Schloss Drachenburg, also known as Drachenburg Castle, is a late 19th-century estate designed to style as a castle. On the Drachenfels hill in Königswinter, a German town on the east bank of the Rhine, south of the city of Bonn, it was finished in just two years, from 1882 to 1884. The State Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia owns the villa. A Drachenfels Railway intermediate station provides service to it. After graduating from high school, Stephan Sarter, a Bonn native, began an apprenticeship at the Leopold Seligman bank in Köln. He changed jobs and joined Salomon Openheim as a market analyst in their Paris branch. He made a fortune by trading on his own account, and in 1881 he petitioned for a patent of nobility. He ordered the schloss as a proper backdrop for a German baron even though he spent the remainder of his life in Paris. Bernhard Tüshaus and Leo von Abbema, two architects from Dortmund, created the original blueprints of the building, and work on it started in 1882. Wilhelm Hoffman was hired by Sarter to finish the project after it appears that he and the original architects had a falling out. In 1902, Sarter passed away alone, and his inheritance, which included the schloss, was divided up among a number of his kin. A Bonn lawyer and one of his nephews, Jacob Hubert Biesenbach, saw the potential of the building as a tourist destination and purchased the other legatees for 390,000 Marks. Despite being relatively profitable, Biesenbach sold the castle to Egbert von Simon in 1910 because revenue was not enough to meet expenses. Von Simon ran the castle profitably. During the First World War, cavalry officer Von Simon was killed in action at Arras. Hermann Flohr, a merchant and arms trader, bought the castle and estate piecemeal at several auctions. He lived in one portion of the castle while using the other as a facility for ladies who were recovering from illness. The Catholic order of Christian Brothers purchased the castle in 1930, and they used it to build St. Michaels Boarding School. The Federal Railways rented the castle from the State of North-Rhine, Westphalia, after the war as a training center until they moved to their own facilities in Wuppertal in 1959. The castle was thereafter abandoned and started to degrade. A Syndicate for the Preservation of Drachenburg was established in 1963, and they were successful in getting the castle designated as being worth preserving. Paul Spinat, a local textile businessman, bought it in 1971 and had it extensively restored before opening it to the public and using it for entertaining. He passed away in debt in 1989, and the State of North-Rhine, Westphalia assumed control of the estate and oversaw additional restoration work that lasted for another 20 years. The presence of several postcards and other illustrations that Jacob Biesenbach had ordered for his initial tourist effort at the turn of the 20th century was very helpful to the restoration. The North-Rhine, Westphalia Foundation is now in charge of managing the structure
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Monuments and Architecture
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