Dretzel Castle

The place is of Slavic origin and was located in the Wenden district of Moricane, which covered the southern part of today's Jerichower Land district. At the beginning of the 10th century, the Frankish King Henry I built a Burgwardei (fortified settlement) here called Dritzele to secure the eastern border of his empire. His successor, Emperor Otto I, handed Dretzel over to the Archdiocese of Magdeburg. When his son Emperor Otto II confirmed this process in writing on June 5, 973, Dretzel was mentioned for the first time in a document.

In connection with the restoration of the Diocese of Merseburg, Emperor Henry II reconfirmed the Archdiocese's ownership rights to Dretzel in 1011. In the 14th century, the squires Henning and Werner von Kracht were enfeoffed with Dretzel. They are the builders of the first Dretzel Castle. They were followed around 1350 by the von Meyendorf family, based in Altenplathow, who owned the place until the 16th century. In 1553, Dretzel was acquired from Georg von Meyendorf in exchange for possessions near Burg by the archiepiscopal privy councilor Lippold von Arnim. Lippold's descendant, Canon Hans Georg von Arnim, sold Dretzel in 1617 to Georg von Angern of Stassfurt. On the occasion of an inspection of the drainage of the Fiener Bruch, which he had ordered, the Prussian King Frederick II stayed at Dretzel Castle in 1779. When the last male descendant of the von Angern family, Rittmeister Gustav Friedrich von Angern, died in 1790, his daughter Ferdinandine married the War and Domain Councilor Herrmann Ludwig von Stilcke. He had to rebuild Dretzel Castle after it had burned down in 1807 during the Napoleonic era. Stilcke's only son died at the age of 31, so Dretzel passed into the possession of his wife's family, the Prussian Major General Carl Heinrich von Ostau, through his daughter Adelgunde in 1835.

In 1945, the owners were dispossessed and expelled by the communists. The land was distributed to new farmers. The castle became the property of the municipality in 1948, which subsequently used it as a kindergarten, school, youth club, and dormitory. From 1952, the former estate areas were put to cooperative use. Following the political change of 1989, Hans-Fabian von Ostau succeeded in bringing the castle back into his family's possession through purchase in 1999.