Manor House Löwitz near Gadebusch

Remains of the castle are to be found in the park which nowadays is nearly impenetrable. Presumably the von Bülow family resided here as members of this family were large-scale landowners of  most of the properties at this time in Löwitz. In 1803 the estate was in possession of Ernst von Pentz. On August 3rd, 1855 the then estate tenant Joachim Heinerich Koch bought the Allodialgut for the sum of 120.000 Courant. (An Allodialgut is an estate which the owner can freely dispose of and bequeath to others. Land freely held, without obligation of service to any overlord.) (Courant = gold coin). The vendors of the property were the brothers Ahrens who had inherited it from their late uncle Ernst Ahrens who had died on April 5th, 1855.

It was probably Squire Koch who had the Tudor style manor house built or modified in 1856 according to plans of the architect Georg Daniel from Schwerin who originated from Rehna. Baron von Forstner, the son of the 1945 expropriated family von Forstner, stated that the weather vane with the initials J.H.K. 1856 still remained on the manor house until the political change in 1989. Since then it has been missing. After the death of J. H. Koch 1868 the daughter Sophie Koch came into possession of the manor house. She was the wife of the then captain, later major Maximilian Georg Görbitz. After his death on February 3rd, 1900 his daughter Friederike Marie Auguste Lucie Jantzen nee Görbitz inherited the feudal estate. Her husband Paul Jantzen had already managed the estate Löwitz as a tenant. The married couple sold the manor house on the 19th of June 1919 to Alfred Count von Soden for the price of 1.250.000,- Mark. His daughter Editha Baroness von Forstner took over the estate in 1932 together with her husband Paul Reimar Baron von Forstner who incidentally was a studied agriculturalist. They prevented the compulsory auction of the property. The estate was debt-free by the time the family von Forstner had to flee on July, 1st 1945.

After 1945 the manor house accommodated a kindergarten until 1969, then a hostel for apprentices and from 1972 on the kitchen of the local LPG (agricultural production cooperative), a social club, and assembly room as well as a room for pupils to do their homework in.

After the political change in Germany the manor house and the park fell to the Treuhand. ( Fiduciary. As of 1 July, 1990, the day of the currency change in the former GDR, all state-owned enterprises were converted into limited liability companies and stock companies the shares of which were held by the Treuhandanstalt. The most important task of the Treuhand was to privatise the assigned enterprises therefore acting as fiduciary.)

Once the building was emptied of tenants vandals smashed everything to pieces within three months. For seven years the Treuhandanstalt was searching for a buyer, eventually the manor house, which was by now in dire need of refurbishment, had to be auctioned off. However the plans of the new owner from Berlin failed to materialise and the listed manor house continues to decrease.

In 2018 the house will be auctioned again.

Keywords:

• Nordwestmecklenburg
• national heritage protection
• private property
• von Bülow family
• Georg Daniel
• von Pentz family
• Fortified Castle
• von Forstner family
• von Soden family
• Manor House
• Rehna Department