Schloss Kalkum

About

Kalkum Castle is a water castle in the district of the same name in the north of Düsseldorf about two kilometers northeast of Kaiserswerth and an extraordinary example of Classicism in the Rhineland. Together with the associated castle park, it has been a listed building since January 1984. Originating from one of the oldest knights' seats in the region, the ancestral seat of the knightly-born lords von Kalkum, the property passed to the lords von Winkelhausen around the middle of the 15th century, who were to determine the fate of the estate for the following 300 years. Modified in the 17th century into a castle in the Baroque style, the complex was given its current external appearance mainly through a classicist conversion between 1808 and 1814 based on designs by the Krefeld master builder Georg Peter Leydel. He connected the outer bailey and the manor house by inserting intermediate buildings to form a closed four-winged complex. At the same time, under the direction of landscape architect Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe, a palace park was laid out in the English landscape style. In 1817, the main gate was extended by the architect Johann Peter Cremer. The interior of the palace was...

According to the Rhyming chronicle created by Eberhard von Gandersheim from 1216 to 1218, a royal court existed in Kalkhem as early as 892, which the later Kaiser Arnolf of Carinthia gave to Gandersheim Abbey in that year: "Noch gaf de könnich to Gandersem einen riken hof, de is geheten Kalkhem; unde sin bi deme Rine belegen." However, Kalkum was not first mentioned in a document as Calechheim until 947, when Emperor Otto the Great confirmed this donation. However, the Gandersheim estate was not a predecessor of the present-day castle, but probably the present-day Niederhof in the part of Kalkum called Unterdorf. In 1176, the lords of Kalkum were first mentioned in a document with the lower nobleman Willelmus de Calecheim, a ministerial of the Merbey of Meer. They were the owners of a knight's seat in Kalkum. Members of the family later also called themselves von Calichem, Caylchem, Calgheim and von Calcum. The knights' seat was a first fixed house in the part of Kalkum called Oberdorf, which has not yet been dated or located more precisely, but was probably on the site of today's castle. From the 14th century onwards, the lords of Kalkum were in the service of the Berg counts and later dukes. In 1360, Peter von Kalkum held the office of Berg court master and was ducal Landdrost from 1361 to 1383.

By the 14th century, the Kalkum knight's seat had developed into a castle -like complex, probably consisting of a manor house and an outer bailey separated from it by a moat. According to earlier tradition, this complex was besieged and destroyed by Cologne troops in 1405, as members of the family of the Lords of Kalkum were in feud with the city of Cologne from the end of the 14th to the beginning of the 15th century, which went down in Rhenish history as the Kalkum Feud. However, contemporary chronicles of the associated warlike actions only mention the destruction of the house of Arnold von Kalkum ( heren Arnols huyss ) and not explicitly the castle in Kalkum. More recent research suggests that the house that burned down was not the Kalkum castle, but Haus Remberg, located south of Duisburg.

Kalkum under the von Winkelhausen family

The lords of Kalkum rebuilt their burnt-down manor house after the end of the feud. A map from around 1600 shows it as an ensemble of three houses connected by corridor-like buildings, which were surrounded on all sides by a common moat. However, the estate did not remain in the possession of the lords of Kalkum for much longer, as the line of Kalkum died around the middle of the 15th century. Around the middle of the 15th century, the male line of the family based in Kalkum died out and the castle was inherited by the von Winkelhausen family, whose ancestral seat, the Haus Winkelhausen, was located a few kilometers north of Kalkum. It is still not clear exactly when this happened. There is documentary evidence that Grete von Kalkum gave her estates in parish Kalkum to Hermann von Winkelhausen in 1443. This could also have included the Kalkum house. There is evidence that the castle was owned by Winkelhausen in 1465, as in that year Herrmann von Winkelhausen designated Kalkum as a widow's residence for his wife Agnes on 27 October. In the 17th century, the estate was also used several times to provide for widowed members of the family. After inheriting the estate in the 15th century, the von Winkelhausen family moved their permanent residence to Kalkum. Around 1500, the owner was Johann von Winkelhausen. The estate passed from him to his son Ludger and finally to his nephew of the same name in 1556. This Ludger von Winkelhausen was jülich-Berg councillor, equerry and marshal as well as bailiff of Hückeswagen, Bornefeld and Mettmann. In 1553, his family was also elevated to the baronial rank by privilege of Emperor Ferdinand III.

