Location: Eutin, Schleswig-Holstein Map
Constructed: 1776 by Frederick Augustus I of Saxony
The Eutin Castle (Eutiner Schloss) in Eutin in East Holstein forms the cultural center and nucleus of the city. Alongside the Gottorfer and Glücksburg palaces, it is one of the most important courtly secular buildings in Schleswig-Holstein. The four-wing complex emerged from a medieval castle and was expanded into a residence over several centuries.
The castle
was originally owned by the prince-bishops of Lübeck, later it
became the summer residence of the Dukes of Oldenburg. It was
inhabited regularly up until the 20th century, and most of the
interior has been preserved.
Today the castle houses a museum
and is open to the public from March to early January. Access to the
castle is via a bridge. It is guarded by two figures of mythical
creatures. A replica of a statue of Roland can be seen to the left
above the portal. The bridge leads to the courtyard. Most of the
rooms present the original furnishings with paintings, furniture and
handicrafts from the period from late baroque to classicism.
Particularly well-known are several large ship models, which refer
to the family connections to Eutin as gifts from the Russian Tsar's
family. Since there is no modern heating system, the castle is
closed annually from January 6th to the end of February for climatic
reasons. Horns (musical instruments) from different regions of the
world and from different centuries are exhibited on the second
floor.
The former baroque garden was transformed into a
landscape park in the 18th and 19th centuries, which is the annual
venue for the Eutin Festival. In the "rural area" of the park beyond
the castle bay is their open-air stage. The games with operas and
operettas take place in July and August of each year. They were
founded in 1951 in honor of Carl Maria von Weber. The grandstand
system is getting on in years, so that the location and new
construction have been the subject of public discussion for some
time.
Eutin owes the construction of a first castle on the site of the
later palace to the fact that tensions repeatedly arose between the
Lübeck bishops and the citizens of the city, since the Lübeckers did
not want the clergy to regulate them in worldly matters. The
conflicts between clerical and secular rulers ensured that the
bishops, who had their St. John's Cathedral in Oldenburg and did not
move it to Lübeck until 1160, had their residence built halfway
between the towns and at a safer distance from the city.
The
Eutin Castle goes back to a bishop's court of Gerold von Oldenburg.
The lands were given to Gerold in 1156 by Adolf II and he built a
house here, according to Helmold von Bosau. The courtyard was
expanded under Bishop Johannes von Tralau between 1260 and 1275 and
received a larger, stone building, which today forms the core of the
east wing. In 1293 the first chapel was built. Little is known about
the exact shape of the first castle complex. It was probably an
ordinary castle surrounded by ramparts from the time when the
buildings were still unconnected and the visual effect had to take
second place to the function. Between 1277 and 1283 and between 1299
and 1317 Bishop Burkhard von Serkem had renewed conflicts with the
Lübeckers. This led to the castle being expanded into a small
fortress and reinforced with a moat under his successors around
1350.
From 1439 to 1486 further buildings were added in
various sections, the core of today's gate tower was built during
this time. By the 16th century, the individual houses were connected
to form a modest Renaissance castle, which is what still results in
the irregular floor plan (especially the city-side facade).
In the
course of the Reformation, the dukes of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf
came into possession of Eutin from 1586 and from then on provided
the prince-bishops. During the Thirty Years' War, the diocese was
threatened with secularization, but this was averted by John X. -
thanks to which the prince-bishop's office was tied to the House of
Gottorf. The linking of the bishopric to the House of Gottorf led to
ongoing disagreements with the Danish royal family, which culminated
in the Danish occupation and partial destruction of the castle in
1705. As early as 1689, the town and the castle were badly damaged
in a fire and then rebuilt on the old foundations. In this context,
the outer bailey was redesigned into a large courtyard.
Eutin
Castle reached its heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the
period from Christian August to Friedrich August I, it was
transformed into a baroque princely court and Eutin became a social
center of the country. During this epoch significant extensions were
made to the castle, the interior design and the park, which resulted
in Eutin becoming one of the few large baroque residences in
Schleswig and Holstein. The work was managed by the
Swedish-Pomeranian court architect Rudolph Matthias Dallin in the
years 1717 to 1727. Plans for an extensive new building of the
palace were considered, but never implemented for financial reasons.
