Neuhardenberg 1348 to 2002
At an equal distance from the Lower Rhine and Tilsit, Neuhardenberg marks the approximate geographical centre of the former kingdom of Prussia. Quilitz, the original name of the village, was first mentioned in a document in the year 1348 and is derived from the Old Polabian word ›kvilici‹. This gives rise to the supposition that it was originally one of the many Slavic settlements that were founded in the Brandenburg area. As a customs post at a regionally significant three-way junction, the village played a somewhat subordinate role on the western edge of the Oderbruch region as early as the 14th century. Even at this time the trunk road joining the bishopric Lebus and the town of Freienwalde formed the axis of the ribbon settlement of Alt-Quilitz, whose 1.8 km common was the longest village common in eastern Germany.
Various noble families, such as the von Beerfeldes, the von Schapelows and the von Pfuels, alternated as lords of Quilitz on up to the late 17th century, until in the year 1681 the Electress Dorothea von Brandenburg, the second wife of the Grand Elector, bought the Junker's estate Alt-Quilitz. A few years later she transferred the ownership to her son Albrecht Friedrich, the stepbrother of the first Prussian king, Frederick I, and later Margrave of Brandenburg-Sonnenburg. Albrecht Friedrich had a geometric palace garden with a central moat installed. The construction of a new summer or hunting residence that he had planned for the site of the present castle got no further than a vaulted basement floor, however. It was only his son, Margrave Carl Albrecht, who in the years 1746-51 completed a solidly built official residence, a one-storey half-timbered building. Carl Albrecht also financed the construction of a massive village church, which was destroyed by fire in 1801, but whose walls are still part of the nave that was later rebuilt by Schinkel.
After the death of Margrave Carl Albrecht in 1762, the Prussian king revoked the feudal tenure from that family, only to award it, a few years later, to a deserving soldier, lieutenant colonel Joachim Bernard von Prittwitz, in gratitude and recognition for his meritorious deeds. In the Seven Years' War, von Prittwitz had persuaded King Frederick II of Prussia, called »the Great«, to withdraw from the danger zone at their own front line during the battle of Kunersdorf, thus saving the king's life.
At the site of the present-day castle, Prittwitz planned a modest, two-storey building with a baroque façade and three wings. According to an anecdote that Theodor Fontane relates in his travel book »Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg«, the king is supposed to have visited the construction site during a tour of inspection and commented on the building of a second storey with the words: »He sets his sights high; he's building a castle«. To avoid the reputation of being overly ambitious, the story goes on, von Prittwitz then dropped the idea of building a second storey and decided on a one-storey manor with a mansard roof. Von Prittwitz also had one of the first landscaped gardens in the English style laid out in Quilitz and had the very first monument ever to Frederick the Great erected in the park in 1792, where it remains today.
The son of the king's rescuer, Friedrich Wilhelm Bernhard von Prittwitz, began construction of the buildings adjacent to the castle around 1800 and for this purpose hired an architect who was largely unknown at the time, Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The period of the Prittwitz ownership in Quilitz ended in 1811 when the entire property was sold to the Prussian crown.
A new era began in 1814, when Karl August Fürst von Hardenberg became lord of the manor. Born in 1750 in Essenrode near Wolfsburg, the prince, meanwhile a reformer and chancellor of state, was awarded the Quilitz estate and other properties as a gift from King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia in recognition of his achievements as Prussian chancellor of state, which he earned in connection with the Stein-Hardenberg reforms. A year later Quilitz was renamed Neu-Hardenberg in his honour, by analogy with the primary seat of the family, Nörten-Hardenberg near Göttingen.
During the chancellor of state's time in Neu-Hardenberg, the Prittwitz manor house was reconstructed as the two-storey classicistic palace that is still preserved today; moreover, the nearby church was redesigned and consecrated in the year 1817. The plans for both buildings were designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. In 1821 the park, too, was redesigned and expanded. The plans for the park developed by the garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné were influenced by Hermann Fürst von Pückler-Muskau, a son-in-law of Hardenberg's.
