Burg Bärwalde

Burg Bärwalde stands in Meinsdorf, Niederer Fläming, Germany; the first known builders at the site were Slavic communities who created an earthwork there in the tenth or eleventh century.

That early Slavic mound was reshaped in the thirteenth century as settlement and fortification patterns in the region changed. Who later founded the stone castle is not recorded with certainty. The text names possible founders as rulers from Saxony or Brandenburg and identifies Bishop Wichmann of Magdeburg as a candidate for early development of the site. By the fourteenth century local lords of Bärwalde were part of the retinue of the Margrave of Brandenburg, the family of Slawtitz (also recorded as Slautitz) appears in documents in 1366, and the site is first called a fortress in 1375.

Ownership continued to shift in later centuries. In the fifteenth century the von Wollenfels (Waldenfels) family held the castle as a fief. Around 1470 the property passed to a Leipzig family. During the seventeenth century the estate was divided in parts, and by the start of the eighteenth century five different owners held portions of the Bärwalder territory. In 1734 Generalleutnant Gottfried Emanuel von Einsiedel bought and reunited the villages that made up the estate. After his death in 1745 his daughter Sofia Dorothea took over the holdings. On 10 February 1780 Joachim Erdmann von Arnim acquired the estate for 98,000 Taler, and under his ownership the castle was adapted into a stately residence. A pictorial plate produced at Wiepersdorf in 1880 preserves a view dating to about 1784 and serves as documentary evidence for the castle’s appearance in that period.

Following the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the territory of Bärwalde became part of Prussia. After the Second World War the von Arnim family was expropriated and the property was placed under demolition authorization by SMAD Order No. 209. Local farmers removed building materials during that process. The demolition revealed a medieval tower built of bog ironstone; its masonry proved difficult to reuse and the tower remained standing. From 1996 onward the local administrative office initiated measures to stabilise and make the site accessible, and in 1998 the surviving tower received repairs and a new reconstructed roof. A small rest area and an information board were also installed at the site.