Hohen Luckow Manor

Hohen Luckow Manor House is a manor house in the village of Hohen Luckow, part of the Bölkow district in the municipality of Satow in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The entire complex consists of the manor house, outbuildings, the landscape park, and the surrounding lands.

The manor house of the estate was built in 1707 by Christoph von Bassewitz. From 1810, the estate changed hands several times until it came into the possession of the von Brocken family in 1840. A famous member of this family was Carl-Friedrich von Langen, who won Olympic gold in dressage in 1928. The estate was a feudal estate until 1918 and belonged to the knighthood in the district of the knightly office of Bukow near Bad Doberan in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In 1888, the associated agricultural area was 1,072 hectares, and there were 4 peasant farms in hereditary lease and a mill on the estate. This made the estate one of the largest agricultural enterprises in the country.

In 1945, the property was expropriated and nationalized with its conversion into a state-owned farm. The manor house served as the administrative building of the estate. At that time, the estate managed 2,400 hectares of cultivated land with 265 employees, in addition to large stocks of cows, beef cattle, fattening pigs, sheep, and horses. After the reunification, the property returned to private ownership in 1994. The soil around the manor house is very fertile and is still used for agriculture today. Today, the size is again 800 hectares of arable land, although a much larger area is cultivated through additional leases. The focus of agriculture is on milk production and arable farming.

Even during GDR times, the house was a protected monument and was extensively restored with state funds. These works continued after the reunification. The manor house is famous for its Knight's Hall and is used for events, including those of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival. Some rooms of the manor house can be rented.

In 1994, the entrepreneur Adolf Merckle acquired the estate and had it extensively restored.

Adolf Merckle, together with his wife Ruth and their niece Dr. Karin Holland, simultaneously took over the patronage of the Hohen Luckow Church and restored the house of worship. After the drainage and renovation of the late Gothic brick building, the Baroque pulpit altar from 1712 and the baptismal angel from that period were restored between 1997 and 1998.

Together with her husband Joachim Walther, Karin Holland has leased the estate from her relatives, the entrepreneurial Merckle family, since 1994 and has been managing the agricultural business ever since.

On June 6, 2007, an informal dinner took place in the Knight's Hall on the occasion of the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm 2007 (see also Group of Eight). Present were the heads of state and government of Germany Angela Merkel, France Nicolas Sarkozy, Italy Romano Prodi, Japan Shinzo Abe, Canada Stephen Harper, Russia Vladimir Putin, the United States George W. Bush, and the United Kingdom Tony Blair, as well as the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso.