Schwarzenau Castle

Schwarzenau Manor is located in the Schwarzenau district of Bad Berleburg.

The origin of the building was based on the stately Schwarzenau court. This was assigned to the Richstein office in the oldest surviving inventory of goods.

Several times in the following centuries, it was used as a widow's residence, summer residence, and hunting lodge. Temporarily, it also served as a residence and seat of government for the comital family, especially during the time of radical Pietism under Count Henrich Albrecht zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein. Since 1950, they have used it as their residence instead of Wittgenstein Castle, which was sold in 2003.

The building complex consists of the manor house, built in the mid-17th century, and the farm building, constructed in half-timbered style in the 18th century.

The former Schwarzenau hunting lodge was "Monument of the Month January 2007" of the Southern Westphalia regional group and partly of the Münsterland regional group of the "Historic Town Centers in North Rhine-Westphalia" working group.

In its current form, the complex shows a late Baroque character. In 1788, the current manor house was built on a leveled area above a high flood wall parallel to the river. A clear distance was maintained from the already existing structures, which are incorporated into the elongated farm wing along the street. The area in between - today a lawn with about a hundred-year-old tree population - was probably once designed as a geometric garden.

A stone bench and the row of small statues along the main access road behind the gate with its fine wrought ironwork are preserved testimonies of this complex. The statues are integrated into yew plantings with careful geometric cuts. Two large farm buildings made of plastered quarry stone enclose the complex to the east.

The manor house is an elongated two-story building with 12 window axes under a mansard roof. Already in the year of construction 1788, "this whole summer ... all the Wittgenstein lordships stayed in Schwartzenau, because the reigning lord there, Lord Count Ludwig, had a large residential house built on the Eder," as the chronicle reports.

The year of construction and the initials of the builder adorn the main entrance under the crown. Today completely plastered, it is hardly recognizable that the ground floor is made of quarry stone, while the upper floor is executed in half-timbered construction. The necessary wood was probably transported on the Eder over almost 30 kilometers from the demolition of Ludwigseck Manor near Erndtebrück. Numerous reused timbers in the roof structure attest to this tradition.

The representative living rooms were located on the upper floor from the beginning, while the ground floor served for housekeeping. The manor house underwent a redesign around the mid-19th century. This is evident on the exterior through new entrance portals and, above all, through the gabled central risalit with the newly created staircase.

Partially older than the manor house are the western parts of the farm building on the street. The upper floor shows strong half-timbering from at least the early 18th century. The ground floor walls, however, are built of strong quarry stone masonry.

Two vaulted cellars and a fireplace in the wing building behind an open arcade suggest that this is the nucleus of the stately Schwarzenau estate.