Batthyány-Strattmann Castle Complex

The pride of Kőrme is the princely Batthyány-Strattmann Castle, one of the country's most significant historical monuments. In Hungary, it is one of the castle complexes that have been designated as culturally significant, which are the most representative examples of Hungarian castle architecture: the Zichy Castle in Óbuda, the Esterházy Castle in Fertőd, the Grassalkovich Castle in Gödöllő, the Batthyány-Strattmann Castle in Kőrmend, and the Festetics Castle in Keszthely. The monument in Kőrmend stands out among the above due to its long history, as the 15th-century castle was used to build the Baroque castle. The walls of the castle were built in the 17th century from the remains of a 15th-century castle.

The building erected in the northeast corner of the city— the predecessor of today's castle – is only known from 1459, when it was referred to as "Castellum" in contemporary Latin documents. The meaning of this word in the late Middle Ages was a noble mansion built in the style of a castle, surrounded by a moat and high walls. We can assume that it was built by the Széchenyi family, who owned Kőrmed at the time. Its architectural appearance is unknown, as no descriptions or illustrations of it have survived from the Middle Ages. The town, and with it the Renaissance castle, changed hands frequently in the 15th and 16th centuries: Bertold Ellerbach, later Tamás Bakócz, and then the Erdődy family. With the threat of the Turks looming, the Batthyány family, who had acquired the castle, reinforced it. First in the 1610s, then later in the early 1650s, it was rebuilt on a larger scale.

Batthyány I. Ádám commissioned the plans for the reconstruction from the outstanding Italian military engineer of the time, who later became the imperial chief architect, Filiberto Lucchese. Based on these plans, the work was carried out under the supervision of master builder Carlo della Torre between 1653 and 1657. As a result, there were now two-story wings on all four sides, with towers rising above them. The wooden courtyard tower was replaced by a brick, two-story tower with arches. At that time, most of the windows still opened onto the courtyard, but some on the upper floor had already been removed. Although the castle retained its solid and heavy medieval character, its interior became more habitable, and the expanded rooms became more comfortable.
According to the first surviving town plan from 1667, the castle stood on a low island surrounded by a wide moat in the Rába floodplain. In the moat, on the western side, in front of the gate, there was an artificial island with a two-story tower on it. The road leading from the town to the castle crossed this double moat via wooden bridges and an outer tower built in the middle of the moat, in front of which stood an iron gate. built outer tower, in front of which stood an iron gate.nbsp; The first gate was probably in this tower, and the second in front of the gate tower protruding from the castle wall. The third gate after the tower was operated by a heavy iron bar assembled from beams.
After the expulsion of the Turks, Körmend was among the castles that became redundant. The Vienna War Council issued an order for its demolition on January 26, 1702, but its owner, Ádám Batthyány II, managed to save the castle. During the Rákóczi War of Independence, the town suffered greatly, and in 1706, the army of Kuruc general Antal Eszterházy burned the settlement to the ground. In 1706, the armies of Kuruc general Antal Eszterházy burned the settlement to the ground, along with the palace and the castle.

The construction of the baroque castle from the fortress is associated with the name of Chancellor Lajos Batthyány, who later became palatine. The building, which had previously been used for defense, had to be rebuilt in accordance with the new way of life. . It was no longer surrounded by moats, but stood in an open park. The designer of the complex was the Italian Donato Felice de Allio, who was already one of the leading representatives of Austrian Baroque in the first half of the 18th century. In order to design the view, the more distant surroundings of the castle were also included in the scope of influence: its buildings were arranged along a single north-south axis, and tree-lined avenues led to the already transformed main building from a distance of several kilometers. The outbuildings that formed the castle's forecourt were built on both sides of this axis.

