Schochwitz Castle

Schochwitz Castle in Salzatal, Germany, began life as a medieval fortification in the 12th century and was later refashioned as a Renaissance residence, reflecting its long role in regional noble, military and religious affairs. The site’s early medieval core dates to the 1100s and by the 16th century it had become the seat of landed families whose actions shaped local politics, worship and military service over several centuries.

The earliest surviving name connected to the place appears in the early 1100s, when a local lord called Odalricus of Schochwitz is associated with a castle there. In the mid-1500s the von der Schulenburg family took the estate into their ownership (dates given as either 1565 or 1573), and Levin von der Schulenburg (1528–1587), who served as cathedral provost at Havelberg, built the present complex by incorporating the older fortification. Work on the buildings continued into the early 1600s; between 1601 and 1606 the site was rebuilt in the Renaissance manner and outfitted with new defensive earthworks.

Religious life touched the castle in 1604, when Levin’s son, also named Levin and a committed Protestant, permitted a public theological disputation between the Lutheran Albertus Grauerus, then rector at Eisleben, and the Reformed superintendent Wolfgang Amling of Zerbst. The property passed out of the von der Schulenburg line in 1783 when Gebhard von Alvensleben bought the estate and left it to his youngest son, Johann Friedrich Karl II von Alvensleben (1778–1831). Johann Friedrich Karl II fought in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleonic rule and rose to the rank of Prussian lieutenant-general in 1829; later family members continued military careers, among them Hermann von Alvensleben (1809–1887) and Ludolf von Alvensleben (1844–1912). The family’s wider connections included Constantin von Alvensleben, who won the Battle of Mars-la-Tour in 1870 and undertook restoration of a chapel at nearby Krimpe.

In the 20th century the estate remained with the Alvensleben family into the National Socialist era under Ludolf‑Hermann von Alvensleben, identified with the SS and the Reichstag. During that period the land was farmed by Carl Wentzel, who was arrested and executed after the failed 20 July 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler; contemporary accounts link his arrest to a denunciation by the estate’s owner. After World War II the property was expropriated in 1945 under Soviet occupation, and the former owner left for Argentina in 1946. During the German Democratic Republic years the castle served at times as the seat of the local municipal administration. Following reunification it underwent comprehensive restoration and passed into private hands; a British buyer, Richard (James) Welsh, purchased and renovated the property in the 2000s (dates cited as 2004 or 2006), opened a therapy and holistic healing centre called the “Healing Castle,” offered it for sale in 2017 and rented it for weddings and events in 2019. The complex has also been described as operating as a hotel in recent accounts.