Castle Island (Mirow)

View from the park to the Kavaliershaus and the Mirower Castle

The Mirow Castle Island with its ensemble of buildings in Mirow in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was one of the secondary residences of the Dukes of Mecklenburg-Strelitz .

The history of the castle island

The Mirow Castle Island is based on a commandery of the Order of St. John in the 13th century. After lengthy confrontations with the master masters of Sonnenburg , the Mecklenburg dukes gained influence over the appointment of the commander in the 16th century. After the death of the last Mirow Commandery, the Commandery was finally only looked after by Protestant administrators, who mostly came from the Mecklenburg ducal house and took their princely residence here in the manor house of the Commandery. The commandery was secularized in 1648 . During this time, the buildings on the castle island were constantly being built.

With the Hamburg settlement of 1701 , Mirow became a founding component of the newly formed (partial) duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. After the death of Adolf Friedrich II , the Mirow properties in princely ownership were used as a widow's residence, and the Mirow ducal office repeatedly had supply tasks for members of the princely family.

After a major fire in 1742, large parts of the building stock were renewed. At that time, the Mirower Hof had briefly developed into a spiritual and intellectual center of the country, despite or perhaps because of its remoteness. Many important personalities who later gave decisive impulses to regional developments in the second half of the century belonged to the Mirow court society around the middle of the century .

Just as quickly as the rise, Mirow lost its importance again in the 1750s. From the middle of the 18th century, the role of the Mirow palace ensemble was almost exclusively limited to the proper setting of funeral ceremonies for members of the ducal family. "Mirow is now the place of the dead," said a travel writer shortly before the First World War.

The lock

The castle, courtyard facade

Castle building

The core of the castle still consists of parts of a previous building from 1708, which was partially destroyed in the fire in 1742. The baroque ballroom dates from 1710. Today's palace was built from 1749 to 1752 by order of Adolf Friedrich III. built according to plans by Christoph Julius Löwe . It is a small, two-story building with the floor plan of an H with short, risalit-like , three-story wings. The facades of the eleven-axis castle are only sparsely decorated; both the central courtyard and the garden-side risalit are crowned with a simple gable. The spatial structure was based on the French country castles of the 18th century. The formerly valuable facility is said to come from, among other things , artists who were already active in Sanssouci , but there is hardly any work left. After the ducal family moved out, the palace had been vacant for long periods of time since the 18th century and was only used when burials took place in the nearby princely crypt.

The castle and castle island belong to the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The castle was extensively restored from 2003 to Pentecost 2014 and is open to the public again.

View of the courtyard side of the Kavaliershaus

Cavalier House

Since the Mirow Palace was too modestly dimensioned for a lavish court, the courtyard side was juxtaposed with the cavalier's house for the court from 1756 to 1758 . The late baroque building corresponds to the actual castle in terms of width and number of axes and forms an enclosed courtyard with it, creating a stately ensemble. After a fire in the 19th century and partial destruction, the Kavaliershaus was then restored.

Both buildings (palace and cavalier house) were renovated by 2014. The castle was reopened as a museum on June 7, 2014 and today mainly presents building findings in numerous reconstructed rooms. Weddings have been possible in the castle's ballroom since 2015. Today the Kavaliershaus is an information center and permanent exhibition and is open to cultural events under the name 3-Königinnen-Palais . There is also a Mirower Tourist Information Office here.

The Johanniterkirche

Johanniterkirche from the south

The Johanniterkirche or Schlosskirche Mirow partly comes from the church of the Johanniter from the 14th century. It is a hall building originally built in the brick Gothic style , which has been expanded and rebuilt over the centuries. The baroque tower tower goes back to a copper donation from Friedrich II , who as Crown Prince was occasionally visiting Mirow and who was on friendly terms with the ducal family. The church was also badly damaged by the great fire in 1742 and was subsequently given a magnificent baroque interior; the altar painting was done by Charles Maucourt in 1750 . At the end of the Second World War , on the night of May 1, 1945, the church burned down again after shelling by German soldiers. The interior was largely destroyed. After the end of the war, the reconstruction began with simplified means and was partially completed in 1950. For the restoration of the destroyed tower a support association was founded in early 1989 (still in GDR times!) And a new helmet could be put on in 1993. The facade of the nave was renovated from 2008.

