Besenhausen Manor

The Besenhausen manor is an agricultural building complex in the municipality of Friedland in the district of Göttingen in Southern Lower Saxony. Today, it lies near the tri-border area of Hesse–Lower Saxony–Thuringia. The oldest building structures of the former manor, with its baroque residential courtyard and park, as well as the estate farm built in the 18th century, date back to the Middle Ages. The entire ensemble is a protected monument. The estate with its surrounding land has been in continuous family ownership for 700 years. Today, Besenhausen is a popular excursion destination.

Besenhausen is one of three parts of the village of Niedergandern, which belongs to the municipality of Friedland in Lower Saxony. It is located about 2.1 kilometers northeast of the tri-border area of Hesse–Lower Saxony–Thuringia, directly northwest of the border to Thuringia, the former inner-German border, on the Leine river. Neighboring places, besides Niedergandern (1.5 km northwest), are the villages of Reckershausen (2.5 km north) and Kirchgandern (1.1 km southeast; in Thuringia).

The state road L 566 runs northeast past Besenhausen, which connects to federal highway B 80 via the Thuringian L 1001 roughly to the south, and to the northwest via connecting roads to the Neu-Eichenberg–Friedland junction of federal highway A 38, located in Hesse near Marzhausen; this leads through the nearby Heidkopf Tunnel. The nearest train station is in Neu-Eichenberg.

The Besenhausen property extends from the Pferdeberg (approx. 300 m above sea level) in the northeast to Hottenrode in the southwest. It is traversed by the Leine river, which is partly integrated into the park of the manor house and separates the districts of Besenhausen and Niedergandern. The Leine-Heide cycle path runs through Besenhausen.

People probably settled in Besenhausen already at the end of the first millennium. Besenhausen, whose name is interpreted as "house of Bezo" or "house of Biso" (a common Old Saxon given name at the time), has always been a border town of today's states of Thuringia, Lower Saxony, and Hesse. Thus, it was subject to the eventful and often warlike history in the Middle Ages and modern times up to the upheavals of the 20th century.

The history of the approximately 700-year-old manor was a constant struggle for existence between the claims of various powers: the Prince-Bishops of Mainz, the Welfs of Brunswick, and the Landgraves of Hesse. The estate was affected by the disputes between Catholics and Lutherans, between Prussia, the Napoleonic Kingdom of Westphalia, and the Kingdom of Hanover, and finally between the victorious powers of the Second World War. The centuries of archiepiscopal rule in Eichsfeld, which belonged to the sphere of influence of Electoral Mainz, were formative. Besenhausen belongs to the "historical Eichsfeld" even though it became part of Lower Saxony, founded in 1946.

Former Village

Although the first documented mention of the village of Besenhausen is found only at the beginning of the 14th century, due to the specific name construction, it can be assumed that the village existed 300 or 400 years earlier. The village, which no longer exists today, was probably located directly north of the present estate between Hottenrode, Niedergandern, and Kirchgandern.

In 1307, Besenhausen is first mentioned in a document as a possession of the von Hanstein family. According to this document, at that time the brothers and knights Heinrich and Lippold von Hanstein held the village as part of a fief of the Archbishops of Mainz, who ruled in Eichsfeld at the time. In the preserved document, the two brothers committed to transferring the great and small tithe to the altar of Saint Stephen in the Martinsstift in Heiligenstadt, then the most important ecclesiastical institution in Eichsfeld. The Hansteins were at that time Vicedomes, i.e., governors of the Mainz lords. As part of the donation, the existence of an allodial estate (Allod) of the Hansteins in Besenhausen was also confirmed. In another contract dated October 4, 1308, the Hanstein brothers were obliged to build a castle for the Mainz archdiocese in Besenhausen. Consequently, a fortified complex must have been built near the present estate. At this time, however, the Besenhausen Hansteins still lived in their ancestral castle, Hanstein.

Around 1360, the village of Besenhausen was abandoned by its inhabitants for the first time – at least largely – it fell into "ruin". The reasons for this are not known; epidemics, crop failures, or warlike influences could have been the cause.

It is certain that the von Hanstein family was able to prevent their own estate in Besenhausen from falling into ruin. In 1522, Johann von Hanstein became the first lord of Besenhausen who also lived there. From the beginning of the 16th century, the Hansteins no longer resided in their increasingly dilapidated ancestral castle, but had settled on their knightly estates – besides Besenhausen, these included Bornhagen, Werleshausen, Wahlhausen, Ershausen, Oberelle, and Henfstädt. At that time, however, the Hansteins had already lost the right to their own estate in Besenhausen, as it now belonged to the Landgraves of Hesse due to forced enfeoffment. With each change of generation, the feudal relationship between the Besenhausen Hansteins and the liege lord had to be renewed.

In a feudal letter from 1362, the property was named "our estate in Beßenhußen", and in feudal letters from 1546 as "Beßenhausen". In the statistical handbook of Landgrave Wilhelm IV, the estate was already referred to as "Besenhausen".

