Mergentheim Palace

Model of Bad Mergentheim and the palace as it appeared in 1750

In 1568, Georg Hund von Wenkheim, Grand Master since 1566, began to expand Mergentheim Castle into a palatial residence. Maximilian III, Archduke of Austria, as Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, established a seminary on the grounds of Mergentheim Palace in 1606–07. It was to be staffed by 12 knights gathered from the Teutonic bailiwicks.[2]

In 1694, Francis Louis of Palatinate-Neuburg, the Prince-Bishop of Breslau, was elected Grand Master of the Teutonic Order to replace his late brother Louis Anton. Francis Louis, who go on to hold five high ecclesiastical offices and extensively reform the Order, rarely spent time at Mergentheim. Towards the end of his tenure, however, he wrote to the Mergentheim authorities about constructing a new high altar in the palace church. When he was informed that it had fallen into disrepair, he ordered a new church.[5] Construction began in 1730,[6] but Francis Louis died in 1732. He was succeeded as Grand Master by Clemens August of Bavaria, who finished the church in 1736.[5]

Scale model of Mergentheim Palace as it appeared around 1800

According to the 1797 Peace of Campo Formio, which concluded the War of the First Coalition, France was to annex the Left Bank of the Rhine and the German princes who lost territory to France were to be compensated with ecclesiastical possessions east of the Rhine. This compensation ballooned into the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1802–03, which erased all ecclesiastical states except the Electorate of Mainz, which was moved south to Regensburg, and the Teutonic Knights at Mergentheim, and the Knights Hospitaller at Heitersheim. The ecclesiastical states were to be governed by German nobles,[7] with the Teutonic Knights coming under Austrian control.[8] Just two years later in 1805, at the end of the War of the Third Coalition, the Peace of Pressburg gave Mergentheim fully to Austria. Austrian troops were stationed in the town until 1809,[9] when it was occupied by the Kingdom of Württemberg on 20 April 1809,[2] during the War of the Fifth Coalition. In the process of German mediatization that followed in 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte stripped the Teutonic order of its possessions in what was to become the Confederation of the Rhine.[9] Mergentheim was awarded to Württemberg on 29 May 1809 In the process of annexation, Württemberger authorities looted Mergentheim Palace and moved the seminary's library to Stuttgart, the kingdom's capital.[2]

In 1827, Duke Paul Wilhelm of Württemberg received Mergentheim Palace as his residence following his marriage to Princess Maria Sophia of Thurn and Taxis. Paul Wilhelm, a natural scientist and explorer, displayed ethnological, zoological, and botanical specimens and curios collected in his travels in twenty of the palace's rooms.[10] Baron Carl Joseph von Adelsheim managed the Duke's collection, and his own collection of antiquities would later form the basis of the Mergentheim Palace Museum.[11]

As a result of the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic, Staatliche Schlosser und Garten announced on 17 March 2020 the closure of all its monuments and cancellation of all events until 3 May.[12] Monuments began reopening in early May, from 1 May to 17 May.[13]

The inner, residential ring seen from above and to the north.

The palace church was designed and built from 1730 to 1736 by Franz Joseph Roth, a stuccoist from Mergentheim who received the counsel of renowned architects Balthasar Neumann and François de Cuvilliés. The ceiling fresco, Glorification of the Cross in Heaven and on Earth, was painted by Munich court painter Johann Nikolaus Stuber. The structure has a nave flanked by a choir on the east of the nave and two galleries on its west, and a royal box accessed from the second floor of the residential building. The church was consecrated on 30 September 1736 and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Elisabeth of Thuringia, and George of Lydda. It was secularized by decree of the King of Württemberg in 1817. A crypt for the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order was built below the church and decorated with stucco by Roth, but it was desecrated and the graves were destroyed around 1809.[6]

One of the last buildings constructed on the palace grounds before its secularization was the chapter house, erected in the late 18th century. It was commissioned by Grand Master Charles Alexander of Lorraine in 1776 and was designed by Franz Anton Bagnato, master builder of the Teutonic Bailiwick of Alsace-Burgundy. The decoration of the hall's interior is military in character, with stucco reliefs of timpani, trumpets, trophies of arms, and representative symbols for the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.[16]

The western buildings of the administrative wing seen from the gatehouse

Mergentheim Palace has had a garden since at least 1600, when a court garden was laid out on the southern and eastern edge of the palatial grounds. From 1739 to 1745, Grandmaster Bayern had that garden replaced with a French-style garden that included an orangery and a pavilion designed by architect François de Cuvilliés. This pavilion was demolished in 1823. In 1791, Grandmaster Maximilian Francis of Austria decided replace the existing gardens with an English landscape garden. The path the garden would be laid out around was completed in 1800, while work on the garden itself was completed by 1804–05. This garden also included two new pavilions completed in 1802.[17]

A portion of the palace gardens lies on the right bank of the Tauber, away from the palace.[17]

The Radiant Madonna, a gold and silver Madonna statuette produced by goldsmith Georg Stephan Dörffer from a design by Johann Peter Alexander Wagner[18]

In 1864, Carl Joseph von Adelsheim's collection of antiquities was donated to the city of Mergentheim per his will. According to Adelsheim's wishes, the collection was displayed in a room in Bad Mergentheim's town hall,[19] and it was expanded in subsequent years by donations. The collection was moved into Mergentheim Palace in 1927 and three years later gained the sponsorship of local history association and was rebranded into a local history museum. The focus of the museum shifted to the history of the Teutonic Knights after World War II. After a four-year renovation between 1969 and 1973, the palace museum reopened as the Teutonic Order Museum. The museum was further enlarged from 1990 to 1996 to fill the entire residential building, bringing it to a size of 3,000 square meters (32,000 sq ft).[20]

The second floor of the residential building is filled by the exhibit dedicated to the history of the Teutonic Knights, and their legacy in popular culture.[21] A portion of the Teutonic Order Museum is a permanent exhibit on local Jewish history, with a focus on brothers Feilx and Hermann Fechenbach, who were born in Mergentheim.[22] Another of the museum's exhibits showcases dollhouses from the 19th and 20th centuries.[23]

Other permanent exhibits at the palace include one dedicated to the pastor and poet Eduard Mörike, who lived in Bad Mergentheim with his sister Klara from 1844 to 1851,[24] and a municipal history exhibit.[25] The first of these is a collection of over a hundred items collected by the palace museum over a century. Its centerpiece is a housekeeping book that Mörike decorated with drawings that was donated to the museum in 1904 by Mörike's daughter.[26] The municipal history exhibit is made up of twelve sections and a model of Bad Mergentheim as it appeared around 1750.[25]