Shortly thereafter Karl August Fürst von Hardenberg died in Genoa in 1822. His body was brought back to Neu-Hardenberg and buried in the mausoleum there. As he requested, his heart was preserved in the altar of the church.
The castle and the related properties remained in possession of the family. In 1921 Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg took over the Neu-Hardenberg estate. He later participated in the preparations for the attempt on the life of Hitler on July 20, 1944, by allowing, among other things, Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, Henning von Tresckow and others to use Schloss Neu-Hardenberg to work out the plans for the assassination attempt relatively undisturbed. If the plot had been successful, the count was designated to become chief police president in Berlin and Brandenburg, a key position under the given circumstances of a national crisis. Three days after the failed attempt, however, Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg was arrested in the castle under dramatic circumstances before he could attempt to take his own life, and was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where despite serious injury and grave danger to his life he survived.
The expropriation of his properties by the NS regime remained in force beyond 1945; his family was thus twice dispossessed, as it were, and had to leave the town. By order of the communist mayor Karl Linse, the family was refused permission to bury the count, who died in 1958, together with his wife in the family cemetery.
Although the main front during the battle of Berlin at the end of the Second World War touched upon Neu-Hardenberg – the decisive battle before Berlin took place at the Seelow Hills –, the village and the castle properties were only slightly damaged. An artillery shell had merely damaged an exterior wall, causing the ceiling of a room to collapse. On the other hand, the interior furnishings were almost entirely secured and removed by the Soviet Army. The Red Army laid out a military cemetery on the square in front of the castle for the soldiers fallen in battle and erected an obelisk with a red star at the site. The obelisk was removed in 1988.
In 1949 the town learned of its second renaming: it was to be called Marxwalde for the next few decades. Marxwalde was turned into a model village of the German Architecture Academy and served until 1957 as a garrison for the National People's Army of the German Democratic Republic, among whose members was the first German in space, jet pilot Sigmund Jähn, who lived in the village from 1960 to 1978. The state flying squadron of the GDR was also stationed here; it was at the disposition of the chairman of the GDR Council of State, Erich Honecker, and other key members of the political leadership. The Marxwalde airport was also intended as an alternative destination for hijacked passenger planes. On April 7, 1965, parts of the fighter group JG-8 took off from Marxwalde in order to prevent the session of the Bundestag planned for the Berlin Congress Hall though air-traffic noise and repeatedly breaking the sound barrier.
Twice Marxwalde was used as a setting for DEFA films: »Eine alte Liebe« and »Heimliche Ehe« were shot here. In 1988 the 22nd and last Festival of the Workers of the GDR was held in Marxwalde.
The village school, suffering from a lack of materials, took up its operations in the castle in 1945. In place of chalk, the children first used bits and pieces of the destroyed plaster casts from the Old Museum in Berlin; roofing slate from the damaged castle served as blackboards. The castle was used as the central school on up into the 1970s, later as a youth club and as a training room for weightlifters. Several apartment buildings in panel construction were set up in front of the castle, but were recently torn down. After many ambitious attempts at renovation beginning in the 1970s, the castle finally served as the educational building and workshop of the Cultural Academy of the district of Frankfurt/Oder.
Even before the German reunification came into effect, the community council decided in July 1990 to rename the village Neuhardenberg, this time without a hyphen. The vote was 9 for and 4 against the renaming - with one abstention. On October 22, 1991, the last will and testament of Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg was carried out: his urn and that of his wife were buried in the church at Neuhardenberg.
On the basis of the Settlement Contract the possessions were returned to the Hardenberg family in 1996. The family sold the estate to the German Savings Banks and Giro Association. Castle, park and adjoining buildings have been carefully renovated since then and the new areas for the hotel, gastronomy and events added. The responsibility for the cultural programme, the conference activities and the hotel operation were entrusted to the Stiftung Schloss Neuhardenberg GmbH, the sole proprietor of which is the German Savings Banks and Giro Association. After a preliminary opening in September 2001, Neuhardenberg has officially been in operation as a place for conferences, symposiums, debates, theatre, music, exhibitions and readings since May 8, 2002.