Schloss Rosenau, called in EnglishThe Rosenau or Rosenau Palace, is a former castle, converted into a ducal country house, near the town of Rödental, formerly in Saxe-Coburg, now lying in Bavaria, Germany.
It should not be confused with another house of the same name at Waldviertel in Austria.
History
Early history
The main fabric of the Rosenau is a medieval structure which was first built at some time before 1439, when it is recorded as a possession of the lords of 'Rosenawe'. For three centuries the estate was owned by a family which took its name from Rosenau, but Silvester von Rosenau, a friend of Luther and Melanchthon,[1] bequeathed his properties to his son weighed down by debts.
Frontispiece (detail) of Pernau's book of 1707
In 1704, the Rosenau family finally lost the property when it was sold as a summer residence to the Austrian FreiherrFerdinand Johann Adam von Pernau (1660-1731), who had been a member of the Privy Council of Albert V, Duke of Saxe-Coburg. Pernau was a pioneering student of bird behaviour. As a long-term experiment, he released a large number of young common chaffinches in and around Rosenau between 1704 and 1720, after first teaching them to sing like tree pipits.[2][3][4] He was known as the Freiherr von Pernau zu Rosenau,[5] and his most important publication, printed at Coburg in 1707, was titled Lessons, as to what one can do with the lovely Creatures, the Birds, either by Capture, by Probing of their Characteristics and Taming, or by other forms of Instruction, for Pleasure and Profit.[6]
Duke Ernest I, who lived at the castle in the early 19th century
At each end of the Rosenau, Schinkel added crow-stepped gables of an early Gothic style. The windows took on a later Gothic form, while small balconies and coats of arms in stone were added to decorate the main front. The principal tower, which in 1700 had been topped by a domed Welsche Haube, similar to an onion dome, was crenellated, while a ruined tower was left in romantic ruins.
Elizabeth Longford later wrote of the weeks before Albert's departure to woo Victoria:
...above all, he adored his home, the Rosenau, a romantic little Schloss outside Coburg... Prince Albert had spent September at the peaceful Rosenau, his happy birthplace, fortifying himself against the expected humiliations of Windsor. He set out with a letter of recommendation from King Leopold in his pocket and an ultimatum in his heart.[17]
During Victoria's first visit to Coburg, she and Albert slept in the room of his birth at the Rosenau. "How happy, how joyful we were!" Victoria later recalled.[18] Victoria also wrote into her diary that if she were not Queen of the United Kingdom, she would have liked to live at the Rosenau.[19]
From 1941, during the Second World War, the house was used as accommodation for the Reichsarbeitsdienst (National Labour Service). In 1945, it became a convalescent home of the Commission for Refugees, and from 1948 was a nursing home for more than twenty years. The house was then empty for a few years, before in 1972 the Free State of Bavaria bought it, by now in a poor condition, with the aim of restoring it.
This restoration work took place in 1985–90. It aimed at returning the house, both in external appearance and in the division of the rooms, to the condition it was in when Victoria and Albert stayed here. To that purpose, watercolours of the Rosenau at Windsor Castle were used.[19]
Present day
The Turniersäule (or tournament column), a sundial
The Rosenau is now in the care of the Bayerische Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlösser, Gärten und Seen (Bavarian Administration of State Palaces, Gardens, and Lakes), a department of the state government of Bavaria. Since 1990, the house and its landscape park have been open to the public.
Museums
All rooms on the lower two floors of the house are open to visitors. A small eleven-sided library is decorated with paintings of Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's The Travels of Thiodolf the Icelander. During the Grand Duchess Maria's era it was used as the Russian Orthodox chapel. Each summer, there is a program of concerts in the Marble Hall.
Upstairs, the other principal rooms have brightly decorated walls and Biedermeier furniture. Among the remaining family heirlooms is a cradle that is said to have been Prince Albert's.
The orangery building used to house the Museum Of Modern Glass (Europäisches Museum für modernes Glas), a museum of modern art glass.[9][10] Since 2008 it has been in a new building nearby.
^Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (1938 edition), p. 142
^University of East Anglia, Ecological abstracts, Issues 1-6828 (1990), p. 226
^Diana Wells, One hundred birds and how they got their names (2002), p. 28
^Eckhard Mönnig, 'Prinz Albert von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha und die Naturkunde' in Franz Bosbach & John R. Davis, Windsor - Coburg: geteilter Nachlass - gemeinsames Erbepp. 115-116 online (in German)
^Johann Christian von Bellbach, 'Pernau' in Udel Lexicon oder Sandbuch, p. 219 online (in German)
^Giles St Aubyn, Queen Victoria: a portrait (1991), p. 211
^ abKlüglein, Norbert (1991). Coburg, Stadt und Land (German). Verkehrsverein Coburg. p. 151.
^Charlotte Zeepvat, Romanov Autumn: stories from the last century of Imperial Russia (2000), p. 106
^Sidney Lee, Queen Victoria: a biography (1904), p. 552
^Alfred Sidney Johnson et al., The Cyclopedic review of current history (1901), p. 690
^'The Marriage of Princess Beatrice of Coburg', in The Times dated 17 July 1909, p. 5; 'Princess Beatrice Married', in The New York Times dated 16 July 1909, p. 4
^Michael John Sullivan, A Fatal Passion: The Story of the Uncrowned Last Empress of Russia (Random House, 1997)
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