Moyland Castle is a moated castle in Bedburg-Hau

Bedburg-Hau

Bedburg-Hau is a municipality in the district of Cleves in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located approx. 5 km south-east of Cleves....

 in the district of Kleve

Kleve

Kleve , is a town in the Lower Rhine region of northwestern Germany near the Dutch border and the River Rhine. From the 11th century onwards, Kleve was capital of a county and later a duchy...

 , one of the most important neo-Gothic buildings in North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...

. Its name derives from the Dutch word Moiland which means "beautiful country". The name was probably coined by Dutch workers, which the former owner Jacob van den Eger of the Lower Rhine had brought to his property to drain the surrounding wetlands.

Today it houses a Moyland Museum containing an extensive collection of modern art of the brothers van der Grinten and is a popular destination on the Lower Rhine.

Castle

The palace complex consists of a closed, four-towered main keep

Keep

A keep is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word keep, but usually consider it to refer to large towers in castles that were fortified residences, used as a refuge of last resort should the rest of the...

, which is southeast of farm buildings in the front. The latter is home to a museum café, museum administration, the library and a space for changing exhibitions. The two-story main building of brick is presented in historicist Tudor

Tudor style architecture

The Tudor architectural style is the final development of medieval architecture during the Tudor period and even beyond, for conservative college patrons...

 style with battlements on corbels . The four floors of the former donjon on the southeast corner of the main keep were in 2008 crowned by a polygonal lantern roof. On the three other corners of the castle are horseshoe-shaped towers with three floors.

The southeast wall of the castle has a gateway formed by two polygonal towers outside with Pointed roofs and flanked by two slender round towers. On the first floor of the wing is the so-called Zwirner Hall, used for concerts and other events.

The characters of the staircase

The stair railing on the stairway to the portal of the main palace are decorated with various animal figures. At the upper end are two lions - they are older originals. At the lower ends of the railing, the original lions were replaced by a wolf on the right and a pug on the left. The wolf was to commemorate the visit of Voltaire

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

's . The figure was selected to record for posterity the "ferocity" of the French philosopher in discussion with Frederick II

Frederick II of Prussia

Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...

. The pug represents Sir Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he attended Moyland Castle in the wake of observing Operation Plunder

Operation Plunder

Commencing on the night of 23 March 1945 during World War II, Operation Plunder was the crossing of the River Rhine at Rees, Wesel, and south of the Lippe River by the British 2nd Army, under Lieutenant-General Sir Miles Dempsey , and the U.S. Ninth Army , under Lieutenant General William Simpson...

 - the Rhine crossing of the British Army. He was one of the last to visit the intact 200 year old fortress in which the King of Prussia and Voltaire had their discussions. Shortly after Churchill's visit to the palace was looted and the interior largely destroyed.

Castle Park

In the period from July 1995 to May 1997 the park was restored under the leadership of Gustav and Rose Woerner of Castle Park, together with the old stand of trees and oak trees and avenues of trees, so that today the appearance reflects the late 19th and early 20th Century. The architect of the original designs is not known, but they were made in the 1830s/1840s by the family Steengracht. Today, the park features sculptures by contemporary artists from around the world, including James Lee Byars , U We Claus , Hans Karl Burgeff , Eduardo Chillida , Huub Kortekaas , Kubach-Wilmsen , Josef Jaekel , Heinz Mack , Gerhard Marcks , Holger Runge and Antoni Tàpies .

Residents and Owners

1307 is the first time that a fortified farm called Moyland is documented with ditches and ramparts. In that year the priest and later Archdeacon of Liège, Jacob van den Eger accepted the investment of Count Otto von Kleve in annual lease . The teacher then later called the children of the count "of Moyland".

15 years later the estate was purchased from Roland von Hagedorn by Dietrich VIII von Kleve who also renewed the fief in 1339. The relevant instrument is the first time that Castle Moyland is documented. .
Until the second half of the 17th Century there followed frequent changes of ownership inheritance, which ended in 1662, when the Brandenburg Field Marshal Alexander von Spaen

Alexander von Spaen

Alexander Freiherr von Spaen was a Generalfeldmarschall of Brandenburg-Prussia.Spaen was born in the Duchy of Cleves as the son of Bernhard von Spaen, the lord of Kreuzfort....

 purchased the fief.

His descendant Wilhelm von Spaen sold the now a rebuilt castle in 1695 to the then Brandenburg electors, and later Prussian King Friedrich I. He used Moyland primarily as a hunting lodge, and also as a love nest. His affair with the 17-year-old Emmericher citizen's daughter Katharina Rycker was made mention of at the Prussian court.

In 1740 during one of his many stays in the castle, the Prussian King Frederick II met with the philosopher Voltaire. Together they developed the idea of "truth Factory", a philosopher Academy, which should be set up at the Castle Moyland.

