Kellenberg Castle

Kellenberg Castle is a moated castle on the northern edge of the village of Barmen, a district of Jülich, on the Rur river.

The original owners were initially the Lords of Barnim and subsequently the Scheiffardt von Merode family, under whom the current complex was built in the 15th and 16th centuries.

In 1626, Otto Heinrich Waldbott von Bassenheim (1561–1639), who held Kellenberg house and estate as collateral from Wilhelm Scheiffart von Merode, Lord of Bornheim, sold the property for 4,762 Reichstaler, 51 Albus, and 4 Heller to Johann Karl von Utenhove († 1616/19).

Jan van Werth, an imperial general in the Thirty Years' War, bought the castle in 1638 from the Utenhove heirs for his only daughter Lambertine Irmgardis, whose descendants still live here today. Lambertine Irmgard married Winand Hieronymus Reichsfreiherr Raitz von Frentz (son of his former lord of Schloss Schlenderhan, where Jan served as a stable boy in his youth).

After the death of the cavalry general, in 1655, following a legal dispute, the German possessions passed to Werth's daughter and thus to the Raitz von Frentz family.

The castle remained in the possession of the Raitz von Frentz family until the extinction of the male line of the Barons Raitz von Frentz zu Kellenberg.

In 1888, the castle came into the possession of the comital family Hoensbroech through marriage, and Kellenberg remained their property until 2009. A fire on April 1, 1992, almost completely destroyed the main castle. In early 2009, the castle in its entirety was sold to the Bau- und Liegenschaftsbetrieb NRW (BLB).