Bangert Manor

The Bangert manor was located in the former Rhine Province, then the administrative district of Koblenz, near Bad Kreuznach. The manor was first mentioned in a document in 1326. During the Renaissance, it is documented as a moated castle.

The estate, the Bangert, extended over the plateau of the Schlossberg, whose southern slope is covered with vineyards, and over the wooded ridge of the Haardt, the Salinen forest and the Herrnwald, comprising a total of about 1500 Prussian Morgen.

According to old documents and site plans, the estate belonged to a family von Hardung in 1530. The property was acquired in 1771 by Princess Henriette Amalie von Anhalt-Dessau (1720–1793) from the chief administrator Johann Philipp von Hartung (Hardung). Her main residence, however, remained the village of Bockenheim directly outside the gates of the free imperial city of Frankfurt am Main. The castle park is already mentioned in a city council protocol in 1605 as "Bangert" or "Baumgarten" (orchard). Mapped in 17th-century plans as a garden or fruit tree area, the grounds appear to have existed as a park-like facility in the Renaissance style in the last quarter of the 18th century. The name Bangert, however, remained. The unmarried princess lived with Baron von Rackmann, who was fifteen years her junior and was elevated to the rank of Imperial Count as Baron von Bangert through her intervention.

On the slopes of the Schlossberg, paths lead to the ruins of Kauzenburg, located above the city.

In 1802, Andreas van Recum (1765–1828) acquired the property and had a residential building surrounded by water, gardens, and park facilities built on the foundations of an old imperial castle seat. His son Otto Freiherr von Recum (1821–1885) expanded it in 1860, on the occasion of his wedding, with further additions and crenellated turrets. The manor fell to the industrialist family Puricelli in 1881. Carl Puricelli bought it for his son Heinrich Puricelli. The property received a two-story wing building with a coach house, which housed residential and farm buildings. The property in its current form is also known as Puricelli Castle. The current appearance of the park also dates back to the Puricelli family, who commissioned a redesign in the form of a landscape park with an artificially indented pond, botanical rarities such as ginkgos, catalpa, and elephant tree. The iron candelabras and craters in the park also date from this period - products from the Puricelli ironworks.

After the Second World War, the estate was initially used by the Max Planck Institute for Agricultural Labor and Technology before it was transferred to the city.