Gracht Castle

Gracht Water Castle in Erftstadt-Liblar is one of the most impressive water castles in the Cologne area. It is a two-part complex with a three-winged outer bailey and a two-winged manor house. The castle garden was probably laid out at the beginning of the 18th century by the Münster landscape architect Gottfried Laurenz Pictorius in the French style and redesigned in its rear parts in the style of an English landscape park in the 19th century.

The stately home belonged to the Wolff-Metternich family for four centuries, who had their ancestral seat there until 1945. Several famous personalities were born in the castle, for example, in 1658 Franz Arnold von Wolff-Metternich zur Gracht, the Prince-Bishop of Paderborn (there successor to his uncle Hermann Werner von Wolff-Metternich zur Gracht) and Münster; and in 1829 the freedom fighter of 1848 and later US Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz.

In its beginnings, Gracht Castle was not a knight's seat, but merely a secondary court of Haus Buschfeld. In 1433, Otto von Buschfeld inherited the house and court from his father Hermann. Around 1500, the two-part castle complex was built. Otto's granddaughter, Catharina von Buschfeld, inherited the property with her husband Hieronymus Wolff, also known as von Metternich, in 1538.

Her grandson Johann Adolf I was elevated to the rank of baron and received Liblar in 1633 from the Elector of Cologne Ferdinand as a subordinate lordship. In 1658, he began to expand Haus Gracht into a representative castle. His descendants continued the expansion and completed it in such a way that the ancestral seat of the Wolff-Metternich family was subsequently classified as a manorial estate eligible for the Landtag.

After Gracht Castle had served as a lazaret for several years during the French administration (since 1795) and was subsequently left in a ruined state, construction measures to preserve the complex became unavoidable.

On behalf of Levin Anton Graf Wolff Metternich, the current manor house was built between 1851 and 1854 according to the plans of the Cologne architect Johann Anton Wallee. The previously two-story east wing of the building was extended by one floor and a flanking, four-story tower was erected. Furthermore, the house was extended by a two-story south wing with a three-story corner tower. In the new buildings of the outer bailey, erected in neo-Gothic style after a fire, parts of the previous buildings from 1698 were integrated.

The municipality of Liblar acquired the complex with the castle park and lands in 1957. The castle was resold in 1973 to the University Seminar of Business (USW).

Today, the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) is housed in the castle as the successor to the USW.