Haus Weitmar is a former noble residence in the Weitmar district of Bochum. It originated from a Schulzenhof of the Werden Abbey, whose roots can be traced back to the 8th/9th century. Surrounded by a moat in the 12th century, it was expanded into a representative seat in the first half of the 13th century. Extensions in the second half of the 15th century under the von Brüggeney family called Hasenkamp and an expansion in the 18th century resulted in a classicistic-looking manor house with an outer bailey. Northwest of it stood a chapel dedicated to St. Silvester, which, however, lost its function as a home chapel during the Reformation. After the von Hasenkamp family died out, Haus Weitmar was briefly owned by the von Vaerst family before it was purchased by Andreas Friedrich Wilhelm von Berswordt-Wallrabe in 1780. His family is still the owner today.
Haus Weitmar was destroyed by aerial bombing during World War II. The ruins of the manor house with its perron, the remains of the chapel including three headstone, as well as a gatehouse and a gateway from the beginning of the 20th century have been protected as historic monument since 26 April 1995.Eintrag des Hauses Weitmar in der Denkmalliste der Stadt Bochum unter A336 (PDF; 812 kB).
History
Beginnings Haus Weitmar developed from a farmstead that already existed in Carolingian times. This was proven by ceramic fragments of, among others, Hunneschan's pottery, which were found during an archaeological excavation and could be dated to the 8th/9th century.W. Wintzer, C. Kneppe: Ein bewegtes Schicksal: zur Geschichte von Haus Weitmar in Bochum. 2013, p. 99.Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (Hrsg.): Ausgrabungen im Zuge des Museumsneubaus von "Situation Kunst". Haus Weitmar gibt ein neues Kapitel seiner Baugeschichte frei, Zugriff am 7. März 2016. Around the year 1000, this court was an upper court (curtis) with six dependent lower courts, which Hugbald and his sister Reinwi transferred to the Benedictine Abbey of Werden, together with important rights in the Weitmarer Mark.W. Wintzer, C. Kneppe: Ein bewegtes Schicksal: zur Geschichte von Haus Weitmar in Bochum. 2013, p. 98. From then on, the abbey granted the state as a fief and used it as a Schultenhof, which was liable to pay taxes to the monastery. It appears in documents during the 11th and 12th centuries under different name variants: Uuedmeri (c. 1000), Uuetmere (11th century), Wetmare (1153), and Weitmere (c. 1150).Haus Weitmar im GenWiki, Zugriff am 7. März 2016. Since the 12th century the court was protected by a moat and thus a typical moat for Westphalia. Excavations showed that this moat had been at least two meters deep and more than ten meters wide. Through shards of Pingsdorf and Paffrath earthenware found in it, it could be determined that it must have been filled in during a comprehensive expansion of the upper court in the early 13th century.W. Wintzer, C. Kneppe: Ein bewegtes Schicksal: zur Geschichte von Haus Weitmar in Bochum. 2013, p. 101. At that time, a two-room house was built in the area of the former moat, which formed the core of the later complex. Apparently, a ministerialis of Werden Abbey expanded the Schultenhof into a more representative seat,Vortrag von Wolfram Essling-Wintzer am 23. August 2009 über die Ergebnisse der Grabung im Jahr 2009 , Zugriff am 7. März 2016. because before 1250, a chapel located northwest of the two-room house was also built on the courtyard area.
The first feudatory of the Haus Weitmar known by name was Johann von Lüttelnau, who resided at Haus Heck, in the late 14th century. During his time Weitmar - as well as the surrounding Bauerschaften Bisping, Klevinghusen, Nevel, Branthorpe and Eppendorf - was plundered in the Dortmund feud of 1388/1389 by 40 swiss mercenaries under their leader Bitter von Raesfeld.Willi Berneiser: Haus Weitmar. (= Vereinigung für Heimatkunde Bochum [Hrsg.]: Bochumer Heimatbuch. Band 7). Bochum 1958, S. 95 (online [Retrieved 2023-03-07] Trotz anderslautender URL der Link zu dem Artikel). Johann's daughter Grete married Johann von Kückelsheim, later Amtmann of Werden and Hattingen, in 1391. As a pledge for the dowry in the amount of 500 gold shields, the bride's father provided him with the Haus Weitmar. Accordingly, the Werden abbot enfeoffed Johann von Kückelsheim with the Schultenhof after the wedding. After his death in 1421, Wilhelm von Uhlenbrock von Haus Oefte followed as feudatory of the house. After him, the Werden abbot enfeoffed Johann and Heinrich von Galen with the estate.S. Pätzold: Haus Weitmar. 2010, p. 28. The latter ceded it in 1481 to Wennemar von (der) Brüggeney, called Hasenkamp, who was subsequently enfeoffed with it. In addition, he also received as a fief the bureau about wooden law of the Weitmarer Mark and the Bisping court, which also belonged to the Werden Abbey.
Gradual expansion Wennemar was a Margravian Amtmann of Bochum and had already received permission in May 1464Hans H. Hanke: Haus Weitmar – Kunstvolle Romantik (Memento vom 9. Januar 2017 im Internet Archive) to build a new residential house on the grounds of the Schultenhof Weitmar, because his old family seat in Stiepel had become dilapidated. It is possible that an expansion of the two-room house that took place in the second half of the 15th century is connected with Wennemar's move to Weitmar. He was the first feudal lord to occupy the estate himself instead of having it farmed by peasants. During the expansion, an almost square extension was added to the house at its southeast corner, so that it subsequently had an L-shaped floor plan.
