Gadow Castle

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Gadow Castle 2013
Gadow Castle around 1860, Alexander Duncker collection

Gadow Castle is a former knight's seat in the northwest of the Prignitz in Brandenburg . It is located in the middle of the forest and meadow landscape of the Löcknitz lowlands.

A spacious park with dendrologically valuable stock belongs to the castle . In addition to other natural monuments there is the oldest oak in the Prignitz district. The castle is a listed building.

history

Gadow belonged to the ancient possessions of the von Moellendorff family from the Altmark, along with other goods in the Prignitz , which first appeared in documents in the Prignitz in the 13th and 14th centuries and soon acquired extensive property here. The village of Gadow became desolate in the 14th century, while a knight seat was established here in the course of the 15th century. Nothing has been preserved from the medieval buildings of this complex. After many renovations, a late Baroque two-storey house with a high basement and a mansard roof was built around 1790 when Hans Georg Gottlob von Moellendorff (1758–1839) established his household here and also created the gardens that later became an important landscape park have been expanded.

From 1804 to 1816 Gadow was owned by the famous Field Marshal Wichard Joachim Heinrich von Moellendorff (1724–1816), whose heir was his adopted son Hugo von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1806–1865). His father Daniel Theodor von Wilamowitz (1768–1837) had two wings of the same length added at right angles to the existing Baroque building in 1818 and built the curved ramp that still leads to the entrance in place of the former outside staircase. Two years earlier (1816) he had the impressive neo-classical mausoleum built at the western end of the park in the form of a Greek temple according to plans by the Berlin architect Salomo Sachs . This is where the famous Frederician general found his final resting place. When Hugo von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff took over Gadow himself in 1829, the man, who was extremely interested in dendrology, began to remodel the existing English-style park with new facilities to create a large landscape park with a zoo, greenhouse, ice cellar, horse stables, forester's house, etc. Buildings were included and related to each other through visual axes. The charming surroundings of the castle with the Löcknitz, some ponds and meadows offered the best conditions for this. In those years Hugo von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff also founded a famous thoroughbred breed, from which later the legendary stallion "Scherz" emerged, which Franz Krüger painted after his victories in England with the proud owner, who was raised to the rank of count in 1857.

In 1853 the castle was finally redesigned in the classicist style with new staircases, rich stucco ceilings, etc. The mansard roof was changed to a mezzanine floor with a very flat slate hip roof. The result was the monumental three-wing complex that still exists today, with two main floors, a basement and a mezzanine floor. Inside, after the entire palace was converted into an FDGB holiday home in the mid-1960s, no historical structures or even interior decorations were preserved; most of the valuable inventory was lost in 1945.

The extensive landscape park was enriched from 1865 by Count Wichard von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1835-1905) with significant plantings of various types of wood (especially conifers, rhododendrons and Douglas fir), which made the Gadower Park one of the most species-rich landscape gardens in the Mark Brandenburg. It has been preserved and is being maintained (including the forest nature trail of the Gadow Forest District).

The castle has been used as a holiday complex for children since 1994.

Grave inscription from the cavalry master Albrecht Otto Johann von Möllendorff

Varia

The grave of the Prussian officer Albrecht Otto Johann von Möllendorff (1755–1793), who died in the Battle of Pirmasens on September 14, 1793, is located in the old cemetery in Pirmasens in Rhineland-Palatinate , with the note that he was at Gadow Castle was born. He was the eldest son of Reimar Friedrich von Moellendorff (1731–1809) and his first wife Margarete Christina Albertina Louisa von Krüsicke ad H. Dannenwalde (1733–1758). His younger brother was Hans Georg Gottlob von Moellendorff (1758–1839), who inherited Gadow, sold it in 1804 to Field Marshal Wichard Joachim Heinrich von Moellendorff (1724–1816) and took over the Krampfer estate from his father and moved there. The inscription on the memorial stone in Pirmasens reads:

“ This is where Albrecht Otto Johann von Moellendorff, b. zu Gadow near Perleberg in the Prignitz on April 6, 1755, k. prussia. Rittmeister in the Cuirassier Regiment von Borstell, died in the field of honor in the battle of Pirmasens on September 14, 1793 "

literature

  • Torsten Foelsch: Nobility, castles and mansions in Prignitz. A contribution to the art and cultural history of Prignitz , Perleberg, Leipzig 1997, p. 38 ff.
  • Alexander Duncker (Ed.): The rural residences, castles and residences of the knightly landowners in the Prussian monarchy together with the royal family, house, Fideicommiss and casket goods in lifelike, artistically executed, colored representations and accompanying text. Volume 2, Berlin 1859/60, No. 61.
  • Theodor Goecke / Paul Eichholz / Friedrich Solger / Willy Spatz: The art monuments of the Westprignitz district. Berlin 1909.
  • Fritz Graf Schwerin: Gadow. In: Mitteilungen der Deutschen Dendrologische Gesellschaft, Berlin 1930, pp. 444–447.
  • Fanny Countess v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff: memories and encounters. Berlin 1936, p. 50.
  • Paul Ortwin Rave: The old gardens and rural parks in the Mark Brandenburg In: Brandenburgische Jahrbücher 14/15, Berlin 1939, p. 155.
  • Ekkehard Schwartz: Wichard Graf v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff - a private forest owner as a pioneer in the cultivation of foreign tree species. Eberswalde 1996.
  • Peter-Michael Hahn, Hellmut Lorenz (ed.): Manor houses in Brandenburg and Niederlausitz . Commented new edition of Alexander Duncker (1857–1883), Berlin 2000, Vol. 2, pp. 166–169
  • Gerhard Vinken et al., Brandenburg. In: Georg Dehio: Handbook of German Art Monuments . Munich, Berlin 2000, p. 347; 2., revised. Ed. (2012), p. 367.
  • Torsten Foelsch: Gadow Castle. In: Palaces and Gardens of the Mark. Edited by Sibylle Badstübner-Gröger. Berlin 2011 (see: www.deutsche-gesellschaft-ev.de).

Web links

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  1. ↑ Appendix 1 to the ordinance of the Prignitz district on natural monuments in the Lenzen-Elbtalaue district. (District council resolution No. 234-15 / 00 of 21.09.2000). Archived from the original on October 6, 2007 ; Retrieved October 6, 2012 .
  2. ↑ List of monuments of the state of Brandenburg: District of Prignitz (PDF) Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and State Archaeological Museum

Coordinates: 53 ° 4 ′ 47.3 "  N , 11 ° 37 ′ 25.6"  E