Dahlen Castle

This developed into a feudal estate "Rittergut" granted by the monarch as a lien to various aristocrats who were bound in turn to maintain law and order and protect the key road between Oschatz and Leipzig.

Built in the late Baroque style, the castle featured over 30 rooms and some of the finest examples of trompe-l'œil, particularly in the Grand Stair Hall.

"the Great" of Prussia who at the end of the Seven Years' War resided here during the peace treaty negotiations taking place at the nearby Schloss Hubertusburg.

Very soon after extensive restoration work had been completed, on 20 March 1973, a fire supposedly caused by a defective chimney burnt the central part of the H-shaped castle to an empty shell.

This step was a death knell to the castle's future, as the small town had no means of rebuilding it and failed to apply for government and European Union subsidies which at the time were generous and might have been made available for the project.

The town of Dahlen would never be able to find such sums and is indeed not permitted to spend them from its small budget so one must question why ownership was ever transferred to it.

Later attempts by an American private investor to purchase the castle and restore it were blocked by the town's councillors and mayor, who would only sell the ruined buildings on a site up to the back terrace of the building and not an inch more, thus limiting virtually all possible uses for a new owner as it would have had no garden.

Donations have been applied to replace a weathered covering over the flat concrete roof which was built at the behest of the late Johannes Döhler, former head of the communist agricultural unit and member of the ZK (central committee of the communist government), a personal friend of Walter Ulbricht.

The castle ensemble consists of the main H-shaped building; a cavalier's house, due to the crescent shape commonly called the "Banana"; some remaining parts of the three-sided farm courtyard which were awarded to private persons in the 1945 Land Reform; and an Orangery that was converted into an agricultural mixing plant and altered beyond recognition by the communist LPG agricultural unit, sold after 1989 to one of its heads who is a town councillor in Dahlen.

The castle is unlikely to be rebuilt in the foreseeable future, given the stated desire of the majority of town councillors to maintain it as a ruin rather than rebuild it.