spiegelturm stood in the southwest by the twelfth or thirteenth century and is about 28 metres high. Its complex included a sophisticated privy with water flushing and ventilation. The square tower dominates the southern section, where its slate-covered roof carries two weather vanes. The upper storey ends in a simple arch frieze and a battlement-like parapet. Inside, the ground floor has a barrel vault, while the first upper floor has a cross-vault supported by a central pillar on a low base.
Alte Kanzlei and adjoining wings
A nineteenth-century stair tower is attached to the Spiegelturm, and its southern side is faced with basalt blocks to a height of five metres. East of the tower stands a four-storey wing dated to 1463. Its hipped roof and former use as a prison gave it the name Alte Kanzlei. The wing’s southern exterior wall is four metres thick and forms part of the medieval curtain wall, built here from tuff and basalt.
A three-storey wing west of the Spiegelturm has a Renaissance arcade along the courtyard side of its ground floor. The fourteenth- and fifteenth-century additions to the castle used brick extensively. In 1429, Duke Adolf I converted the Spiegelturm into an archive and added vaulted ceilings to its two lower floors.
Northern courtyard and surviving medieval fabric
Gateway passage and courtyard arcades
The northern courtyard is reached through a gateway passage in the three-storey transverse wing. The passage has four cross-vaults. A bearded male head is fixed at the center of its unplastered brick arch. Above it is a coat-of-arms stone with a carbuncle shield, installed in 1953 in place of the alliance arms of Duke Wilhelm the Rich and Maria of Austria, which were destroyed. The gate beam bears the date 1664.
Renaissance arcades line two sides of the northern courtyard. The eastern arcade has five arches and the western one six. Their brick square piers rest on low bases of light ashlar and have simply formed imposts, while the Doric capitals are made of limestone. Two courtyard entrances contain spolia, architectural pieces taken from an older or demolished building and reused in a later structure. One doorway is flanked by monolithic black-stone columns and has a pointed arch enriched with foliage ornament.
Former residential building
The former medieval residential building occupies the northern corner of the courtyard. Part of its exterior wall is the medieval curtain wall, which is three metres thick at this point. A well in the courtyard displays a sculpture of a swan, the heraldic animal of the Dukes of Kleve. The swan and the coat-of-arms stone above the gateway were made by the sculptor Alfred Sabisch.
Schwanenturm
The 54-metre-high Schwanenturm dominates the northern section at the northern end of the eastern side. It is built of tuff with trachyte ashlar quoins and stands on a square plan of about 180 square metres. Its ground-floor walls are 3.25 metres thick. The first seven storeys rise together to 25 metres. Above them, a slightly projecting storey carries a battlement walk on a pointed-arch frieze, followed by two further storeys of reduced plan. A second battlement walk with corner turrets on pendentives crowns these levels, and the tower is finished with a pointed roof and lantern.
The original residential tower, or donjon, the principal fortified tower of a medieval castle, collapsed on 7 October 1439. Duke Adolf I commissioned the Kleve master builder Johan Wyrenberg to replace it with the more slender Schwanenturm. Construction began in 1440 and ended thirteen years later. A gilded swan was placed on the summit in 1455, and an inscription tablet above the ground-floor entrance records the tower’s construction.
Renaissance and Baroque transformations
Duke Wilhelm the Rich commissioned modernization and extensions from the Pasqualini architectural family during the sixteenth century. The work included the Herzog-Wilhelm-Tor, built south of the castle in 1560, and a chancery building constructed in 1558 and joined to the Johannisturm by a lower Renaissance gallery wing in 1569 and 1570. These extensions do not survive.
Between 1663 and 1666, the Dutch architect Pieter Post transformed the complex for the Brandenburg rulers into a restrained Baroque palace. Apart from the towers, the earlier Gothic architectural elements were removed, establishing much of the complex’s present appearance. Post added a connecting wing with a monumental gateway and a Brandenburg coat of arms above it. This gateway remains the main entrance, and arcaded galleries were added to both courtyards.
Demolition and surviving structures
Poor maintenance in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century led to the demolition of much of the complex. The chancery buildings, the Staufian palas and its knights’ hall were demolished in 1771, the Johannisturm followed in 1784, and the Herzog-Wilhelm-Tor was also removed. Parts of the palas portal were reused as a doorway surround in the northern courtyard. These surviving elements, together with the towers, curtain-wall sections, arcades, and later wings, preserve the layered development of Schwanenburg from a medieval castle to a Baroque palace complex.
