Gadow Castle

Gadow Castle is a former knight's seat in the northwest of the Prignitz in Brandenburg. It is located amidst the forest and meadow-rich landscape of the Löcknitz lowlands.
The castle includes one of the most beautiful and spacious park areas in the region, with dendrologically valuable stock. Among other natural monuments, the oldest oak in the Prignitz district is located there.

Gadow, along with other estates in the Prignitz, belonged to the ancient possessions of the von Moellendorff family, originating from the Altmark, who first appeared in documents in the Prignitz in the 13th and 14th centuries and soon acquired extensive land here. The village of Gadow became desolate in the 14th century, while a knight's seat was established here in the course of the 15th century. Nothing remains of the medieval buildings of this complex. After many alterations, a late Baroque residential building of two stories, a high basement, and a mansard roof was probably newly built around 1790, when Hans Georg Gottlob von Moellendorff (1758-1839) established his household here and also created those garden areas that were later expanded into a significant landscape park.

From 1804 to 1816, Gadow was owned by the famous Field Marshal Wichard Joachim Heinrich von Moellendorff (1724-1816), whose heir was his adopted son Hugo von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1806-1865). His father Daniel Theodor von Wilamowitz (1768-1837) had two wings of equal length added at a right angle to the existing Baroque building in 1818 and created the curved ramp leading to the entrance today in place of the former grand staircase. Two years earlier (1816), he also had the impressive classical mausoleum at the western end of the park built in the form of a Greek temple according to plans by the Berlin master builder Samuel Sachs. Here, the famous Frederician general found his final resting place. When Hugo von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff took over Gadow himself in 1829, the dendrologically extraordinarily interested man began to extensively redesign the existing park in the English taste with new facilities into a large landscape park with a menagerie, greenhouse, ice cellar, stables, forester's house, etc., into which these buildings were integrated and related to each other through sightlines. The charming surroundings of the castle with the Löcknitz, some ponds, and meadows offered the best conditions for this. In those years, Hugo von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff also established a famous thoroughbred breeding here, from which the legendary stallion "Scherz" later emerged, which Franz Krüger painted after its victories in England with the proud owner, who was elevated to the rank of count in 1857.

Finally, in 1853, the castle was extensively redesigned in the classical style with new staircases, rich stucco ceilings, etc. The mansard roof was changed to a mezzanine floor with a very flat slate hip roof. The result was the monumental three-wing complex still existing today with two main floors, a basement, and a mezzanine floor. Inside, after the conversion of the entire castle in the mid-1960s into an FDGB holiday home, no historical structures or even interior decorations have been preserved; the valuable inventory was largely lost in 1945.

From 1865, the extensive landscape park was enriched by Count Wichard von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1835-1905) with significant plantings of various tree species (especially conifers, rhododendrons, and Douglas firs), which made Gadow Park one of the most species-rich landscape gardens in the Mark Brandenburg. It is preserved and maintained (including a forest nature trail of the Gadow Head Forestry Office).