Schloss Parsow

Kluka, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Ancestral seat of the family's Pomeranian branch, acquired in 1779 by Privy Finance Councillor Friedrich Wilhelm von Gerlach. The palace housed a fideicommiss library of 4,000 volumes on Pomeranian history – one of the finest private collections in Hinterpommern. Paintings, porcelain and faience stood beside it; none of it survived 1945.

Chronicle

1. 1172

   According to Helmut Sieber, a manor at Parsow is attested in a charter of Duke Casimir I; the original site was probably a refuge fort protected by moat and palisade.

2. 1227

   First mention under the name Parsow: Duke Barnim I and his mother grant the village to Marienbusch convent (Pomeranian Charter Book I no. 242); in 1252 it passes to Hermann von Gleichen, later Bishop of Cammin.

3. 1252

   Bishop Hermann of Cammin takes over from Belbuck Abbey, in exchange for tithes and 82 hides near Mielno, the villages of Błotowo, Brodno and Parsowo in the Kolberg land – so the Koszalin museum catalogue on the town's history. The transaction stands in print: Friedrich von Dreger took the charter into the first volume of his Codex Pomeraniae Diplomaticus in 1748 as number CCXXVIII. It calls Hermann "Caminensis ecclesie Electus", the bishop-elect, and says where the three villages lie – "in territorio Colbergensi". The witnesses include Hermann’s predecessor Wilhelm, who had resigned the see, the abbots of Usedom and Stolp, and the provost of Cladessow. It is dated the Friday before the Sunday Invocavit, in the first year of the election.

4. 1255

   A warning sign for further research. The same volume of Dreger prints, as number CCLXVIII, a second charter about a Parsow: on 25 July 1255 Duke Barnim I granted the Cistercians of Kolbatz "the village called Parsow" and described its bounds – from the boundary of Babin into the forest Drenca which divides the boundary of Belitz, then to the boundaries of Woltersdorf and Gardna and back to Babin, with fields, woods, meadows, pastures, ponds, fisheries, streams and mills. In all probability a different place is meant: Kolbatz lies south of Stettin, the neighbouring villages named lie there, and the Kolberg Parsow had passed to the bishopric of Cammin three years earlier. The name occurs more than once in Pomerania; the two charters do not belong together.

5. 1658

   The von Parsow family dies out; the Great Elector enfeoffs Jakob von Heydebreck, castle captain, with the estate (Sieber erroneously gives 1558, Lorenz von Parsow).

6. um 1700

   Parsow is a seat of the von Bonins: Margarete Klara von Bonin "of the house of Parsow" (1689–1737) marries Wedig Bogislav von Kleist of Klaptow in 1713; in 1769 Henning Ernst von Heydebreck is born at Parsow (Gotha).

7. 1765

   Friedrich Wilhelm von Gerlach acquires the neighbouring estate of Schwemmin – the first Gerlach property in Hinterpommern.

8. 1772/1779

   Friedrich Wilhelm von Gerlach, Privy Councillor of Finance, acquires Parsow – according to Brüggemann (1784) "all of Parsow with the Dammbruch" by agreement of 7 May 1779; other sources give 1772 or a gradual purchase from 1764.

9. 1782

   Ludwig Wilhelm August von Gerlach has today's central block built.

10. 1782–1910

    The house is built in three stages: the central block in 1782, the north wing in 1860, the south wing in 1910. The two-storey building carries a hipped roof with oculi; above the semicircular central projection with the main entrance sits the family's armorial cartouche. Despite the classical touches given it by the last owner, the plan remains that of a baroque country house.

11. 1798–1816

    The estate supplied the Berlin house of the Rohrbeck cousins with its people. Old Bunde the servant came from Parsow, had already served the grandfather and in that service built up a fortune of four to five thousand talers. The peasant Lüttke at Parsow had travelled to Amsterdam as a manservant in the seventies; in 1816 young Leopold still spoke with him there and heard him talk with great affection of his long-dead master. And from 1798 to 1801 Adelheid von Gerlach, the daughter of the Parsow uncle and later Frau von Bassewitz, lived in the Berlin house. From this Leopold draws a conclusion in his records that shows how a nineteenth-century conservative saw the emancipation of the peasants: these "bondsmen" had fared better in old age than the free servants of the present.

