Hirschfelde Manor

The Märkisch Angerdorf Hirschfelde was first mentioned in a document in 1268. It initially belonged to the Zinna Monastery for about 100 years. From 1450, the village was owned by the locator family of the Knights of Krummensee. Later, it changed owners more frequently. In 1586, Hirschfelde became a manor and in 1753 came into the possession of the Prussian Minister of Justice Levin-Friedrich von Bismarck, who bequeathed it to his son August Wilhelm von Bismarck upon his death in 1774.
The Deer Sculpture by Louis Tuaillon

Hirschfelde experienced a cultural heyday at the beginning of the 20th century through the then owner of the manor, the Berlin entrepreneur and patron Eduard Arnhold. He acquired the estate in 1904, then had the manor house rebuilt by the architect Paul Baumgarten and the park redesigned as a sculpture park. In 1907, he founded the Johannaheim in Werftpfuhl as an orphanage for young girls. The most famous student of the orphanage was the actress Brigitte Helm, whom director Fritz Lang discovered during a private performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream on the open-air stage in Arnhold's manor park in Hirschfelde and to whom he gave the leading role in his film Metropolis. Today, the Kurt Löwenstein Youth Education Center is housed in the Johannaheim. The bronze statue of a deer, created by the Berlin sculptor Louis Tuaillon, still commemorates this period and the art patron Arnhold on the village green with its ponds. The remains of the park are now listed as a historical monument.

Arnhold died in 1925. The estate initially remained in the family's possession, who had to flee after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. The estate then came into the possession of the opera singer Carl Clewing, who owned it until 1945. After 1945, the entire estate was settled as part of the land reform. The manor buildings became partly public property with different legal entities. For example, a kindergarten, after-school care, a crèche, apartments, and the community nurse were housed in the manor house. In the 1990s, the manor house and other estate areas were privatized.

Today, horse breeding is carried out in the manor house and in the adjacent stable facilities. Other listed buildings of the historic estate district, such as the former administrator's house, the distillery, and individual former tenant farms in the village, are also inhabited and partly used for agriculture. The striking and widely visible water tower has been privately owned for years and is undergoing renovation. The arable land around the village is increasingly being cultivated again by local residents.

The equally listed medieval Märkisch village church (choir square church with tower) from the 13th century belongs to the Gielsdorf parish and was re-roofed in 2015.

The Manor

The center of Hirschfelde has always been the manor. The manor house itself has been repeatedly extended, altered, and modernized by its various owners. Thanks to Eduard Arnhold, there was already electricity and central heating at the beginning of the 20th century, and a water tower supplied the village with water. The manor also included other buildings. For example, there was an adjacent farmyard, a stable for horses and a coach house for carriages and coach horses, its own schnapps distillery, the administrator's house, and a kindergarten next to the church.

In the village, there were several small farms, which were probably owned by small farmers. The buildings were constructed entirely in the regional style: from red bricks, with the foundations partly made of hewn fieldstones. A fieldstone wall surrounded the park. Later, the park was enlarged, and a second fieldstone wall was built for this purpose. Both, however, have now almost completely disintegrated. Allegedly, their stones were used after 1945 to build new residential houses in the village.

The Park

The park is largely thanks to the art patron Eduard Arnhold. Today, its former splendor can only be imagined. An old amphitheater has since been reclaimed by vegetation, and the park walls have disintegrated except for a remnant at the old forester's lodge in Akazienallee.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a fountain adorned the axis of the chestnut avenue with a view of a sculpture on one of the side wings of the manor house. The precious fountain was an excavation piece from Herculaneum near Vesuvius; today, grass grows in the sandstone basin, and the precious white marble railing is missing – as is the water. Many of the sculptures that Arnhold collected to adorn the park are either untraceable or destroyed; some have been in the possession of other communities for years – the question of ownership is often unclear. For example, a bull made of white Carrara marble, also created by Tuaillon, is located in the spa park of Bad Freienwalde.

Only the deer statue, which now adorns the village center in a new location, is still present in Hirschfelde itself. Originally, it stood centrally in front of the manor house. The Soviet forces took the deer with them in 1945 after the end of the war, when the village of Hirschfelde was deserted (the inhabitants had been evacuated immediately before the Soviet invasion), and placed it on the barracks grounds in front of the officers' casino at the Werneuchen military airfield. After German reunification, the city of Werneuchen returned the statue to Hirschfelde. The deer has since stood by the pond in the center of the village.