Holzhausen Castle (Frankfurt)

In 1729, Johann Hieronymus von Holzhausen had a small moated castle built on the foundations of the former moated castle, according to plans by Louis Remy de la Fosse, who had died shortly before, as a representative summer residence for his family. As a member of the highest bourgeois class of the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt, he thus imitated a lifestyle cultivated by the contemporary nobility.

The building presents itself as a simple rectangular structure, with 5 window axes on the long side and 3 on the narrow side. The building is covered by a two-story mansard roof, the upper floor of which forms a square skylight. It is accessed via a three-arched stone bridge, which probably replaced a drawbridge of the previous building and was covered before the Second World War. The round-arched portal of the building could be a remnant of the Renaissance complex. It leads into the entrance floor, above which are the bel étage and another full floor above it. Below the entrance level, directly above the water level, there is another "basement" floor.

Due to the overbuilding of a large part of the park area during the Gründerzeit, the once expansive representative gesture of the complex is now hardly perceptible. Its spaciousness can still be seen in remnants through the location of the preserved wrought-iron gate from the end of the 17th century in Louis-seize style, a remnant of the former enclosure on Oeder Weg, over 200 meters away from the castle, connected by an avenue whose chestnut trees date from around 1910. At that time, the castle pond was also reduced to 0.2 hectares.

The last male member of the Holzhausen family, Rittmeister Adolph von Holzhausen († 1923), donated the castle and the surrounding park to the city of Frankfurt am Main. The city housed the Frankfurt department of the Reichsarchiv here. In 1944, the building suffered damage during air raids, which was repaired after 1949.

From 1953 to 1988, the castle housed the Frankfurt Museum of Prehistory and Early History. The exhibition showed finds from Frankfurt's archaeology, but was spatially very limited from the outset. Initially, only the ground floor and staircase were available as exhibition rooms. A permanent exhibition on the Roman city of NIDA-Heddernheim had been outsourced to the Deutschordenshaus since 1976. Only with the move in 1989 to the current museum building in the Karmeliterkloster did the museum's spatial situation improve.

Since 1989, the Holzhausenschlösschen has been the seat of the Frankfurter Bürgerstiftung, which fundamentally rebuilt its interior in 1995. Cultural events are regularly held here.