Friedelhausen Castle: A Historic Estate Complex in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page9 sections
History
Friedelhausen Castle is a historic estate complex near Lollar in Germany, comprising a sixteenth-century manor house and a nineteenth-century New Castle built in the English classicizing Neo-Gothic style known as Tudor Gothic. The estate lies on the Lahn between Marburg and Gießen, south of Sichertshausen, and developed through the changing ownership of several noble families.
Medieval origins and the Old Castle
The name Friedelhausen derives from the personal name Fridilo. The estate’s old village stood on the left bank of the Lahn, east of Salzboden and northwest of Staufenberg, but the settlement was later deserted. In 1414, the territory became a fief, meaning an estate granted by a superior lord in return for service or allegiance, to the von Rolshausen family. This family is known from the thirteenth century and had supplied members of the garrison, the men assigned to defend and serve a castle, at Staufenberg since 1358.
Friedrich von Rolshausen built the manor house in 1564. After passing through several owners, the estate was acquired in 1852 by the von Nordeck zur Rabenau family, together with its farm buildings and surrounding land. The sixteenth-century building is now called the Old Castle and remains the oldest structure in the present farm estate.
The New Castle and its owners
Baron Adalbert von Nordeck zur Rabenau and his English-born wife, Clara, née Philipps, commissioned the New Castle from 1852. Their daughter Luise inherited the estate and married Count Karl von Schwerin of Schwerinsburg in Pomerania in 1876. Friedelhausen, together with Hofgut Appenborn, Nordeck Castle, and Upper Rabenau Castle, remains in the ownership of the Counts of Schwerin. The New Castle is inhabited.
The New Castle also has a literary association with the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. At Countess Luise von Schwerin’s invitation, he stayed there for several weeks in both 1905 and 1906. She had met him in Dresden in 1905, encouraged his poetry, and introduced him to the banker and collector Karl von der Heydt, who became Rilke’s first patron.
Conservation
The Friedelhausen Castle complex is designated as a cultural monument. Since 2009, the German Foundation for Monument Protection has supported repair work addressing severe moisture damage that affected the building during the preceding decades.
Remains
The castle buildings
Old Castle
The Old Castle stands approximately 200 metres southwest of the New Castle and at a lower level. It is a two-storey stone building with a stair tower set to one side. The building forms part of the lower Friedelhausen farm estate, which also includes farm buildings and is operated by a social-therapeutic community as a Demeter agricultural enterprise. Demeter is a farming and certification system associated with biodynamic cultivation and strict ecological standards. The estate includes a farm shop.
New Castle
The New Castle occupies higher ground beside the Lahn, approximately 200 metres north of the Old Castle. Designed by the English architect John Dobson, it follows Tudor Gothic forms, a nineteenth-century revival style combining Gothic architecture with features associated with Tudor-period English buildings. The nearly cubic, two-storey structure has a crenellated parapet, or battlemented upper edge, and a flat roof. Slender open corner towers rise above its corners, giving the building a fortified appearance.
The castle was constructed in a late-Gothic manner from dark Lungstein basalt quarried at Londorf. This variety of basalt is unusually workable for stonemasons. Inside, the rooms retain vivid illusionistic paintings by the Kassel decorative artist Reinhard Hochapfel, along with original furniture and wallpapers made for the castle.
Approach avenue
An avenue leading to the New Castle from the east contains two memorial columns. One commemorates Adalbert von Nordeck zur Rabenau, while the other is dedicated to Adolf Reinhard von Nordeck zur Rabenau, who lived from 1852 to 1869.
