Osnabrück Castle

During the National Socialist era, the Secret State Police (Gestapo) was housed from 1938 onwards in the former riding hall in the western wing of the castle. In the cellar, they set up five detention and torture cells. Jewish residents of Osnabrück were imprisoned there during the November Pogroms in 1938 before being taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. Later inmates of the penal camp for foreign forced laborers at Augustaschacht Ohrbeck were also initially held here, as were political prisoners and Jews who continued to be persecuted. Since 1995, a memorial plaque on the west wing of the castle commemorates the Gestapo victims in Osnabrück. After the end of the war, the rooms were temporarily used as storage. In 2001, the association "Memorial Gestapo Cellar in Osnabrück Castle," with the support of the University of Osnabrück, opened the Gestapo Cellar Memorial with permanent and temporary exhibitions.

In 1953, the Adolf-Reichwein-Hochschule, a College of Education, was moved from Celle to Osnabrück. It took up residence in Osnabrück Castle. In 1969, all eight Colleges of Education in the state of Lower Saxony were merged as the College of Education Lower Saxony. The Vechta and Osnabrück departments were integrated into the new University of Osnabrück on December 5, with the law on the organization of the Universities of Oldenburg and Osnabrück proclaimed on December 3, 1973. It began teaching in the summer semester of 1974. The university administration has since been located in the castle. In addition, the subject units Music/Musicology and Protestant Theology are housed in the main castle building. The castle auditorium is used for larger events, concerts, and conferences.

The castle garden, with an area of more than three hectares, was planned in 1674 by the French garden architect Martin Charbonnier. He was also involved in the further development of the Great Garden in Herrenhausen. Sophie of the Palatinate reported on the work in the castle garden: "I get up every morning at six o'clock. Then I watch the soldiers enlarging our garden and surrounding it with a canal. It is not yet very beautiful, but I am pleased to see it progressing. I hope to end my days here; I will never be more comfortable." A water basin was created in the center of the symmetrical park with a central axis; a forest formed the southern end.

The castle garden was destroyed in World War II. In the 1940s and 1950s, the British armed forces had erected Nissen huts here for their soldiers; even their own cinema was present. In the 1960s, after their removal, the garden was redesigned by Werner Lendholt. In the castle garden stand four sculptures, presumably made around 1740 by a student of the Baroque master builder Johann Conrad Schlaun. They are allegories of the continents Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. They were brought from the former manor in Eggermühlen to Osnabrück in 1965, after having been thoroughly restored. In 1976, the sculptures were overhauled again. The Europe allegory had been knocked off its pedestal in the mid-1980s and was repaired in 1986. By 1996, the damage from pollution and vandalism had become so extensive that the sculptures were restored again.