Schloss Gödens, Water castle in Sande, Germany

Schloss Gödens is a water castle in Sande built with brick walls and surrounded by a protective moat system. The complex features connected buildings arranged around a central courtyard in the style typical of northern German construction.

Around 1517 Hicko von Oldersum and his son Haro began a water castle about 1.5 km north of the destroyed Burg Altgödens; a 1983 excavation by Dieter Zoller found a tower and hall later absorbed into larger wings. After a fire in 1669, Harro Burchard von Frydag rebuilt it in Dutch Baroque style, replacing the burnt southwest wing with two corner pavilions. In 1746 Gödens passed by marriage to the von Wedel family, who still live there.

The gate to the castle park, added in 1653, bears the coat of arms of the Frydag family, raised to the hereditary imperial baronage in 1646. The family line began with Franz Frydag, who married Almuth von Olderbockum, heiress of Gödens. Since 1746 the castle has belonged to the counts von Wedel through marriage, and they still live there.

The castle itself is privately owned and lived in by the Von Wedel family, so interiors open only during events: the Landpartie garden festival at Pentecost and the Christmas market on the first Advent weekend. The surrounding park is open Monday to Friday. The site lies between Dykhausen and Neustadtgödens in the municipality of Sande.

All buildings stand on a grid of driven piles and timber sills carrying a foundation of boulders, a construction detail revealed by Dieter Zoller's 1983 excavation. The castle island itself was enlarged with building rubble and fire debris, and the site once had three water moats, of which two remain.