Vehlefanz Castle (Ruin)

Vehlefanz Castle is located in the Vehlefanz district of the municipality of Oberkrämer in the Oberhavel district, approximately ten kilometers northwest of Berlin.

The name Vehlefanz could be derived from the Slavic words "velij" = large and "vas" = beard.

Besides an artificially raised earth mound, today only the ruin of a tower with a small piece of brick wall from the 14th-century moated castle remains.

South of the village is an artificially raised hill (Bosselberg), which probably also contains Slavic material. On it stood an early German castle – presumably dating back to the time of the Ascania settlement. Whether this castle was the residence of the knight Buchard von Vehlefanz – son of the Spandau Vogt Albrecht – who was mentioned several times in documents in the mid-13th century, is unclear. Apart from the castle hill, no remains of this castle are present today.

The first documented owner of the village is Marquard von Lauterbach. In 1355, Kopke von Bredow acquired the village. By 1375 at the latest, the village was in the possession of the von Redern family. The Lords of Redern had a new moated castle built to replace the old – by then probably no longer habitable – high castle. Near the castle, in 1412, the Nuremberg Burgrave Friedrich VI. von Hohenzollern (from 1415 to 1440 as Friedrich I Elector of Brandenburg) defeated the Pomeranian Dukes Otto and Casimir.

In 1786, a new administrative building was erected to replace the moated castle. Stones from the former moated castle were probably used for this new construction. The new administrative building briefly served Napoleon as his headquarters in 1812.