History & cultural landscape
Only the simple "Karnies" is the formal language of the early Baroque - the infinite variation of a simple wave at the end of the Renaissance from about 1570 to 1670, which was also referred to in cultural history as the "line of beauty" (Hogarth).
Its simple and level-headed design, which only the full baroque and rococo spoiled so pompously, can be found in many ways on the outside and inside of today's building ensemble of Schloss Ahlhausen on the upper Ennepe. The cubatures of rooms and buildings in a building development from 1592 to 1678, designed in a geometrically ordered equal set of the Renaissance, are so uniformly and harmoniously put together that a fortification dating back to the high Middle Ages - the "Westphalian Peace" made it possible! - changed into the representative early baroque country palace on Ahlhausen, as it has remained visible and, above all, noticeable to this day - despite some losses.
Belonging to the goods of the imperial abbey of the Benedictines Essen-Werden in the Oberhof Schöpplenberg, as they are documented around 1080, it can be found in a copy of the earlier document made by the Werden provost Gottfried between 1125 and 1138 in the "Heberegister" with the agricultural taxes to the monks as "Adalhedehuson", published in the "Rheinische Urbaren" referred to. Even the old name indicates that it could have been the endowment of a historical "Adelheid" that may have come to the Benedictine abbey before 1000. But when exactly everything began here in the lands of the monks on the Ennepe for the von Ahlhausen family, from which mention can be found for almost 800 years until 1770 in documents of all centuries after the turn of the millennium, has remained unimaginable to this day. What is certain, however, is the record of an 18th-century abbot from Werden, which shows that the Schöpplenberger lands were already part of the foundation property of the imperial abbey at the time it was founded in 792. Ahlhausen is just over 1000 years old.
In 1678, Heinrich Wilhelm von Ahlhausen (around 1645 – 1684) and Maria Magdalena Frowein (around 1653 – 1714) completed the early Baroque face of Ahlhausen Palace that is visible today. Both married in 1671 and their marriage resulted in 3 children. They will probably have completed the conversion work of today's building ensemble as a representative country palace around 1678, which Ahlhausen attributed to the uniformity of the Renaissance, which is confirmed by the dates 1592 and 1678 left in sandstone and by dendrochronological investigations. A Heinrich Wilhelm von Ahlhausen is referred to in documents as a "receptor", which points to an activity in addition to the shops in Ahlhausen, with which he will have had a function as a chamber councilor or chamberlain in the tax system of the government of the county of Kleve-Mark.
