Schloss Freienwalde
Early Classicist palace in Bad Freienwalde with a permanent exhibition on the life and work of the politician and industrialist Walther Rathenau.
Have only individual sections read aloud
About the museum
Schloss Freienwalde was built in 1798/99 to designs by David Gilly as a summer residence for the Prussian queen Friederike Luise in her widowhood. It is considered the first royal villa in Prussian architectural history and was furnished mainly in the Louis XVI style. The grounds include a palace garden of more than eleven hectares on the edge of the old town, a theater pavilion, a tea house, and the gardener's house.
After the palace fell into disrepair, the industrialist and later foreign minister Walther Rathenau (1867–1922) bought it in 1909. He had it restored in the spirit of its construction period, added a semicircular terrace with Doric columns, and used it for more than a decade as a summer residence and writing retreat. His guests included politicians, entrepreneurs, and artists, among them Gerhart Hauptmann and Carl Sternheim. In 1918 he transferred the property to a foundation company (Stiftungs-GmbH) he had established.
After Rathenau's assassination in 1922, his heirs gave the estate in 1926 to the then district of Oberbarnim, to create a memorial to him and to Old Prussian culture. Under the National Socialists and in the GDR, nothing in the palace, which had been looted in 1945, recalled Rathenau. Only in 1991 was the Walther-Rathenau-Stift gGmbH re-founded and a permanent memorial established. In early 2023 the nonprofit Michael Linckersdorff Stiftung took over the core area, with the palace, tea house, castellan's house, and palace garden, from the Märkisch-Oderland district.
Highlights
- Permanent exhibition on the life and work of Walther Rathenau
- Classicist palace by David Gilly (1798/99)
- Palace garden with tea house and theater pavilion
- Site of the democratic history of the Weimar Republic
Permanent exhibition
- Walther-Rathenau-Gedenkstätte – The permanent exhibition in the palace covers the life and work of the foreign minister murdered in 1922 and asks what lessons can be drawn from the Weimar Republic.
- Founded
- 1991
- Operated by
- Michael Linckersdorff Stiftung
Admission & discounts
| Adults | €4 |
|---|---|
| Reduced | €2Pupils, trainees, students, recipients of unemployment benefits (ALG I and ALG II), spa guests, people with severe disabilities, people doing military or civilian national service |
Free admission for members of ICOM, the Deutscher Museumsbund, and the Walther Rathenau Gesellschaft e. V.
Accessibility
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Kids & families
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Getting there & parking
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Amenities & dining
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Events & venue rental
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