Meseberg Castle

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Huwenowsee and Meseberg Castle (from the north)

Meseberg Castle is a baroque castle in Brandenburg from the 18th century. It is used as the guest house of the German federal government and is located about 70 kilometers north of Berlin in Meseberg, a district of the city of Gransee with 150 inhabitants. The property is located on the easternmost tip of the Huwenowsee .

history

Meseberg Castle from the south

Count Hermann von Wartensleben had today's castle built from 1736 after the old manor house in Meseberg burned down in March 1721. His wife Dorothea, née von der Groeben , inherited the manor in 1735, together with Baumgarten , after she had received the Rauschendorf and Schönermark estates as a dowry in 1723 . The von der Groeben family had owned the manor since the second half of the 16th century. Count Hermann was a son of the Field Marshal General and Minister in the Cabinet of Three Counts Count Alexander Hermann von Wartensleben (1650–1734).

According to Bernhard Ludwig Bekmann, the garden was laid out in Meseberg in 1736 and the house was built in 1737. The construction was completed in 1739, the initials HvW are painted on the cartouche above the gable on the courtyard side. The architect is not known by name, but is suspected to be in the vicinity of Berlin's senior building director Philipp Gerlach . The designer of the terraced baroque garden was called Münther.

Shortly after his marriage, Hermann von Wartensleben had Rauschendorf Castle built as a residence. In 1735, following a decree of the king, his brother Friedrich Ludwig started the construction of the Palais Wartensleben on Pariser Platz in Berlin, the architect was probably also Philipp Gerlach.

Access avenue
View of the main courtyard
View of the park side

Ten years after Wartensleben's death, in 1774 his daughters sold the Meseberg estate (including the Rauschendorf, Schönermark and Baumgarten estates) to Prince Heinrich of Prussia , who resided at the nearby Rheinsberg Castle. The following year he gave the goods complex to his favorite Christian Ludwig von Kaphengst (1740–1800) as a gift. For the acquisition, the prince had to sell 29 paintings from his collection to Catherine the Great , and he also made savings on his own household and that of his wife. The purpose of this generous donation was supposedly the removal of Kaphengst from the Rheinsberg court, ordered by his brother, Frederick the Great. In fact, however, Kaphengst mostly lived in Berlin. However, he had the existing facility expanded to include additional buildings, including the stables. Kaphengst led an elaborate lifestyle that eventually drove him to financial ruin. Thiébault describes him in his memoirs as a tall, happy, courageous and spirited man of extraordinary physical strength , who could make any society laugh. However, he increasingly exploited the prince's favor financially. A spiral staircase between the master's bedroom and the prince's guest room has been preserved in the castle to this day. When Kaphengst finally urged Friedrich II to be promoted to colonel, he received a rude refusal and took his leave. The extravagant pledged his goods and Heinrich had to borrow 130,000 thalers in France in 1784 to pay off the debts, King Louis XVI. personally vouched for it. Heinrich now parted ways with Kaphengst.

The editor of the Vossische Zeitung , Carl Robert Lessing, was one of the later owners . In 1883 he bought the property for his son Gotthold Ephraim Lessing the Elder. J. (1861–1919), for whom a mausoleum was built in the park in 1919. Kaphengst and his successors had mainly extended the garden to the south and turned it into a park that encompassed large parts of the lake shore. The editor's wife, Emma von Gelbke, passed on the story of Baroness Elisabeth von Ardenne to Theodor Fontane and thus provided the template for the novel Effi Briest . In his hikes through the Mark Brandenburg , Fontane referred to Meseberg as a “magic castle”.

The Lessing family played an important role in the further development of the property. The family coat of arms - three rings symbolizing the ring parable of the related poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - was affixed several times. The house was decorated with paintings by Carl Robert Lessing's brother Karl Friedrich Lessing and his nephew Konrad Lessing . Otto Lessing - another nephew of Carl Roberts - created various busts of family members and ancestors for Meseberg as well as a multi-figure deposition from the cross for the manor church. The Lessing family owned the estate until 1931 and 1934 respectively.

The castle in the GDR era

In 1945 the property was expropriated without compensation. The mayor Franz Rhode prevented the castle from being blown up by the Red Army . In the following decades the castle housed a grocery store, a kindergarten, the community office and other facilities. After the fall of the Wall , Meseberg Castle fell into disrepair - which was not returned to the owners - until the Messerschmitt Foundation acquired the dilapidated property in 1995 without a specific usage concept. With the move of the government at the turn of the millennium, the need arose for a new federal guest house near Berlin instead of the previously used federal guest house on Petersberg . The castle, garden and park were restored by the foundation according to the standards of monument preservation . In 2004 the foundation, which spent around 25 million euros on this, let the federal government use the castle for an initial 20 years at a symbolic rental price of 1 euros. The federal government invested a further 13 million euros in security and communication technology and is also paying for ongoing maintenance costs. Linked to this use and protection were interventions in the historical substance of the building. In addition to its function as a guest house for the federal government, the palace is also used for other events such as cabinet retreats and conferences. The handover to the head of the Chancellery at the time, Thomas de Maizière, took place on January 26, 2007; the first guest in the house was the French President Jacques Chirac .

garden

The lake parterre in the Meseberg castle garden

The baroque terrace garden was extensively restored. The division by axes emerged from the existing inventory. The height of the parts of the garden was determined on the basis of the building fabric and excavation findings.

