Location: Rhineland
Tel. (0261) 516 56
(0261) 516 56
Transport:
bus: 650 from Hauptbahnhof
Open: Apr-Sep: 9am - 6pm
Oct-Nov 9am - 5pm
Jan-Mar: 9am - 4pm
Closed: Dec
Stolzenfels Castle is a castle in the Middle Rhine Valley in Koblenz. It towers on the left bank of the Rhine above the district of Stolzenfels, for which it gave its name, opposite the mouth of the Lahn. The complex, which was only converted into a palace by the Prussian crown prince at the beginning of the 19th century, goes back to a Trier electoral customs castle from the 13th century, which was destroyed in 1689. The neo-Gothic castle is the outstanding work of Rhine Romanticism. The entire complex also includes a hermitage in the Gründgesbachtal, the former staff apartment, and a landscaped park.
Stolzenfels Castle
Between 1242 and 1259 Archbishop Arnold II von
Isenburg of Trier built Stolzenfels Castle as a hillside castle.
Opposite it on the Lahnstein side is Lahneck Castle, built in 1232,
which marked the Kurmainz territory as the northernmost outpost. The
five-sided keep, which is still preserved today, was built around 1244
and was then raised twice, most recently in Prussian times. The name of
a knight Walter Burggraf von Stulzenvels was mentioned in 1248. Under
Archbishop Baldwin of Luxembourg, the castle was expanded around 1300 to
become an electoral Trier toll castle and connected to the town on the
banks of the Rhine by walls. Stolzenfels Castle was expanded by
archbishops Kuno and Werner von Falkenstein in the years 1388 to 1418
with a residential tower and the palace on the Rhine side. Werner von
Falkenstein transferred the role of customs castle in 1412 to Kunostein
Castle, built by Kuno in 1371 and located down the Rhine, on the site of
Engers Castle, which was built later.
During the Thirty Years'
War, Stolzenfels Castle was first occupied by the Swedes in 1632 and
then by the French for two years (1634 and 1646). After being destroyed
by the French in 1689 during the Palatinate War of Succession, the ruins
fell into disrepair over the next 150 years. During the French period
(1794-1814), the ruins were transferred to the city of Koblenz as
property in 1802. In 1815, the city of Koblenz presented it to Crown
Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, who later became King Friedrich
Wilhelm IV and son of King Friedrich Wilhelm III. However, he only
accepted the donation in 1823 under Mayor Abundius Maehler shortly after
his marriage to Elisabeth Ludovika von Bayern. This decision was
supported by his enthusiasm for the romantic Rhine landscape and
stimulated by the beginning reconstruction of Rheinstein Castle by his
cousin Friedrich von Prussia.
Between 1826 and 1833, Friedrich Wilhelm IV had the neo-Romanesque
parish church of St. Menas built in Stolzenfels by the architect Johann
Claudius von Lassaulx. Stimulated by the contemporary enthusiasm for the
Middle Ages, which brought about a castle renaissance, he then rebuilt
the castle as a Prussian summer residence on the Rhine. Today's
neo-Gothic palace was built between 1836 and 1842 with the participation
of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and after 1841 under the direction of
Friedrich August Stüler. The existing old structure of the castle ruins
was integrated at the express wish of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The local
construction work was the responsibility of the Ehrenbreitstein fortress
builders W. Naumann and Carl Schnitzler, coordinated by the fortress
commander Philipp von Wussow. The influences of English neo-Gothic and
Schinkel's romantic style are unmistakable.
The rooms of the
summer residence were furnished with valuable medieval and
medieval-style furniture, works of art and paintings. The interior
furnishings were created by the master carpenter H. Rhode from Trier,
Johann Wilhelm Vetter from Neuwied and C. Gerstenkorn, Ferdinand Gerber
and G. Mündenich from Koblenz. The garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné
designed the romantic surroundings of the castle (e.g. with a riding
arena) as a landscape and hunting park.