12. 1809

    In the will of Ludwig Wilhelm August von Gerlach, Parsow and Schwemmin are designated a fideicommiss. The first holder becomes his son Carl Heinrich von Gerlach (1783–1860).

13. 1816

    The young Leopold von Gerlach still speaks on the estate to old farmer Lüttke, who forty years earlier had accompanied his grandfather as a servant on an official journey to Westphalia and Amsterdam. Another man from Parsow, the old servant Bunde, had already served the grandfather and had built up a fortune of four to five thousand Taler in the family's Berlin household.

14. 1843

    Bagmihl's Pomeranian armorial prints the succession of owners of Parsow – supplied by the Landrat of the Fürstenthum district, who had himself subscribed to the work.

15. 1860

    After Carl Heinrich's death, his son Bogislav von Gerlach (1822–1874) takes over the fideicommiss; he subsequently adds a north wing in Tudor style.

16. 1860–1874

    Bogislav von Gerlach (b. Parsow 28 May 1822), pupil of the Brandenburg Ritterakademie, ensign in the Guard Cuirassiers, discharged as lieutenant in 1840, first manages Schwemmin and succeeds his father as holder of the entail; married to Luise Karoline von Alvensleben (b. 1842), daughter of Major General Karl Johann von Alvensleben and Elisabeth née von Bassewitz. He dies at Parsow on 1 November 1874 (Leers 1914; Wikipedia).

17. 1866

    The official land and building tax assessment for the Köslin administrative district lists Parsow twice: the estate district measures 2,753.95 Morgen – about 703 hectares – with a net yield of 2,370.68 Taler and just under 227 Taler of land tax, the village district 331.79 Morgen with 261.05 Taler. The county was then still called Fürstenthum.

18. 1867

    The Royal General Commission for Pomerania concluded the settlement of an old right: the taking of clay from the peat bog at Warnin was abolished by order of 5 March. The farm concerned received in compensation three Morgen and one hundred and five square rods of peat bog, allotted by decree of 28 May. The transaction stands in the village land register and shows how the old common rights were redeemed piece by piece.

19. 1877

    A land register under the new law was laid out for the village: "Parsow. Volume I. Sheets 1 to 18", a leather-bound book whose printed spine label originally announced 23 sheets and was corrected by hand. Sheet I is headed "No. I of the mortgage book" and describes a peasant farm lying within the Parsow estate; the first registered owner is the village headman Martin Gottlieb Brunk, whose title goes back to purchase contracts of 1811 and 1816. The entries run to 1930. Sheet 14 carries the farmer Wilhelm Beilfuß and his wife Anna, and from 1928 the farmer Albert Beilfuß – the same name the district gazette gives as village headman in 1907. The volume survives, lies today in Poland, and is secured in fifty photographs.

20. 1874

    August von Gerlach (1830–1906), Landrat of Köslin district, takes over the fideicommiss.

21. Was in Koszalin liegt

    The Körlin district court collection in the State Archive at Koszalin holds three units for Parsow. Under shelf mark 156 the land register of the village, volume I, sheets 1 to 18. Under shelf mark 155 a separate "land register of the Parsow estate, volume I, sheet no. 1" – the sheet of the manor itself, that is of the family’s own property. Under shelf mark 1736 a roll of hereditary farms for the parish of Parsow with six sheets, from the years of the Reich Hereditary Farm Law. The village register and the roll of hereditary farms are digitised and secured; the sheet of the manor is still missing.

22. 1880/1881

    The neo-Gothic church of the Apostles Peter and Paul is built in the village. Its furnishings date from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, so they were carried over from the earlier building and survive to this day. The church patronage lay with the family. The diocesan gazette noted in 1881 that the patron, Landrat von Gerlach, had built the "very fine new church" at his own expense.

