Schloss Röderhof

Schloss Röderhof stands in the village of Röderhof, part of the Huy municipality in Saxony-Anhalt. The complex began as the Huysburg monastery’s farmyard in the Middle Ages. Most of the present buildings date from the 18th century, though two 15th-century inscriptions remain embedded in the walls. In 1822 Karl Friedrich von dem Knesebeck received the site as a reward for wartime service and built a romantic manor house east of the old farmyard. He reused stone and capitals from the abandoned Huysburg, creating a castle-like structure with two towers, battlements and limestone walls. The castle chapel was constructed from sections of the monastery’s late-Gothic cloister moved three and a half bays away. Its rib profiles and corbels match those in the surviving north wing of Huysburg. The chapel’s cloister wing has pointed arcades on square piers, some fitted with relocated vault starts. One bay is a ribbed vault, and a broad flight of steps leads up to a raised terrace. During the DDR years trees grew inside the cloister, nearly collapsing it; conservation work in 2003 saved the structure. After changing hands several times, the building served as a children’s home, a tuberculosis sanatorium and later a care home until it closed in the 1980s. Art lovers began partial renovations in 1987, and the first workshop exhibition opened in 1989. A whispering grotto with two Romanesque columns and worn capitals lies in the park that stretches west and south of the house. The entire ensemble is listed as a heritage building in the regional register.