Rittergut Schwemmin

Located two kilometres west of Parsow, acquired even before the main estate. Together with Parsow, Schwemmin formed the family's testamentarily secured fideicommiss.

Chronicle

1. 1765

   Friedrich Wilhelm von Gerlach acquires Schwemmin as hereditary property from Landrat Hans Joachim von Kleist on 17 January 1765 – before the later ancestral seat of Parsow; a farm in the village is added in 1772 (Brüggemann 1784).

2. 1779

   With the acquisition of Parsow, both estates are united under one ownership.

3. 1809

   Schwemmin and Parsow are designated an inseparable fideicommiss by testament. First holder: Carl Heinrich von Gerlach (1783–1860).

4. 1811–1819

   The emancipation of the peasants on the family’s estates can be followed to the day. The land registers of both villages name the same transaction: a settlement between the lordship and the peasant farmers, negotiated in 1811, concluded on 1 November 1816 and confirmed in 1819 by the Royal General Commission at Stargard. With it the farms passed into the ownership of those who worked them. The Schwemmin entry adds a decree of the Royal Government at Cöslin of 1 July 1827. The lord who had it negotiated was Carl Heinrich von Gerlach, who took over the entail in 1814.

5. 1852

   A Herr v. Gerlach of Schwemmin showed a meeting of Farther Pomeranian farmers parsnips "of unusual size" grown on spade-ploughed land; the Ostsee-Zeitung printed the question and the answers. It is one of the few glimpses into the estate's husbandry – the meeting, incidentally, concluded that carrots were the better crop.

6. 1860–1906

   The descent of the estate is thereby settled: Carl Heinrich died on 12 April 1860 (Chronicle of the Prussian House of Lords, 1885); the entail passed to his eldest surviving son Bogislav (1822–1874) and only after his death to August (1830–1906). By then August had long been a Landrat – since 1858 – but he was seated on Drosedow, which his mother had left him in 1858; the notice of his appointment accordingly calls him "estate owner of Drosedow".

7. 1877

   A land register under the new law was laid out for Schwemmin too, on the tenth of the month. The volume is headed "Land register of Schwemmin, Kreis Cöslin, Volume I, Sheet No. 1"; sheet I describes the "peasant farm lying within the estate of Schwemmin in the Fürstenthum district" belonging to the farmer and village headman Gottlieb Treptow. The volume survives: State Archive Koszalin, collection 26/143 of the Körlin district court, shelf mark 208, one hundred and one sheets. A note at the top right records that sheet 1 was transcribed and closed in October 1932. Fifty photographs are secured.

8. 1905

   Under the law of 15 June 1905 the parish and the estate district of Schwemmin, together with Parsow and Warnin, pass from the Köslin district court to the Körlin district court; the change applies from 1 July 1905.

9. 1906

   How far the property reached is shown by the electoral roll of the Köslin district of September 1906. It lists the landowners assessed in the flat country at no less than 225 marks in land and building tax, and gives in eighth place "von Gerlach August, owner of a knight’s estate, Landrat ret., Parsow". Four districts are attributed to him: the Schwemmin estate including the incorporated Stadthof formerly belonging to Köslin, the parish of Schwemmin, the Parsow estate and the parish of Parsow. This is the first evidence of the Stadthof as part of the Schwemmin estate district.

10. 1907/08

    Schwemmin, too, can be traced in the district gazette: inspector Wilhelm Botike takes out an annual hunting licence at the end of November 1908, the master joiner Friedrich Potraz appears in the same list, and a schedule of defaulting taxpayers names the schoolmaster Klatt and the farmers Vahl and Hardt. For the fourth quarter of 1907 the estate district owes 7 marks 32 pfennigs in health insurance contributions to the county treasury.

11. Anfang 20. Jh.

    The present manor house is built within a landscape park laid out in the first half of the nineteenth century; both have been listed since 1982.

12. 1919–1925

    The Köslin directories count 152 inhabitants for village and estate (9 October 1919) and 345 (16 June 1925); the post office is Nassow, registry office and administrative district are Parsow, the parish Altmarrin. The farm is run by the administrator Wilhelm Bottke. The county breeding regulation of 1925 records an approved breeding bull at Schwemmin belonging to the estate owner von Gerlach – the cow keepers of the village were allowed to use no other.

13. heute

    The park covers six hectares; an avenue of sixteen oaks is a natural monument, and the old German cemetery lies at the edge of the village.

14. 1945

    With the end of the war the Parsow-Schwemmin fideicommiss, founded by will by Ludwig Wilhelm August von Gerlach in 1809, comes to an end; Schwemmin had been in the family since 1765.