Corselitze: A Historic Manor Estate in Denmark
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Denmark
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Danish
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page11 sections
History
Corselitze is a historic manor estate on Falster in Denmark, recorded in the thirteenth century and known today for its Neoclassical manor house and surviving landscape garden. The name, also written as Korselitse, is of Wendish origin and means “settlement of Chotel’s heirs.”
Medieval and noble ownership
The Danish Crown owned Corselitze in the thirteenth century. Around 1231, the estate was entered in King Valdemar II’s Danish Census Book, a major record of Danish lands and settlements compiled during the medieval king’s reign. In 1354, the local nobleman Jens Falster acquired Corselitze, beginning a long period of ownership by his family.
The Falster family retained the estate until 1600, passing it through successive generations. The recorded sequence names Jens Falster from 1354 to 1421, Laurids Falster from 1421 to 1460, Peder Falster from 1460 to 1500, Oluf Falster from 1500 to 1529, Peder Falster again from 1529 to 1556, and Jens Falster from 1556 to 1600. Axel Brahe then held Corselitze for three years.
Crown estate and cavalry district
The Crown reacquired Corselitze in 1603 in exchange for Eskebjerg on Funen. It was first used as a dower estate, land placed at the disposal of a dowager queen for her support. In 1718, the estate became part of a cavalry district, an administrative system whose revenues supported the provision and maintenance of cavalry forces.
The cavalry district was dissolved in 1766, and its lands were divided into ten manors that were sold at auction. Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel bought Corselitze and nearby Carlsfelt, apparently as a nominal purchaser for his friend and colleague, Major General Johan Frederik Classen. Classen took over the properties two years later.
Classen and the philanthropic trust
Classen was a wealthy industrialist with close connections to the Danish king and political elite. He had reacquired Frederiksværk, a foundry in northern Zealand that he had helped establish and had sold to the king in 1761. At Corselitze, he commissioned the present manor house and developed the estate’s gardens and associated buildings.
Classen died in 1792, after which Corselitze and the remainder of his estate passed to Det Classenske Fideicommis, the philanthropic trust he had established to hold and manage his property. The trust still owns Corselitze. It expanded its regional holdings by acquiring Fuglsang and Priorskov on neighboring Lolland in 1947. Since 1999, the trust has managed Corselitze’s farmland directly rather than leasing it.
Remains
Manor house and designed grounds
Corselitze Manor House
The present Corselitze Manor House was built between 1775 and 1777 as a Neoclassical adaptation of an older seventeenth-century house. Neoclassicism was an eighteenth-century style based on the forms and proportions of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The building has two stories beneath a black-tiled roof, a nine-bay front, and pilaster decoration. Parts of its interior decoration by Johannes Wiedewelt, an eighteenth-century Danish sculptor and decorative artist, have been preserved.
Landscape garden
Classen created an English-style landscape garden around the manor. It included orchards, a nursery, and avenues lined with trees. Portions of this designed landscape survive as part of the estate grounds.
General’s Summerhouse
At the edge of Corselitze Forest toward the sea stands the General’s Summerhouse, a thatched cottage built by Classen as a miniature version of Liselund on the island of Møn.
Estate farm
The estate also contains a farm designed by Vilhelm Tvede and built in 1866. Tvede was a Danish architect associated with the estate farm.
Estate landscape and Hesnæs
Corselitze’s estate covers 2,792 hectares and includes Næsgård, Bjerregård, Bellinge, and Herslebslund. Of this area, 645 hectares are farmland. Together with Fuglsang and Priorskov on Lolland, the trust’s regional holdings comprise 2,600 hectares of forest and 1,700 hectares of farmland.
The nearby fishing village of Hesnæs has reed-clad houses built after the Baltic Sea flood of 1872. Its harbor accommodates a small fishing fleet and leisure boats.
Nearby sites