Ludger had the old Gothic Wasserburg into a representative Baroque castle by 1663, partly using the old building fabric. The stately residence at the south-west corner of the complex, known as the Oberhaus was not only given large rectangular windows and a new roof, but a square corner tower with a curved hood and lantern was also added to its two wings, which abutted at right angles. However, the main focus of the work was on enlarging the outer bailey buildings. Ludger had the old farm buildings completely demolished and then had a new four-winged outer bailey built, which was more than twice as large as its predecessor. Together with the manor house, the castle now had the quadrangular ground plan it still has today and was surrounded by a newly dug moat. A drawing by the Walloon Renier Roidkin from around 1720/1730 shows Kalkum Castle after the conversion and extension work. The building stock at that time included a castle chapel to the north of the two-storey manor house. A ridge turret depicted on the Roidkin drawing points to this building, which no longer exists. In addition, a stone foundation found in the corresponding place suggests an altar. At the north-east corner of the outer bailey stood a polygonal corner tower with a double-curved Baroque dome, which is no longer preserved today. A wooden bridge led over the southern moat to a square tower with a gate.

After the death of Ludger von Winkelhausen in 1679, his son Philipp Wilhelm took over the inheritance. During his time as lord of the castle, Kalkum was almost constantly involved in warfare due to its proximity to the heavily fortified Kaiserswerth was almost constantly involved in warfare. In the course of the Palatinate and the subsequent Spanish War of Succession, the complex was severely damaged. In 1688, soldiers of the Sun King Louis XIV occupied Kaiserswerth. The French Minister of War Louvois demanded that Philipp Wilhelm defortify his property by filling in the castle moat and taking down all the defensive walls. When these demands were not immediately met, French troops occupied the complex and devastated it. Their stay at Kalkum did not last long, however, as the German imperial princes had joined forces to expel the French from the Lower Rhine. The French soldiers eventually had to vacate the castle and flee from the approaching allied troops from Brandenburg, Münster and Holland, some of whom then took up quarters in the castle themselves. The change of occupation was accompanied by constant bombardment of the castle, which caused considerable damage to the walls and roofs. The quartering of the soldiers - Lieutenant Colonel von Kalkstein from the Brandenburg regiment alone came with 40 horses and 200 foot soldiers - also affected the fabric of the building. Despite the uncertainties, the von Winkelhausen family continued to live at Kalkum Castle during this time. Kalkum was also involved in the fighting during the War of the Spanish Succession, during which Kaiserswerth was again taken by French troops at the end of November 1701 and besieged and recaptured in 1702 by allied imperial troops from Holland and Prussia under the leadership of Elector Johann Wilhelm II. Soldiers again took up quarters in the castle. This time the buildings were not damaged by military action, but gardens, fields and meadows were devastated by entrenchments and could no longer be cultivated. In addition, the occupying forces had taken away or destroyed numerous pieces of equipment and furniture from the castle.

