Empel Castle

Haus Empel is the ruin of a moated castle in Empel, a district of Rees in the North Rhine-Westphalian district of Kleve. It is located in a nature reserve directly on the Empeler Meer, an old arm of the Rhine, and is surrounded by moats. The unsecured ruin is privately owned and not publicly accessible, but in 2007 it served as a backdrop for the television film Das Gelübde by Dominik Graf.

Haus Empel is first mentioned in a document in 1240 as the property of the knight Bernard von Rees. In a document from 1256, the estate of Emple is named and was expanded into a castle in the 13th and 14th centuries. Meanwhile, having come as an allod to the Lords of Hönnepel, a castle chapel is mentioned for Empel for the first time in 1339, when Lutzo von Hönnepel and his wife Lisa bequeathed a foundation to the chapel there. In an inheritance dispute on August 4, 1345, Rütger von Hönnepel received "the castle ter Empel and all goods within ter Empelt" before his seven siblings. This Rütger was for a long time in dispute with Walram von Jülich, the Archbishop of Cologne, which was to sustainably influence the status of Empel. Through the mediation of Count Dietrich VII of Kleve, a contract was concluded between the two warring parties on May 21, 1347, according to which Empel was henceforth to be a Cologne fief. In a document from 1349, Rütger also declared Empel to be an open house of Cologne. Nevertheless, conflicts continued, as Haus Empel was subsequently besieged by archiepiscopal troops. In a reconciliation treaty of October 18, 1356, Rütger von Hönnepel had to again pledge his property to the Cologne archdiocese as a fief and open house. He was also forbidden to further fortify Haus Empel without the archbishop's consent. Rütger's son Luysse succeeded his father as owner and was the first member of his family to call himself "von Empel". In 1387, the castle was besieged by troops from the Kleve city of Wesel, with the besiegers reportedly already having used a stone cannon.

Through the pledging of the office of Aspel/Rees to the Dukes of Kleve, Haus Empel had been a Kleve fief since the beginning of the 15th century. From 1482, the estate was for some years in the possession of the von Wittenhorst family, before it came in 1487 to Heinrich von Diepenbrock, who had married Sara, the daughter of a Rütger von Hönnepel and his wife Elisabeth von Hetterscheid. But already in 1489, Johann, a member of the von Hönnepel family, was again enfeoffed with Haus Empel. In 1491, he transferred it to the knight Johann von Wylich, the Kleve bailiff in the Hetter, who also owned Hueth Castle near Bienen. Johann von Wylich sold the Empel castle complex again in 1498 to Sara von Hönnepel and her son Rütger von Diepenbrock. The von Diepenbrock family had the medieval core castle of the complex redesigned in the Renaissance style in 1570. During the Eighty Years' War, the house was conquered and plundered by Spanish troops in 1598. The outer bailey burned down in the process. Under Baron Johann Hermann von Diepenbrock, Empel was elevated in 1661, together with the village of Hurl and the parish of Millingen, to a lordship with its own jurisdiction of Empel. Around 1700, the complex underwent a baroque redesign in the outer bailey area. In 1731, the Imperial Count Friedrich von Gronsfeld-Diepenbrock was enfeoffed with Empel. He or his heirs were forced to sell the indebted estate around the middle of the 18th century to Christoph Ludwig von Seckendorf. Further changes of ownership quickly followed. From 1765 to 1804, Empel was in the possession of the von Oppeln family and came in 1830 to the von Weiler family. Under them, Haus Empel was no longer listed in the registers of the knightly estates eligible for the Landtag. In 1923, Alfons Böck became the owner through inheritance.

In 1945, the buildings were completely destroyed during the fighting for Rees and not rebuilt. The ruin was entered into the monument list of the city of Rees in 1983 as an archaeological monument and in 2002 as a building monument. With the purchase of the ruin by Peter Landers in 2000, initial securing works began. On the initiative of the Millingen-Empel local history association, further securing measures were initiated in 2010 to preserve the existing building fabric. The costs for this are estimated at 120,000 euros and are to be borne by the state, the city of Rees, as well as the owner and the local history association.