Stolberg Castle rises on a steep limestone cliff in the middle of Stolberg's old town in Stolberg (Rhineland) in the North Rhine-Westphalian city region of Aachen. It is the landmark, cradle and namesake of the city.
Stolberg Castle was built by the Lords of Stalburg in the 12th century. In the middle of the 15th century, the Dukes of Jülich pledged the razed complex to the Lords of Nesselrode in order to have it rebuilt as an open house. In the middle of the 16th century, Hieronymus von Efferen had the castle expanded after it had been destroyed. As a result of marriage, the castle and dominion passed from the barons of Efferen to the imperial barons of Raitz von Frentz. In the 18th and 19th centuries the castle fell into ruins. The dilapidated complex came into bourgeois ownership in 1863 from the last aristocratic owners, the Imperial Counts of Kesselstatt. The Stolberg manufacturer Moritz Kraus had the castle rebuilt in the historicist style in 1888 and gave it to the city in 1909.
Today, Stolberg Castle serves as a venue for cultural events and as accommodation for various associations. In the basement there is a gastronomic business and a local history and crafts museum in the Torburg.
The beginnings of the castle and thus the town of Stolberg go back to the 12th century. The von Stalburg family, who named themselves after the castle and whose name was passed on to the settlement, built a castle complex at that time, the appearance of which is completely unknown to us but can be assigned to the type of a high medieval hill or spur castle.
After the castle was besieged, captured and razed in 1375, Wilhelm von Nesselrode, feudal man of the Counts of Jülich, built a new, late medieval complex on the same site in 1445, which met both the requirements of a defensible fortress and that of a representative residence.
An expansion in the 16th century gave the castle complex a more castle-like character, which is a typical phenomenon of the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. The fortification building elements (shield walls and eastern towers) were not included in this expansion; they fell into disrepair over time, while the residential and administrative functions were modernized and expanded.
In 1888, the Stolberg manufacturer Moritz Kraus bought the castle, which had now fallen into disrepair, at auction and had it rebuilt by the two architects Carl Schleicher and Alfred Müller-Grah in the style of historicism in the spirit of the castle renaissance. The focus was on the ideal of a medieval castle complex according to the ideas of the time, similar to what was pursued at the time with Neuschwanstein Castle, Stolzenfels or Wartburg. In 1909, Moritz Kraus gave the rebuilt castle to the citizens of Stolberg as a non-saleable inheritance.
Source:
stolberg-erleben.de/sichtswert/burg
Translated by Google •
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