In 1766 the estate came into the possession of the Dutch family of von Steengracht. Adrian von Steengracht received the castle as compensation for loans made to the Prussian royal family in the Seven Years War.

Moyland remained in the possession of Steengracht until the 11th July 1990 when the Castle Moyland Museum Foundation was formed with the objective of rebuilding the facility for use as a museum. The owners had long been seeking suitable funding for a rebuild. The decisive impetus for the creation of the Foundation in 1987 was provided by the brothers Franz Joseph van der Grinten and Hans van der Grinten who were looking for a site for their private collection of modern art. On 24 May 1997 the completely renovated buildings and the gardens were reopened.

Building history

The former fortified farm was in 1345 to 1355 redesigned by Roland von Hagedorn into a classical gothic castle with a square floor plan . In addition to three round towers it had on the north corner of a more powerful, fourth round tower, which served as a dungeon. From the interior courtyard the third tower was accessible and provided all sorts of comforts, such as a well, toilet, light niches and a fireplace. The western side of the castle was at that time, a great hall , the other sides consisted of walls with battlements . South of the main castle was a bailey , the castle gate through which the main castle was reached.

In the 15th century in the courtyard of the main castle building new wings were built and a decorated chapel was added in the east tower.
Alexander Baron von Spaen had the medieval fortifications expanded and rebuilt in 1662 as a baroque castle styled like the buildings from the capital city of Kleve by Pieter Post. Since only a year before the renovation work at Castle Ringberg was completed you can still today see architectural parallels between the two castles. The basement rooms received new, concave sides and the floor heights were changed. Also the windows of the main castle windows were arranged symmetrically and the approaching roads were moved so that they leads axially towards the main house.

Under Johann Nikolaus von Steengracht from 1854 to 1862 a remodeling of the exterior was done in the Gothic Revival style. The Baroque interior was maintained largely untouched during the work under the Cologne Cathedral architect Ernst Friedrich Zwirner. The castle walls were covered with red brick and the three corner towers were fitted with battlements and pointed windows. The keep was set up with a historicist pointed roof. The gateway also experienced a reorganization and was made accessible via a newly built stone bridge. In the course of this work, the fore-castle was rebuilt on the foundation of its predecessor.
In addition, the builder replanted the parks in the "mixed style" of that time. In this can be found in the style of an English landscape garden and baroque structures typical of the so-called "architectural garden. Because of their importance, the park was in 2004 added to the tourist route Strasse der Gardenkunst (road of garden art).

The castle survived the last battles of the Second World War relatively unscathed, until the arrival of the Allies on February 25, 1945 . Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery took the castle as his headquarters. In this period Winston Churchill also came to Moyland. After they left almost all of the sumptuous interior went through theft and vandalism by Canadian soldiers, and the castle was devastated. The castle's owner Gustav Adolf Steengracht von Moyland

Gustav Adolf Steengracht von Moyland

Gustav Adolf Baron Steengracht von Moyland was a German diplomat and politician of Dutch descent, who served as Nazi Germany's Secretary of State at the Foreign Office from 1943 to 1945.-Early life:...

 was Ribbentrop's state secretary and was tried for war crimes by the Americans, but in January 1950 he was given an amnesty and freed. A temporary repair was done in 1954 but a fire in the western roof truss in 1956 caused damage, so that the buildings gradually fell into disrepair, despite a temporary roof.

1987 began with repairs to restore the buildings. From 1990 to 1997 the newly formed Foundation Museum Schloss Moyland had responsibility for the restoration and extension of the historic buildings and a modern redesign of the rooms of the interior for use as a museum.

The Museum

The castle buildings now house the art collection of the brothers Hans van der Grinten and Franz Joseph van der Grinten , collected over 50 years. The extensive collection includes exhibits from the 19th and 20th Century, including works by Erwin Heerich , Willem den Ouden , Rudolf Schoofs and Hermann Teuber. A major focus of the comprehensive collection of works by Joseph Beuys which consists of nearly 5000 pieces and thus is the world's largest collection of his work. Several previously unpublished drawings in the exhibition "Energy Plan" are presented, from 5 September 2010 to 20 March 2011 in the rooms of the castle.

In a special Joseph Beuys Archive, in co-operation with the Düsseldorf Institute of Art Academy , is kept about another 200,000 archival records and documents related to the life and work of the artist.

There is also an extensive art library of more than 60,000 items of the Museum Foundation.

The palace building is closed for a planned refurbishment of the museum in October 2010 for about a year. The sculpture garden and the new bailey with an exhibition of Beuys drawings remain open to the public. Part of a fundamental redesign of the museum is the plan, established at the museum to restore the original oak avenue in the style of Beuys' work 7000.

External links

• Museum Schloss Moyland