Heßberg Manor

In 1296, Betzigerode was first documented as a possession of the Lords of Löwenstein-Westerburg. Heinrich von Löwenstein-Romrod, whose castle was near Zwesten, received the place in 1523 and established a manor there. The laborers needed to work it were settled along the Scheren-Graben.

In 1661, the Betzigerode estate and village were owned by the noble family Hund, then in 1686, through inheritance, half went to the von Dalwigk family and half to a Major Eckhard, who had married an heiress of the Hund family. In 1713, Landgrave Karl bought the Betzigerode estate from the Lords of Sobiwolski and left it to his son Maximilian. In 1723, the estate was acquired by purchase by the widow of the former Landgravial Chancellor Nikolaus Wilhelm Goddaeus (1646-1719), Amalie Elisabeth née d'Orville (1676-1752). She had the manor house rebuilt, expanding a room intended for services and erecting a bell tower. After its completion, in 1733, she donated a church bell and valuable communion vessels. A sermon took place every two weeks. Through marriage and inheritance, the estate came in 1768 to Ernst Ludwig von Heßberg (1737-1796), a retired Hessian-Kassel captain, who had a beautiful small chapel built in 1773. In 1960, Eitel Reinhard von Heßberg sold the estate's lands to the settlement company "Hessische Heimat," which established resettlement farms there.

The former manor house on the former estate grounds above the village, a two-story half-timbered building, is privately owned and not publicly accessible. An English park with old trees extends to the west and south of the manor house.