Schloss Schlemmin: A Gothic Revival Manor House in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Kingdom of Prussia
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page9 sections
History
Schloss Schlemmin is a manor house in Schlemmin, Germany, rebuilt in the Gothic Revival style between 1846 and 1850. Its history reaches back to the von Thun family, who were established at Schlemmin by around 1320, when Heinrich von Thun served as councillor to Wizlaw III, the medieval prince of Rügen.
The von Thun estate and medieval castle
During the fourteenth century, the von Thun family built a fortified castle at Schlemmin. The castle was altered and rebuilt several times in later centuries. Its walls were said to be 1.8 metres thick, and the complex included a rampart, a moat, and a dungeon.
The nineteenth-century rebuilding
Major General Wilhelm Ulrich von Thun inherited the Schlemmin feudal estate in 1838. He converted his holdings into allodial property, meaning land held as private ownership rather than as a feudal tenure, and expanded the estate by purchasing surrounding lands. Because the old castle was no longer usable, he commissioned Eduard Knoblauch, a Berlin architect and building councillor, to design a new residence.
Knoblauch designed the present Schloss, and regional craftsmen built it under his direction from 1846 to 1850. The rebuilding campaign extended beyond the residence, renewing the estate farmyard, farm laborers’ cottages, schoolhouse, church, and other village buildings. King Frederick William IV of Prussia visited Schlemmin and stayed at the Schloss in 1853. After Wilhelm Ulrich von Thun died in 1862, the estates were placed in a family fideicommissum, a hereditary arrangement intended to keep major landed property together within the family.
Estate ownership and twentieth-century use
The property later passed through the families of Solms-Rödelheim and Stolberg-Wernigerode. Kuno, Count of Solms-Rödelheim, remained the principal owner until the postwar land reform. After the Second World War, the aristocratic owners were expropriated without compensation.
By 1939, the historic Schlemmin estate formed part of a larger complex centered on Altenhagen. The Schlemmin estate covered 1,553 hectares, including a separately leased 28-hectare area known as Schlemmin II. The wider holdings amounted to about 4,000 hectares and were administered by Paul Dievenkorn. Since Kuno Solms-Rödelheim had made Altenhagen his principal residence, the Schloss stood partly vacant during the 1930s and 1940s. A military hospital was established there in 1943, and refugees from former German territories transferred to Poland were housed there from 1944. After the war, 160 displaced people lived in the building.
During the East German period, the Schloss accommodated a consumer retail outlet, a school, and local administrative offices. From 1970, it served as a guesthouse for the agricultural production cooperative at Trinwillershagen. After German reunification, the municipality of Schlemmin initially owned the property. The TLG administered it from 1992 after unsuccessful management by a Berlin business group. A private investor acquired the Schloss in 1999 and comprehensively renovated it, establishing a hotel in the building. It has been used as a hotel since 2002 and was sold to the Stralsund physician Klaus-Heinrich Schweim in 2020.
Remains
The Gothic Revival Schloss
The present Schloss is a plastered Gothic Revival building that reinterprets medieval fortification forms. It contains four large halls and 35 rooms. Battlemented parapets crown parts of the building, including a crenellated round tower, while the projecting wings have stepped gables. The central projection of the main facade rises to a pointed tower roof.
On the village side, a water moat surrounds the Schloss and is crossed by a bridge. The lower part of the tower and the retaining wall beside the water, which supports the raised forecourt, are built from smoothed granite blocks. Two single-storey utility buildings in the same Gothic Revival style stand on either side of the entrance drive. The southern building is inhabited, while the northern building survives as a ruin.
Landscape park and approaches
Chestnut avenues and forecourt
The landscape park covers more than 20 hectares. It began as a Baroque park in the eighteenth century, incorporating existing beech and oak stands, and was transformed into an English landscape park during the nineteenth century. Two chestnut avenues run from the village to a forecourt before the moat, enclosing a broad lawn. A pump with a Gothic Revival metal casing stands on the forecourt.
Lime avenue and hospital memorial
A lime avenue approximately 200 metres long extends from the forecourt to the southern edge of the park. A memorial to people who died in the military hospital stands at that edge. Trees and shrubs of dendrological interest are marked throughout the park with identification signs, and the park is publicly accessible.
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