Lützinghausen Castle

Lützinghausen House is a manor house in the district of the same name in the municipality of Gummersbach in the Oberbergischer Kreis in North Rhine-Westphalia. The building was constructed from 1733 by Johann Theodor Caspar von Omphal and his wife Anna Klara von Neuhoff next to an older predecessor building. It is listed as a protected architectural monument.

The two-story solid quarry stone building has seven window axes on its long sides and four on its narrow sides, and is covered by a two-story mansard roof. In addition to the structured roof (5 to 2 and 3 to 1 window axes), the strong fluted corner pilasters are particularly striking. The entrance on the western long side is located in a single-axis central risalit crowned with a pointed gable. Above the simple front door is the stone alliance coat of arms of the Omphal and Neuhoff families. This motif is repeated on the roof in two weather vanes with the same coats of arms and the year 1733. The main and ancillary buildings are unplastered.

The place "Lucinchusen", already mentioned in documents as a court location in 1287, was probably the seat of a free knight's estate and noble family since that time.

In the 16th century, the von Mollenbeck (Müllenbach) family owned this estate in addition to the one in Steinenbrück. Caspar Adolf Moellenbeck bequeathed both estates to his daughter Anna, and through Anna's marriage to Caspar von Omphal, they passed to this Rhenish family of jurists, who had moved from the Bergisches Land to the Gummersbach area in 1587. They enlarged the property in Lützinghausen in the 16th/17th century through land purchases.

In 1733, Johann Theodor Caspar von Omphal, together with his wife, began the construction of a representative new building right next to the medieval bailiff's house. He had married Anna Klara Johanetta von Neuhoff, called Ley, on August 8, 1725. Apparently, however, the economic decline of the Omphals began around the same time. The new building project dragged on for many years. In 1753, the new house was not yet completed, and even in 1763, the increasingly dilapidated old building still existed.

Thus, the couple von Omphal/von Neuhoff cannot have lived in Burg Lützinghausen for long, because in 1763 it was already sold to the Merten family from Windhagen. However, the new owner Johann Heinrich Merten died only 13 years later and left behind his wife Anna Gertrud with eight minor children. The widow could not keep the property and sold it to Johann Peter König, a Gummersbach merchant who had already acquired the Steinenbrück part of the Omphal possessions.

However, probably only after 1800, Mrs. Merten bought back the estate for her now adult son Peter Joseph, a surveyor by profession. Descendants of the same family still own and inhabit the manor house today (which, however, has been divided into two parts for some time). It can therefore only be viewed from the outside.