Schwanenburg Castle

The Schwanenburg (Swan Castle) is the landmark of the city of Kleve in North Rhine-Westphalia, near the Dutch border. It was probably built in the 11th century by the Counts and later Dukes of Kleve on a spur-like outcrop of the Lower Rhine ridge, making it one of the few hilltop castles on the Lower Rhine. Its castle hill gave its name to the settlement that later emerged: Cleef (for cliff) became Kleve.

The name Schwanenburg only came into being during the Romantic period of the 19th century. Previously, the complex was simply called het slot von Cleef, and even if the name suggests it, the Schwanenburg is not a castle complex, but due to alterations in the 17th century, a palace in the simple Baroque style.

Residents and Owners

In 1092, a Count Dietrich I of Kleve is first mentioned in a document, who probably named himself after his ancestral castle located there. Around 1233, the Counts of Kleve incorporated the carbuncle into their coat of arms, thus referring to the legendary Swan Knight Helias as their ancestor. It was this legend of the Swan Knight that gave the so-called Swan Tower its name in the Middle Ages and the entire castle complex its current name in the 19th century.

West of the complex, Count Dietrich IV founded the settlement of Kleve and granted it town rights on April 25, 1242. Under Counts Dietrich VII and Johann, Kleve Castle finally replaced Monterberg Castle near Kalkar as the permanent seat of government for the county.

When the comital family died out in the male line in 1368, the County of Kleve, including the Schwanenburg, passed as an inheritance to the Counts of Mark. Adolf II of Kleve-Mark was appointed Duke of Kleve by Emperor Sigismund in 1417.

However, the dukes reached the peak of their power only in the 16th century as rulers of the United Duchies of Jülich-Kleve-Berg, which also held the counties of Mark and Ravensberg and briefly – from 1538 to 1543 – the Duchy of Geldern. This also affected the Schwanenburg, as the ducal court rarely resided in the Kleve residence, mostly staying in Düsseldorf, Jülich, or Hambach.

With the death of the childless Duke Johann Wilhelm, the Schwanenburg passed to the Margraviate of Brandenburg, namely Johann Sigismund, through inheritance division. Alongside Berlin and Königsberg, Kleve became the third Brandenburg residential city. Under the Brandenburg governor Johann Moritz von Nassau-Siegen, the Schwanenburg experienced its last great heyday from 1649. In the name of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm, he had Kleve developed into a garden and park city of European renown, which in turn served as a model for the Elector's garden designs for his Potsdam City Palace from 1660.

In the first half of the 18th century, the city and thus also the palace lost its importance because the focus of the residential function and government and administrative activities shifted to Berlin and Potsdam. The Schwanenburg was only used for administrative and judicial purposes.

During the French period of Kleve, French "occupiers" established themselves there, followed in 1821 by German officials after Kleve had been assigned to the Düsseldorf administrative district. The castle complex served as a prison until 1917. Today, the Schwanenburg houses the Kleve District Court and the Kleve Regional Court. The Swan Tower contains a geological collection of the Kleve Local History Museum on several floors.

Construction History

Excavations in 1999/2000 showed that a castle complex already existed at the end of the 11th century, whose origins, however, are suspected by historians to be in a fortification from the late Carolingian period. The work showed, however, that assumptions that the complex might have Roman roots are incorrect.

Kleve Castle was indirectly mentioned for the first time in 1145, when a Heinricus castellanus de Clevia (Henry, castellan of Kleve) appeared. Direct mention, however, of the Schwanenburg was first found in 1184 in a Siegburg miracle book. At that time, it already consisted of a square residential tower built of tuff stone around 1100 with 2.5-meter thick walls, which had been surrounded by a polygonal curtain wall since about 1150. On the east side of the area stood a palas measuring approximately 12x30 meters, whose ground floor with a barrel vault housed the knight's hall. The castle gate in the east was secured by the so-called Johannisturm. In the south, an artificially created neck ditch separated the complex from the rest of the ridge. In the southwest, the so-called Spiegelturm (Mirror Tower) already stood with a comfortable latrine system including a flush toilet and ventilation system. This crescent-shaped complex was one of the largest and most magnificent secular buildings of the Romanesque period on the Lower Rhine in the 12th and 13th centuries.

At the beginning of the 13th century, an independent castle settlement with accommodation for servants and ministerials lay below the complex, which gradually grew together with the nearby town of Kleve in the following period.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, numerous additions and alterations were made using brick to reflect the increased political and cultural standing of the Kleve ruling house. Duke Adolf I had the Spiegelturm converted into an archive in 1429, with the two lower floors being provided with vaulted ceilings.

When the old residential tower collapsed on October 7, 1439, Adolf I had the slimmer Schwanenturm (Swan Tower) built in place of the keep by the ducal Kleve master builder Johan Wyrenberg. Construction began in 1440 and was completed 13 years later. In 1455, a gilded swan was placed on the top of the tower, which gave the building its name.

In the 16th century, Duke Wilhelm the Rich had the Schwanenburg modernized and expanded by the master builder family Pasqualini. These extensions, all of which are no longer preserved today, included the Herzog-Wilhelm-Tor (Duke Wilhelm Gate) built in 1560, located south of the castle, and a chancellery building built in 1558, which was connected to the Johannisturm in 1569/70 by a lower gallery wing in the Renaissance style.

Under the Brandenburgers, the Schwanenburg was then converted by the Dutch architect Pieter Post between 1663 and 1666 into a simple Baroque palace, in line with the taste of the time. In the course of these works, all existing Gothic architectural elements, with the exception of the towers, were removed. During that time, among other things, an intermediate wing with a monumental gate passage with the Brandenburg coat of arms above it, which is now used as the main entrance, and arcaded walkways in the two inner courtyards were created. The construction measures thus gave the complex its current appearance.

Lack of building maintenance in the second half of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century led to many parts of the large complex having to be demolished; for example, the chancellery buildings, the Staufer palas with the knight's hall (1771) and the Johannisturm (1784) as well as the Herzog-Wilhelm-Tor. Remains of a portal from the palas were subsequently used as a door frame in the northern inner courtyard.

In 1828, a reconstruction was carried out by the judicial administration located in the Schwanenburg to adapt the buildings to the needs of the time. This completely destroyed some historical architectural features. The first restoration work on the preserved building fabric took place from 1893 to 1897 and – following initial archaeological investigations of the complex – between 1909 and 1914.

During the Second World War, the Schwanenburg was severely damaged on October 7, 1944, during an Allied air raid: an airplane crashed into the Schwanenturm and exploded. The "Bauhütte Schwanenburg" association, subsequently supported by citizens of Kleve, ensured the partial reconstruction of the complex between 1948 and 1953. The "Freunde der Schwanenburg" (Friends of the Schwanenburg) association, founded in 1986, succeeded it and has since continuously ensured the restoration and preservation of the still existing building fabric, such as the Gothic vaults in the Spiegelturm in 1988.