Divitz Castle

Divitz Castle Manor House is a manor house in the Barthe valley in the Divitz district of the municipality of Divitz-Spoldershagen in the Vorpommern-Rügen district.

The manor house was originally conceived as a moated castle and is considered one of the most important moated castles in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It was built during the German eastward colonization in the 13th century. A Conrad (or Cord) von Krakevitz is considered the builder of the castle, but it was probably the Knights of Divitz who owned the castle complex until their extinction in the 14th century. In 1374, a family von Vitzen was named as owner, before that the family von Moltke. From 1480 to 1625, the family von Krackewitz owned the castle. They expanded the castle in the 16th century, creating the two-story north wing in the second half of that century. With the extinction of the Divitz branch of the family, the estate fell to Duke Bogislaw XIV of Pomerania. He leased it from 1627 to 1648 to his chancellor Philipp von Horn. After the extinction of the Pomeranian ducal line, it probably passed directly into the ownership of the Horns. They bequeathed the manor house and estate to Johannes von Lilienstedt, who was later elevated to the rank of count. He began the contemporary conversion of the castle into a baroque manor house. He had the east wing with two portals added between 1729 and 1743. The medieval moat was preserved.

Through further inheritance, the estate passed to the von Krassow family. In 1840, on the occasion of his accession to the throne, King Frederick William IV of Prussia elevated Baron Friedrich Heinrich von Krassow to the rank of count. Between 1820 and 1830, he had a landscape garden laid out south of the building by the Prussian court gardener Gustav Meyer.

In the following year, he bequeathed a family fideicommissum, consisting of the knightly estates of Divitz, Spoldershagen, Frauendorf, Wobbelkow, Gäthkenhagen, and Martinshagen. Established as a majorate, the title of count belonged solely to the head of the fideicommissum. After his death, his son Carl Reinhold von Krassow managed the Divitz estate. After the dissolution of the family fideicommissum, the estate passed to the family of the Counts von der Groeben from 1892 to 1945. In 1945, the owners were forcibly expropriated and expelled by the communists.

After the end of the Second World War, the manor house was used as a residential building. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it has been uninhabited. In the early 1990s, the property was sold by the municipality to an ownership company. After years of decay, the building was leased to a new interested party in 2001. However, the manor house remains empty and for sale.