Schloss Elnhausen: A Baroque Palace Complex in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page6 sections
History
Schloss Elnhausen is a Baroque palace complex in Marburg, Germany, built between 1707 and 1717 as an aristocratic estate complex. Located in Elnhausen, a district of Marburg in Hesse, it is counted among the few representative Baroque buildings in the Marburg-Biedenkopf district.
From water castle to Baroque estate
In 1672, Hermann von Vultejus, also known as Vultée, purchased Elnhausen’s water castle and its associated estate from the Schenken zu Schweinsberg. He served as a government councillor to the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in Marburg and later became vice-chancellor of Upper Hesse. The older castle had suffered partial destruction during the Thirty Years’ War, the major European conflict fought mainly from 1618 to 1648, and had subsequently fallen into neglect.
Between 1707 and 1717, Vultejus demolished the old castle and replaced it with a new complex on approximately the same square footprint. The palace occupied the western side, while agricultural and service buildings formed the other three sides. This arrangement combined a representative residence with the working buildings of a landed estate.
Changes of ownership and political administration
Hermann von Vultejus’s youngest son, Johann Adolph von Vultée, inherited his father-in-law’s estate and moved from Elnhausen to Wieblingen in 1747. He then sold Schloss Elnhausen together with the estate. After an auction, the property passed in 1750 to the von Heydwolff family of Gut Germershausen near Oberweimar. The family sold it to Lieutenant Colonel Udam in 1764.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Duke Wilhelm Joseph von Looz-Corswarem acquired the estate after losing his possessions in the Austrian Netherlands during the French Revolution. In 1807, Schloss Elnhausen and its estate became part of Napoleon’s Kingdom of Westphalia, a Napoleonic state created that year and dissolved in 1813. After its collapse, the property passed to Kurhessen, the Electorate of Hesse, and the estate became a state domain.
A forestry office was later established in the palace building. The complex is now privately owned, preserving the site’s transition from a noble estate to state administration and then to private ownership.
Remains
The complex stands at the northwestern edge of Elnhausen within a farmyard estate on the gently declining slope of the Stöckelsberg, also called Stackelberg. The hill’s elevation is given as 366 metres, while the palace stands at about 225 metres above sea level. The approximately square arrangement retains the palace on its western side and the agricultural and service buildings around the remaining sides.
Palace building
The palace is a two-storey building approximately 25 metres long and 15 metres wide. Its nine-axis elevation is covered by a hipped roof, which slopes down on all four sides. On the east side, a three-axis central projection, or risalit, extends from the main wall and contains the entrance portal. Above it rises a cross-gabled dormer, a roof projection set across the main roof slope, with a semicircular gable. A matching dormer is centred on the west elevation, and each of these two elevations also has a small hipped dormer on either side. Two further dormers of the same style are placed on each end elevation.
The entrance portal lies beneath a centrally broken round arch and is reached by a double flight of steps. These elements form the principal architectural emphasis of the otherwise compact two-storey building and express its Baroque design.
Trace of the former water castle
The earlier water castle survives physically through a moat south of the present palace. This remnant preserves a visible connection between the Baroque estate complex and the fortified predecessor that stood on the site before its demolition in the early eighteenth century.
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