Roggow Manor

The Roggow Manor House in the municipality of Rerik in the district of Rostock in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is a manor house built in the Tudor Gothic style from the mid-19th century.

About 60 meters east of the country road between Rerik and Neubukow, the Roggow Manor House is located in the middle of the village. 400 meters to the west lies the Salzhaff and 3.5 kilometers to the north is the seaside resort of Rerik.

The former Slavic castle complex was subsequently first mentioned as "Gut Roggow" in a document on June 28, 1345, with Hermann von Oertze van Rogghowe. However, it is assumed that the Oertzen family was already settled here much earlier. For centuries, the small, self-contained place was then a knight's estate of the von Oertzen family.

After severe destruction and devastation in the Thirty Years' War, the manor house was rebuilt around 1666 in the Baroque style. A plan of the courtyard complex from 1745 states that in addition to the residential house built in 1666 and the barn, the estate also included a stable, an outbuilding, two cattle sheds, and an arched bridge from 1736 onwards. The entire estate complex was surrounded by a water-filled moat. It could be crossed via a drawbridge, which was still in operation until 1835. A gatehouse adjoined the courtyard side. Of the former courtyard, today, besides the manor house, only the old pigsty located to the east - now a residential house - and a building located to the south still exist. The moat that surrounded the former moated castle has also disappeared, except for small remnants, making the original character of the entire complex difficult to recognize.

The manor house is of medium size. After several alterations and extensions, it was redesigned in 1850 in the Tudor Gothic style. In 1921, it was last rebuilt and brought into its current form, although its core is much older. The two-story plastered building with the shallow gable roof was rebuilt in Neo-Gothic style. Since the gables were removed after 1945, the facade appears somewhat asymmetrically structured. Of the twelve axes, the left one is pulled forward like a risalit and gabled with pinnacles. In the middle of the facade, there used to be a stepped dwarf gable.

The Roggow estate was documented as being owned by the ancient noble Mecklenburg knightly family von Oertzen from 1345 until its expropriation during the land reform in Germany.

Wilhelm von Oertzen, the lord of the manor and 1st chairman of the Herrengesellschaft Mecklenburg, which he founded in 1926 in Roggow Manor House, wrote in his diary, begun in 1931:

"The future of Roggow is more important to me than anything else. An individual is transient, a family estate has something imperishable about it, something of eternal value.

All my thoughts and efforts are dedicated to this one goal: to be able to leave Roggow to one of my sons as a secure ground beneath his feet."

Wilhelm von Oertzen's sons, Jürgen and Frithjof, both fell in World War II on the Eastern Front; he himself shot his wife Gerda and himself on May 4, 1945, upon the entry of the Red Army, thereby temporarily ending the 600-year family tradition of the von Oertzen family in Roggow.

In the period after 1945, the building served as a residential house for resettlers and later also as a sales outlet. Afterwards, it was converted and used as a children's holiday home by the LPG.

After 1990, Peter von Oertzen was able to repurchase Roggow Manor House and part of the estate park. Today, holiday apartments are operated in Roggow Manor House.