Transfer to the von Hatzfeldt family and renewed quartering

The von Winkelhausen family was raised to the Imperial Count rank by Elector Johann Wilhelm in his capacity as Imperial Vicar on behalf of the Emperor on 2 October 1711. Philipp Wilhelm's son from his marriage to Anna Maria von Hompesch, Count Franz Carl, died in 1737. When his only son Karl Philipp also died shortly afterwards in 1739, the Kalkum line of the Counts of Winkelhausen became extinct in the male line. Philipp Wilhelm's daughter Isabella Johanna Maria Anna, who had married Edmund Florenz von Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg-Weisweiler Castle on 17 November 1703, became the sole heir to the estate. Through her, the castle passed to her husband's family. However, she not only inherited the castle, but also the associated debts of 77,000 Reichstalern. Through clever management, the family managed to restore a stable financial situation. Initially, however, the von Hatzfeldts rarely stayed in Kalkum. The estate was only occupied by a Rentmeister and the tenant of the agricultural land belonging to the castle. A head forester managed the extensive forest estate. Because the manor house was mostly uninhabited, its structural condition deteriorated visibly. This was aggravated by renewed quartering of soldiers during the Austrian War of Succession and the Seven Years' War. From 1741 to 1742, it was used by French soldiers under Marshal Jean-Baptiste Desmarets. During the Seven Years' War, it was initially the French again who set up camp at Kalkum Castle until 19 April 1758. They were followed in June by Hanoverian troops under General von Wangen, who were relieved by soldiers of the allies before a French regiment seized the castle again for its own purposes in November. The French marshal Charles de Rohan, Prince of Soubise, did not even issue an exemption certificate for the castle to prevent its quartering. He was simply ignored. The changing quartering ceased at the end of the Seven Years' War, but by then the fabric of the building had suffered greatly. Major alterations were made to the farm buildings between 1747 and 1755, including the extension of the stables and the creation of a tack room. In 1778, the lord of the castle considered enlarging the residential building, but this plan was not realized.

It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that Kalkum Castle was to be used as a permanent residence again. In 1806, Maria Anna von Kortenbach, the widow of the recently deceased Jülich land marshal Edmund Gottfried von Hatzfeldt (1740–1806), came to Kalkum to use the castle as a widow's residence. Maria Anna was joined by her daughter-in-law Frederike Maria Hubertine von Hersell (1758–1833), who was widowed in 1799, and her grandson Count Edmund von Hatzfeld, born in 1798. However, as they found the castle uninhabitable, they temporarily moved to Kinzweiler before taking up residence in the tenant's apartment at Kalkum Castle in the fall. They spent the following winter of 1806/07 at the Hof von Holland in Düsseldorf and moved back to Kalkum Castle in the spring, this time to a small room in the tenant's apartment. The widow soon realized that extensive building work would be needed to be able to use Kalkum as a residence in the future. In July 1805, her deceased husband had turned down the offer of a Swedish Obrist, who was looking for a suitable country residence, to lease Kalkum Castle and restore it to a habitable condition. Maria Anna engaged the Krefeld master builder Georg Peter Leydel to convert the run-down Baroque castle into a spacious residence in the style of Classicism. Leydel left almost all of the interior buildings unchanged, but made the exterior of the complex symmetrical. He removed the separation between the manor house and outer bailey by filling in the dividing moat and closing the gaps with intermediate buildings. In addition, the western part of the outer bailey was demolished and replaced by a copy of the Baroque manor house. The relocation of the main driveway from the north to the west side completed Leydel's conversion plans.

Repairs to the outer bailey in 1808 marked the start of the subsequent six years of construction work on the castle, which Leydel had initially calculated would only take four years. From November 1809, the manor house underwent only relatively minor exterior alterations: ceilings and roofs as well as the mural crown were repaired and the building was extended from six to eight window axes on the west front. A newly erected, low central building with a portal connected the manor house with its recently built counterpart at the northwest corner of the complex. Like the original, this counterpart to the manor house had two wings; the western wing had been completely rebuilt following the demolition of the outer bailey wing there, while the northern wing, later called the Rentei and Domestics Wing, consisted of the former Halfe house, which was extended by one storey to three storeys in 1812/1813 and thus to the height of the west wing. The north-western corner tower - at the same time as the tower at the north entrance - had already been taken down and rebuilt in 1811. The completion of the central portal building in the same year gave Kalkum Castle a symmetrically designed, representative frontage. The western part of the previous outer bailey wing to the south was demolished in September 1810 and the gap there was closed by the so-called kitchen building, a two-storey intermediate building with three window axes. Its height was initially determined by the adjoining stable to the east. After all the work on the outer bailey had been completed, it was painted a light ochre color, while the white exterior color of the rest of the castle was not changed. From 1810, craftsmen were busy redesigning the interior of the manor house in the strict Empire style. Little remains of this initial decoration of the living rooms with elaborate stuccoatures, valuable wallpapers and magnificent wall paintings due to later redesigns. Engelbert Selb from Krefeld was responsible for the stucco work. The wallpaper was supplied by the upholsterer J. G. Lentzen from Aachen. The work he carried out in November 1811 not only used paper wallpaper, but also some very expensive fabrics, for example in the so-called tower room, which has a wall covering made of Chinese silk. The murals were painted by the Düsseldorf decorative painter Ludwig Pose, who later also worked at Jägerhof Palace and Rheinstein Castle. In April 1813, the manor house was completed to such an extent that the von Hatzfeldt family could move into it. Only a few months later, at the beginning of 1814, there were Russian quarters in the castle for a few months after they had driven out the French soldiers previously stationed there.

