Schloss Schmieheim

Schloss Schmieheim stands in the Ortenau district of Baden-Württemberg, a Renaissance manor house built in the early 17th century by Friedrich Bock von Gerstheim and his second wife Salomone von Fegersheim. The house bears three dated inscriptions: 1607 above the cellar door, 1608 on the kitchen wing portal, and 1609 on a sandstone panel beside the spiral stair-tower. A fourth date, 1610, appears on an alliance shield inside the tower, combining the couple’s initials and coats of arms. The builders chose an uncertain site of sandy loam, which later contributed to cracks in the masonry. The façade was originally plastered pale and the windows trimmed in colour, a scheme revived during later restorations. The estate passed quickly from the Bock family to the Wurmser von Vendenheim line in 1671 and then to the Waldner von Freundstein family in 1711. By the early 20th century it was in poor repair; Franz Xaver Kraus described it as ‘in extraordinarily bad condition’ in 1904. After serving as a kindergarten and temporary housing in the mid-20th century, the building was comprehensively restored in 1960–61. Today it belongs to Kippenheim municipality, which has preserved the original plaster finish and coloured window frames. Visitors approach through a courtyard framed by the main house and two rectangular corner towers linked by a hexagonal stair-tower with a late-Gothic portal. The steep roof is topped by pointed spires on the towers and shell-shaped gables on the main block. Inside, the spiral stair rises past the 1609 sandstone panel and the 1610 alliance shield. The restored interiors show how the pale plaster and coloured window trims once unified the façade, while the soft sandy ground beneath reminds visitors of the challenges faced by the original builders.