Friederikenberg

Friederikenberg is a former pleasure palace on the Hüttenberg near Badetz between Tochheim and Steckby. It was built in the principality of Anhalt-Zerbst and named after Friederike of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Only the main gate remains today beside the Elbe cycle path. The hill and traces of the garden planting have faded over time. The palace was begun by Johann August around 1700, probably to designs by Giovanni Simonetti. After his wife’s death in 1709 work slowed, but the Zerbst master builder Johann Christoph Schütze enlarged it in 1725–26. The whole complex was finished in 1741, yet by 1793 the fall of the Anhalt-Zerbst line left the site unwanted. Citizens of Zerbst tried to save it as an excursion spot in 1832, but the gift was withdrawn the next year and the buildings removed. Visitors now find the single surviving main gate standing beside the Elbe cycle route. The former Schlossberg is hard to pick out among the trees, and the old garden layout has vanished. The gate itself, once part of a grand entrance, is all that marks the spot where a Baroque palace once stood.