Country Seat of the Hansteins

In 1540, Johann von Hanstein († 1558) had a representative building in Renaissance style constructed. For this purpose, he had acquired additional land in Besenhausen from a Matz Conradt from Kirchgandern through exchange. Today, only a few relics remain of this building, which was surrounded by a rampart and moat.

Since the early 16th century, the Besenhausen estate repeatedly became a point of contention between the Welf office of Friedland and the Mainz chief bailiff in Heiligenstadt. Mainz, Hesse, and Hanover repeatedly tried to bring the stately complex of estate and lands under their respective influence.

Like most of the Eichsfeld nobility, the Hansteins had converted to the Reformation early on. In the subsequent religious wars, Hottenrode, the patron church of the Besenhausen family, played an important role. In the church, which belonged to the Duchy of Brunswick, Protestant Eichsfelders gathered for Lutheran services, thus escaping Mainz's religious supervision. In the course of the Thirty Years' War, the manor and village of Besenhausen were destroyed.

Reconstruction after the Thirty Years' War

The reconstruction of the residential buildings of the estate began under Hans Hermann von Hanstein (1610–1686) at the end of the 17th century. His son Dietrich von Hanstein (1644–1716) completed his father's work. The manor house again received a rectangular moat and rampart system – which no longer exists today. Dietrich von Hanstein's son Carl Friedrich von Hanstein built the farmyard from 1740 onwards. A village, which probably also existed (again) before the war, was not resettled and fell into ruin (again).

Since Carl Friedrich von Hanstein († 1724) died childless, Besenhausen fell to his cousin Liborius Friedrich von Hanstein (* 1678) from the Werleshausen line. The Protestant Friedland bailiff took this inheritance as an opportunity to have about three hundred armed men occupy the estate in 1724. A part of this troop remained there and thus held the estate against the Mainz forces for 20 years. Only in 1743 did the Electoral Government in Hanover and the Mainz Government of Eichsfeld agree on the future course of the border, which assigned the Besenhausen estate to Eichsfeld, but a large part of the agricultural land of the estate to the Hanoverian territory, and thus to the Friedland office. A boundary stone with the Hanoverian Wolfsangel on one side and the Mainz Wheel on the other still bears witness to this today. Even though the Besenhausen residents and the manor house fell back to Mainz, they were allowed to retain the right to the Protestant faith.

The "Zedler", the largest encyclopedia of the 18th century, described Besenhausen in 1751 as: ... a castle, manor and village in Lower Hesse, on the Eichsfeld borders, on the Leine, one hour from Witzenhausen.

Friedrich Ernst von Hanstein (1723–1807) had become the heir of Liborius Friedrich von Hanstein in 1737. In 1802, Eichsfeld fell to Prussia under Friedrich Wilhelm III. At that time, the then 79-year-old Friedrich-Ernst von Hanstein was lord of Besenhausen; he also owned the estates of Rommerode, Wiesenfeld, and the former Grone possessions in Friedland and Reiffenhausen. Hanstein was also the representative of the Eichsfeld knighthood ("Ritterschaftlicher Deputirter der Stände des Fürstenthums Eichsfeld").

In 1896, the grandson of the knightly representative Friedrich von Hanstein died unmarried, and 600 years of Hanstein history in Besenhausen with always male heirs came to an end. Even in his time, the Besenhausen Hansteins' possessions included the estate in Rommerode and half of an estate in Ober-Ellen. The Besenhausen estate now fell to Bertha, the sister of the last Hanstein owner, who was the wife of the scholar Levin Georg Freiherr von Wintzingeroda-Knorr, living in Göttingen. He was also district administrator of the Prussian district of Mühlhausen and thus found himself in a historical dilemma due to the possession of Besenhausen. In 1866, as a Prussian official, he had to pass on what he had learned as a Welf estate owner: the exact marching route of the Hanoverians, who were then defeated in the Battle of Langensalza during the German War.

From the marriage of his grandson Friedrich-Wilhelm Freiherr von Wintzingerode-Knorr (1893–1952) with Ruth, née von Marschall, the next inheriting woman in the history of Besenhausen, Sitta, emerged.

German Division and Reunification

After the Second World War, US military units occupied the estate. The demarcation line between the British and Soviet occupation zones, established according to the Potsdam Agreement of summer 1945, ran directly through the estate grounds: the manor house and courtyard would have fallen into the Russian sector, while the water mill and workers' houses would have fallen into the British sector. Most of the lands would have been in the Western sector. Without its land, the estate would no longer have been viable, and a demolition of the historic complex on the demarcation line would have been likely. On July 1, 1945, Russians and British moved in. However, Wintzingerode-Knorr was able to persuade the Soviet military administration to make an exchange. They shifted the border by several hundred meters to the southeast, and Soviet troops plundered the estate for three days.

Through the daughter of Sitta von Klitzing, née Freiin von Wintzingerode-Knorr, Besenhausen came into the hands of the Flechtner family in the 1960s, descendants of Ferdinand Gottlieb Flechtner from Langenbielau in Silesia – thus, the estate has been inherited three times in the female line after about 600 years of Hanstein family ownership.