Steinhorst Manor

The manor house Steinhorst in Steinhorst in the district of Herzogtum Lauenburg was originally the manor house of the noble court of the same name and later an administrative seat. Due to this dual function, it mostly served only as an official residence; as the manor house of the Steinhorst estate, it was inhabited for only one generation in the 18th century. Steinhorst is considered one of the most important Baroque buildings in Schleswig-Holstein. It is currently in private ownership.

The Steinhorst estate was initially owned by the von Borstele family in the Middle Ages, who built two small moated castles on the site in the 14th century, which were already destroyed by around 1349. For the late 14th century, ownership by the von Steinhorst family is documented. The Steinhorst estate passed to the Dukes of Lauenburg in 1408, who elevated it to an Amt (administrative district) and later pledged it to the Duchy of Gottorf. The farmstead was destroyed as a result of the Thirty Years' War and rebuilt after 1648. In 1691, the Amt passed to the Gottorf minister Magnus von Wedderkop, whose son Gottfried had the present manor house built in the 18th century. He transferred Steinhorst to the Kingdom of Hanover in 1738, which, due to its location near the border, led to repeated disputes with the Kingdom of Denmark. In 1739, Steinhorst was reunited with Lauenburg; after the completion of the so-called unified state, the estate passed into the possession of the Danish king in 1815 and, after the war of 1864, to the Kingdom of Prussia. From 1876, the manor house housed the district court, and the estate was parcelled out.

After the Second World War, the manor house served to accommodate war refugees, and later it housed several apartments. The state of Schleswig-Holstein sold the manor house in 1973 to the cosmetics company Schwarzkopf, which used it as a training and guesthouse and had a small museum set up. Regular guests of the company included the former Minister President Uwe Barschel. In the 1990s, another sale took place, and the manor house has been in private ownership ever since. The building can only be viewed to a limited extent from the outside.