Schloss Rantzau: A Neo-Gothic Urban Palace in Lübeck
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.3
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Elite Residence
On this page12 sections
History
Schloss Rantzau is a neo-Gothic urban palace in Lübeck, Germany, incorporating the medieval core of a residence built for a canon of Lübeck Cathedral. Located in the Cathedral District near Lübeck Cathedral, the building developed from a thirteenth-century canon curia and became an aristocratic residence in the nineteenth century.
The Medieval Canon Curia
A cathedral chapter was a corporate body of clergy attached to a cathedral, and each canon held a residence known as a canon curia. Lübeck Cathedral Chapter established such houses within the cathedral’s immunity district, an area governed by the church institution’s special privileges rather than by ordinary municipal law. Unlike most of Lübeck, where city law required continuous building along the street, the district allowed detached houses.
The plot of Schloss Rantzau was first mentioned in 1290 and was initially built up by the canon Mohr. The medieval building probably took the form of a residential tower. Over the centuries, it was altered and enlarged while retaining elements of its earlier structure. Its later history makes it the last surviving of Lübeck’s thirteen medieval canon curiae.
From Ecclesiastical Property to Private Residence
The cathedral chapter was dissolved in 1803 during the secularization of the Bishopric of Lübeck. This process formed part of the Imperial Deputation Recess, a major reorganization of the Holy Roman Empire that transferred many ecclesiastical territories and institutions to secular authorities. The curia passed to the city, and its last holder, the canon and Prussian chamberlain Baron Franz Ludwig von Höveln, vacated the house in 1804.
Lübeck sold the property at public auction on 21 February 1805 in the Schütting, a guild and merchants’ hall used for public auctions and commercial business. Protonotary Nicolaus Heinrich von Evers purchased it for 34,000 marks and later intended it to pass to his son, Lübeck mayor Christian Nicolaus von Evers. Queen Desideria of Sweden stayed at the house as Evers’s guest during visits to Lübeck. After Evers resigned from office in 1852, he sold the large residence.
Count Kuno zu Rantzau-Breitenburg acquired the property in 1858 after the death of his wife, Amalasuntha, born Bothmer, an heiress at Schloss Bothmer near Klütz. He transformed the existing house into an aristocratic urban palace in romanticizing neo-Gothic forms, a nineteenth-century revival of medieval Gothic architecture. During the Franco-Prussian War, he made the building available as a hospital for wounded soldiers.
Public and Administrative Uses
The property changed hands again in 1875 and 1882. In 1900, it returned to state ownership for 115,000 marks, after which the state made it available for the construction of a swimming hall. The 81st Infantry Brigade used Schloss Rantzau as its headquarters until 1912, when it moved to Buddenbrookhaus. The building also served temporarily as a women’s trade school.
From June 1939, the Lübeck Weights and Measures Office occupied the ground floor, while the Lübeck Trade Supervisory Office used the upper floors. Both authorities left at the end of 1966. Afterward, and until the late 1990s, Schloss Rantzau housed the administrative headquarters of the Lübeck Office for Monument Preservation. Its Rococo Hall was used for meetings and lectures.
The German Foundation for Monument Protection took over the building in 2002 and restored it by 2005. Until 2019, the palace housed the administration of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.
Remains
Schloss Rantzau combines a medieval structural core, later additions, and a neo-Gothic exterior. The building occupies a corner plot at Kapitelstraße and Parade, with surviving elements that range from a Gothic vaulted cellar and fifteenth-century brickwork to eighteenth-century Rococo decoration and nineteenth-century revival features.
Medieval and Early Modern Fabric
Brick Rear Facade and Vaulted Cellar
The rear facade, built of exposed brick in the fifteenth century, survives as part of the older fabric of the palace. Beneath the building is a Gothic vaulted cellar, preserving the character of the former canon curia and its medieval construction. The medieval core probably had the form of a residential tower before later rebuilding altered the plan and appearance.
Bay Room Woodwork
The bay room contains remnants of wood paneling with coats of arms and the date 1586. An oak-carved coat of arms associated with the canon Jürgen Schrader shows three bells, with two above and one below. The initials G. S., which may represent Georg or Jürgen Schrader, and the date 1586 appear outside the shield.
Painted ceiling beams and Baroque door surrounds on the ground floor date from the early seventeenth century. In 1760, two lateral additions expanded the previously elongated, three-storey building into an almost square plan and brought it approximately to its present size.
Neo-Gothic Exterior
The nineteenth-century remodeling gave Schloss Rantzau its palace-like neo-Gothic appearance. Half-octagonal turrets frame the building, while a bay window marks the northwest corner. A crenellated parapet, stepped gables, and tracery add forms derived from medieval Gothic architecture. The repeated Rantzau coat of arms reinforces the connection between the remodeled residence and its aristocratic owner.
Residential Layout and Service Buildings
Main Residence
A sale description from 1805 records the scale and arrangement of the residence before the Rantzau remodeling. A bright central hall was flanked by three rooms in suite on each side, with two further rooms at the rear. The house included wallpapered and heated rooms, a large kitchen, a pantry, a servants’ room, and a chamber.
The second floor contained a large salon with two adjoining rooms, two additional heated rooms, and several chambers. Two large attics and further compartments completed the upper part of the house. The property also included a vaulted cellar, large courtyards around the residence, horse stables, a carriage shed, a wood store, servants’ chambers, and a water-supply installation. A separate residential annex stood on Pfaffenstraße.
Rococo Hall
The Rococo Hall preserves an eighteenth-century interior style characterized by delicate stucco, curved volutes, and allegorical figures. Light stucco covers the ceiling and the upper four-fifths of the walls. Simple rods and Rococo volutes divide the wall surfaces into panels, whose central areas contain suspended emblems associated with astronomy, music, and architecture.
Decorative panels above the three doors use putti to personify painting, music, and architecture. The ceiling corners have especially elaborate stucco work. The attributes of painting, sculpture, and music surround a portrait-like female bust in one corner, while symbols of mathematics, astronomy, or architecture surround male busts in the others.
The corners opposite the windows are chamfered and contain round niches that formerly held stoves. One of these was a Stockelsdorf stove, a decorative ceramic stove associated with the pottery tradition near Lübeck, and it was sold to Hamburg. The lower fifth of the walls is covered with wood paneling. The doors follow a similar panel design, each panel centered by a delicate Rococo volute.
The stucco was made by Johann Nepomuk Metz, a member of the Metz family of stucco artisans from Attendorn. He signed the overdoor panel representing painting with the inscription “J. R. Metz. Fecit 1762.”
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