Borghees Castle

Schlösschen Borghees, colloquially also known as Haus Borghees or Schloss Borghees, is a manor house in the district of the same name in the Lower Rhine city of Emmerich. After a checkered history, it is now used as a cultural center and has been a listed building since December 1986.

The house stands between meadows and pollard willows on the edge of the Borghees Forest in the north of Emmerich. Two trees on the property are protected as natural monuments.

The building is an approximately 17x11 meter, two-story brick structure, topped by a hip roof with dormers. Its main facade on the west side has five axes and is vertically structured by six pilasters. Above the portal in the middle of the facade is the alliance coat of arms of the Rickers and Raab families from 1680. On the east side, a square stair tower with four stories and a high spire is centrally placed in front of the building. As in the case of Haus Hertefeld in Weeze, Schlösschen Borghees has different floor heights, with the ground floor being lower than the first floor. The area west of the house is surrounded on three sides by a moat.

In 827, a "villa hese juxta Embrica" is first mentioned in a document, which was sold by the Elten Abbey in 1336. Its identification as Borghees is not certain, however. Only in the 17th century does the present property become tangible in documents, when the Brandenburg customs inspector Christoffel Rickers (also Ryckers) acquired the then estate in 1678 and had a country house built on its grounds two years later. This was a single-story building with brick masonry, with a small turret with a baroque dome placed in the middle. Christoffel's 17-year-old daughter Katharina caused a stir with her love affair with Frederick I. After the Prussian king made her Countess of Wartenberg, he took her to Berlin. Katharina inherited the property upon her father's death in 1690 and subsequently had it managed by her cousin Johann. His grandson Johann Peter Reinhard von Rickers expanded the manor house to its present form in the mid-18th century.

Through inheritance via the female line, the estate passed to the Dutch Thooft family in 1804, who leased it to Peter Reyers from 1838. He not only used the buildings for agriculture but also operated a cheese dairy and an inn there, which was taken over by the Braam family in 1907. Already in 1902, the property had gone to the Jonkheeren Bosch van Rosenthal. After the farm was taken over by the Rheinische Heimat settlement company, the property was divided into three individual agricultural farms. The Braam family acquired the Schlösschen in 1957, selling it to the then district of Rees in 1964. During renovation work in the 1960s, an annex north of the turret was demolished.

When the district of Rees merged into the district of Kleve, among others, at the beginning of 1975, the latter became the new owner of the building. Shortly thereafter, Schlösschen Borghees came into the possession of the city of Emmerich. In the same year, a fire almost completely destroyed the roof and upper floor of the building. On the initiative of Emmerich citizens, complete demolition was prevented; instead, the city of Emmerich undertook the reconstruction, which lasted two years. During the restoration, the attic of the house was converted into an apartment. In 1978, the silted-up moats of the property were restored.