Sommerswalde Castle

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Sommerswalde Castle

Sommerswalde Castle is located not far from Schwante ( Oberkrämer municipality ) in the middle of the Schwanter Forest in Brandenburg . The entire complex of the castle with its outbuildings was built from 1888 to 1891 for lieutenant a. D. Friedrich August Richard Sommer built by the Berlin architects Hans Abesser and Jürgen Kröger .

prehistory

Richard Sommer was the heir of the Berlin master carpenter and city councilor Carl August Heinrich Sommer (1801–1873), who owned valuable real estate in the area around the Brandenburg Gate . The street on which the Reichstag building was erected was named after him. The building south of the Brandenburg Gate is still called Haus Sommer today . His son Richard Sommer sold the houses by 1891 and in 1888 acquired Schwante Castle and its farm. Shortly afterwards he began building Sommerswalde Castle.

buildings

Former horse stable, the so-called 'Red Town Hall'

In Schwante, the castle rises in a semicircular place in the central axis, which is symmetrically framed by other buildings on both sides. On the left there is a neo-Gothic residential building and an orangery in originally oriental shapes. To the right is the former forester's house - which was inhabited by Sommer's family until the main building was completed - as well as the crenellated brick construction of the horse stable next to the castle , which was supposed to evoke associations with the Red City Hall in Berlin, where Richard Sommer's father worked. The castle itself shows - especially with the dome that was removed again in the 1920s for structural reasons - clear allusions to Paul Wallot's first design for the Reichstag building.

Further use

After his death in summer 1916, the eleven heirs sold the property. The land was taken over by the agricultural cooperative Freie Scholle, while the castle complex was acquired and renovated as a family seat by the lawyer and entrepreneur Erich Lübbert . After the Lübbert family escaped from the advancing front on April 23, 1945 and the end of World War II , the Soviet military administration initially used the castle as a command post . In 1949 the FDJ Alexei Maressjew school was established there, where the FDJ trained pioneer leaders until 1989 . During these 40 years of use, the buildings inside and outside - especially from a monument preservation point of view - were massively disfigured.

After the political change , there were initially a number of applicants for the facility, but their use was subject to monument conservation requirements. From 2000 to 2003 the Dharmakaya Schloss Sommerswalde association maintained a Buddhist monastery school there. In 2006 the property was acquired by the New Kadampa Tradition - International Kadampa Buddhist Union , an international Buddhist organization, and extensively renovated in the following years under restoration supervision.

In September 2008, the Kadampa Meditation Center Germany , located in the castle, opened its doors to the public and offered Buddhist study programs, weekend courses and retreats .

In September 2010, the state of Brandenburg awarded the meditation center as one of four winners the Brandenburg Monument Preservation Prize 2010 for the exemplary renovation of Sommerswalde Castle.

In October 2012 Tharpaland International Retreat Center e. V. moved into Sommerswalde Castle and the sister center Kadampa Meditation Center Berlin moved to Berlin. Tharpaland IRC specializes in silent retreats and offers them in various lengths. Since even individual retreaters live in silence here for several years in some cases, you are asked to move around the site in silence during visits.

In May 2016, the Red City Hall was completed through a complete renovation and now offers more living space for residents of the community of Tharpaland .

  • Orangery

  • Outbuildings

  • detail

literature

  • Caren Heller: Sommerswalde Castle near Schwante . In: Sibylle Badstübner-Gröger (Hrsg.): Series of publications of the Freundeskreis Schlösser und Gärten der Mark in the Deutsche Gesellschaft e. V . Berlin 1994.
  • Detlef Stübs: Sommerswalde Castle. The second Reichstag not far from Berlin . Hennigsdorf 1992.

Web links

Commons : Sommerswalde Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Description on the website of the municipality of Oberkrämer
  • Internet presence of Tharpaland International Retreat Center e. V.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Summer Street . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
  2. ^ "Summer House" on Pariser Platz in Berlin. In: arch INFORM .

Coordinates: 52 ° 44 ′ 56 ″  N , 13 ° 6 ′ 28 ″  E