Qualla: Schwerin Castle

Schwerin Castle: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Витольд Муратов, CC BY 3.0. The parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern conducts its business in a building that, by long local agreement, is also occupied by a ghost. Petermaennchen — "little Peterman" — is said to stand no more than a few feet high, to dress in the cavalier fashion of the seventeenth century, and to take a dim view of anyone who comes to rob or damage the place. He has the run of a palace that looks less like a seat of government than like the castle a child draws when asked to draw a castle: gilded dome, turrets, a thicket of gables and chimneys, all of it stacked on a small island in the middle of a lake. It is easy to assume the whole thing is medieval. Almost none of it is.

Read more: Schwerin Castle on Qualla

Image: Витольд Муратов | CC BY 3.0

Schwerin Castle: The Island Was Always the Point

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ralf Roletschek, CC BY 3.0. The first record of a structure here dates to AD 973 — a fort of the Obotrites, the Polabian Slav people who held this lake country long before any German prince did. An island in a large lake is a defensive gift, and they took it. In 1160 the fort became a target for noblemen pu...

Read more: Schwerin Castle on Qualla

Image: Ralf Roletschek | CC BY 3.0

Schwerin Castle: John Albert Softens the Walls

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willem van den Broecke, Public domain. Under John Albert I, Duke of Mecklenburg (1525–1576), a fortress turned into a residence. Defensive necessity gave way to ornament and comfort, much of it in the terracotta that dominated North German building of the period, shipped in from Luebeck. Between 1560 and 1563 John Alb...

Read more: Schwerin Castle on Qualla

Image: Willem van den Broecke | Public domain

Schwerin Castle: A Loire Chateau on a Baltic Lake

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Schröder, CC BY-SA 3.0. The residence came back in 1837 to a building in poor repair and, to the grand ducal eye, embarrassingly incoherent. Grand Duke Paul Friedrich told his architect Georg Adolph Demmler (1804–1886) to remodel. A few months later his successor, Friedrich Franz II, stopped the work an...

Read more: Schwerin Castle on Qualla

Image: Richard Schröder | CC BY-SA 3.0

Schwerin Castle: Fire, Abdication, and Kindergarten Teachers

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krzysztof Golik, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the night of 14–15 December 1913 a fire of unclear origin destroyed about a third of the palace, taking the Golden Hall and the main staircase with it. Only the exterior had been rebuilt when the revolution of 1918 ended the grand duchy. What followed reads like an inventory o...

Read more: Schwerin Castle on Qualla

Image: Krzysztof Golik | CC BY-SA 4.0

Schwerin Castle: Petermaennchen's Rounds

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elisabeth S. Meyer-Lassahn, CC BY-SA 3.0. The ghost predates the current building, which is part of his appeal. Accounts of Petermaennchen do not agree: a long-bearded blacksmith in some tellings, a night watchman in others, a prankster in most. What the versions share is a job description. He rewards honest visitors and...

Read more: Schwerin Castle on Qualla

Image: Elisabeth S. Meyer-Lassahn | CC BY-SA 3.0