Steinort Castle
Steinort Castle ( Polish : Pałac w Sztynorcie ) is a castle on a headland between Dargeinen and Mauersee in the Polish Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship . Until 1945 it was the East Prussian headquarters of the von Lehndorff family . Today the Gutsdorf Steinort is called Sztynort .
history
At the beginning of the 16th century, the von Lehndorff family , who lived in the Königsberg area, were enfeoffed with a large piece of land, which was called "Steinort Wilderness". Many neighboring places were part of it.
The first owners were Casper, Fabian and Sebastian. They were official governors of Preußisch Eylau and Oletzko , followed by Meinhard (District Administrator von Rastenburg , Lieutenant Colonel, born 1590). He laid out the Steinorter Park, the oak avenue and the cloister from Ionic columns . A part of the oak stands for every child of the von Lehndorff family born in Steinort. The place with the associated estate is also the headquarters of the von Lehndorff family . Ahasuerus , born in 1637, was his successor at Steinort. His third wife Eleanor had the manor built. His son Ernst Ahasuerus took over the successor. From 1758 his son Ernst Ahasverus Heinrich (born 1727) continued the line. His son Carl Ludwig was born in 1770 and then took over Steinort. He had five children and his eldest son Carl Meinhard took over Steinort in 1854. Carl Meinhard married his cousin Anna, née Countess Hahn-Basedow, who after his death in 1883 took over the management of the property until her son Carl Meinhard came of age. This Carl Meinhard ("Caroll") remained a bachelor. Since he was childless, the property passed to the Preyl line of his uncle Heinrich after his death in 1936 . The younger, Manfred, inherited from his two sons. The older one, Heinrich, had died in the First World War . Manfred renounced and handed it over to his son Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff , who was murdered in 1944 because of his involvement in the assassination attempt on Hitler . Since Heinrich's brother, Ahasuerus, had died in the war, Hans von Lehndorff (Heinrich's cousin) could have continued the line.
Under the direction of the most experienced restorer of the Royal Palaces in Berlin, the palace underwent a thorough renovation at the end of the 1930s, after it had been neglected and soaked through since the First World War. It was in pristine condition until the entry of the Red Army in January 1945.
Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff lived with his family in one wing of the castle, in the other half the field quarters were set up by Reich Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop in 1941 . His staff lived in the nearby “Jägerhöhe” guest house on the Schwenzaitsee. Six kilometers north of Steinort, the Army High Command had built its "Mauerwald" field camp with an extensive bunker system. Eleven kilometers east of the village was Himmler's field command post "Hegewald", 25 km southwest was the " Führer Headquarters Wolfsschanze ", where the assassination attempt on Hitler took place on July 20, 1944.
After a long period of occupation by the Red Army since 1945, an agricultural production cooperative (PGR) was housed in the castle from the 1950s . In the 1990s, the entire facility including the economic sector came into the hands of an Austrian, then, in 1995, to a Warsaw yacht operator. Currently, the castle can only be viewed from the outside as it has deteriorated over time and renovation work has only recently begun. The greatest treasure of the dilapidated building were the painted and carved baroque wooden ceilings in the middle section.
In November 2009 the “Polish-German Foundation for Cultural Preservation and Monument Protection” acquired the castle. After extensive renovation measures, it will be used as a meeting place. Together with the German sister foundation, a usage concept is being struggled to obtain generous funding. So far, money from private German donors and funds from the Polish Ministry of Culture have been used. Urgent emergency safety measures were carried out by autumn 2013. Auxiliary structures introduced statically stabilize the building, especially the basement, the wall crowns of the middle section are strengthened, the window openings are provisionally closed by foils with slits, an emergency roof is raised. So far it has rained in and the sponge spread. The valuable, partly already destroyed ceiling boards (1,500 m 2 ) were removed years ago and unfortunately were not properly stored. They have been disinfected and impregnated.
The grave chapel of the Lehndorffs has been plundered several times since 1945 and has become a ruin.
On June 22, 2009, a memorial stone was inaugurated at the castle on the 100th birthday of Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff.
The palace park was completely overgrown. It was worked on in the summer of 2012 as a project “Cutting back the wild growth in the historic castle park” of the youth building works of the German Foundation for Monument Protection by 40 German young people in a two-week deployment. In particular, the historic park paths and lines of sight were exposed again.
The planning was suspended for several years, and funding has been applied for since 2018, for which the foundation must, however, raise donations as part of its own funds.
interior
The original furnishings included numerous Gdańsk cupboards, many ancestral portraits, Flemish tapestries (“ Simson ”), collections of miniatures, Chinese porcelain, pastels, on the ground floor an enfilade of state apartments from the 17th century with wall coverings in brocade and raised embroidery, and a tiled hall with Delft tiles .
In 1943, the von Lehndorff family outsourced parts of the interior furnishings to Kriebstein Castle , which belonged to their friends from the von Arnim family. After the assets had already been expropriated by the Nazi government in 1944, the Soviet Union had around 90 percent confiscated in 1947. The smaller part was walled up in a chimney in the castle and was only discovered in 1986 during renovations: the so-called Kriebstein treasure . According to the will of the Lehndorff family, large parts of it should return to Steinort Castle.
literature
- Busso von der Dollen, Walther-Gerd Fleck, Günter Schmitt: Castle trip 1987 to Northern Poland (formerly East and West Prussia). In: Castles and Palaces . Vol. 29, No. 1, 1988, ISSN 0007-6201 , p. 52.
- Manfred Kühr: Ruins testify to the vanished splendor. On the trail of the impending decline of the castles and manors in the former East Prussia. In: Castles and Palaces. Vol. 46, No. 4, 2005, ISSN 0007-6201 , pp. 241-247.
- Hans Graf von Lehndorff: people, horses, wide country. Childhood and youth memories . Biederstein, Munich 1982.
Web links
- Steinort - Sztynort German-Polish Foundation for Cultural Preservation and Monument Protection
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marion Countess Dönhoff : Names that nobody mentions anymore . Eugen Diederichs, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-424-00671-8 , pp. 167-168.
- ↑ Information about the castle on the website of the German-Polish Foundation for Cultural Preservation and Monument Protection , accessed on May 21, 2019.
- ↑ a b Peter Schabe: Emergency security work at Steinort Castle . Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung, July 27, 2013.
- ↑ Udo von Alvensleben (art historian) , visits before the downfall, aristocratic seats between Altmark and Masuria , compiled from diary entries and edited by Harald von Koenigswald, Frankfurt / M.-Berlin 1968, pp. 43–45
Coordinates: 54 ° 8 ′ 1.7 ″ N , 21 ° 40 ′ 52 ″ E