The construction began with the demolition of the castle gate tower and the filling in of the moat. Then, another floor was added to the entire building. The main facade of the castle was created on the south side of the building, where a wide, protruding central block, known as a central risalit, was erected. In the middle of this stood the main gate, behind which was the new gatehouse, which formed the axis of the castle complex and continued into the gatehouse built on the north wing. In the inner courtyard, the arched corridor was demolished and replaced with solid-walled corridors lit by windows. On the eastern side, the smaller Sala Terrena – a cooling room – was built, with two decorative rooms on either side. The south side was occupied by the entrance hall and a decorative staircase, while the existing upper floor housed staff rooms. Above it, on the second floor, there were oil paintings of various sizes, some painted and some with stucco ceilings, furniture, antique items, and weapons from military collections. and living rooms.
Among the outbuildings located in front of the main building, the western carriage house was used to store the court carriages. The eastern building housed the stable for the horses, with seven feeding troughs built into the wall on both sides.

Among the two-story buildings in the south courtyard, the western one was the riding hall. The eastern building served several purposes. On the ground floor was the larger Sala Terrena, a summer hall richly decorated with paintings and marble columns. The smaller hall above it was also used for festive occasions. At that time, the archives and library were located on the single-room second floor. The next buildings opposite were service apartments, where the estate manager and the Kőrösmajor lived.
At the turn of the century, the new architectural fashion reached Kőrmend, and buildings were rebuilt in this spirit between 1799 and 1809. The classicist style left its mark on all the buildings: the central part of the southern main facade was redesigned, with a six-column balconyand roof, supported by six half-columns, was replaced by a triangular pediment adorned with the gilded coat of arms of the Batthyány family. All the exterior and courtyard facades were rebuilt, the windows were uniformly enlarged, and a mansard roof was added.
In the 1880s, during the reign of Prince Ödön Batthyány, historical renovations were carried out on the castle complex, which was then painted yellow. After Ödön's death, the count's descendant, Dr. László Batthyány, inherited the princely title and the trust of the people. His name is associated with the renovation of the representative second floor and the creation of its rich neo-baroque stucco decoration in 1920.

In 1945, László Batthyány-Strattmann II was forced to leave the Kőrmend castle, which had been owned by his ancestors for 340 years and had been occupied by the Russian army. The building was converted into barracks, which were demolished by tanks. When the Russian soldiers left the castle in 1957, the furnishings of the main building were gone, but the interior decoration was still intact. Subsequently, the interior of the castle was altered in several ways, the most drastic of which was the conversion into a college in the early 1960s. At that time, the rich stucco decorations on the representative level were knocked down, and walls were demolished, the materials of which were not removed but simply placed as fill in the ground floor rooms. The last major renovation took place in 2001, when the castle chapel was restored to its original three-story form.
 

Based on the castle's inventory and surviving interior photographs, we know that the princely residence was furnished with princely pomp. Even more valuable than the Baroque and Rococo furniture were the collections kept in the castle before World War II: a family archive of exceptional importance to historical science, a library valuable in terms of both content and binding, and an armory of national significance. was occupied by the Russian army, which marked the beginning of the final destruction of the property left in the building. The remaining furniture was carried away, and some of it was thrown out of the windows and smashed. They scattered the rare items in the famous weapons and saddle collection, and scattered the documents from the huge archive, estimated at thirty-five cubic meters, from the windows of the building onto the bare ground. Some of them were collected by soldiers and carried to the twenty boilers operating in the courtyard, while the rest was collected in Hegyalja, beyond the Rába River. Witnesses reported on the conditions in the castle: "I saw that in large sacks, royal charters from the time of Béla IV, Robert Charles, Lajos Nagy, Zsigmond, and Máté were hanging in large sacks, along with royal documents bearing seals, to which the Russian soldiers had attached large quantities of potatoes, ash, straw, plaster, soot, and other rubbish. The sight is beyond imagination, beyond belief... the torn pieces of the gallery, old handwritten maps stretched on canvas, and torn 17th-century Instead of broken windowpanes, they used... filth, stench, and dirt, destruction everywhere."

