To be privately owned
CastleGeilenkirchen
Leerodt Castle (Geilenkirchen)
Leerodt Castle is one of the numerous moated castles in the Wurm Valley and is located between the villages of Süggerath and Müllendorf on the L 42 in the municipality of Geilenkirchen.
The former moated castle Leerodt, first mentioned in 1354, was the ancestral seat of a noble family of the same name since the 14th century. The castle was a fief of the Lords of Randerath and later of the Lords of Heinsberg. Christoph von Leerodt expanded the former moated castle around 1578 and built the outer bailey in 1616. His grandson, Heinrich Wilhelm, Hofmeister and Chamber President at the court in Düsseldorf, built the stately manor house in 1647, which today only exists as a ruin after its destruction in the Second World War. With Baron Clemens August von Leerodt, the family died out in the male line in 1829. The widow of his nephew Max von Leerodt, a born Baroness von Eynatten-Trips, did not inhabit the castle as an heiress. The estate increasingly fell into disrepair, and in 1840, a part of the manor house had to be demolished. After her death in 1882, Leerodt fell to her grandson, Major and Royal Chamberlain Baron Georg Schütz von Leerodt.
During the battles on the Rur front at the end of the Second World War, an emergency hospital of the US Army was located there.
Buildings+
Of the complex from the first half of the 17th century, only remnants and the buildings of the five-sided outer bailey remain after significant war damage. The brick buildings of the outer bailey date from the 17th century, the gatehouse from 1658. After a wing of the manor house was demolished in 1840, the remaining building stock suffered considerable war damage and has since been preserved as a ruin. According to Edmund Renard (see Lit.), Leerodt Castle was once one of the finest secular buildings on the Lower Rhine in the style of the Dutch Renaissance.
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Source: Wikipedia · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
This description draws on the facts documented in the linked Wikipedia article; Wikipedia content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Wording and editing: Mobile History.
Location: 50.9856, 6.1525