The castle park was redesigned according to the French model and
expanded to form one of the largest baroque parks in the country
alongside the gardens of Gottorf Castle. Sophie Auguste Friederike
von Anhalt-Zerbst, the niece of Friedrich August I and later Tsarina
Catherine the Great, and her unloved husband Karl Peter Ulrich von
Holstein-Gottorf first met in the palace park in 1739.
In 1773 the Lübeck
prince-bishops received the rank and title of Duke of Oldenburg as a
result of the Treaty of Tsarskoye Selo through the unification of
their area with Oldenburg and Delmenhorst. Friedrich August ruled
from Eutin until his death in 1785. The widow's palace was then
built for his wife, but she no longer used it. After the
secularization of the Lübeck Bishopric, which became the
Principality of Lübeck, his successors resided in Oldenburg Castle
from 1803. Eutin was now in an exclave of the Oldenburg dominion and
was only used as a summer residence, but this did not detract from
the importance of the place for the time being. The now obsolete
baroque garden was redesigned into a modern landscape park at this
time. At the beginning of the 19th century, the court gained the
reputation of being a "Weimar of the North", which can be attributed
to the work of artists such as Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein,
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock or Franz Anton von Weber and the
patronage of Duke Peter I is.
Around 1820, plans were
developed to redesign the outer palace courtyard in a classical
style. The old courtyard was demolished and instead, from 1828, an
open palace square was created by J. F. Limpricht, which was
surrounded by a cavalier's house, coach house and stables. By 1840,
the interior of the palace was also redesigned in a classicistic
style and, by 1845, a storey had been added.
Eutin was the regular
summer residence of the ducal family until Friedrich August II
abdicated in 1918. After their abdication, the castle was no longer
inhabited and a first castle museum was set up.
The town and
the castle survived both world wars without damage. At the end of
the Second World War, a large wave of refugees, mainly from the east
of Germany, came to the country and the empty Eutin Castle was
converted into a reception camp. In the beginning, several hundred
people lived in the castle and the hygienic conditions were
sometimes catastrophic. At times there were said to have been only
four toilets in the whole house and up to 90 people were
accommodated in the Knights' Hall alone. The refugees had to fend
for themselves and cooked on small kitchen stoves, the smoke from
which damaged the interior stucco. Until the beginning of the 1950s,
the refugees left the castle and were assigned private living
quarters.
Foundation and castle today
The castle remained
in the possession of the former ducal family, who were economically
heavily burdened with securing and maintaining the building. After
the Second World War it served as a residence for the Africa
explorer and former governor of Togo, the Mecklenburg Duke Adolf
Friedrich until 1969. After an extensive restoration, it was made
accessible to the public again to a limited extent from 1957 and
served as a backdrop for parts of the film "Cabaret" with Liza
Minnelli in 1972. After further renovations were necessary in the
1980s, the state and federal government supported further work
financially and in 1992 the ducal family brought the castle and
garden into the newly founded Schloss Eutin Foundation. The first
section of the castle was opened to the public again in 1997 after
almost ten years of renovation work. The work on the interior
followed in individual sections and so, for example, the Knights'
Hall has been open to the public again since 2006.
The Eutin Castle grew to its present form in several individual
steps from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. The varied building
history can be almost read at different points of the building.
After the great fire of 1689, plans were considered in the 17th
century to demolish the grown palace complex and then build a new
building in the Baroque style. However, the economic and political
consequences of the Great Northern War prevented this undertaking
and the prince-bishops were content with expanding and restoring the
existing building fabric. The castle got its current appearance
through the work of Rudolph Dallin from 1717 to 1727 and through the
renovation measures of 1840.
The castle is an asymmetrical,
four-wing complex with dimensions of approx. 70 × 80 meters. The
wings lie around an almost trapezoidal courtyard on a small castle
island surrounded by moats directly on the Great Eutin Lake. Of the
four-winged palace complexes in Schleswig-Holstein – the so-called
multiple houses and later three-winged buildings were the dominant
features here until the Renaissance – the Eutin and Gottorf palaces
are the only ones that have survived.
