Höhnscheid Castle

Höhnscheid Castle, also Hönnscheid, is a Baroque castle near Wolfhagen and Bad Arolsen in North Hesse. It was built on the foundations of a monastery dissolved during the Reformation.

Höhnscheid Castle is located in the district of Bühhle, a rural part of Bad Arolsen, at 360 m above sea level, immediately north of the B 251 (Brilon-Kassel) between Freienhagen (a district of Waldeck) and Ippinghausen (a district of Wolfhagen). Approximately 3 km east-southeast, near Ippinghausen, lies the Weidelsberg (492.3 m above sea level) with the Weidelsburg. Immediately south of the castle is a large pond fed by the flowing Georgengraben. The farm buildings of the former estate are located northwest of the castle; to the east and north, there is a tree-lined park. Approximately 700 m further north in the forest is a family burial site.

As early as 1208, the first monastery buildings in Höhnscheid were erected by the brothers Volkwin IV of Schwalenberg and Adolf I of Waldeck. In 1230, this monastery was first mentioned in a document as a donation to Corvey Abbey. An Augustinian convent, subordinate to Aroldessen Abbey, was founded in 1235. In 1468, Count Otto IV of Waldeck zu Landau expelled the nuns due to their alleged moral decay and handed over the monastery to the canons of the Order of the Holy Cross in the same year.

In 1527, the monastery was dissolved by Count Philipp IV of Waldeck during the Reformation, renovated, and then used as a comital manor. An attempt to use it again as a monastery in 1630 failed.

In 1720, Prince Friedrich Anton Ulrich, who needed considerable sums of money for the construction of his new residential castle in Arolsen, sold the property to Colonel Johann Wilhelm von Leliwa. He commissioned the court architect Julius Ludwig Rothweil with the conversion and expansion. From 1720 to 1730, the architect gave the building complex, with its two-winged, castle-like manor house, its current Baroque appearance. In 1811, the castle was sold by the von Leliwa family to Rittmeister Schenck zu Schweinsberg. In 1871, Baron Wilhelm von Gaertner-Griebenow acquired the castle and estate. In 1846, he had married Dorothea Wilhelmine, the daughter of Christian Wilhelm Griebenow and owner of the Leuthen lordship, who received the Leibchel manor as a gift from her father in 1852. On November 10, 1858, he received permission to use the name von Gärtner-Griebenow. Through a settlement, Höhnscheid Castle finally passed to the district of Twiste. In 1960, the current owner, the Waldeckische Domanialverwaltung, bought the entire property.

After a renovation and fundamental refurbishment, Höhnscheid Castle has been used as a conference and retreat hotel and as a center for the Baltic Knighthoods since 1996.