Schloss Britz - History

History

The village Britz is first mentioned in 1373 in the book (Landbuch) of the Mark Brandenburg properties of Kaiser Karl IV (Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor). Until the end of the 17th century the country estate was the fiefdom of the knight family von Britzke. Due to the devastating consequences of the Thirty Years' War the family was forced to sell the estate to the Prussian crown in 1699. Later, king Friedrich I (Frederick I of Prussia) awarded his minister Samuel von Chwalkowski with the manor. Around 1706, Chwalkowski finished the new manor stone house, which would be the core of the building, even until now. In 1717 the manor was given the prestigious allodial title. In the 18th century the Britz Manor (Schloss Britz) was in the possession of Heinrich Rüdiger von Ilgen and the count Ewald Friedrich von Hertzberg, and other noble families. Ilgen owned the manor from 1719 until his death 1728 and served as minister for foreign affairs under different Prussian kings. From 1763-1791 Hertzberg was a leading minister of the crown cabinet and managed the foreign affairs under Friedrich II. (Frederick II of Prussia) used the estate from 1751 until his death as his country estate. He established one of the first silk farms of Prussia in Britz, and he hired the prominent painter Bernhard Rode to furnish the manor-house with a new décor of frescos and paintings honoring the life of a genteel statesman.

In the 19th century the estate came into the possession of private owners. From 1824 until 1857 the silk trader Johann Carl Jouanne lived in the manor year-round with his family, and rebuilt the whole house to suit his requirements. Nearly all of the older baroque decorations were destroyed and only some paintings of Rode survived. Also around 1840, the buildings of the farmyard were given their present appearance in the style of Italian country mansions following the example of the Bornstedt Crown Estate(Krongut Bornstedt) near Potsdam. Under Jouanne the first brewery was built on the farmyard to produce hard liquor from potatoes (Kartoffelschnaps). From 1880 to 1883 under the last private owner of the manor Wilhelm A. J. Wrede, a trader and producer of sugar and hard liquor, the manor house was given its final and current appearance as a little castle or château in the style of the Neo-Renaissance. The Berlin architect Carl Busse reshaped the house into a representative upper-class home with a new bath, stair tower, and a magnificent new interior in the new styles of the German elite. Today in the rooms of the museum, one can see furniture and objects from this time, like an original lincrusta wallpaper, which is rare in Germany and one of the few remaining Victorian crystal perpetual table fountains produced by J. Defries & Sons in London .

In 1924, the entire estate was sold to the city of Berlin. After World War II, the Schloss Britz served as a refugee house and from the 1950s on as a children's home. In 1971 the manor house and later the park and the remaining farmyard buildings were declared historic monuments and after the renovation from 1985 to 1988, the manor house was opened to the public for the first time. Ever since, the manor house has hosted many cultural events and has also served as a guest house for the borough office of Neukölln.