The Wilhelmsburg Castle in the city of

Schmalkalden Schmalkalden () is a town in the Schmalkalden-Meiningen district, in the southwest of the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is on the southern slope of the Thuringian Forest at the Schmalkalde river, a tributary to the Werra. , the town had a popula ...

was a secondary residence of the Landgraves of Hesse. It is one of the most important

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

buildings in central Germany, which has experienced no structural changes to this day and is preserved in almost its original condition.

History

In 1583, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel became the sole owner of the Lordship of Schmalkalden, which had been shared with the

Counts of Henneberg The House of Henneberg was a medieval German comital family (''Grafen'') which from the 11th century onwards held large territories in the Duchy of Franconia. Their county was raised to a princely county (''Gefürstete Grafschaft'') in 1310. Upo ...

until then. Landgrave William IV immediately decided to make the city one of his secondary residences. He had the 12th Century Waltaff Castle demolished and began the construction of the castle named after him on the same location. The castle was inaugurated on 23 May 1590, although it had not yet been completed. The interior was procured from

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

. William's son Maurice often stayed at Wilhelmsburg castle. During his reign, the castle was finally completed in 1618. His successors used the castle less and less and in the early 19th Century the castle was abandoned altogether. In 1873, the Association for Henneberg History and Geography purchased the castle and began using it as a museum.

Building

The palace is a four-winged structure with a nearly square floor plan. The comprehensive facilities include an outdoor parade grounds, a gatekeeper's house, pleasure gardens, a kitchen garden, a prison tower, stables, a bakery and a brewery. The spatial arrangement is typical for a residential palace. The halls were decorated with

scrollwork The scroll in art is an element of ornament and graphic design featuring spirals and rolling incomplete circle motifs, some of which resemble the edge-on view of a book or document in scroll form, though many types are plant-scrolls, which l ...

and strapwork and adorned with decorative paintings, including a copy of the

Iwein ''Iwein'' is a Middle High German verse romance by the poet Hartmann von Aue, written around 1200. An Arthurian tale freely adapted from Chrétien de Troyes' Old French ''Yvain, the Knight of the Lion'', it tells the story of Iwein (Yvain), a k ...

epos by Hartmann von Aue the basement. Located on the City Palace is a four-winged structure with a nearly square floor plan. The comprehensive facilities include outdoor parade ground, gatekeepers house, pleasure gardens, kitchen garden, prison tower, stables and bakery and brewery. The spatial arrangement corresponds to a representative of the Royal Palace. The halls were labeled with

Roll Roll or Rolls may refer to: Movement about the longitudinal axis * Roll angle (or roll rotation), one of the 3 angular degrees of freedom of any stiff body (for example a vehicle), describing motion about the longitudinal axis ** Roll (aviation), ...

- equipped and strapwork, just as they are adorned with decorative paintings - which includes a copy of the

epic in Hartmann von Aue the basement. Schmalkalden 2008-013

Ballroom Renaissance organ The magnificent castle church, built by Dutch architect Willem Vernukken in 1590, is one of the oldest and most beautiful newly built Protestant churches in Germany. Many German Lutheran churches of the 18th century followed its example with the connection of altar with baptismal font, pulpit and organ in a vertical axis; central paintings above the altar were replaced with pulpits.

Organ

The Renaissance

organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

in the chapel is one of the oldest instruments of this kind in Central Europe that is still playable. It was commissioned by Landgrave William IV and built by Daniel Meyer in Göttingen. The organ receives its special timbre from 252 wooden pipes, six registers and its so-called ''bird cry''. It was played for the first time on 23 May 1590 when the castle church was consecrated during the inauguration of the castle.

Museum

The castle houses the permanent exhibition ''Dawn of a new era'', with the main topics

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

and Schmalkaldic League.

References

* Dieter Eckardt, Helmut-Eberhard Paulus, Willi Stubenvoll: ''Schloss Wilhelmsburg in Schmalkalden'', 1999

External links