Greckenschloss

The Greckenschloss is a 17th-century manor house standing on a ridge above the village of Kochendorf, now part of Bad Friedrichshall in northern Baden-Württemberg. Built between 1599 and 1602 by Wolf Conrad Greck II, it was raised with three years of forced labour that provoked complaints reaching the Reichskammergericht. The two-storey building has a rectangular plan with two wings and overlooks two courtyards below: the Schlosshof near the church and the Meiereihof further west. A dry moat separates the main structure from the Lindenberg plateau to the east, where a tournament ground once lay. The Grecken family lost the estate after the Thirty Years’ War; the Ritterkanton Odenwald took it over in the late 17th century and turned it into an administrative office and school. By the 19th century the building housed a cigar factory, a liqueur distillery, and again a school. In 2005 the Denkmalstiftung Baden-Württemberg named it Monument of the Month, and from 2004 to 2010 it underwent full restoration before reopening as a primary school, music school and art school. Visitors approach along the ridge to find the stone manor with its steep red-tiled roofs and small dormers. Inside, classrooms and studios occupy the former reception rooms and halls, while the moat and outer walls remain visible from the paths that circle the site. The two courtyards below show the contrast between the formal Schlosshof and the more rustic Meiereihof, both framed by views across the Neckar valley toward the hills of the Odenwald.