Viktoriastift, Neo-baroque estate in Finkenbach-Gersweiler, Germany

The Viktoriastift is a three-wing estate built in 1919–1922 in neo-baroque style to plans by Ludwigshafen architect August Greifzu for merchant Heinrich Lieser. The left wing is a large barn with mountain-side high threshing floors, the right wing an administrative building with stables and a slaughterhouse, and the taller manor house rises above both. Its six-sided baroque roof turret makes up a third of the total height, and the veranda covers several hundred square metres.

Heinrich Lieser, born in 1891 to poor day-labourer parents in Finkenbach-Gersweiler, made his fortune as an ironmonger and bought about 120 Tagewerk of field there to build the estate, completed in 1922. Bankrupt in 1926, he sold it to the children's sanatoria of Bad Kreuznach, which ran an 80-bed recovery home. In 1934 the villa became an NSV mothers' recovery home; from 1943 an old people's and infirmary, closed at the end of 1971.

The name Viktoriastift comes from the Bad Kreuznach children's institution that bought the insolvent estate in 1926 and ran it as a branch home. From June 1934 the villa housed an NSV mothers' recovery home, and after 1943 the manor became an old people's and infirmary. Elderly residents slept in two large communal dormitories on the lower left of the villa, cared for by two deaconesses.

The estate can be accessed from the northern end of Finkenbach-Gersweiler and viewed from the outside. Visitors should know that it has been vacant since 1971 and is protected as a historic monument, so access may be limited.

The 1928 fire destroyed the administrative and stable building down to its foundations; it was rebuilt. In 1970 the home made headlines when its director was accused of mistreating residents for six years; she was suspended and the home closed at the end of 1971.