History

History

The former manor Britz came into the possession of Samuel von Chwalkowski, president of the Brandenburg-Prussian domain administration in 1699. He had the old half-timbered building replaced by a nine-axle, two-storey stone house.

Sigismund von Erlach took over the estate in 1705, had the estate park laid out and equipped with statues, goldfish ponds and an orangery. The following owner, Heinrich Rüdiger von Ilgen, planted the first Robinia (or pseudo acacia) in Northern Germany in 1719.

Under Ewald Friedrich Earl von Hertzberg, Britz Castle developed into a model estate. He introduced silk growing in Britz and implemented exemplary agriculture according to the latest scientific findings. One of the most modern village schools of his time was also built in Britz. In the representative rooms of the stately manor house in Britz, the painter and director of the Academy of Arts Christian Bernhardt Rode erected a monument to the Berlin Enlightenment on behalf of Hertzberg.

In the first half of the 19th century the estate experienced a new heyday by the bourgeois landowner Johann Carl Jouanne. He reconstructed all the farm buildings of the estate, including the steam-powered distillery for the production of spirits, extended the attic of the manor house on the garden side and remodeled the entrance area.

In 1865, the banker and manufacturer Wilhelm Julius Wrede acquired the estate and had the interior and exterior of the building remodeled in the neo-Renaissance style by the architect and monument conservator Carl Busse in 1880. In 1924 the Wredesche Erben sold the estate to the city of Berlin. The rooms of the manor house were rented to private persons and the manor was leased. From 1945-53 the house served as a refugee home and was then used as a children's home by the Neukölln district authorities.

After this use, Britz Castle was restored in only three years (from 1985 to 1988) and furnished with excellent, carefully selected furniture and paintings from the period of Historicism. Since 1989, the cultural programme has been guaranteed by the Kulturstiftung Schloss Britz.