However, the antiquities accumulated in the castle were not only destroyed, but also saved by conscientious people from Kőrös, who valued historical treasures. The archives were partially destroyed by Russian soldiers, but among the survivors was János Kőszegi, a teacher and director from Kőrös, who risked his life to save them.with the help of Kőszegi János, director and teacher, Kőrösdi students, Dr. István Kevey, chief steward, and to a lesser extent József Peszeszér, the prince's head gardener, saved it from certain destruction in the summer of 1945.
Over the centuries, the Batthyány family accumulated a huge amount of documents, the part relating to the princely family being kept in Kőrmend, in one of the castle's outbuildings. The archive, which was moved from Körmend to Keszthely in 1947 and then to Budapest in 1953, suffered further serious damage during the 1956 revolution.
The country's second largest family archive, comprising 210.7 linear meters, can now be researched in Budapest at the Hungarian National Archives, but some of the documents were scattered during the war scattered documents can be found in the Kőrmend Museum as well as in other public and private collections.

The Batthyány archives contain historically valuable documents relating to the anti-Turkish wars of the 17th century. The detailed estate management documents from this period are particularly valuable sources. In the 18th century, family members who held national offices brought political, military, and cultural history. For the 16th-19th centuries, it contains missives of unparalleled value among all Hungarian archives.
Károly Batthyány established his library in Vienna, Trautmannsdorf, and Payersbach. After his death in 1772, his family created an impressive collection from the prince's books in Körmend. They themselves added to the number of inherited books, which explains why some of the volumes found today are later editions. The fate of the library after 1945 is contradictory based on the sources, but it is certain that in July 1947 its contents were placed in the Museum of Applied Arts, where 2,617 volumes are currently held.
The diversity of the collection was determined by the former owner's wide-ranging interests. Based on his studies and his long military career, Károly Batthyány collected a large library of practical books, he amassed a large library for himself. Among the volumes, there are a considerable number of treatises, dealing with theoretical warfare, as well as practical manuals and works on military history. Noteworthy is the collection devoted to philosophy, which includes handbooks on scholastic philosophy as well as the most modern works of the period. Ancient and modern literature was an important area of the library. This is interesting material from several points of view, indicating that the library grew as a result of careful selection. On the other hand, it also testifies to a love of German-language Enlightenment literature, which later turned to French classics. The number of theological books is also quite large. Examining these, we can identify the former owner's interests, who also shows particular attention to ecclesiastical rhetoric. In addition to historical, philosophical, and theological works, we also find dictionaries, and dictionaries, along with scientific publications of the period, which showcase every article of encyclopedic scholarship.

The library is outstanding not only in terms of content, but also in terms of appearance, as it contains several special and unique works can be found in it. The volumes have whole or half leather bindings, and it is not uncommon to find examples with embossed, gilded front covers. The high-quality workmanship is evident in the gilded or marbled cut surfaces and the ornate spines.
The weapon collection located in the main building of the castle, together with the saddle room, was recorded by Baron Kálmán Miske in 1915. According to the inventory data, it consisted of 980 items, more than 1,000 pieces. At that time, 365 rifles, 134 pistols, 140 swords, and 37 bayonets made up two-thirds of the collection. There were also wire cutters, shields, helmets, and weapons and equipment obtained as spoils of war during battles with swords.were of considerable value. The tents, military insignia, saddles, decorative saddle blankets and horse tack, quivers, bows, spears were among the highlights of the collection. The weapons and saddle collection included many rare items. There was a full suit of armor made for a child, an elephant bone saddle decorated with a depiction of Saint George slaying the dragon from the Sigismund era, , a fragment of a flag, which according to family traditionoriginated from the disaster of Mohács, and last but not least, Joseph II's childhood practice rifle and toy soldiers.
The devastation of war destroyed the famous weapon collection. The Russian soldiers who occupied the castle destroyed, damaged, and stole some of the collection. János Kőszegi managed to save 650 pieces, which were transferred to the Hungarian National Museum in 1948.

Source: Batthyány-Strattmann László Museum