In the meantime, there had been a dispute between the countess and her master builder and the two went their separate ways. From 1815, Leydel no longer appeared in the count's building accounts, although the palace conversion was still unfinished at the time. To make matters worse, Leydel had never submitted plans for the conversion, so Maria Anna von Kortenbach had to have new designs drawn up for the further construction. This took into account the fact that the previous design was too plain and not representative enough for the lady of the castle. The first minor reconstruction took place in 1817, when a risalit was added to the west portal according to plans by Johann Peter Cremer, who shortly afterwards designed the Aachen City Theater and was a close collaborator of Adolph von Vagedes. In 1819, the lady of the palace commissioned August Reinking, who had previously worked at Oberhausen Palace, to draw up a proposal for the transformation of Leydel's plain central building in the west wing into a stately Corps de Logis. He envisaged adding a storey to the building and deepening it on the inner courtyard side. The flat roof was to be crowned by a dome and hidden behind a broad balustrade. Reinking also planned to remove the third storey of the two corner towers and replace it with a low mezzanine storey to take away the dominance of the towers on the west façade. However, Reinking's unexpected death just a few months after he had submitted the designs thwarted the implementation of the plan. Countess Maria Anna was forced to go in search of an architect again and chose Friedrich Weinbrenner from Karlsruhe as her successor. Weinbrenner was in Düsseldorf at the time because he was working on plans for the new Düsseldorf theater. In 1820, he also presented the countess with a design for the redesign of the western palace façade; however, as Weinbrenner's plans for the new Düsseldorf theater failed, he returned to his home town, and so his plan for Kalkum also remained unrealized.

Another architect had been working on the palace since 1818: Anton Schnitzler, a student of Vagedes. According to his plans, the kitchen building in the south wing was extensively altered in 1821. He added a second, low upper floor to the building in order to bring its height into line with the adjoining manor house to the west. From then on, the new floor served as servants' accommodation. The design of the exterior façade was also changed with a flat projecting central risalit and new windows. Schnitzler used a trick here: in order to adapt the façade of the three kitchen floors to the two-storey manor house, the lower row of high arched windows not only illuminated the first floor, but also the low mezzanine floor above. The south entrance was probably also moved from the flanking square tower to the kitchen wing in the course of this conversion work. Around the same time, houses for the castle servants were built on the southern edge of the castle park around 1820. Until the 1820s, the northern west wing of the palace and the upper floor of the Rentei and Domestics Wing were only completed in the shell. The interior work has now begun. The reason for this was a lack of space caused by the birth of several children in the Hatzfeldt family. On 10 August 1822 Maria Anna's grandson Edmund married 17-year-old Sophie von Hatzfeldt-Schönstein, who was related to him, in the chapel of Allner Castle. Two days after the marriage, the family hosted a lavish wedding for the couple at Kalkum Castle, where the two newlyweds subsequently lived. The billiard room was completely overhauled especially for this celebration. In the days following the celebration, numerous windows in the castle had to be replaced because they had been broken during the evening fireworks display at the event.

