Melkof Castle

Melkof Castle Manor House is located on a lake in Melkof. It is now privately owned. With over 5,000 m² of usable space, the manor house is one of the largest Wilhelminian era buildings in Northern Germany. The building and park are located in the center of the Mecklenburg Elbe Valley.

The entire complex was first mentioned in a document in 1471. It passed by purchase in 1810 to the Hanoverian Minister of State Claus von der Decken (Minister). Around 1820, he had a classical manor house built by the architect Joseph Christian Lillie. The minister's great-granddaughter and daughter of Julius von der Decken, Adelheid von der Decken, married the Prussian Count Konrad Erich Rudolf von Kanitz (1844–1901) and inherited the family fideicommiss, which also included the Langenheide estate, according to Mecklenburg's inheritance law for unmarried daughters. They had the manor house converted into a large Wilhelminian era house in 1888 by the Mecklenburg-Saxon master builder Gotthilf Ludwig Möckel.

After the death of Julius von der Decken in 1867, his widow Anna Hedwig, née von Kleist (* 1829; † 1920), had the Protestant church building with crypt, which is still in use today, erected on the castle grounds, representing the special relationship between the castle and the church.

Only a few complexes in Northern Germany present such a combination of a Neo-Gothic manor house and a Neoclassical castle church.