Lehnin Abbey

According to legend, Otto, while hunting at the site, had fallen asleep beneath a giant oak, when a white deer appeared to him in a dream, whose furious attacks he could only ward off by appealing to the Saviour.

Devastated during the Thirty Years' War, it was rebuilt under the "Great Elector" Frederick William of Brandenburg from about 1650 and became a summer residence of his first consort Louise Henriette of Nassau.

After her death in 1667, Frederick William encouraged the settlement of Huguenot refugees at Lehnin according to his 1685 Edict of Potsdam, which added largely to the recovery of the local economy.

Lehnin received access to the Havel river via an artificial waterway and became the site of a large brickyard, while the historic monastery premises again decayed and were used as a stone quarry.

The deaconesses adopted the Cistercian tradition; they were suppressed under Nazi rule, when the authorities seized large parts of the monastery complex for Wehrmacht and SS purposes.

The Vaticinium Lehninense was a work, famous in its day, which purported to be the creation of a monk of Lehnin called Hermann, supposedly written in the 13th or 14th century.