The Ottheinrich Building, the most beautiful of the early German Renaissance works, lies between the older buildings, south of the Ludwig Building and north of the Hall of Mirrors . Of its builder, the Elector Ott-Heinrich (1556-1559), the humanist on the throne of the Palatinate, the historian Rott sais: "If anyone by his aspiration to an existence full of perfect beauty can be called the Prince of the German Renaissance in the 16th century, he has earned this title of honor". The three years of his rule are among the most important in the history of the Palatinate. They were sufficient to bring about a complete transformation of the religious and scientific life, the reformation of the church according to Luthor, the reform of the university, in which he was helped by Melanchthon, not less, however, a renaissance of the fine arts. At the beginning of his rule he was a mature, much-travelled man, who has seen Spain, Italy, the Burgundian Netherlands, and the Near East on an adventurous tour to the Holy Land. As a youth he took part in the campaign against Franz von Sickingen and the fight against the rebellious peasants. In 1532 he took up arms against the " tyrant and arch-enemy of Christendom, the turks"; yet when he arrived in Passau he found to his chagrin that "all the warriors were on leave". The journals of his travels record how greatly they helped him "to see something, also to learn". They were preparations for his duties as a ruler which he was first able to take up so late. Doubtless Ottheinrich is the most self-willed of the Palatine builders. From the experience he had gained during his journeys, above all Italy and the Netherlands, he himself took such a keen interest in the plans and asserted his will to such a degree that even today the question is still unanswered as to who was the architect of the Ottheinrich Building, and the question of who created the plastic decorations of this building was long disputed. Ottheinrich himself can be considered the intellectual founder of the building. With its area of more than 830 sq. yds. it is by far the largest of the palaces on the Jettenbuehel. Building started in 1557. Ottheinrich did not live to see its completion which may be considered to have taken place in 1566, although he had exerted every effort to finish the building. With its clear horizontal structure, in which only the vertical loftiness of the ground floor, above all the exaggerated form of the central portal rising to the first storey has a restless effect, the German element in the otherwise so well-balanced classical structure, the whole splendour of the decorative ornamentation is seen merely twards the castle courtyard, whereas the exterior wall erected on the East Wall is of modest plainness in contrast to the later Friedrich Building . The fineness and delicacy of the plastic decorations seems like a dream from a southern world. It is interspersed with the verticals of the figures, wrought from the brittle red and grey sandstone, visualized in noble marble; most lovely in the late summer evenings when the luminous red stones begin to glow against the steel-blue sky. Elements of the re-discovered antique, of the Christian faith and of astrology are a unique mixture in the symbolism of the decorations on the facade. On the fround floor (from left to right): Joshua, Samson, Hercules, David, as symbols of strength. On the first floor: Strength, Faith, Charity crowning the portal, Hope and Justice as Christian virtues, and on the second floor: Saturn, Mars, Venus, Mercury and Diana with the crescent moon. On the top floor: the Sungod Sol and lightning-hurling Jupiter, the stars who under whose lucky constellations and heavenly direction power and virtue could flourish, symbol and mirror of a Renaissance rule such as that of Ottheinrich himself. The plastic sculpturing comes from the master-hand of Alexander Colins of Mecheln who also created the magnificent portal with the medallion of Ottheinrich himself. The best decorative sculpturing is the splendid coat-of-arms on the portal; the imperial medallion with cherubs, in the gable above the ground floor windows, is charming.
In the interior several stone door-frames with rich plastic decorations
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