23. 1881

    On 27 August a copy is made for the Rohrbeck family archive from the "manuscript book in the Parsow library" – a family chronicle with notes on Friedrich Wilhelm, Christiane Sophie and Ludwig von Gerlach (now Gerlach Archive, Erlangen).

24. 1885/1886

    A painter is at work in the house: at Parsow a pastel of the twenty-two-year-old Asta von Gerlach is made, and the following year one of Fräulein Luise at Köslin. Eleven years later Rosa Petzel returned and took the same Luise a second time, by then married to a von Richthofen. Three pictures listed in her diaries; where they went nobody knows.

25. 1888

    A directory of estate owners records "Parsow village and estate district, 250 inhabitants" and assigns the place to the Körlin district court and the Köslin regional court. The court given, however, only fits the situation after 1905; the volume is probably later than its title year.

26. 1905

    The law of 15 June 1905 on the alteration of the Köslin, Kolberg and Körlin district court areas – given at the Neues Palais and signed by Wilhelm II and Chancellor Prince von Bülow – assigns to the Körlin court the parishes of Schwemmin and Parsow together with the estate districts of Schwemmin, Parsow and Warnin from the Köslin county. From the Kolberg-Körlin county the parishes of Rabuhn and Rüwolsdorf with the estate districts of Alt-Marrin, Neu-Marrin and Zürkow are added at the same time. The law takes effect on 1 July 1905; from then on the family estates of Parsow, Schwemmin and Rabuhn lie in the same court district.

27. 1906

    Carl August von Gerlach-Parsow (1883–1945), a cavalry captain, becomes lord of the estate; the south wing is built in 1910, and the entire ensemble is comprehensively redesigned in 1922.

28. 1907/08

    The district gazette shows how the village was administered. Administrator Clamp signs for the estate farm, the village headman Beilfuß for estate and parish; the rentier Neitzel and the castle gardener Runge also appear. For the Parsow official district, however, the county assembly declares in 1907 that there is neither a person suitable for the office of district head nor any way of providing for it temporarily – the previous owner August had died a year before and his son was only twenty-four.

29. 1912–1921

    A ferry long crossed the Radüe, and it had cost several lives. In 1912 the Danzkrug gymnastics club built a footbridge with the consent of the Parsow landowner, to whom the far bank belonged. When the straightening of the river – it cost some 400,000 marks and shortened the course by more than fifteen kilometres – cut off the bend the bridge crossed, he refused a second one. The people of Buchhorst laid one themselves in a single night at the old ford; it stayed until the drift ice tore it away in the winter of 1921 (Aus dem Lande Belgard, third year, 1924).

30. 1917/18

    Carl August has a memorial stone set up for his war horses in the Parsow forest ("Garde-Drag[oner]", "Osten – West", "Mein Kriegsfreund Lotta", 1914, 1917/18) – the "horse cemetery" about a mile from the manor that survives to this day (Głos Słupski, January 2005).

31. 1919–1930

    The Köslin directories show the place as the centre of a small administrative district: the registry office, the administrative district and the manorial district are all called Parsow, the post office lies at Nassow, the parish is Altmarrin. The registrar is the schoolmaster Pöppel, later Pagel; the head of the administrative district is the lord of the manor. Village and estate counted 246 inhabitants (9 October 1919) and 252 (16 June 1925).

32. 1922

    Carl August applies to the dissolution office for family estates in Stettin for a family resolution dissolving the Gerlach-Parsow entail; hearing on 31 March 1922 (Reichsanzeiger 13 February 1922).

33. 1925–1935

    Dissolution of the Parsow family entail – the file of the Prussian ministry of justice is in the Secret State Archives (I. HA Rep. 84a no. 44502); in 1935 a protected forest of the family is recognised (no. 44503).

34. 1929

    On estate land near Danzkrug, a good three hundred metres from the Radüe on a sandy rise, a prehistoric cemetery came to light. The graves lie only thirty to fifty centimetres deep, often two to six metres apart: stone cists of skilfully fitted field stones, each holding an urn of cremated bone under a cover slab. The excavators dated them to about half a millennium before Christ. The settlement history of the place thus reaches far behind the first charter.