In 1842 the expansion and
renovation of the castle was completed. On September 14, King Friedrich
Wilhelm IV finally moved in with his entourage dressed in historical
costumes. The hermitage planned as staff accommodation was completed in
1843 by Naumann and Schnitzler on the driveway to the castle. The
neo-Gothic chapel on the Rhine side was built in 1843-1847 according to
plans by Stüler and Schnitzler. Stolzenfels Castle received a
distinguished visit in 1845 from Britain's Queen Victoria, who began
remodeling Osborne House that year and three years later the
construction of Balmoral Castle. Immediately before the renovation of
Stolzenfels, from 1832 to 1837, the Bavarian Crown Prince Maximilian, a
nephew of Friedrich Wilhelm's wife Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria and
since 1842 the husband of his cousin Marie of Prussia, had
Hohenschwangau Castle rebuilt in a similar style. Hohenzollern Castle
was rebuilt from 1850 to 1867, with which Friedrich Wilhelm IV also
commissioned Stüler.
After the First World War and the end of the Prussian monarchy in
November 1918, Stolzenfels Castle came into the possession and care of
the state castle administration. Today the palace is managed by the
Directorate for Castles, Palaces and Antiquities of the General
Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Stolzenfels Castle has been part of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley World
Heritage Site since 2002. A digital model was created for the Rhine
Romanticism exhibition in the Koblenz State Museum in 2002, which
reconstructs the condition of 1845 based on restoration studies. In
superimpositions, continuous comparisons are possible between the ruins,
as shown on a cork model from around 1830, the building photographs and
expansion plans by the architects von Lassaulx, Schinkel, Stüler and
others, as well as the artistic representations in watercolors by Caspar
Scheuren and others, and finally the finished building and inaugurated
in 1845 Building. Up to 250,000 visitors come to the castle every year.
Before the Federal Horticultural Show 2011 in Koblenz, complex
renovation measures began at Stolzenfels Castle under the leadership of
the state office for property and construction management. The castle,
which is an outstanding cultural monument in Germany because it has been
completely preserved including its interior, was then integrated into
the Federal Horticultural Show. The planning for the large-scale general
renovation project goes back to the year 2000 and has been specifically
pursued since 2004. In the first construction phase, the external
appearance was restored to the original color, a light ocher yellow, and
the gardens were redesigned according to the old plans of the garden
architect Peter Joseph Lenné. In addition, wall anchors were set to
ensure the stability of the castle. Another construction phase followed
until 2015, during which the keep (completed in November 2014) including
the stairs and the gate system were restored. The wall painting by
August Gustav Lasinsky and the canopy on the Palas above were
extensively repaired by 2014. At the same time, building research was
carried out, in which the remains of the castle ruins in particular were
examined. Up until 2016, renovation measures were carried out on the
west side of the castle in a final construction phase. By then, 21
million euros from state funds will have been used for the extensive
restoration. After that, work on the interior design and the renovation
of the neo-Gothic chapel are planned.
Stolzenfels Castle
Stolzenfels Castle is located on a ridge that
drops steeply to the east to the Middle Rhine Valley and to the north to
the Gründgesbachtal. On the south side, the castle is closed off by a
moat. At the request of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, some parts of the
medieval castle have been preserved and integrated into the new castle
building. Schinkel rebuilt the remaining buildings and added to them. He
created a neoclassical palace from the castle ruins and unified the
Rhine frontage in a way inspired by English neo-Gothic. All wall ends in
front of the flat roofs were therefore provided with circumferential
battlements. The entire facades were covered with a smooth light yellow
plaster.
The oldest preserved and highest part of the complex is
the keep, which was built in the middle of the 13th century. In the
middle of the 14th century, the pentagonal keep, the so-called "Rough
Tower", was raised. The pointed side points towards the mountain, the
attacking side. The defense tower, which has been preserved almost in
its entirety, protrudes by a stone width in the upper third and ends
with reconstructed battlements over a protruding round arch frieze.
Entrances to the two lower floors are on the west and east sides. On the
floor above, on the courtyard side, is the original entrance. The keep
has only a few windows, on the top floor there are balconies from the
expansion period on the north and south-west sides. A shield wall is set
in front of it at the same angle.
The northern tip of the spur
was built on under Archbishop Baldwin of Luxembourg in the 14th century.
The north-east building (palas) on the Rhine side, the ring wall around
today's pergola garden including the adjutant's tower in the north and
the adjoining arched wall on the west side, which is today the west wall
of the north-west building, were built between 1336 and 1338. The two
buttresses on the north-west corner of the north-west building testify
to the problems that the rocky subsoil caused the medieval builders. The
four-storey adjutant's tower is circular on the two lower floors and
heptagonal on the upper floors. It has been almost completely preserved
in its medieval substance.
