Faber-Castell-Schloss: A Historicist Palace Complex in Stein, Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- German
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page10 sections
History
Faber-Castell-Schloss is a historicist palace complex in Stein, Germany, near Nuremberg, built for the Faber-Castell family during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historicism was an architectural approach that deliberately revived earlier styles. The complex includes the Old Castle, built in the Neo-Renaissance style between 1843 and 1846, and the New Castle, constructed in the early twentieth century in a German Romanesque style.
The Old Castle
The Old Castle was planned and built for Lothar von Faber, a nineteenth-century German industrialist associated with the Faber pencil enterprise. The architect Friedrich Bürklein designed the building in the Neo-Renaissance style, which revived forms associated with Renaissance architecture. Its construction between 1843 and 1846 established the principal earlier phase of the palace complex.
The New Castle
The Faber-Castell family commissioned the New Castle in 1903/1906. Theodor von Kramer designed it in the style of German Romanesque architecture, drawing on medieval architectural traditions associated with Germany. Some of the complex’s representative rooms were designed by Bruno Paul, a German architect, designer, and illustrator linked with modern design around the turn of the twentieth century.
War and postwar uses
The Faber-Castell family lived in the castle until 1939, when the Wehrmacht confiscated the complex. After the Second World War, American occupation troops occupied it. Journalists covering the Nuremberg Trials, the postwar proceedings against leading figures of Nazi Germany for major war crimes and crimes against humanity, lived there until the beginning of the 1950s. AFN Nuremberg also operated studios in the complex before moving to the Grand Hotel in January 1950.
Exhibitions and renovation
During the Dürer Year in 1971, the Nuremberg Albrecht Dürer Society organized the exhibitions Ars phantastica and Positionen + Tendenzen at the castle. After decades of neglect, Anton-Wolfgang Graf von Faber-Castell undertook renovation and inventory work. The complex has been used for events since 1986. The estates of Appelhof and Wolfgangshof remain part of the Faber-Castell family’s holdings.
Remains
The surviving complex is arranged as two castles joined by a richly articulated five-storey tower. A gateway passage runs through the connecting tower, making it a physical link between the two principal buildings. Together, the buildings are regarded as an artistic distinction and as a notable overall example of historicism in Franconia.
Buildings and interiors
Old Castle
The Old Castle has three wings arranged around a square, four-storey tower. Its roof is provided with crenellations, giving the tower a fortified architectural profile within the Neo-Renaissance design.
New Castle
The New Castle contains a spacious staircase with a stucco ceiling above it. The molded plaster decoration is in the Art Nouveau style, an international style known for flowing ornament, organic forms, and decorative craftsmanship.
Representative rooms
The former residential suite on the first floor was divided into the Lemon Room, the Room of the Months, and the Louis XVI Room. The Lemon Room takes its name from furniture formerly placed there, which was veneered with yellow East Indian satinwood, commonly called lemonwood. The ceiling of the Room of the Months displays the signs of the zodiac.
The second floor contains a Tapestry Hall, a music or ballroom, and a former dining room. The tapestries formerly held in the Tapestry Hall no longer survive, and the original furnishings of both castles have been lost.
