Neuhardenberg Castle

Neuhardenberg Palace is located in the municipality of Neuhardenberg in the district of Märkisch-Oderland in the federal state of Brandenburg.

When construction of the palace began is not entirely clear: possibly in 1786, the year of Frederick the Great's death, but possibly even earlier, because according to Theodor Fontane (in Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg, Volume 2), Frederick the Great is said to have remarked, "He's building a palace! He wants to reach for the sky!", whereupon Joachim Bernhard von Prittwitz is said to have foregone the bel étage and settled for a single-story three-wing complex with a high mansard roof. Carl Gotthard Langhans was involved in the interior design. In 1792, a monument to Frederick the Great was erected in the park according to designs by Johann Wilhelm Meil (1733–1805).

Joachim Bernhard von Prittwitz, Rittmeister of Zieten's Hussars, received the manor Quilitz, as it was then called, on April 18, 1763, as a royal donation in gratitude for saving Frederick in the Battle of Kunersdorf (1759). Shortly thereafter, work on the palace began. In 1811, Quilitz was sold back to the royal crown.

On November 11, 1814, King Frederick William III of Prussia gave the town and palace as a royal donation to his State Chancellor Karl August Prince von Hardenberg, who had been elevated to the rank of prince in June of the same year. From 1820–23, Karl Friedrich Schinkel converted the originally baroque palace in a classical style; the palace was extended by a second floor. The town and palace were renamed Neu-Hardenberg. The redesign of the adjoining landscape garden was carried out in 1821 by Hermann von Pückler-Muskau with the collaboration of Peter Joseph Lenné.

After the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg was dispossessed. This expropriation was confirmed in 1945 during the socialist land reform. Until the mid-1970s, the palace served as a school building, after which it was unused. In the 1980s, the palace was extensively reconstructed. In 1996, the von Hardenberg family received the palace and its park back. However, they moved their residence and estate management to the Lietzen Commandery and sold Neuhardenberg Palace with its extensive park in 1997 to the German Savings Banks and Giro Association, which founded the wholly-owned subsidiary Stiftung Schloss Neuhardenberg for the operation of the palace and event management. After extensive renovations, it was officially reopened on May 8, 2002, in the presence of Federal President Johannes Rau. In June 2003 and July 2004, two closed meetings of the red-green federal government under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder took place in Neuhardenberg.

In summer (during daylight saving time), the palace can be visited on Sundays. From March to November, exhibitions, theater performances, concerts, readings, conferences, and political and scientific debates on contemporary issues regularly take place in the exhibition hall in the Cavalier House East, in the Great Hall, in the Schinkel Church, and in the park.