Birlinghoven Castle

Birlinghoven Castle is a castle-like villa in Sankt Augustin, a city in the Rhein-Sieg district in North Rhine-Westphalia, which was built from 1901 to 1903. It is located in the middle of Birlinghoven Forest on a ridge west of the Sankt Augustin district of Birlinghoven.

Birlinghoven Castle was built above the old Birlinghoven Castle according to a design by the architect Edwin Crones (1874–1917) for the Rautenstrauch entrepreneurial family, who sold it a short time later to the Cologne banker Louis Hagen. In 1900, the builder of the castle, Theodor Damina Rautenstrauch (1873–1907), acquired the site with a one-hectare forest area. He initially began the creation of a landscape park, incorporating the forest area and Pleisbach stream, commissioning the garden architect Rudolf Rausch (1876–1947) with its design. By 1904, it was largely completed, and work was finished by 1910. Parts of the park were later developed.

During and after the Second World War, the castle was confiscated by the military; it was converted into a recreation center for families of British staff officers for the British occupation forces. After 1949, the British High Commissioner Robertson preferred Birlinghoven Castle as his personal residence, but after a corresponding inspection, it was decided to remain at Röttgen Castle due to the expected conversion costs. In 1959, Deutsche Shell AG established its Institute for Basic Research on the site. Since 1968, the castle has been owned by the Federal Republic of Germany and houses research institutes; initially, the GMD Research Center for Information Technology was located there, which merged with the Fraunhofer Society in 2001.