Schloss Wolfsbrunnen

Schloss Wolfsbrunnen stands in a wooded area near the village of Schwebda in northern Hesse. Built between 1904 and 1907 in the Neo-Renaissance style, it replaced an earlier park created around the Wolfsborn spring. The spring still feeds a courtyard fountain designed by Kassel architect Anton Karst. The estate was commissioned by Alexander von Keudell, a Prussian chamberlain and district administrator, as a gift from his father-in-law, industrialist Oscar Henschel. The castle has served many purposes since it was completed in 1907. During the Second World War it became a military hospital, and in 1945 it housed displaced children under UNRRA. From 1947 it sheltered returning prisoners of war and hosted a key conference of the Evangelical Church’s diaconal works. Later it was used as a miners’ convalescent home, a border-guard training centre and even an ashram for followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Today the building is a hotel with 53 rooms, a restaurant and six event spaces. The three-winged main block surrounds an honour courtyard and opens onto terraces with bastion-like parapets. A five-storey tower with timber upper storey and baroque cap rises beside the compact, square main palace. Inside, stepped gables, corner turrets and dormers shape the roofline, while the restored terraces and staircases recall the estate’s early 20th-century appearance.