Hereditary farm Thedinghausen

The Erbhof Thedinghausen is a manor house in the municipality of Thedinghausen in the district of Verden, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It was built from 1619 by the Evangelical Lutheran Archbishop Johann Friedrich von Bremen for his mistress in the Weser Renaissance style.

The Bremen Archbishop from the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf had met Gertrud von Hermeling-Heimbruch here, in 1612, on the hereditary farm of her husband Heinrich Corlehake. In 1613, the year before his death, Heinrich bequeathed the previously feudal property to the sovereign, and in return Johann Friedrich appointed the lord of the manor as drosten of the districts of Thedinghausen and Langwedel. After his death, the archbishop built the manor house for the widow, his now lover, as a residence befitting his status. While the construction work was still underway, on 16 March 1620, Gertrud also died. It is probably due to their deaths that the conversion of the former hereditary farm, originally planned only as a pleasure palace, was expanded into an archbishop's country palace by the two outer luchtes and the addition of representative architectural ornaments. Since then, the two-storey brick building has been characterised by three protruding risalites or cutouts on the main façade. The middle one contains a spiral staircase, while the side staircase belongs to a slightly later construction phase, as can be seen from the construction seams. Portrait medallions show the same portraits of Gertrude and her lover over and over again. In terms of ornamental history, the individual forms are already at the transition from Mannerism to early Baroque. The interior design has been largely changed.

Wikipedia