Parchen Castle

Schloss Parchen is the name given to the former building, more accurately described by Dehio as the "Byern Manor House," which stands in the Parchen district of the city of Genthin in Saxony-Anhalt.

It is unknown since when there has been an estate in Parchen. However, a knight Rembert is already mentioned in 1276 as a castellan on a castle built around 1220. After several changes of ownership, Kurt von Byern acquired the remains of the by then destroyed castle in 1472. With him begins the over 400-year history of the Byern knight's estate, until it came into the possession of the von Schnehen family in 1922. With the so-called land reform ordered by the Soviet occupation forces in 1945, the estate was broken up and the manor house was transferred to municipal ownership.

Rudolph Johannes Heinrich von Byern laid the foundation stone for the manor house that still exists today in 1780. However, at that time, a simple single-story building, surrounded by a baroque park, was built over a three-year construction period. After a good fifty years, the Berlin architect Friedrich August Stüler was commissioned to extend the manor house, as it had suffered considerable damage during a large fire that had destroyed almost the entire village. Between 1830 and 1832, the building was rebuilt in the Neoclassical style and extended by adding an upper and an attic floor. Following the extensions, P. Clausen transformed the baroque manor park into a 3.5-hectare landscape park according to plans by the renowned garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné.

Today, the building, which was altered again around 1880 and 1920, presents itself as a simple two-and-a-half-story plastered building. The front is divided into two outer and one central risalit, which project only slightly. The ground floor of the central risalit is set forward by about one meter, where the round-arched portal is embedded. Above the portal, a balcony extends over the width of three windows. Overall, the facade is divided into thirteen window axes. The main building is covered with a tiled hip roof. On the west side of the main building, a lower two-story annex is attached, adorned with a flat-gabled central risalit. The Lenné landscape park is only rudimentary preserved. During GDR times, the western part of the park was leveled and built over with partly barrack-like functional buildings.

Since June 2006, "Schloss Parchen" has been back in private hands and has been undergoing renovation ever since. There are plans to establish a historical museum of the knight's estates in Jerichower Land and the surrounding area in the building.