Seckenheim Castle

It was in 1767 when Baron von Stengel made his estate in Seckenheim the ancestral and noble seat of the family and decided to build a castle there. Just two years later, in 1769, the building was completed. After the Baron died in 1798, and none of his numerous descendants wanted to take over the castle, it was acquired in 1804 by the Baden court president von Hacke. However, von Hacke lived an extravagant lifestyle in Vienna - under the burden of his accumulated debts, the castle was sold to Carl Graf von Luxbourg. His daughter, in turn, sold the property in 1854 to Baron von Babo from Weinheim - the son of Baron von Stengel's former administrator. After Babo's death, part of the castle garden was laid out as the new Schlossgasse. The subsequent owner, the entrepreneur Julius Espenschied, also parted with his property in 1891, after almost two-thirds of the park had been lost due to the construction of the Mannheim-Heidelberg local railway. The Edinger Aktienbrauerei, which was looking for a landlord for its new acquisition, became the buyer of the castle and the remaining land. Various tenants alternated until the First World War, and the castle became a popular excursion destination for Mannheim residents. In 1920, the municipality of Seckenheim took over the castle from the brewery's bankruptcy estate and had a large hall built between 1927 and 1929 in place of the old pavilion. The incorporation of Seckenheim was celebrated in that very hall in October 1939 - the city of Mannheim had thus become the owner of the castle.