Nienrode Manor

The Nienrode estate belongs to the district of Ohlendorf in the independent city of Salzgitter in Lower Saxony.

The settlement consists of the farmstead and some functional and residential buildings located southeast of it. It is located in the southeast of the city of Salzgitter on the district road from Ohlendorf to Gielde, about two kilometers southeast of Salzgitter-Ohlendorf and one kilometer southeast of the shaft settlement, which also belongs to Ohlendorf.

The village was first mentioned in 1191 in a sales document confirmed by Bishop Berno of Hildesheim under the name villa nigenroth. Further mentions of the place are known from 1194 as Nienroth, 1311 as Nigenrode and 1345 as Nigenrod. In 1224/1345, the current spelling Nienrode also appeared for the first time. The name is derived from the term "new clearing", with "new" referring to the older estate of Altenrode, located about 1.5 km away, which had been an outwork of Heiningen Monastery since the 14th century.

The root word "rode" of the place name suggests a foundation in the 9th century. In the Middle Ages, the place belonged to the Leraga (also called Leragau or Liergau) and after 815 to the Prince-Bishopric of Hildesheim. After its reorganization, the place belonged to the Amt Liebenburg from the middle of the 14th century. Between 1523 (end of the Hildesheim Diocesan Feud) and 1643, the place belonged to the Duchy of Brunswick, after which the area was again assigned to Hildesheim. In 1802, the Diocese of Hildesheim fell to Prussia. The Congress of Vienna created the Kingdom of Hanover in 1815, to which the territories of the former Diocese of Hildesheim were assigned. In 1866, Hanover fell to Prussia. After the founding of the district of Goslar, the estate belonged to it as an independent locality. In 1928, Nienrode was incorporated into Ohlendorf, which became a district of today's Salzgitter on April 1, 1942.

Initially, Nienrode was a village settlement. The then name villa nigenroth also points to this. The landlords included various families from the region, such as the Lords of Mahner, the Lords of Burgdorf and the Lords of Ohlendorf. From 1190, the nearby Augustinian convent of Dorstedt (founded in 1189) began to acquire parts of Nienrode. This process was completed by 1345 at the latest, so that thereafter the entire land ownership of Nienrode was in the possession of Dorstadt Monastery, whose lay brothers also took over the management of the estate.

Dorstadt Monastery had already acquired the ecclesiastical parish rights of Nienrode in 1316 and built a chapel here by 1322. Nothing is known about the further history of this chapel; there is only a note from 1614 stating that there was no longer a chapel at that time.

In the middle of the 15th century, Dorstadt Monastery ran into economic difficulties, which led to the pledging of the Nienrode outwork. The first tenant attested in 1459 was a hereditary cupbearer of the bishop, Asche von Cramme. From 1480, the estate was leased for the first time to the von Schwicheldt family, who managed the estate with some interruptions until 1717. Thereafter, Dorstadt Monastery again managed the estate on its own. Subsequently, the two-story half-timbered residential building with a mansard roof, which still exists today, was built by Provost Franziskus Vogt (1743–1754). From the tenure of Provost Johannes Schübeler (1792–1808), it is reported that a barn, a bathhouse, and several stables were built during this time. Around this time (1801), the estate included 459 acres of land and nine acres of meadows.

During the period of Napoleonic rule (1807–1813), Dorstadt Monastery was secularized, its possessions were confiscated and subsequently sold. In 1811, a Hildesheim merchant family acquired the Nienrode estate, whose descendants still manage the estate today. In 1839, the family built a brickworks and in 1857 a residential building for its workers. How long the brickworks was operated is not known. In the 1890s, a new barn and stables were built, and around 1900, new residential buildings for the estate's employees.

After the Nienrode estate had belonged ecclesiastically to Ohlendorf since 1913, it was incorporated into Ohlendorf in 1928 and thus now belongs to the city of Salzgitter.