The Architectural Dream
===================================================================(in a German town on the east bank of the Rhine River, south of the city of Bonn) Drachenburg, Castle is a private villa styled as a palace and constructed in the late 19th century. It was completed in only two years on the Drachenfels hill in Königswinter.
+Stephan Sarter was born the youngest son of a Bonn innkeeper in 1833. After his apprenticeship at a bank and several stays abroad, he made his fortune by speculating on the stock exchange and, helping to finance the Suez Canal. In 1882, he was ennobled by Duke Georg von Sachsen-Meiningen and, by 1882, Baron Stephan von Sarter had already laid the foundation stone for an imposing residence, Schloss Drachenburg – a mixture of villa, mansion and castle. Two Düsseldorf-based architects, Leo von Abbema and Bernhard Tüshaus, drew up the original plans which were later revised by Wilhelm Hoffmann, an architect resident in Paris and a former pupil of Ernst Friedrich Zwirner, a Cologne Cathedral architect. The historical architecture and fine furnishings of Schloss Drachenburg were to find much admiration among contemporaries. Yet Sarter was never to live there. His chosen place of domicile was Paris where he died in 1902, still a bachelor, without having regulated his inheritance. Jakob Biesenbach, one of his nephews, bought the castle from the state.
+Schloss Drachenburg as a Summer Resort: As a child, Jakob Biesenbach had experienced the lived in the nearby Hirschburg Castle for some time. A lawyer by profession, he decided that Schloss Drachenburg should be developed as a tourist attraction and had the medieval Burghof (a castle farm that was then part of the overall property) demolished, replacing it in 1904 with a hotel built in the "Swiss style." Biesenbach also built some Nordic Summer Houses in the park for use as exclusive holiday apartments. Schloss Drachenburg was changed into a sort of community center for the better-off: there was a restaurant in the basement; art objects were sold in the art gallery; and further rooms in the castle could be inspected.
+The Planned Amusement Park: In 1910 Biesenbach sold the property to Egbert von Simon, a retired cavalry captain, whose plans soon surpassed the touristic ambitions of his predecessor. The idea was that Schloss Drachenburg become a leisure park, pull in lots of visitors and turn into an attractive proposition. Von Simon planned a huge festival Theater, a hotel building, and a hangar for an airship. Being unable to finance these features, he arranged only garden and art exhibitions and ran a nature theater.
+In 1921 – An industrialist, Hermann Flohr, bought the Burghof by auction (and Schloss Drachenburg in 1923). The Cologne-based merchant placed several of the block houses at the disposal of the Women's Association of the German Red Cross. In 1930 he left the property to a Catholic order, and the interior furnishings were auctioned off and the Brothers of the Christian Schools, moved in a year later.
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