Until 1833, a slender square tower with a double-curved baroque dome stood at the north-east corner, which served as a pigeon tower. It was demolished that year and the resulting gap was closed by a wall. In September of the same year, Countess Maria Anna von Kortenbach died. Her grandson Edmund succeeded her as owner of the castle. In 1836, he engaged the Essen city architect Heinrich Theodor Freyse as the leading architect for a redesign of the rooms in the manor house. Under him, who had previously been responsible for the new construction of Heltorf Palace, the so-called state rooms were created from 1837. These living and public rooms were given an elaborate late classicist décor according to Freyse's plans by 1841. In Ludwig Pose and the upholsterer Lentzen, two of the experts who had already been responsible for some of the interior decoration under Leydel were called in. The stucco work was carried out by the Cologne master plasterer Lenhardt and his journeyman Moosbrugger. The sculptural decoration came from the workshop of the Düsseldorf sculptor Dietrich Mein(h)ardus. In 1841/42, the work was completed when the west wing of the palace and the other fronts of the manor house and the Rentei wing were given a new plaster, which was painted light pink according to Freyse's suggestion.

At the same time as the renovation work began in 1808, Countess Maria Anna had a new palace park laid out in the English landscape style. The plans were drawn up by Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe, who coordinated them with Georg Peter Leydel's building project. It was probably even Leydel on whose recommendation Weyhe received the commission. There was already a small park from the Baroque period to the west of the palace, which was to be redesigned and enlarged. In order to be able to carry out the extension, land to the west of the castle was acquired in exchange. On 18 November 1807, Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe visited Kalkum for the first time to gain an impression of the site and carry out a survey. On 26 January, he delivered his plans for the conversion and redesign of Kalkum Park to the lady of the castle, although the originals are no longer preserved today. The Düsseldorf court gardener oversaw the garden work in Kalkum until 1819 (in which year the layout was essentially completed), whereby the original plan was repeatedly supplemented with new elements in the course of implementation, so that the work continued until 1825. Under Weyhe's direction, not only was a new landscape garden created, but also kitchen gardens, a park pond and a riding arena to the north of the palace. Together with Leydel, he established the final boundaries of the English garden on 12 June 1809 and from then on visited Kalkum once a month until 1819 to inspect the progress of the work. By 1818, 7572 trees and shrubs had been delivered to Kalkum for the design of the gardens and park. Weyhe had the Schwarzbach, which still feeds the castle forces today, canalized so that it flows in a straight line from south to north on the west side. Between November 1812 and May 1813, he used the excavated material from the pond north of the castle grounds to raise a mound on the northern edge of the landscaped garden, on which a small temple in the tradition of Chinoiserie was built by 1818. In the following year, a shooting range was laid out in the south-western area of the park and at the same time the renovation of the nearby ice cellar. South of the palace buildings, at the level of the manor wing in front of the water garden, there was an older formal garden, traditionally designed with a crossroads, which Weyhe converted into a kitchen garden. The part of the ditch bordering this garden was filled-in in 1825 and the area thus gained was added to the south garden. In 1835, a luxurious greenhouse called the flower house was built on this area on the south side of the southwest tower according to Weyhe's plans. In addition, a orangery over 20 meters long was built in the eastern area, leaning against the southern outer wall, and the so-called pineapple house was built parallel to it in the summer of 1838.

After work on the palace buildings was completed and the gardens finished, the palace was only rarely used as a residence by the Hatzfeldt family. They mostly stayed in Düsseldorf. The farm and the pig and cattle stables had already been abandoned by 1840. Kalkum served almost exclusively as the seat of the Hatzfeldt head office, which was under the direction of a rentmaster. Nevertheless, the estate once again came to the public's attention during the 19th century when Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt separated from her husband Edmund in 1846. Their marriage had been entered into in 1822 for purely family-political reasons and was not a happy union. The affair degenerated into a veritable divorce war and was fought bitterly by both sides. The countess was represented by the young Ferdinand Lassalle as her lawyer. The divorce proceedings were conducted before six courts, before the parties agreed in a settlement in 1854 that Sophie von Hatzfeldt would receive her allods back and thus become financially independent.