35. 1931

    On 27 November a protective procedure under the Eastern Aid decree is opened for the estate (Ostsee-Handel vol. 12, 1932, no. 2). The register in the Ostsee-Handel lists Parsow fifth of sixteen estates in the group "Köslin-Land UE I"; the appointed trustee is the Landberatung Pommern G. m. b. H. of Stettin. The same group contains the neighbouring estates of Streckentin, Hohenfelde, Varchminshagen, Strachmin, Schulzenhagen, Tessin B, Wusseken, Schübben, Barzlin, Funkenhagen, Güdenhagen, Eckerndauß, Gieskow, Kolberg and Kasimirsburg – the crisis had gripped the whole county.

36. 1938

    The sheets record the words as well. At the binding this was spoken: "I have heard that our lord and lady have come out to the field. I will bind you with lovely ribbons, with lovely things. Many compliments I do not know how to make. I do it not for honour and [illegible], but for the honour of the lord and lady alone. I have bound with my coarse hand; may they undo it with their fine and tender hand. I have no longer time to stand, I must go to my work." The poem for handing over the wreath was not the same every year: it came, reworked, from a printed volume of festive speeches and poems from the publisher Robert Bardtenschlager at Reutlingen, and it began: "The lord and lady I now will greet with my most beautiful gift: I lay at your feet the wreath that I have bound."

37. 1938

    Another sheet preserves the verse with which the "old man" – the harvest crown made from the last sheaf – was handed to the owners: "Good evening to you all, since you are in this hall. We have stepped in; nobody asked me to, but I thought it over and have brought our masters this old man. This old man is plain and fine, but he is not of thistle and thorn, he is of flowers and ears of corn. May our masters be so good as to take this old man from us." Whoever bound the old man was called after: "Next year there’ll be a boy!"

38. 1938

    And what happened in winter: on Christmas Eve figures in disguise went through the village – in earlier days, the sheet adds. Among them the white horse, a frame under a white sheet, and the bear, a man wrapped in straw, with a shepherd, a couple as man and wife, a musician and one who carried the sack. The harvest dance was held in the barn; dancing off the wreath and crown was not the custom here.

39. Die Lieder des Dorfes

    Beside the questionnaires of 1938 the same Greifswald archive holds a second body of material: the Pomeranian folk-song archive. Two soldiers’ songs are recorded from Parsow, written down by Bruno Panke and preserved with their tunes – "Mädchen meiner Seele, bald verlaß ich dich" in D major and three-four time, and in G major "Infantrie sind lust'ge Brüder, haben frohen Mut". The first of the two was also taken down at Ganzkow, the estate the family had held for four decades and sold eighty years before the recording. From the neighbouring village of Nassow, Parsow’s postal address, twenty-four songs are recorded.

40. 18./19. Jh.

    The 13-hectare landscape park holds the von Gerlach family cemetery, with a horse cemetery beside it. Above the main entrance the house still bears the family's coat-of-arms cartouche. The oldest tree in the park is a yew of about 250 years; beside it stand three grown-together spruces of about 200 years and a copper beech and an ash of about 170.

41. 1930er Jahre

    The Pomeranian folklore archive of the University of Greifswald records nineteen items from Parsow – beginning of harvest, harvest festival and harvest dance, binding rhymes, barrel riding, Easter customs, the Whitsun dove, midsummer fires, Shrovetide, children's verses and counting rhymes, Pomeranian games such as barrel-striking –, all under the name Karl Wille (Digital Library of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern).

42. 1938

    What the village looked like is recorded in a questionnaire of the Greifswald folklore archive, returned on 6 April. It was filled in by the schoolmaster Wille, born 1885, in the village since 1 April 1934; his informant was the forewoman Minna Feldt, born 1903 at Karnkewitz in the Schlawe district and living at Parsow since 1930. By his account Parsow is neither a pure farming village nor a pure estate village: beside the estate stand five farmers, a sixth has leased out and lives as a childless pensioner, and the Danzkrug, the only inn on the high road from Körlin to Köslin and belonging to the estate, is leased out as well. No outside harvest workers come into the village.

