Erpernburg Castle

Erpernburg Castle is located about six kilometres northeast of the North Rhine-Westphalian town of Büren in the district of Brenken above the Almetales.

At the beginning of the 16th century, the Lords of Brenken, who came from the village of Brenken, had lost their long-used houses on the Wewelsburg through pledge redemption. Reineke von Brenken, who owned 2/4 of the Brenken shares, moved into the Old Castle in Wewer near Paderborn in 1515 by marrying into the von Imbsen family. Philipp received the Bruchshof in Brenken and his younger brother Georg built the Erpernburg on the hill above the alpine pasture with the permission of the bishop, which he only lived in for a short time. In 1622 during the Thirty Years' War and in a fire in 1684, the castle was so badly damaged that it was not rebuilt. The castle on the Brede, also known as the Niederburg, built in 1550, had already been destroyed in the Thirty Years' War. Around 1712, the construction of Erpernburg Castle finally began under the descendant of Reineke von Brenken, Ferdinand Freiherr von und zu Brenken, later married to Juliane Countess of Westphalia. The two-storey, plastered manor house with hipped roof and the four attached tower porches was built between 1712 and 1723. Nikolaus Wurmstich was named as a master mason in the building files. Five years later, the Orangery was built on the garden side of the manor house according to plans by the Paderborn master builder Daniel Gottlieb Schleich. The conversion of the baroque orangery into a classicist garden pavilion took place in 1833. The western of the outbuildings adjoining the castle building to the north is dated 1804. The buildings of the adjoining farm to the east date from the 18th to 20th centuries. The complex also includes a Loreto chapel from 1736 and a hereditary burial with grave slabs from the 16th/17th century. The complex, which is not open to the public, is still owned by the noble family of the Barons von und zu Brenken.

Wikipedia