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German Roots Trip 2003 - Contents

SEEKING OUR GERMAN ROOTS

Chapter III    
May 16 - 20, 2003

MECKLENBURG

Von Pressentin Family History - Schloss Bülow & Gross Raden

Monday, May 19 - Schloss Bülow & Gross Raden Outdoor Museum

Today was our last full day in "von Pressentin country" and we made the most of it.

After another hearty Meditek breakfast, we went to the Wessin hotel and settled up our bill. Four nights in a very nice room and hearty breakfasts each day cost us a grand total of 160 Euros. Chris told us not to worry about the cost--that it would be "most reasonable" and indeed it was!

Schloss Bülow

As we set out for the day’s adventures, there was a little drizzle. But, as we are learning, if you don’t like the weather in Mecklenburg, hang around half an hour, it might get better. Our first stop was to retrace our way to Prestin so that we could take a good look at the "von Bulow schloss," sited on the estate that adjoins Prestin. These two estates were closely intertwined--with much marrying between the families.

Bülow had another impressive entrance driveway, but little activity around the building. Apparently some repairs are underway on the house--we could see signs of painting. Overall, just eerily empty. A colorful crest over the entrance included the date 1746. The house must have originally been brick--where the rather dismal gray plaster was broken away, we could see bricks peeping out. In talking to a delivery man, we learned that the schloss is "going to be sold." (To Herr Reitman?) (or, more likely, by Herr Reitman?)

Our route today took us north toward Sternberg, once again. Along the way, near Badegow, we spotted a large flock of cranes in a field full of dandelions gone to seed. Farther along, we came upon what always seems an incongruous sight--bucolic fields of wheat or mustard and then boom! a huge array of windmills in the midst of the fields. This time, the vanes of these high-tech, 21st century windmills were painted with red stripes--perhaps to help warn the birds away.

Gross Raden

Our next stop would push back our family history even farther. In the vicinity of Sternberg is one of Germany’s most valuable archeological treasures: "Gross Raden" ("great wheel"). At this site, on the shore of a lake near Sternberg, archeologists have uncovered an old Slavic temple, its adjoining village and over 90,000 artifacts! The settlement has been dated to the 9th century. Gross Raden is now an outdoor museum and the early settlement has been reconstructed. Since the von Pressentins are assumed to be of Slavic origin, Gross Raden gave us a glimpse of what our ancestors’ lives might have been like--long before Christianity and institutions such as knighthood came into this northern land.

Like Williamsburg in the USA, museum staff are on hand to help visitors have a "hands on" experience. After entering the village through a palisade log wall and over a moat, we found various old buildings--some only partly finished so the visitor can see how these early people made good use of the materials at hand--reeds growing at the edge of the lake served as thatched roofs and as part of the "mud and wattle" walls.

And, of course, here were the school kids--off on another May field trip! Everywhere we go, we find ourselves amidst the school kids, off on their May trips.

It was fun watching the teenagers try to punch holes in leather with only a deer bone, or preparing seed cakes and then baking them on hot flat stones.

A few were even brave enough to eat the result of their baking!

The show piece of Gross Raden is a huge circular structure (the "Great Wheel") sitting out in the lake and connected to the village by wooden walkways. Sand from a far lake shore had been laboriously quarried and floated out onto the lake to create an artificial island. Ultimately, the Slavs created a high fortification with a deep depression in the middle. The archeologists concluded that this island was a used as a castle and religious temple.

There was one rather impressive pole in the center of the depression, with a carved head that looked very Viking to us.

Later, back at the restaurant in Wessin, we saw a series of pictures showing the development of the castle at Schwerin--also out in a lake. In its earliest form, that castle looked very much like this 9th century Slavic "Great Wheel"! Maybe this is how many castles evolved--first as a safe haven from predators (animal and human) and then, with time came the parapets, the towers, the drawbridges.

By 3 p.m. we finished our tour of the Gross Raden museum. It was a good long walk back through the pretty beechwood forest. There were informational signs along the way telling about the Wends and Gross Raden - and this "Bird Clock" telling you who's singing at 3 am and who waits for evensong.

We stopped in the village for a light lunch of "sausage and bread" which turned out to be pretty much a sausage and two slices of plain, white Wonder bread. When we asked for catsup, they poured a very runny sauce onto our plate--something like the honey mustard sauce that comes with McDonald’s Chicken Nuggets.

* * * * * * * * * *

Additional Information on Gross Raden

(from a University of Toronto website)

Open-air museum Groß Raden, Kreis Sternberg

[This is an excerpt from the website:( http://citd.scar.utoronto.ca/CITDPress/holtorf/7.13.html), which seems to have disappeared.) BH]

"Gross Raden is the location of a Slavic castle (Burgwall) and fortified settlement which was excavated between 1973 and 1980 by a team led by Ewald Schuldt. Schuldt wanted to conclude his splendid archaeological career with one last project about the Slavs, which at the same time would allow him to return home to Schwerin every evening. Groß Raden was chosen as a suitable site.

The excavations turned out to be a huge success. The well preserved finds and features resulted in many new insights into the life in and around a Slavic castle in two main phases of the 9th and 10th centuries AD. Following the excavations and Schuldt's retirement from the directorship of the Museum für Ur- und Frühgeschichte in Schwerin in 1981, an open-air museum and a separate museum building were planned and built. Ewald Schuldt remained in charge until his death in 1987; the museum building had been opened, in his presence, a short time before.

The open-air part of the museum, which covers 7000 square meters and was not finished until 1993, shows the reconstructions of a wall and gate, several craft workshops and houses, a temple, and an impressive fortified castle on a peninsula stretching into a lake. During the time of the Socialist GDR the museum conveyed at least two politically significant messages: it contributed in its content to a larger deterministic view of history, thus legitimising Marxist ideology, and it boosted in particular an awareness of the Slavic contribution to regional history, thus strengthening a slavophile identity among its visitors.

The museum ran into major financial difficulties after Mecklenburg-Vorpommern became part of the Federal Republic of Germany. Its (then) director Rolf Voss founded a charity and managed for a few years to keep the museum going independently. Since 1995, the Freilichtmuseum Groß Raden is again part of the Archäologisches Landesmuseum and now a major tourist attraction in the region, attracting 80,453 visitors in 1995. Special events, including experimental archaeology and performances of ancient crafts, are conducted every year during a 'museum week' in July, providing a very popular form of entertainment.

In 1995, the annual 'museum's week' took place in the context of '1,000 years Mecklenburg'; In 1996, an art-symposium "Erdwall-Hünenstein" was held during that week in the neighbourhood. In addition, there are various activities offered to school classes and other single events which take place in the museum.

The museum is a heritage-site where important parts of contemporaneous history culture become apparent. Part of the museum concept in recent years was, however, to prevent the site from becoming an over-commercialised visitor attraction, as the responsible archaeologists (notably Rolf Voss) felt that commercialisation would be detrimental for the educational aims of the museum, which is to a large extent based on scientific studies."

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