Eckberg Castle

Eckberg Castle is one of the three Elbe Castles and is located on the right bank of the Elbe in Dresden, about 3 kilometers upstream from the city center. To the west of Eckberg Castle is Lingner Castle, and next to it is Albrechtsberg Castle.

With the acquisition of the Loschwitz vineyard Eckberg, the English merchant Johann Daniel Souchay decided in 1859 to move his main residence to the Dresden Elbe Valley. On his behalf, Semper's student Christian Friedrich Arnold erected the richly structured neo-Gothic castle building in place of the Klengel country house built on Eckberg in 1675.

Johann Daniel Souchay entrusted the design of his 15-hectare landscape garden to the Prussian head gardener Hermann Sigismund Neumann, who had been brought to Dresden a few years earlier for the creation of the gardens at the neighboring Albrechtsberg Castle and Villa Stockhausen (Lingner Castle).

At the same time as the castle, numerous outbuildings were built on Bautzner Straße, including stables, a coach house, a gardener's house, and a large neo-Gothic glasshouse.

In 1883, Consul General Arthur Bruno Wunderlich acquired the property. After his early death in 1909, his widow rented the castle to the Austrian confectionery manufacturer Josef Weiser, whose then 18-year-old wife Grete Weiser later achieved fame as an actress.

When the industrialist Ottomar Heinsius von Mayenburg bought Eckberg Castle in 1925, new life came to the castle and park. With the invention of toothpaste and the aluminum tube under the name "Chlorodont" and the founding of the "Leo-Werke", von Mayenburg had acquired wealth and was able to fulfill his lifelong dream. As a trained botanist and passionate gardener, he dedicated himself primarily to redesigning the park. Rock gardens, tulip and crocus meadows are his creation. For a few weekends a year, e.g., during the rose bloom, he opened his garden to the Dresden population.

After the expropriation of the von Mayenburg family in 1952, Eckberg Castle was used as a student dormitory, trade union school, and for the manufacture of electronic parts. After a renovation from 1980-1985, the Jugendtourist travel association of the GDR operated Eckberg Castle as a hotel.

In the course of the reunification, the castle and the Leo-Werke were reprivatized in 1995 and acquired by the Munich-based ARGENTA group of companies.

Extensive renovation measures enabled the opening of Eckberg Castle as an exclusive hotel in 1997.

The former Leo-Werke, now Dental Kosmetik GmbH, are again successfully producing toothpaste and oral hygiene products under the "el-ce-med" brand.

After a checkered history, the Munich-based ARGENTA group of companies took over the property in 1994 and had the castle complex and park thoroughly renovated in 1997 and expanded into a luxury hotel according to the plans of the Italian interior designer Danilo Silvestrin.