Schloss Britz

Today it is the headquarters of the cultural organization Kulturstiftung Schloss Britz and includes authentic reconstructed rooms from around 1880.

In 1997 the park was honored with the German Gustav Meyer Prize for the accuracy and historic authenticity of the reconstruction.

Due to the devastating consequences of the Thirty Years' War, the family was forced to sell the estate to the Prussian crown in 1699.

He established one of the first silk farms of Prussia in Britz, and he hired the prominent painter Bernhard Rode to furnish the manor-house with a new décor of frescos and paintings honoring the life of a genteel statesman.

From 1824 until 1857 the silk trader Johann Carl Jouanne lived in the manor year-round with his family, and rebuilt the whole house to suit his requirements.

The Berlin architect Carl Busse reshaped the house into a representative upper-class home with a new bath, stair tower, and a magnificent new interior in the new styles of the German elite.

Today in the rooms of the museum, one can see furniture and objects from this time, like an original lincrusta wallpaper, which is rare in Germany and one of the few remaining Victorian crystal perpetual table fountains produced by J. Defries & Sons in London [1].

Like the manor-house, the park was given its modern appearance with the winding path system, exotic potted plants and a fountain in the last decade of the 19th century.

This fable was transferred into a German version Die Milchfrau (The Milkmaid) by the author Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim in the 18th century.