The sea ​​parterre was given two broderie compartments in an elongated outline, as was customary at the time of its creation. A modern form was developed for the undocumented broderie . In the subordinate south-western parterre, a lawn parterre seemed appropriate, the ornamental structure of which was also designed in a modern way.

Garden stairs were not documented from the Baroque period, but were necessary for their use. Since the former baroque west staircase of the castle had been rebuilt according to findings (foundations, original parts), the two new garden stairs were designed with the same step profile in the main axis. Seen from the other bank, these three staircases form a unit and act as part of the castle. All other stairs in the garden were given unprofiled block steps.

For the assumed diagonal division of the four bosket compartments , the structure of the very similarly constructed garden of Burgscheidungen Castle was used.

The barn yard was no longer needed as such and therefore, after measuring and documenting all foundations, including the axes of the baroque garden and the cavalier house, it was given a geometrically structured lawn parterre, which reminds us that a continuation of the garden was either available or planned here under Waiting life.

A publicly accessible landscape garden with the mausoleums of the Hövel and Lessing families extends along the lake .

Events (selection)

In the castle found u. a. the following state visits and official dates take place:

  • February 23, 2007: French President Jacques Chirac is received by Chancellor Angela Merkel
  • April 23, 2007: Reception of the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso
  • August 23, 2007: Conference of the Federal Government ( Cabinet Merkel I )
  • September 10, 2007: French President Nicolas Sarkozy is received by Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Blaesheim meeting
  • November 20, 2007: Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi
  • June 10, 2008: Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the US President George W. Bush
  • November 2009: Conference of the Federal Government ( Merkel II Cabinet )
  • June 5, 2010: Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomes Russian President Dmitri Medvedev
  • June 18, 2010: Future summit with representatives from business and trade unions
  • January 25, 2011: Reception of the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso
  • 12./13. April 2013: Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed British Prime Minister David Cameron
  • 22./23. January 2014: Conference of the Federal Government ( Merkel III cabinet )
  • 10/11 April 2018: Conference of the Federal Government ( Cabinet Merkel IV )
  • April 19, 2018: German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomes French President Emmanuel Macron
  • June 19, 2018: Meeting of the Franco-German Council of Ministers
  • August 18, 2018: German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin
  • June 29, 2020: French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed by Chancellor Angela Merkel
  • July 13, 2020: Reception of the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte by Chancellor Angela Merkel

Special

In 2019, the German Association of Taxpayers criticized in its Black Book the fact that only 36 events took place in the castle in the past four years. Guarding by the federal police cost around 15.4 million euros from 2015 to 2018. In addition, there are personnel costs for the Federal Chancellery, around 513,000 euros per year. For building maintenance and management, an average of around 670,000 euros a year was incurred. This means that the federal government's guest house at Schloss Meseberg costs taxpayers around 5 million euros per year.

literature

  • Friends of the Palaces and Gardens of the Mark in the German Society V. (Ed.), Manfred Hamm (photos), Walther Grunwald (texts): Palaces and gardens of the Mark. Meseberg. Nicolai, Berlin 1991. ISBN 3-87584-406-8
  • Jörg Kuhn : Otto Lessing (1846-1912). Sculptor, craftsman, painter. Life and work of a sculptor of late historicism, with special consideration of his work as a building sculptor. Dissertation, Free University of Berlin 1994.
  • Clemens Alexander Wimmer , Ragnhild Kober-Carrière: Meseberg - A risen baroque garden. In: Brandenburg Monument Preservation. Berlin 16.2007, No. 1, pp. 80-94. ISSN  0942-3397
  • Jörn Lehmann : Meseberg - castle and village. Ed. Rieger, Karwe 2007, ISBN 978-3-935231-84-8
  • Markus Jager (Ed.): Meseberg Castle. In: Palaces and Gardens of the Mark, Issue 100. Circle of Friends of Palaces and Gardens of the Mark in the German Society, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-9812292-4-0 .
  • Robert Rauh : Meseberg. In: Fontanes Ruppiner Land. New walks through the Mark Brandenburg. Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-86124-723-4

Web links

Commons : Schloss Meseberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The fact that Prince Heinrich acquired Meseberg Castle because Friedrich requested that Kaphengst be removed from Rheinsberg (in fact, he mostly lived in Berlin) is an inaccurate, but often repeated rumor. Less than a month after his accession to the throne in 1740, Friedrich himself had also given his valet Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf the Zernikow estate near Rheinsberg.
  2. ↑ On this and the following: Eva Ziebura: Prince Heinrich of Prussia. Biography (= construction paperback 1770). Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-7466-1770-7 , pp. 186 ff., 233 ff., 309 f.
  3. ↑ Seldom used federal government guest house costs around 5 million euros per year. In: schwarzbuch.de. Retrieved December 23, 2019 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 58 ′ 21 ″  N , 13 ° 6 ′ 5 ″  E