Steinbrück Castle

Steinbrück Castle is a moated castle in Steinbrück (Burgstr. 28), a district of the municipality of Söhlde in the district of Hildesheim in Lower Saxony. It is located on the B1/B444, which runs together here, on the Fuhse river.

The castle is located on the eastern border of the Hildesheim Diocese with the Duchy of Brunswick. Bishop Gerhard von Berg had the castle built in 1383.

The change of ownership in 1425, together with the jurisdiction, by the Hildesheim Cathedral Chapter was the basis for the Amt Steinbrück, which existed until the 19th century, with market and town rights.

Duke Henry the Younger of Brunswick was granted the territory in 1523 in the Quedlinburg Recess. His son Duke Julius (1528–1589), Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, expanded Steinbrück Castle in 1573. In 1643, in the Hildesheim Main Recess, Steinbrück returned to the Hildesheim Diocese.

The castle still exists today as a ruin of the former moated castle. Among others, the former Lübeck mayor Jürgen Wullenwever (1488–1537) was imprisoned there.

After the Second World War, many Protestant refugees and displaced persons from the Salzgitter area found a new home in the village. The castle's lands were divided into farms, and the remains of the Kehrwiederturm, a former gun tower, were converted into an Evangelical-Lutheran church in the 1950s. This was consecrated on the third Sunday of Advent in 1956 by Bishop Johannes Lilje and was named Kehrwiederkirche.