Metternich Castle

The moated castle Burg Metternich (Schloss Merle) was built no later than the 13th century. In 1316, a family bearing the name Metternich and featuring a lion on their coat of arms was first mentioned.

The castle was held as a fief from the Archbishop of Cologne, was documented in 1348 on the occasion of an inheritance division among four brothers, and remained in this family until 1692. The last resident Baron von und zu Metternich sold the castle and lordship in 1692 to the Electoral Cologne Privy Councillor and Secretary of State Franz Wilhelm von Schönheim. After the death of the last Schönheim von Metternich, Canon Johann Arnold von Schönheim, his cousins inherited the property: the art-loving Cologne Auxiliary Bishop and Diocesan Administrator Clemens August von Merle and his brother Josef Clemens von Merle. The creation of the landscape park around the castle in 1802 (court gardener Josef Clemens Wehye) dates back to the latter. The later royal court gardener Lenné received his first training here; the landscape park is still preserved at the castle, but on the Ville slope, it has mostly turned into forest. Through the prominent Rhenish-French jurist Heinrich Gottfried Wilhelm Daniels, translator of the Code Civil into German and later first president of the Cologne Court of Appeal, who bought the estate from the Cologne noble family von und zum Pütz in 1811, the manor came after his death through sale to Major a. D. Karl Friedrich von Müller and his wife Helene née Krupp from Essen, from whose son Franz Freiherr von Schorlemer-Overhagen bought it in 1879; he rebuilt the mansard and the farmstead. He sold Metternich as early as 1895 to the royal chamberlain Edmund Freiherr Spies von Büllesheim, whose family still inhabits the castle today. While the manor house of Burg Metternich could be thoroughly renovated after very severe war damage and incipient decay, nothing remains of the original outer bailey. The current four-winged farmstead was completely rebuilt around 1885; only the large sandstone gate was taken from the previous buildings. Nothing remains of Bishop Merle's furnishings and painting collection, only a hanging plan. The outer bailey moats are mostly leveled, but the manor house is still surrounded by a large pond, which keeps the pile foundations constantly submerged. To the west and south, however, the castle is still protected by three water obstacles, including the Swist. The partnership agreement of the company Friedrich Krupp in Essen was concluded at Burg Metternich at the beginning of the 19th century.