03-Mar-2016

Sternzimmer, Generals Restoration part III


When I took charge of castle Grünsberg from my father in the year 1999, the appearance of the first floor of the palas was like this
My parents built in an oil heating system with radiators in 1974. This was very dangerous for the rooms and the inventory because the air humidity went down too much. This had the effect that the floor boards shrank very much, the colour went off the painting surface and the veneers from the furniture.
In the so called Sternzimmer there existed a warm-air tiled stove, build in 1955, but it had no function.
After removing the warm-air tiled stove we found in the wall at the place of the former medieval privy the remnants of a former window, presumably closed after the destruction of the castle by Markgraf Albrecht Alkibiades von Kulmbach-Ansbach in the year 1552. With the closing of this window the spatial division of the floors had been changed, the rooms became much higher.
My great –grand-uncle decorated the ceiling of this room in about 1870 with a star-studded sky, made of light blue coloured paper and the stars of goldpaper and little mirrors. It was very important for me and my familiy to keep this sky. Therefore we decided to keep it and the wallpaper as well, a reprint from the empire which my parents brought onto the wall in 1965. The wallpaper has been thoroughly cleaned and holes have been closed (we found remnants of this wallpaper in a big box in the castle). Unfortunately we hadnīt enough money to restore the star-studded sky properly as well, but one day this will be possible.

In construction phase III cracks could be closed and dirtied places (window reveals) could be cleaned after we had already removed the oil-heating-system with all its pipes in construction phase II .
The cracks in the windowsills caused by the direct grenade hit on April, 28th of 1945
could be closed finally and totally.
The most important thing for me of the restoration was to reopen the double doors leading directly from the Sternzimmer to the library. They had been bricked up a long time before my childhood. You could see the door panels, the doorknob and the doorframe in the Sternzimmer , in the library there was only a big book case with a wall and wallpaper in its back.
We found all necessary parts of a door existing including the threshold. Only the outer part of the doorframe was missing. Our fine cabinetmakers built it after the original on the other side. This is the first view through the recently opened door into the temporary furniture storage in the library during the restoration. In the castleīs "funus" I even found a fitting key!
Now we can use the "Sternzimmer" as one of a suite of rooms for our special concerts on our ancient Viennese fortepiano built in 1810.


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