Castle Steinhausen: A Historic Castle Complex in Witten, Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page13 sections
History
Castle Steinhausen is a historic castle complex in Witten, Germany, whose origins lie in a hilltop fortress first documented in 1297. It was associated with the Lords of Witten, who helped secure a ford and ferry across the Ruhr during the thirteenth century. The surviving buildings reflect repeated destruction, rebuilding, and remodelling from the medieval period through the nineteenth century.
Medieval fortress and the Ruhr crossing
Members of the Witten family, Hermann and Everhard, were recorded in 1248 in the service of Count Dietrich of Altena-Isenberg. Their duties included protecting a Ruhr ford and ferry. Near the end of the thirteenth century, Everhard’s son Bernhard von Witten built a fortified house called Steenhus near the river to guard the crossing. This earlier building gave the later complex its name.
A partition document from 1321 describes the medieval castle as a substantial double-castle complex with a private chapel. In 1434, troops from the Imperial City of Dortmund attacked and destroyed it. The force consisted of 700 infantrymen and 20 cavalrymen, bringing the first major phase of the site to an end.
Rebuilding and changes of ownership
After the destruction, Rötger von Witten established a new residence on the opposite bank of the Ruhr around 1470. Known at that time as Burg Berge and now called Haus Witten, it was a later Witten residence rather than a reconstruction of the ruined castle at Steinhausen.
The Steinhausen estate passed to the Staël von Holstein family in 1464 through the marriage of the heiress Jutta to Lutter Staël von Holstein. Hardenberg Staël von Holstein rebuilt the complex in 1529 while operating coal mining there. In 1607, his descendant Robert Staël von Holstein, a canon, or member of a cathedral’s clerical community, at Hildesheim Cathedral commissioned a stepped-gable house and a prominent tower.
After the family’s male line ended, Helena Margareta and her niece Maria Helena, both canonesses of Asbeck, transferred the estate in 1732 to their nephew, Baron Friedrich Christian von Elverfeldt. Levin von Elverfeldt later commissioned a new manor house in the Classical style in 1810. His descendants sold the estate in 1851 to the Dutch manufacturers Jan Jakob van Braam and Gerrit Vriese. The families Fromberg and den Tex subsequently held the property.
Historicist remodelling and later uses
Witten building contractor and entrepreneur Friedrich Wilhelm Dünkelberg acquired the castle and its associated lands in 1893. He extensively remodelled the complex in the Historicist style, a nineteenth-century approach that revived and recombined forms from earlier periods. Dünkelberg reshaped the buildings as a romantic knightly estate, creating much of the appearance visible today. Ownership later passed through marriage to the Oberste-Frielinghaus family, which remains the owner.
The complex has also acquired modern cultural uses. The manor house has contained a restaurant since 2001, while the former cowshed serves as an event venue and other rooms house artists’ studios. Since May 2002, the castle park and an adjoining former service building have presented a permanent exhibition of Shona sculptures from Zimbabwe, including works by Raymond Chataira. From 2004 to May 2009, the Bommern Local and Historical Society used the stepped-gable house for offices, an archive, and a ground-floor exhibition devoted to the history of Bommern.
Remains
Castle Steinhausen is a group of buildings on the Muttental Mining History Trail in Bommern, a district of Witten south of the Ruhr. Its irregular complex combines rubble-stone masonry, rendered walls, gabled and half-hipped roofs, medieval fabric, Renaissance and Classical additions, and later Historicist work. The buildings occupy the former castle estate, with a round tower on the eastern side, residential structures extending to the southeast, a former stable to the south, and the manor house in the northern part.
Eastern tower and adjoining residences
Round tower
A three-storey round tower stands on the eastern side of the complex. Its lower section is medieval, while the upper section and the external spiral staircase date from the nineteenth century. The tower formerly carried a polygonal roof spire with a weather vane. Mining-related damage, together with decay in the roof covering and timberwork, led to the spire’s removal for safety reasons in 1999. It now stands in the castle courtyard. The Friends of Castle Steinhausen, founded in June 2005, pursued restoration of the tower and roof for many years, but the plans were temporarily suspended after the association was dissolved.
Stepped-gable residential building
A rubble-stone residential building adjoins the tower to the southeast. Its most prominent features are its stepped gables, whose sloping sides rise in a stair-step pattern. The structure probably occupies the foundations of an older palas, the principal residential or representational building of a medieval castle. Gothic-style decoration includes a cornice with an egg-and-dart profile.
The northern part of this two-storey building dates from the Renaissance, the period when European architecture revived classical forms from the fifteenth century onward. Its southern part is an extension from around 1800. Above the west entrance, a coat of arms accompanies the date “1.2.1607” and an inscription naming Robert Staël von Holstein, canon of Hildesheim Cathedral, as the builder.
Former service building
A rubble-stone service building joins the southern end of the later extension at an obtuse angle. It has a pitched roof covered with brick tiles. Its origins probably reach back to the medieval period, while its stepped gables were added during the nineteenth century.
Manor house and chapel
Manor house
The two-storey manor house occupies the northern part of the site. Its half-hipped roof has gable ends that are partly cut back, and its facade is arranged in nine window bays. The oldest fabric is medieval, while other portions date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A major remodelling in the Classical style took place in 1810. Work carried out from 1899 added the vestibule, staircase, veranda, and western extensions in the Historicist style.
Castle chapel
The Historicist castle chapel stands at the northeastern corner of the manor house. Its core dates from 1648, and it was fundamentally remodelled in 1904 in the Art Nouveau style, known in German as Jugendstil. The chapel contains grave slabs dating from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, including the tombstone of Hardenberg Staël von Holstein.
Earlier castle arrangement
The medieval site is also represented in the historical layout associated with the earlier fortress. The 1321 description of a double-castle complex and private chapel records the scale and organization of the predecessor to the surviving buildings. Together with the medieval lower section of the eastern tower and the probable medieval foundations beneath the stepped-gable residence, these elements connect the present estate with the fortified crossing point established near the Ruhr.
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