In the 16th century the von Hasenkamp family was no longer the sole owner of Weitmar. They had to share it with the von Eickel family. Christine, the daughter of Wennemar's grandson Wessel, had married Heinrich von Eickel, who was enfeoffed with a part of the Haus Weitmar in 1577. In 1644, however, Johann von Hasenkamp was of the opinion that he was entitled to the Eickel part as compensation for debts that had never been settled and chased Dietrich von Eickel's widow and her children out of the house on August 14. However, the final and legally binding transfer of the house did not take place until 2 June 1650, when the widow renounced the Eickel part of the property in exchange for a payment of 300 Reichsthaler for herself and 2125 Dutch thalers for her children. The Eickel part of the property was transferred to Johann von Hasenkamp.
It was probably not until the 16th century that Haus Weitmar received the status of a knight's seat. After a firebombing by Spanish soldiers in 1588, a new building had already been erected in 1592 by Johann's father of the same name. For a long time, this was considered by researchers to be a new manor house, but this was refuted by excavations in 2009, which allowed the construction phases of the main house to be dated to other times.W. Wintzer, C. Kneppe: Ein bewegtes Schicksal: zur Geschichte von Haus Weitmar in Bochum. 2013, pp. 98–101. It is more likely that a second manor house was built as a result of the division of the fiefdom between the von Hasenkamp and von Eickel families. On a map from the year 1780, a building can be seen in the outer castle area, which was only slightly smaller than the actual main house. This could have been the new building from 1592. In 1823, however, it had already been demolished, because on the original Westphalian map from that year it was already marked as demolished. The building is still visible on the map.
The Hasenkamp family remained the owner of the estate until the 18th century. Already during his lifetime, the cathedral scholaster Johann Georg von Hasenkamp transferred the Weitmar house to his nephew Johann Werner in 1707. Thus, for the first time in seven generations, the property was not inherited from father to son. In 1748, the family built a new Catholic house chapel, as the old Sylvester chapel had been used by a Lutheran congregation since the Reformation. However, the family was doing badly financially. In 1756, a forced sale of some properties belonging to the house.Wochentliche Duisburgische auf das Interesse der Commercien, der Clevischen, Geldrischen, Moers- und Märckischen, auch umliegenden Landes Orten, eingerichtete Adresse- und Intelligentz-Zettel. Nr. 30, 1756, o. S. (Digitalisat). In 1762, insolvency was even opened over the assets of the owner of Haus Weitmar.Wochentliche Duisburgische auf das Interesse der Commercien, der Clevischen, Geldrischen, Moers- und Märckischen, auch umliegenden Landes Orten, eingerichtete Adresse- und Intelligentz-Zettel. Nr. 18, 1762, o. S. (Digitalisat). With the death of the unmarried Johann von Hasenkamp, the family died out in 1764, and the rights to Haus Weitmar were to be sold. An appraisal of the property in June 1764 resulted in a value of 8200 Reichsthaler,Wochentliche Duisburgische auf das Interesse der Commercien, der Clevischen, Geldrischen, Moers- und Märckischen, auch umliegenden Landes Orten, eingerichtete Adresse- und Intelligentz-Zettel. Nr. 23, 1764, o. S. (Digitalisat). but this was already far exceeded at the second sale on 2 November 1764, with a bid of 13,000 Reichsthaler.Wochentliche Duisburgische auf das Interesse der Commercien, der Clevischen, Geldrischen, Moers- und Märckischen, auch umliegenden Landes Orten, eingerichtete Adresse- und Intelligentz-Zettel. Nr. 50, 1764, o. S. (Digitalisat).
In 1774 Friedrich Goswin von Vaerst acquired the estate in a public probate process. He released the house from the feudal relationship with Werden and became the owner of the estate. He did not remain so for long, however, but sold it again as early as 1780 to Andreas Friedrich Wilhelm von Berswordt-Wallrabe, whose family is still the owner today and has taken up quarters in the neighboring Galerie m. They had changes made to the manor house once again in the late 18th century. The space located in the northeast at the angle of the core and extension was closed. This involved either a major overhaul or completely new brickwork on the facades to give them a uniform classicist appearance. In addition, the house received a multi-storey mansard roof. The facades and roof form were the reasons why later art historians often mistakenly classified Haus Weitmar as a purely classicist building. Also in the 18th century, the estate's pond-like moat, created in the 16th century at the latest, was drained and replaced by gardens. A large market garden still existed to the north of the house until the 1930s.
19th - 21st century Wilhelm Friedrich von Berswordt-Wallrabe married Philippine von Syberg in 1848. Through this union, Haus Kemnade also came into the possession of the family. At the end of the 19th century, the owners had almost all the gardens transformed into a landscape park. On the island in front of the castle, a stable and residential building was built at the same time, incorporating older structures such as the house chapel, which also had a gate-like character. In the design of the landscape garden, the central axis of the estate was retained as the dominant element. It is formed, among other things, by a long access avenue, at the starting point of which in the east a gatehouse was built at the beginning of the 20th century.S. Pätzold: Haus Weitmar. 2010, p. 30. In 1890, Ludwig von Berswordt-Wallrabe reacquired the Sylvester chapel, which had meanwhile fallen into disrepair, together with the associated land for 1000 marks for the Haus Weitmar. The chapel was built on the site of the Sylvester chapel. The small house of worship had been so dilapidated that the Protestant congregation had already decided to build a new church elsewhere in the 1860s and thus no longer had any use for the chapel.