Dahmshöhe Castle
Dahmshöhe Castle (also called Waldschlösschen ) is a listed mansion in the Altthymen district of the Brandenburg town of Fürstenberg / Havel .
history
In 1929 the Berlin banker and art collector Siegfried Bieber acquired the 235 hectare Dahmshöhe near Altthymen from Privy Councilor Richard Weber in Berlin , which was known as the Ochsenkrug until around 1865 and was then named after Carl Ferdinand Dahms. By far the largest part of the area consisted then as now of forest, 30 hectares were designated as arable land, 40 hectares as grassland. The livestock consisted of 5 horses and 22 cattle.
Bieber had an exclusive country estate built some distance from the old estate with its simple farm buildings. He entrusted Paul Schultze-Naumburg , at that time one of the most famous conservative architects in Germany. Since Schultze-Naumburg mainly designed representative villas and mansions, builders from the circles of the Jewish upper middle class were among his customers. After the First World War, however, Schultze-Naumburg had increasingly moved towards racist and anti-Semitic positions. His book “Art and Race” was published in 1928, and two years later he became a member of the NSDAP . Siegfried Bieber could not have remained ignorant of these views of his architect, which in his eyes evidently took a back seat to the common preference for traditional, landscape-related building.
When Siegfried Bieber moved into the new house in 1930, he was 57 years old and at the height of his professional career. He and his wife Josephine were dedicated art collectors. She was particularly interested in 17th century Dutch painting. The rooms in Dahmshöhe Castle are also likely to have housed part of their art collection. Siegfried Bieber had the 56,000 m² park laid out according to his own detailed plans. There was also a botanical garden with a small tropical house.
In 1939, Bieber Dahmshöhe, who fled to Switzerland with his wife in 1935, was forced to sell to Nazi sympathizers. A little later, prisoners from the women's concentration camp in Ravensbrück set up a barrack camp for the rider's division of the Waffen SS on the estate.
After 1945 the barracks were used as emergency shelters for the liberated prisoners of the former concentration camp and for refugees from the eastern German regions.
From 1947 to 1990 the castle was a children's sanatorium, in which, among other things, recovery cures (also for children and adolescents suffering from cystic fibrosis ) were offered. In some GDR maps, the place was incorrectly referred to as Damshöhe.
The castle currently houses the education and meeting center of the Lebenshilfe Landesverband Brandenburg eV As an open meeting place, people with and without disabilities can spend their time here today.
literature
- Erika Schwarz: "... at the expense of my account". Siegfried Bieber. Jew, banker, landowner, emigrant. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-942271-27-1 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Database of the Brandenburg State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and the State Archaeological Museum ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed December 11, 2016.
- ^ Neue Lychener Zeitung, 2012
- ^ Hermann Aurich: Between trading floor and forest loneliness. Siegfried Bieber and the Dahmshöhe house. ( Online version )
Coordinates: 53 ° 13 '48.3 " N , 13 ° 8' 16.8" E