Schönborn Castle

Schloss Schönborn is a baroque castle southeast of the market town of Göllersdorf and northeast of the city of Stockerau in the Hollabrunn district of Lower Austria, 25 km north of Vienna.

The castle was built between 1712 and 1717 as a summer residence for Friedrich Graf von Schönborn, a Prince-Bishop of Würzburg and Bamberg and Imperial Vice-Chancellor. The Veste Mihlberg previously stood on this site. Master builder Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt erected a three-winged complex with an extensive castle park, orangery, and castle chapel. An orangery pavilion was decorated with frescoes by Jonas Drentwett in 1715. Salomon Kleiner created series of drawings of the complex's design for documentation purposes at the time. In 1729-1733, Hildebrandt built a Saint John of Nepomuk Chapel in the castle park.

At the end of the war in 1945, the Schönborn family had moved most of the castle's inventory to the west and were themselves in St. Gallenkirch in Montafon. Only the old Countess Elise remained, she died at the beginning of July. The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna relocated many valuables to the upper rooms of the castle. During the last weeks of the war, when the front was only a few kilometers away, many rooms served as a hospital for the German Wehrmacht. 18 German and two Russian soldiers were buried in the pheasant garden. Units of the SS and the Russian army looted.

The castle has been magnificently renovated. The castle park covers an area of approximately 104 hectares with some old trees.

Significance

Schloss Schönborn is the successor building to the old Buchheimsche Mühlburg and therefore has the character of a noble residence. The newly built castle of the Imperial Vice-Chancellor, due to its exterior and interior furnishings, provides the representative setting for a court. This is evidenced by the rooms inside the castle, the main hall, the staircase, the galleries, the antechambers, and the apartments. Following the example of the great princely residences, a rank-ordered sequence of rooms determines the internal layout of the castle. The claim to a residence is expressed by the arrangement of the rooms of the castle building and the associated reference to Schloss Clagny near Versailles. In a similar way, Schloss Schönborn was designed as the residence of Count Schönborn, not as an official residence of the Imperial Vice-Chancellor.

In addition to its function as a "manor house with estate management" and residence, Schloss Schönborn also serves the Count primarily as a private and hunting lodge, for which the pheasantry and the associated gardens are evidence. Friedrich Carl did not hold court in Göllersdorf as the holder of the Imperial Chancellery office, but as a private person.

Reconstruction

With the acquisition of the lordship, he had finally succeeded in entering the Austrian nobility. Such a status had to be maintained and preserved by upholding old traditions and caring for the inherited seats of power. Therefore, the foundations of the former Mühlburg were also incorporated into the reconstruction of the castle and integrated into the floor plan. Through this consideration, the Count also set his architectural monument in accordance with the Austrian nobility.

In the building report, the remains of the walls are recognizable by their increased thickness. The narrow and oppressive inner courtyard is in gross disproportion to the otherwise broadly laid out outer castle courtyard. Hildebrandt had drawn two different plans for Schloss Göllersdorf, which are known in literature as Projects I and II. Project I represented a modern wing complex with two stories. The courtyard front was to be decisive for the courtyard complex through a broadly laid out and risalit-like design. Stables were to be separated from the actual castle and arranged around an independent outer castle courtyard.

While financial and economic considerations on the one hand prevented the implementation of Project I, the decisive and more significant reason was the Schönborn counts' sense of tradition, to incorporate older parts of the predecessor building into the redesign.

Project II, which was executed, adopted the floor plan position of the inner courtyard of the old Mühlburg. This expresses the claim of a contemporary and spacious castle complex and a seat of power.

In the autumn of 1712, the building was restored, its interior architecture re-structured, and a new roof was added. In the summer of 1713, the stucco work in the hall was completed, and by autumn, another twelve rooms were provided with stucco. Two pavilions were added to the three-winged core building. For the interior decoration of the castle, the frescoes in the Sala terrena were painted by Jonas Drentwett in July 1714, and in the chapel and library in June 1715. In the autumn of 1716, the castle was completed, and the masons were engaged in building the orangery.

An undated engraving of the Schönborn castle prospects shows that the castle building in its current appearance was created in at least two construction phases. The three-winged complex appears to be connected to the outer wing tracts only by gatehouses, which swing out in a quarter-circle with gate towers above their central axes, thus framing the basin.