Despite the baroque
transformations, which focused mainly on the interiors and the park,
the exterior of the castle makes a severe impression. Apart from the
west façade, which is reinforced with a tower and faces the
Schlossplatz, the outer walls of the building are almost
undecorated. The wings made of brick are only loosened up by the
rich windows and the green shutters.
The facades of the courtyard are completely plastered in light colors and stand in direct contrast to the sober outer walls of the castle. The windows are accented with ornamental pediments and the portals are decorated with sculptural ornaments. The door decoration comes from the different construction phases of the castle, so the portal of the north wing, decorated with volutes, can be dated to 1616 and that of the west wing to 1717. The low stair tower leaning against the gate tower dates from 1600. Also striking are the three loggias supported by columns, which Dallin added as connecting galleries between the salons and rooms on the first floor.
The front side of the castle faces the city and the castle square,
it is emphasized by a mighty, gable-decorated gate tower and two
other towers at the transitions to the side wings. The asymmetrical
floor plan of the west wing derives from the fact that the solitary
previous buildings were not demolished during the expansion work,
but integrated into the overall plan by means of connecting
buildings. The west wing, like the southern building, mainly
contains the apartments of the princely couple, as well as a dining
room and a lounge. The former bedroom of the Princess is the
so-called "Europe Hall". It contains extraordinary ceiling paintings
depicting the rape of the Europa. The most unusual room in the wing
is a Dutch-tiled kitchen from 1720, furnished for Duchess Albertine
Friederike.
The core of the gate tower dates from 1439 to
1449, parts of a late Gothic vault have been preserved in the
passage. On the left above the entrance is the Eutiner Roland. The
area of the building was doubled in the 16th century and the tower
was then increased. Around 1720, Rudolph Dallin gave it a fourth
floor, the decorative triangular gables and the crowning lantern.
The north-west corner tower of the wing dates from around 1600 and
was built as a residential tower overlooking what was then a
north-facing garden. It also hides the remains of a predecessor
inside. The round south-west tower in front of the south wing was
completed in its foundations between 1485 and 1486 and once stood as
a free defense tower. It was not connected to the palace building
until around 1645, and it received its baroque hood in 1689 after
the palace fire.
During the Renaissance, the
north wing was the main building of the castle, and it was given its
current form between 1600 and 1615. As with the other building
blocks, its outer facade is completely unadorned, while the areas
facing the courtyard are also plastered and structured in colour .
The most important room in the north wing is the "Knight's
Hall". This banquet hall is the largest room in the palace and takes
up almost half the length of the northern wing. Its stucco
fireplaces date from the Dallin period, around 1844 the room was
raised by a floor. The windows to the courtyard were bricked up so
that large-format state portraits could be hung in their place.
The outer wall of the east wing is undecorated, whereas the façade facing the courtyard with the loggias conveys an almost southern impression. The east wing also acquired its present form largely under the work of Dallin, whose most significant innovation was the addition of gallery-like corridors connecting the rooms that were originally lined up one behind the other. The building contained above all the guest rooms of the court, of which the so-called "Yellow Salon" formed the center. The so-called "Tapestry Room" is decorated with tapestries from a Versailles factory.
In addition to the city facade, the
south wing offers the best-known view of the castle. A small,
planted terrace is in front of the outer facade. Apart from the
green shutters and the central portal, it is almost unadorned. The
building faces the garden and mainly housed the private living
quarters of the ducal family and the palace chapel. The interior of
the rooms located here contains pieces of furniture, paintings and
other works of art mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries.
The most important room in the wing is the palace chapel in the
south-east corner of the building. The chapel of the castle complex
has always been at this point, the first church room dates back to
1293. The vaulted cellar at this point dates back to the Gothic
period. The chapel hall extends to the first floor and is completely
surrounded by a gallery, which also serves as a connection between
the south and east wings on the top floor. Most of the furnishings
date from after the castle fire and were installed between 1689 and
1694. It is the work of the court sculptor Theodor Allers. The room
layout follows the example of the chapel in Gottorf Castle and, like
there, there is also a princely box here. The organ prospectus by
Arp Schnitger dates from 1693, the instrument itself was renewed in
1862 by the organ building company Friedrich Schulze and restored in
2009 by Rowan West.