Fürstenberg/Havel Palace, Baroque palace in Fürstenberg/Havel, Germany.
Fürstenberg/Havel Palace is a two-storey plastered brick building with a saddle roof, built on the Mühlenkamp island north of the old town. Its horseshoe-shaped side wings enclose a courtyard about 20 metres across, and the three-storey central block has smooth pilasters and Rococo stucco. The Baroque gable carries the Mecklenburg coat of arms and the Danish Order of the Elephant.
Duke Adolf Friedrich III of Mecklenburg-Strelitz commissioned court architect Christoph Julius Löwe to plan the palace as a widow's seat for his wife Dorothea Sophie. The mills standing on the island were demolished in 1741 and rebuilt at the Havel bridge, in today's Bahnhofstraße. Largely finished by 1750, the building served Dorothea Sophie until her death in 1765; after a fire destroyed the town church in 1807, services were held in the palace hall for 41 years.
The palace was a widow's seat for Duchess Dorothea Sophie of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who lived here from 1752 until her death in 1765. After a fire destroyed the town church in 1807, services were held in the palace hall for 41 years. The baroque gable shows the Mecklenburg coat of arms and the Danish Order of the Elephant, reflecting the duchess's Schleswig-Holstein-Plön origins.
The palace stands on the Mühlenkamp island north of the old town, reachable on foot from the centre. Since 2020 the owner Terraplan has planned 43 suites and penthouses, with a shared Great Hall on the upper floor; access is tied to this conversion, so check locally before crossing the B96.
In 1920 Walther Rathenau, later German foreign minister, stayed here as a patient when the building was a sanatorium for nervous and internal illnesses, run from 1925 to 1939 by Viktor Emil von Gebsattel. After 1945 it held a school for children of the Soviet garrison's officers before becoming a hospital with a polyclinic in 1953.
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