Schloss Jägerhof

No building is better suited to house the Anton and Katharina Kippenberg Foundation than "Schloss Jägerhof" in Düsseldorf, on the eastern edge of the "Hofgarten" in the centre of the city: The building was built according to the blueprints from 1748 that Elector Carl Theodor had commissioned from the Aachen architect Johann Joseph Couven, and that were probably adapted by Nicolas de Pigage.  Designed a year before Goethe was born, the building was completed in 1772. Although Goethe does not mention it, he must have seen it in 1774, when he took advantage of his first visit to Düsseldorf to visit the Jacobi family at their "Pempelfort" residence, separated only by a garden area from the Jägerhof. Even when Goethe paid another visit in November 1792, staying at Pempelfort for four weeks during his return from the first Coalition War against the army of the French Revolution, he made no explicit mention of the Jägerhof but did praise the "neighborhood of spacious well-kept gardens". Four years later, in 1796, the "Jägerhof" had been sacked by the revolutionary forces and had finally become completely uninhabitable. The building was only restored in 1811 on the occasion of Napoleon’s visit to Düsseldorf, according to Adolf von Vagedes’ plans, and under his supervision.