Burg Kinzweiler

Burg Kinzweiler stands on the eastern side of Wardener Straße in the Eschweiler district of Kinzweiler, just opposite the junction with Kirchstraße. It is a water castle whose remaining building is the three-winged brick manor house, now privately owned and open only for external viewing. The site once formed one of the largest and most important knightly estates in the Aachen and Düren region. The manor’s history begins in 1420 when the Palant family acquired the Kinzweiler lordship and two existing motte towers from the heirs of the Knights of Kinzweiler. By the early 16th century Dietrich von Palant had replaced the outdated mottes with the new castle. After passing through the hands of the Waldeck and Saxon ducal families, the estate was remodelled in the mid-18th century in the Baroque style by Elector Karl Theodor. Later owners included the Hatzfeld and Arenberg families, and in 1928 the Eschweiler Coal-mining Company took possession before selling it in 1956 to the predecessor of today’s Rheinbraun AG. In 1981 five local families bought the surviving manor house and converted it for residential use. The brick manor is encircled on three sides by a moat once fed by the Merzbach stream. Its three wings enclose a small Baroque forecourt reached by a double flight of steps. The oldest parts are the partly stone-built cellar and a few Gothic cross-mullioned windows on the south wing’s courtyard side; the rest of the windows and the hipped roof date from the mid-18th century. Inside, only two Baroque stucco salons and an Empire-panelled room from Napoleonic times survive, the rest having been removed during a late-20th-century conversion that added a third storey. Outside, ivy covers the walls and the moat reflects the brickwork, giving the house a quiet, secluded air.