The basement of the Palas is open to
the Zwinger in front of it and the Rhine and accommodates the summer
hall, in which a ribbed vault is supported by two octagonal pillars.
Above it is the large knight's hall, in which slender columns support a
net vault. When designing this room, in which old suits of armor are on
display, Schinkel oriented himself on the Großer Rempter of the
Ordensburg Marienburg in East Prussia, which he had recently restored.
On the outer wall of the palace, between the Gothic cross-stacked
windows, there is a large mural that August Gustav Lasinsky completed in
1844. It shows how “Archbishop Werner of Trier receives the newly
elected King Ruprecht”. On the east side of the Zwinger, the remains of
an entrance tower, to which a path led from the village up to the
castle, have been converted into a viewing terrace. However, this was
later built over by the chapel.
The residential tower (1381)
south of the palace and the subsequent inner gate building (1382/83)
were built by Archbishop Kuno II von Falkenstein. The three-storey
residential tower, which is essentially medieval, stands on a square
floor plan and has four polygonal corner bays. In the basement, a
central column supports a hip vault. On the floor above is the small
knight's hall with a reconstructed star vault and scenes of knightly
virtues painted by Hermann Stilke from Berlin. The gatehouse has a
polygonal stair tower on the north-west corner and a polygonal bay
window on the Rhine side, which Schinkel had reconstructed using the
consoles that were still there.
The Elisabeth Tower stands at the
south-east corner of the palace complex. From this surviving old tower,
a wall led down into the valley to a toll tower, which bounded the
village of Kapellen (today's Stolzenfels) to the south. In the south, a
bridge leads over the neck moat to the gatekeeper's house, the main
entrance to the palace complex.
According to plans by Naumann and
Schnitzler, the buildings on the Rhine front were mirrored inwards in
the second construction phase and a second building wing was erected on
the west side of the castle courtyard, northwards. In the north, both
wings of the building were connected by an open three-bay arcade hall,
through which a staircase leads from the courtyard down to the pergola
garden.
The Protestant chapel on the Rhine side in front of the
residential tower was the last building to be built on the viewing
terrace between 1843 and 1847. It stands on a cruciform plan and has
octagonal needle-shaped choir towers. Lancet and rose windows are built
into the east-facing 5/8 chancel. The interior of the chapel is kept in
early Gothic style with a colored ribbed vault. The painter Ernst Deger
created twelve Nazarene murals in strong colors on a gold background,
which depict the history of the redemption of mankind. A swallow's nest
organ was created in 1846 by the Johannes Adolph Ibach company. A
baptistery is set up under the chancel on the basement floor in an
octagonal space with a ribbed dome and octagonal windows. The roof of
the chapel is a viewing terrace and can be reached via the small
knight's hall.
The private rooms of the king and queen were
housed on the upper floors of the Rhine and rear valley wing. Both areas
for the royal couple met in the shared bedroom above the arcade hall.
The reception rooms were on the ground floor of the Rhine wing, and the
kitchen, manager's apartment and storeroom were on the ground floor of
the valley wing.
Various gardens were laid out on the site of
Stolzenfels Castle according to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné, Maximilian
Friedrich Weyhe and Wilhelm August Weyhe. In the north, between the
arcade hall and the adjutant tower, is the pergola garden. The central
element is a flower bed in the form of a Gothic rose window, which is
framed by a wooden pergola with segmented arcades. In the center of the
bed is a cast-iron fountain with a goblet-shaped fountain bowl that
stands in an octagonal basin. The adjutant tower opens as a belvedere to
the Rhine and as a tea hall to the pergola garden. On the Rhine Terrace
in front of the Summer Hall there is a central fountain with an eagle
column designed by Christian Daniel Rauch, surrounded by lawns and
flower borders. South of the chapel is a kennel garden. Further to the
southeast, one level down in the direction of the Elisabeth Tower in the
Halsgraben, is the Hirschzwinger with a vineyard and a gazebo. To the
north and west of the ring wall is an enclosed garden with a path,
resting places, and flowers and bushes.
hermitage
The Klause
(♁50° 18′ 7.1″ N, 7° 35′ 25.2″ E), also called Klausenburg, is located
in the valley of the Gründgesbach on the way up to Stolzenfels Castle.
