Hemer Castle

Hemer House is a manor house in Hemer. It dates back to a main court (Oberhof) from the 11th century, which supplied the Grafschaft Monastery. The current building largely dates from the 17th century. Together with the surrounding building complex, Hemer House forms a district of the city.

The property, alongside Hedhof and Brelen, was first mentioned in 1072 as one of the main courts of the Archbishops of Cologne in the Hemer area. Anno II, in a document at that time, transferred the main court of Hademare to the newly founded Grafschaft Monastery as a supply estate. There is little information about its further development. The estate reappears in sources only in 1452. At this time, it was a knight's estate within the Duchy of Kleve-Mark, but still a fief of Grafschaft. The owner was the von Höcklinghausen family. Later, the property passed to the von Böckenförde genannt Schüngel family. Subsequently, the property passed by inheritance to other members of this family as owners, before Dietrich Ovelacker, then Drost of Altena and Iserlohn, purchased it.

He had the complex redesigned into its essentially still visible form by 1614. Through inheritance, the house fell to the Wachtendonk family, who owned it until 1664. Afterwards, it fell to the von Brabeck family. They owned the property until 1812, when Carl Heinrich Löbbecke acquired it. The Löbbecke family sold the manor house and the associated park in 1957 to the Catholic parish of St. Peter and Paul, who used it as an orphanage until 1980. Today, Hemer House serves the parish as a community center and kindergarten.