43. 1938

    The same sheets record what happened in the village at harvest. The "binding" was kept only at the manor: when the owner and the inspector came out to the field for the first time, the regular farm girl bound them with a posy and a silk ribbon, and both bought themselves free with money; the ransom was shared out equally among the girls and the coachmen. No "old man" or harvest crown rode in on the last waggon, only a figure bound from stalks and dressed with flowers. The harvest feast was called Kranzköst and fell on a Saturday once the potatoes were out: four musicians to open it, a procession with two coachmen carrying the crown, and small posies of cornflowers and ears of corn that the village called Krieken.

44. 1938

    Easter began early and roughly. On Easter morning the children of Parsow went "stieping": they came to the beds with birch twigs, young small leaves still on them, lifted the covers and struck the bare feet until they were given something. At Shrovetide this was not done – the sheet distinguishes the two expressly. Of the old Easter customs the schoolmaster names two as still alive: fetching Easter water and watching the sun dance.

45. 1938

    At Shrovetide masked figures went through the village. One of them the sheet describes exactly: the bear, a lad covered in sacking and stitched over. There was no wooden fork for the gifts and no decorated rod; the collecting was done otherwise. The course of it stands in five words: accordion, dance, ringing, food and money. No verses were recited. At the children’s festival, on the other hand, the children knocked a wooden bird from its pole – Taubenstechen, dove-sticking, is the name of the game in Parsow.

46. 1938

    What the schoolmaster denies is telling too. Barrel-riding and barrel-beating: no. Whitsun dove-throwing: no. Games with the Trünnel, the Kuhsöög, the Hammeldebuff, the catching games with geese and ducks: not known. The sheet for counting-out rhymes stayed empty, and the only children’s verse written down is the Hoppe-hoppe-Reiter. Asked about anciently inherited solstice fires, he answers across both columns with four words: "only in the Third Reich". The fire that burned in the village in 1938 was thus no old one, and the man filling in the form says so rather than confirming it.

47. um 1939

    The estate covers 727 hectares, the associated estate of Schwemmin 773 hectares; the family held the church patronage of Parsow.

48. 1943

    Evacuation depot of the Prussian State Library: inspection by Director General Krüß on 12 July, on 24/25 August 150 crates (parts of the union catalogue, subject groups) are stored, delivered by rail, rent 50 Reichsmark a month; looted in 1945 – "Parsow, belonging to the Gerlachs, is hit particularly hard" (Voigt 1995; Schochow 2003).

49. 1945

    After the invasion Soviet soldiers occupy the house. Nothing remains of the library; the paintings, porcelain and faience have been missing ever since. A state farm then uses the building as its offices.

50. 1945/1946

    A "commission for the protection of books" gathers about 60,000 German volumes in the Köslin district from school libraries, manor houses and private collections. From December 1946 they are stored in the cellars of the Köslin museum and gradually distributed to museums and institutions across Poland; in January 1949 the curator Jakub Rokicki complains that the books are blocking the building. Whether volumes from Parsow were among them is not documented – it is the one known trail that could be followed.

51. 1945

    Occupation by the Red Army. The fideicommiss library is largely destroyed, though the palace building itself survives the fighting. Carl August von Gerlach-Parsow is abducted and killed.

52. 1964

    Entered in the Polish register of monuments (no. A-440). After repairs in the 1970s and 1990s the house has served as a care home since 1992; the furnishings of 1945 are lost.

53. 2000/2005

    Tessen von Gerlach-Parsow (1911–2007), Carl August's son born at Parsow in 1911, visits the manor several times – in 2000, aged 89, during a painting competition, in 2005 bringing childhood photographs and the family history; the house now serves as a care home (Dom Pomocy Społecznej) (Głos Słupski, June 2000 and January 2005).