Frederick the Great, while still Crown Prince, designed and moved into a restored chateau in Rheinsberg shortly after his 1733 marriage to Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern.

Here he experienced his "Rheinsberg Period", an era marked by regular correspondence with Voltaire, boisterous celebration in the company of minor philosophers and musicians, and the writing of several works of political theory, including the Anti-Machiavel.

Frederick also gave Prince Henry the great castle on Unter den Linden, which is today Humboldt University.

On the obelisk, Prince Henry placed 28 medallions honoring a number of prussian generals for military victories that Frederick had falsely claimed as his.

In 1870, the painter Eduard Gaertner and his family decided to leave the hectic atmosphere of Berlin and settle in Flecken Zechlin, a suburb of Rheinsberg - where he lived until his death in 1877.