Manor House Stolpe near Anklam

Wartislaw’s sons built a church in Stolpe in memory of their father and interred his body in it. His brother, Ratibor I, endowed a convent in 1153 to promote the spread of Christianity for which his brother had died. This convent belonged to the Benedictine order and was the first one in West Pomerania. The buildings belonging to the convent reached at least from the convent ruins still standing today ca. 100 m in an easterly direction over the so-called “Amtskoppel”, the great meadow above the Peene. The foundations were dug out in the 1950s which were however later reburied. The convent stood until 1637 when the unified Brandenburg and Emperor troops crossed the Peene near Stolpe during the Thirty Year’s War and set fire to the convent, destroying it to its foundation walls. The over 300-year-old Ferry Inn, only a stone’s throw from the former convent, was in its time partly built out of stone taken from the convent ruins. You can still see the particularly large bricks dating from medieval times in the street-facing faҫade of the Ferry Inn - below and between the second, third and fourth windows from the left. They first reappeared during the building restoration at the start of 1998.

The whole of Pomerania became Swedish after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and Stolpe became a Swedish crown estate. A little later it was gifted to the Governor of Swedish Pomerania Major General Count Steenbock by the Swedish Queen Christine. Steenbock had a few rooms built in the burnt-out convent walls. After the Northern War West Pomerania was divided in the 1720 Treaty of Stockholm. While the northern part remained with Sweden, the part lying south of the Peene went to Prussia so that the Peene became a border river. Stolpe became the personal demesne of Friedrich Wilhelm I, the “Soldier King”. His great grandson King Friedrich Wilhelm III had to sell Stolpe to the Prussian State in 1807 as a result of the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, so that it became a state-owned demesne. Stolpe changed ownership several times in the following decades until it became a Bülow property in the 50s of the 19th century. However a Bülow had never managed the estate in person and the manorial lord seldom lived in Stolpe. The estate was mostly tenanted, and the tenants usually let an administrator, or a so-called inspector, manage the estate.

It turned out that during this time the Pomeranian poet Fritz Reuter was a frequent guest in Stolpe. Reuter was friends with the tenant Fritz Peters, who had the estate tenancy from 1853 to 1880 as well as with the Inspector Rudolf Wiencke and later Friedrich Knitschky. Reuter spent a lot of time in the Ferry Inn during his stays in Stolpe between 1853 and 1863. The Reuter bench, on which he is to have sat, is a reminder of Fritz Reuter using his time in Stolpe for the “Urgeschicht von Meckelnborg” (“Prehistory of Mecklenburg”). He gave Inspector Knitschky and the estate mademoiselle Caroline Neukirch a literary memorial in this work. Cast iron crosses in the Stolpe graveyard are a reminder of them today. This can be found on Stichstraße, which can be found by turning left on Dorfstraße in front of the Ferry Inn, next to the old village school (this is not to be confused with the small graveyard next to the Wartislaw Church which was reserved for the estate lord and his relatives). The introduction to the “Urgeschicht von Meckelnborg”: “Ick stah anno domini 1860 tau Kloster Stolp bi Anklam in den Goren un kik mit den Herrn Entspekter Knitschky oewer den Gorentun ... - bum! seggt dat unner em. – “Dunner nich enmal!” segg ick, “wat's dit!” – “Ja”, seggt hei un lacht so recht vennynschen, “Sei sünd so'n klauk Küken un weiten allens, willen ok en utgelihrten Ökonomiker sin, un nu weiten S' nich mal, dat Stolp en Kloster west is un dat hir unner uns all' holl un boll is? Hir geiht jo de unnerirdische Gang unner de Peen dörch.” [Extract from the satire written in Low German]

The last Bülow estate lord in Stolpe was the Royal Prussian Lieutenant Colonel Hans v. Bülow, who only served far afield from his property as his forefathers had. Hans Bülow only lived permanently in Stolpe after World War I. He and his wife Sophie, maiden name v. Maltzan, Baroness of Wartenberg and Penzlin, had no progeny so that there was no heir for the estate. After Sophie Bülow died in 1920 and the estate had no female leadership, Hans Bülow adopted the then 17-year-old Ursula v. Maltzan, Baroness of Wartenberg and Penzlin, a niece of his wife. Ursula Bülow-Maltzan married Kurt Stürken in 1926. He came from a Hamburg merchant family but had studied agriculture in Göttingen. Kurt Stürken renovated the debt-ridden estate and built some new farm buildings in Stolpe and Neuhof which you can recognise by the dates. The Bülow and Maltzan connection to Stolpe is also documented in the Wartislaw Church opposite the manor house. The Maltzan coat of arms with two hare heads and a vine is represented on the right window of the three windows behind the altar. A pointed arch to the right of this leads into the former manorial lords seating area. You can even still recognise the separate entrance which the manorial lord and his family entered the church and was bricked up when it was nationally owned. You can see the Bülow coat of arms to the left of that with its 14 golden balls on a blue field.

The Wartislaw Church was built in 1893 and replaces the old chapel which still stands next to the convent today and was then used as a mortuary. The key to the church can be borrowed at reception. Kurt and Ursula Stürken had one daughter and five sons between 1927 and 1940. Ursula Stürken mainly managed the estate alone during World War II since her husband was an officer and was almost always absent. She had to make the decision to flee alone as the Red Army came closer to the Oder in the spring of 1945. On 9 April 1945, only one month before the end of the war, Ursula Stürken fled to Hamburg with her six children.

Kurt Stürken, the second youngest son of Kurt and Ursula Stürken, only returned to the place in which he had spent the first ten years of his life on 3 January 1990. A little later he negotiated with the fiduciary institution about repurchasing the parental estate which had been expropriated by the Soviet Union military administration in 1945 and later transferred to a Stolpe nationally owned company for seed propagation. Kurt Stürken, after long negotiations, repurchased the old estate and ca. 150 ha. forest and meadows from the German State on 9 September 1994, with the aim of building a hotel and restaurant. A little later the rebuilding began and the restoration of the almost 150-year-old country manor which during DDR times had been used, amongst other things, as a boarding school for agricultural apprentices.

The GUTSHAUS STOLPE was opened as a Hotel and Restaurant on 1 December 1996. Kurt Stürken purchased the old listed property of the Ferry Inn in December of 1997 which was reopened in the summer of 1998 after being lovingly restored.

Sources:

• K. Weber, Beitrag über die Geschichte Stolpe in "Mitteilungsblatt für das Amt Krien", 11.2.1997
• Arnold Hückstädt, "Reisen zu Fritz Reuter", Berlin 1990
• Diverse Aufzeichnungen in Familienbesitz

Stolpe ist Bestandteil des Wochenkalenders 2011

Gutshaus Stolpe - Hotel und Restaurant

17391 Stolpe, Peenstraße 33

Phone: 039721-5500
Fax: 039721-55099
Email: infoSPAMFILTER@gutshaus-stolpe.de
Url: www.gutshaus-stolpe.de

Keywords:

• Manor House
• gastronomy
• Vorpommern-Greifswald
• Overnight Accommodation, Holidays
• national heritage protection
• private property
• village church / chapel
• von Maltzahn, Maltzan, Moltzan family
• von Bülow family
• von Steenbock family
• Friedrich Wilhelm I.
• Friedrich Wilhelm III.
• Fritz Reuter
• Weddings
• Holidays in a Manor House
• Anklam Land Department