Kalkum Castle

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.

Kalkum became known far beyond the borders of Prussia as a result of the divorce war between the castle owner Count Edmund von Hatzfeldt and his wife Sophie, who was represented by Ferdinand Lassalle, who was only 20 years old at the time.

Today, the palace is empty because the Branch of the State Archives of North Rhine-Westphalia, which was housed there for a long time, moved to the new Landesarchiv building in Duisburg at the end of 2014.

Philipp Wilhelm's daughter Isabella Johanna Maria Anna, who had married Edmund Florenz von Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg-Weisweiler Castle on 17 November 1703,[27] became the sole heir to the estate.

[29] 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.

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.

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.

[32] 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.

[33][34] From November 1809,[34] 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.

[33] 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.

The work he carried out in November 1811 not only used paper wallpaper,[38] but also some very expensive fabrics, for example in the so-called tower room, which has a wall covering made of Chinese silk.

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.

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,[57][58] on which a small temple in the tradition of Chinoiserie was built by 1818.

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.

[64] 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.

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 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.

[66] 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.

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.

At the same time, the castle moat was cleared of mud in 1954, during which not only the foundations of the former pigeon tower were found, but also large quantities of live ammunition from both world wars.

[74] These were the foundation walls of two late medieval building phases, which archaeologically proved that the manor house of the Kalkum complex had always stood at today's south-west corner.

From October 1956 to mid-1960,[75] the manor house was restored in a third construction phase, including the adjoining kitchen building, so that the administrative rooms of the archive could be accommodated on the upper floor.

In a fourth construction phase lasting from November 1958 to December 1962,[76] the Rentei und Domestikenflügel was extended and converted in order to install a five-storey compact storage facility.

In the mid-2000s, a citizens' initiative campaigned to redesign the orangery in the south-eastern area of the palace park, which was only used as a storage room at the time, for cultural purposes and to offer young artists an event forum there.

The relief was created in 1854 by the Düsseldorf sculptor Dietrich Mein(h)ardus, who also designed the western entrance door of the manor house, which is richly decorated with carvings.

Today, the rooms present themselves with restored or reconstructed wall and ceiling paintings, splendidly designed stucco work and precious parquet floors with inlays.

A stucco ceiling frieze and surrounding arabesques as wall paintings complete the lavish décor of this room, the highlight of which is the floor with a covering of valuable precious woods with inlays of mother-of-pearl.

Two smaller, curved paths branch off from this access road in the central axis and lead around the landscape park, which is bordered on the outside by hedges and woodland planting, until they meet the canalized Schwarzbach stream at the southwest and northwest corners of the castle and cross it by means of small bridges.

On the northern outer wall of the pavilion, plaques made of the same marble hang in two shallow niches with a quote by Ferdinand Lassalle as well as data on his life and work.