On the north side of the castle church is the several times expanded princely crypt, in which members of the Mecklenburg family found their final resting place as early as 1670 and 1675, and from 1704 members of the Mecklenburg-Strelitz family. In the part of the princely burial place accessible today, there are still 22 rather simple coffins, including those of five (died between 1794 and 1914) of the eight regents of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Among them is Duke Adolf Friedrich IV of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, caricatured in the work of the same name by the Low German poet Fritz Reuter as "Dörchläuchting" (Low German for "Highness") . His brother, Karl II. , Also buried here, was the father of Luise , Queen of Prussia, and first Grand Duke (1815) of the Mecklenburg-Strelitz region. The last funeral to date took place here in 1996.

Tower from the north
inside view
Princely Crypt

The gatehouse

The oldest preserved secular building on the castle island and also in the town of Mirow is the gatehouse . It comes from the fortification system that was created around the castle island in the 16th century and of which remains of the ramparts are still present. The gatehouse is dated to 1588 and was built in the Renaissance style. The building, decorated with strong rustication , was renovated from 1995 to 1996.

The gatehouse
5-field Mecklenburg coat of arms from 1588 on the gatehouse

The lower lock

Not far from the gatehouse, but outside the actual castle island, is the Lower Castle . This baroque building was built in 1766 and initially remained unfinished. It replaced a simple, unadorned previous building, which was built from 1735 to 1737 after the marriage of the so-called "Prince von Mirow" Karl (Ludwig Friedrich) , a later prince of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, to Elisabeth Albertine of Saxony-Hildburghausen and in which several of the couple's children were born, among them Adolf Friedrich IV. and Karl II. , later regents of the Strelitz part of the country , as well as (Sophie) Charlotte , the later Queen of England. No pictorial representations are known of the former birth house of that generation of the Strelitz ducal family.

After Adolf Friedrich IV ascended the throne, the ducal family moved to Strelitz's main residence, Neustrelitz Castle . The royal court in Mirow ceased and after 1761 the castles were largely empty. In 1820, a teachers' seminar was held in the Lower Castle, where elementary school teachers for domanial villages and towns in the Strelitz region were trained for more than a century. During the GDR era, the Lower Palace housed the “ Etkar André ” polytechnic and, after the fall of the Wall, a grammar school . School operations ceased in 2006.

The Lower Palace, including the courtyard buildings and park directly on the water, was for sale for a number of years. In April 2014, a real estate company from Cologne planned to buy the area at the Untere Schloss Mirow and to set up a training and holiday center as well as guest rooms and restaurants there together with the Cöllnische Foundation. According to a traffic report, the ensemble of buildings (main building, outbuildings and barn) was worth around 310,000 euros at that time. The plans were later discarded for reasons unknown.

In September 2017, a group of investors led by Clemens Adam, Gerhard Jung and Andreas Krause from Immoundplan Projektgesellschaft mbH from Freigericht (Hesse) and the architects Krause Architects from London presented a redevelopment plan for the area. This provides for an investment of 30 million euros for an upscale hotel complex. a. provides a swimming pool, restaurant, conference and banquet hall, suites, a sculpture park, jetties, a wellness and gymnastics area, apartments, holiday homes, a bathing area and a castle terrace. With the approval of the Mirow city council, construction is expected to start in mid-2018. ^[outdated]

Lower castle in Mühlenstrasse
Gable field of the lower castle
Lower castle on a 19th century postcard

The park and the island of love

The tomb of Adolf Friedrich VI.

Around the castle, the island houses the small castle park. Almost nothing has been preserved from the original baroque garden that surrounded Mirow Castle. Today's park is designed in the style of English landscape gardens . The tomb of Adolf Friedrich VI is located on the "Love Island" . , the last Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. He died of suicide in February 1918 and was therefore not buried in the royal crypt.