Under Edmund and Sophie's son Alfred and his wife Gabriele von Dietrichstein-Proskau-Leslie, some more minor construction work was carried out in the palace in the second half of the 19th century, for example the installation of several porcelain ovens in 1867. Shortly afterwards, around 1870 changes were made to the interior decoration, as a result of which the classicist furnishings were lost in all the living rooms with the exception of the Music Hall. Nevertheless, Prince Alfred and his wife spent little time at Kalkum. Alfred, who had been elevated to the Prussian princely rank on 18 May 1870, was succeeded by his nephew Paul Hermann von Hatzfeldt in 1911. Under him, the castle was finally given up as a residence and in 1912 the Hatzfeldt manor house was moved to Crottorf, the main residence of Paul Hermann and his wife Maria von Stumm. The manor house was subsequently rented out, with the castle owners reserving only a few rooms for temporary stays in Kalkum. Tenants included the von Spee, von Stumm and von Benningsen families. As several families in the service of the prince kept their apartments in the castle alongside the rentmaster, the building and park continued to be well maintained. This did not change when a recruit depot was set up in the palace in 1915 during First World War and after the end of the war, first a Soldiers' Council, then Spartacists moved into the complex. From 1938 to 1945, the Painter Richard Gessner lived there. He captured his impressions of the complex in numerous paintings, which can be seen today in the Düsseldorf City Museum, among other places.

The hitherto good structural condition of the complex changed with the Second World War. To protect the nearby Düsseldorf Airport, an anti-aircraft tower was erected in the inner courtyard of the castle. Air defense crews and officers moved into the castle buildings, while anti-aircraft helpers were housed in a barrack built especially for them on the site of the riding track in the northern part of the park. Kalkum Castle did not receive any direct bomb hits during the war, but frequent impacts in the surrounding area caused massive static problems in the roof structure. The improper use as soldiers' accommodation and as storage space for Düsseldorf companies was also detrimental to the fabric of the building. In addition, the fragmentation effect of the anti-aircraft shells caused severe damage to the trees in the palace park, which gradually became overgrown due to the lack of manpower. After the end of the war, British occupying troops confiscated the grounds and converted the manor house into an officers' mess. In the process, they removed many of the valuable wallpapers for hygienic reasons and burned them. The British vacated the castle again in 1946.

Sale to North Rhine-Westphalia and conversion into an archive

After the British soldiers had left, the then owner Maria von Hatzfeldt offered the castle, including the park and surrounding agricultural land, to the newly founded state of North Rhine-Westphalia for 750,000 Reichsmark. The federal state accepted this offer. The corresponding purchase agreement, in which the lady of the castle reserved some rooms in the retirement wing for herself and her employees until 1951, is dated 15 November 1946. The state government confirmed this on 3 February 1947. on February 3, 1947, in order to set up an arts and crafts training and work center for war refugees in the castle buildings, as at the time of the sale, the complex served as accommodation for over 100 displaced persons at times. The model for the project was the Verein für Kunst- und Heimarbeitspflege Rheinland, which had been in existence for around ten years and aimed to train refugees and severely disabled people in arts and crafts work at home. Kalkum Castle was renovated for this purpose in 1948/1949, whereby the focus was not on monument protection but on making it usable for living and working purposes. The work, estimated at 20,000 Reichsmark, also included breaking out new windows. However, the refugee aid plan ultimately fell victim to the currency reform, and the associated activities were discontinued on 30 June 1950. Those responsible were now looking for a new use. Among the options under discussion were use as a retirement home for displaced persons, a domestic school, a police station and a state fire brigade school. This was not realized, nor were the plans to set up an administrative office or conference centre in the castle or to use the buildings as a hotel. During these numerous considerations and proposals, the neglected grounds fell into increasing disrepair. The manor house eventually even had to be evacuated because the roof truss was completely rotten due to damp and the Main State Archives were no longer strong enough. In 1952, a new perspective for use arose out of an emergency: notarial files from the Main State Archives, which had been moved toLinnep Castle and Gracht Castle due to the war, were to be returned to Düsseldorf and brought together. The space required for this was provided by the north and east wings of the Kalkum outer bailey, in which a temporary auxiliary storehouse was set up. This makeshift solution gave rise to the plan to use Kalkum Castle as a branch archive of the Main State Archives in the long term.