It was built in place of an already existing smaller building and housed
the servants' and guests' apartments as well as the horse stables and
coach houses. The building complex was built in two phases, first the
front Klausen building in 1842/43 according to plans by Naumann, which
was extended in 1845 according to plans by Schnitzler. At the same time,
the rear Klausen building was erected.
The hermitage is a
picturesque group of slate stones with building parts of different
heights. It stands in a bend in the path to the castle, which crosses
the stream over a bridge and then leads through the ground floor of the
pentagonal five-storey east tower. Behind the tower is a building
complex that is slightly tilted, which is equipped with gables and stair
towers and housed the horse stables on the ground floor. The western
part is a transverse building with a two-aisled, ribbed vaulted
passageway to the courtyard of the rear Klausen building. This slightly
kinked two-storey building is stretched narrow and has a hexagonal stair
tower on the inner crease side. On the ground floor there are eight
horse boxes with partitions and racks. There is a continuous hall on the
upper floor. As with the castle, all the buildings in the hermitage are
surrounded by battlements. On the western edge of the courtyard is a red
sandstone wall fountain.
landscape park
Stolzenfels Castle is
surrounded by a 9-hectare landscaped park that includes the Schlossberg,
the Gründgesbachtal and the Dreisäckerberg. Originally it was even
larger to the south. It was created at the same time as the castle was
being built according to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné as a landscape and
hunting park. It is considered one of his major works.
The
landscape park follows the ascent path planted as an avenue along the
Gründgesbach, which has been dammed to form small fish ponds and whose
slopes are wooded. At the end, the stream overcomes an artificially
created rock face as a waterfall. At the lower end of the path, the main
path leads over a monumental viaduct created by Friedrich August Stüler.
From the main path you have a view of the castle, the Rhine and the
opposite estuary of the Lahn. Many Roman and medieval architectural
ruins were placed along the paths. Pieces of cornice from a demolished
castle still serve as benches to this day.
At the end of the
winding path you reach a seat with an octagonal bench built around a
tree. Below the adjutant tower is a lava grotto. The oval riding arena,
which was intended for medieval equestrian games, is located on the
Dreisäckerberg. It is bordered to the west by rows of seats dug into the
slope and opposite to the valley by a row of capitate lime trees.
The park and gardens of Stolzenfels Castle are now part of the route
of the World Heritage Gardens in the UNESCO World Heritage Upper Middle
Rhine Valley.
tourism
Shortly after completion, the palace was
open to visitors when the king was absent. The gate building, Gothic
residential tower, palace with vaulted knight's hall, pergola garden and
keep can still be visited today. In the Knights' Hall there are
collections of historical weapons and drinking vessels. Visitors are led
through the living quarters in felt slippers. In the medieval
residential tower there is a hall with murals by the Berlin painter
Hermann Stilke. Today they are among the most important works of Rhenish
High Romanticism. In addition to southern influences (e.g. fountains in
the pergola garden), the visitor encounters a colorful interior that
came about as a result of Friedrich Wilhelm IV's passion for collecting.
Rhine in Flames - large fireworks and ship convoy on the 2nd Saturday
in August along Spay, Braubach with the Marksburg, Brey, Rhens,
Koblenz-Stolzenfels with Stolzenfels Castle, Lahnstein with the Lahneck
Castle and the mouth of the Lahn to the fireworks from the
Ehrenbreitstein Fortress in Koblenz .
Drama performance "The Muse of
Stolzenfels", a scenic tour through the castle and its history.
Stolzenfels Castle is a protected cultural monument under the
Monument Protection Act (DSchG) and is listed in the list of monuments
for the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. It is located in
Koblenz-Stolzenfels in the Stolzenfels Castle monument zone.
Stolzenfels Castle has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Upper
Middle Rhine Valley since 2002. Furthermore, it is a protected cultural
asset under the Hague Convention and is marked with the blue and white
protection symbol.
Reception
In 1882, the newly founded Bremen shipping company Deutsche Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft “Hansa” christened its first cargo ship the Stolzenfels in honor of the castle. In the years that followed, three more ships of the shipping company were given the same name.[4] Today the passenger ship Stolzenfels of the Cologne-Düsseldorfer Deutsche Rheinschiffahrt drives on the Rhine. In addition, an Intercity with the train name Stolzenfels operates on the left Rhine route.
