Schloss Ledenburg (Ledenburg manor) is a moated

Schloss ''Schloss'' (; pl. ''Schlösser''), formerly written ''Schloß'', is the German term for a building similar to a château, palace, or manor house. Related terms appear in several Germanic languages. In the Scandinavian languages, the cognate ...

Bissendorf Bissendorf (formerly Bissendorpe) is a municipality in the district of Osnabrück, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approximately 9 km southeast of Osnabrück Osnabrück (; wep, Ossenbrügge; archaic ''Osnaburg'') is a city in ...

-Nemden, Osnabrück district,

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

, Germany, which probably dates from the 15th century. Originally built with four wings, it was reduced to two wings during restoration after a fire in 1618. It belonged to many noble families. It housed what is called now the Ledenburg Collection, an 18th-century collection of poems by

Eleonore von Grothaus Eleonore von Grothaus, also Countess Eleonore von Münster (10 April 1734 – 26 March 1794), was a German noblewoman, a writer and poet, and a lay musician. She may have assembled a collection of writings and music, the Ledenburg Collection from ...

and a music collection, where music by

Georg Philipp Telemann Georg Philipp Telemann (; – 25 June 1767) was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes. After studying in Magdeburg, Zellerfeld, and Hildesh ...

Carl Friedrich Abel Carl Friedrich Abel (22 December 1723 – 20 June 1787) was a German composer of the Classical era. He was a renowned player of the viola da gamba, and produced significant compositions for that instrument. Life Abel was born in Köthen, ...

and others was rediscovered in 2015 and subsequently published.

History

The castle

Holter Burg The Holter Burg is the oldest castle site in the municipality of Bissendorf near Osnabrück in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is the ruin of a hill castle.Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz (publ.): ''Führer zu vor- und frühgeschicht ...

of the Holten family on the site of the current palace was destroyed in 1147. It was probably rebuilt in the 15th century as a moated building with four wings, first called ''Neue Burg Holte'' (New Holte castle). When the , who also had a mansion in

Osnabrück Osnabrück (; wep, Ossenbrügge; archaic ''Osnaburg'') is a city in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is situated on the river Hase in a valley penned between the Wiehen Hills and the northern tip of the Teutoburg Forest. With a population ...

, used it as a residence, it was called Schloss Ledenburg. The building was severely damaged by a fire in 1618. Restoration was completed in 1627, now with only two wings. When the Leden family died out, it went in 1557 to the Enningloh family, also known as Pladiese. From 1622 to 1776 it was owned by the family Grothaus zu Krietenstein, then by the . The palace has belonged to the in Dissen from 1951. The buildings are a main building ("Haupthaus") with two wings and an adjacent tower, and a separate gate house. The only exterior decorations are a sandstone

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. Types Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or r ...

and the entrance with

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s. The interior of the west wing has an

imperial staircase An imperial staircase (sometimes erroneously known as a "double staircase") is the name given to a staircase with divided flights. Usually the first flight rises to a half-landing and then divides into two symmetrical flights both rising with ...

("dreiläufiges Treppenhaus"), an early example in northern Germany of the then new design, which followed on from the

spiral stairs Stairs are a structure designed to bridge a large vertical distance between lower and higher levels by dividing it into smaller vertical distances. This is achieved as a diagonal series of horizontal platforms called steps which enable passage ...

of the Weserrenaissance. The building houses a fireplace decorated with stone figures, and several ceramic stoves. It is a registered monument. The Ledenburg Collection (''Ledenburg-Sammlung'') is the name of a collection of historic documents which was deposited at the (state archive of

) in

in 2000. They date back to

, who was a poet and a musician, married to Georg Hermann Heinrich von Münster in 1759. The collection contains handwritten poems and music in prints and copies, with a focus on music for

viola da gamba The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...

by German and Italian composers. Thanks to research by the French musicologist

François-Pierre Goy François-Pierre Goy (born 9 February 1960 in Troyes) has been a conservator at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris since 1995, first in the audiovisual section, later in the Department of Music. Biography Holder of a diploma of Adv ...

, the collection was discovered and researched by musicologists, resulting in new editions of music that were assumed to have been lost, especially Telemann's ''

Twelve Fantasias for Viola da Gamba solo Georg Philipp Telemann's collection of Twelve Fantasias for Viola da Gamba Solo, TWV 40:26–37, was published in Hamburg in 1735, titled ''Fantaisies pour la Basse de Violle''. The Fantasia (music), fantasias for viola da gamba were considered lo ...

'', but also three sonatas and a trios by

Edition Güntersberg Edition Güntersberg is a German publishing house of classical music, focused on compositions for the viola da gamba. It was founded in Heidelberg in 1990 by Günter von Zadow and Leonore von Zadow-Reichling, who is a professional gambist. In addit ...

published most of the collection, including three sonatas by Giacobo Cervetto (1681/1682–1783), two sonatas by

Giuseppe Tartini Giuseppe Tartini (8 April 1692 – 26 February 1770) was an Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque era born in the Republic of Venice. Tartini was a prolific composer, composing over a hundred of pieces for the violin with the majority of ...

, a sonata by Juan Bautista Pla, two anonymous sonatas, a sonata by Filippo Ruge (1722 – after 1767), a sonata by

Pietro Castrucci Pietro Castrucci (1679 – 7 March 1752) was an Italian violinist and composer. Castrucci was born in Rome, where he studied with Arcangelo Corelli; in 1715, he settled in London, where he became known as one of the finest virtuoso violinists of ...

, a trio by , and a trio by Johann Konrad Gretsch (ca. 1710 – 1778). The building is surrounded by an estate with 200 hectares of forest, of which 30 hectares were damaged by

cyclone Kyrill Cyclone Kyrill was a low-pressure area that evolved into an unusually violent European windstorm, forming an extratropical cyclone with hurricane-strength winds. It formed over Newfoundland on 15 January 2007 and moved across the Atlantic Oce ...

in 2007.

References

External links

{{Commonscat, Schloss Ledenburg
Schloss Ledenburg
(in German) www.burgen-und-schloesser.net 15th-century architecture Buildings and structures in Osnabrück (district) Bissendorf Palaces in Lower Saxony