Niederweis Castle

Niederweis Castle is located in the municipality of Niederweis in the Bitburg-Prüm district of Rhineland-Palatinate.

The lordship of Niederweis, which also included the villages of Alsdorf, Kaschenbach, and Meckel, passed to the Bitburg family Cob von Nüdingen around 1580 through the marriage of Christoph Cob to Margaretha Fock von Hübingen. Christoph Cob's sons were both childless, so Niederweis passed to his sister Maria Ursula, who had married Johann Hermann von der Heyden in 1680, after the death of his son Philipp Christoph Cob von Nüdingen in 1699. Thus, Niederweis passed to the von der Heyden family.

The castle is a two-story plastered rubble stone building with a mansard roof. A grand staircase with seven steps leads to a round arch portal, above which the year of construction is inscribed in the keystone. From the construction period, a large fireplace with superstructure, wall and panel cupboard, and a stucco ceiling are preserved in the rooms of the main wing.

The baroque castle was built in 1751 for Franz Eduard Anton Freiherr von der Heyden (1693-1755). In the gable field of the main facade, the alliance coat of arms of Franz Eduard Anton von der Heyden and his wife Marie Wilhelmine von Eltz-Rodendorf (married 1732) is emblazoned under a baronial crown (seven pearls). Franz Eduard Anton became the highest-ranking official in the Luxembourg region as President of the Provincial Council of Luxembourg. Planned as a three-winged building entre cour et jardin, the castle is described as unfinished in the Marie-Theresian cadastral survey from 1765 to 1769. Franz Anton Eduard von der Heyden died in 1755 and could not complete the construction. Clemens Wenzeslaus Freiherr von der Heyden (1774-1840), the last of his lineage, died unmarried. He bequeathed his entire fortune to the Bitburg district for the education of orphaned children and the care of poor elderly people. The district used this to establish the Von der Heyden and Schütz Foundation. Niederweis Castle was subsequently leased several times and lost its original character. In 2005, the castle came into private ownership and has since been professionally restored to its original condition. The estate is now used commercially.