Water Castle Tauchritz, Water castle in Tauchritz, Görlitz, Germany

Water Castle Tauchritz is a quadrangular baroque manor house on the northern edge of Tauchritz, near Lake Berzdorf. It was built on oak piles in marshy ground and is surrounded by water on three sides, with moats that kept the piles from drying out.

A manor here was first documented in 1306, held by Nikol von Neuershove, hereditary judge of Görlitz. From 1349 to 1422 it belonged to the Bieberstein family of Friedland, then to the von Gersdorfs; Georg von Warnsdorf bought castle and estate in 1611 for 25,000 talers. A fire in 1683 destroyed the castle and eleven other buildings, and Maria Sidonia von Warnsdorf rebuilt it in 1686/1687 on the old foundations.

The name Wasserschloss links the house to the water ditches that still surround it on three sides, built to keep the oak piles from drying out. From 1749 the estate belonged to the Joachimstein convent for noblewomen, and after 1945 it served as a school until it was abandoned in 1987.

The manor stands at the northern edge of Tauchritz, close to the shore of Lake Berzdorf, a flooded former open-cast mine. It has been empty since 1987 and is privately owned, so visits are limited to the exterior; the surrounding water ditches and the building itself are best seen from the village side.

The moats were not decorative: the house stands on oak piles driven into marshy ground, and the water ditches around it kept those piles from drying out and rotting. The water level was thus a structural necessity, not an ornament.