Schloss Rauschendorf

Schloss Rauschendorf is a Baroque manor house in the village of Rauschendorf in northern Brandenburg. It stands on the site of a medieval knight’s seat built after 1220 by Gebhard von Arnstein to secure his lands. The present building was erected in 1723 for Count Hermann von Wartensleben and later enlarged in the 19th century. A fire in 1921 destroyed much of the house, which was rebuilt the following year in its current form. The house is worth visiting for its restrained architecture and layered history. The 1923 reconstruction by architect Ernst Paulus kept the original eleven-bay façade and added a three-bay central projection with paired columns and a Renaissance-style bell gable. Inside, the ground floor features varied oak parquet floors and ceilings with plain plaster frames, while the corridors are lined with cross vaults. The garden front has nine bays with a broad central projection framed by four banded pilasters. Visitors find a symmetrical manor set in a landscaped park. The entrance side shows the eleven-bay front with its central porch and bell gable above. On the garden side the nine-bay arrangement includes round-arched windows and a matching banded pilaster rhythm. The surrounding park, once a Baroque garden, was later turned into an English landscape park that stretches behind and to the right of the house.