Gut Vollenschier

Olaf Meister, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

The place he was named after. In the official gazettes and newspapers around 1900 Jakob von Gerlach appears as “von Gerlach-Vollenschier”, just as his cousin was “von Gerlach-Parsow” – and as with Plutowo it was a Kröcher estate, of which he owned a half and which he could not pass on. Here he lived as a widower, and here he lies buried.

Chronicle

1. before 1854
   before 1854

   The von Bornstedts

   Before the von Kröchers the von Bornstedts sat at Vollenschier. The Saxony-Anhalt State Archives keep a file “The Vollenschier estate of the von Bornstedt family” and a second on “boundary disputes between v. Bornstedt of Vollenschier and Staats” – Staats being the neighbouring village. The succession of the estate is thus traceable across three families.

2. the buyer

   Who bought Vollenschier for the von Kröchers is told by the same family history. It was Friedrich Wilhelm Carl von Kröcher, the Landesdirektor of the Altmark – the same man who owned Plutowo. The book lists his acquisitions in order: first Vinzelberg, Deetz and Käthen, which his father-in-law had bought for him and which he took over in 1817, then Falenczyn and Gluchowo in the Culm country, and “at a later time” in the Altmark the estate of Vollenschier and the Kröpelwarthe, along with a forest district near Sichau. So one man held both the Altmark and the West Prussian estate, and both later passed to his youngest daughter and her husband.

3. since 1854
   since 1854

   The von Kröchers

   The Brünn pocketbook lists Vollenschier in the von Kröcher article among that house’s possessions: “in the Altmark: Vinzelberg (since 1817, now an entail), Vollenschier (since 1854, allodial estate)”. Vinzelberg, the seat of this line, lies two and a half kilometres to the north.

4. 1858–1936
   1858–1936

   Entail and allodial land

   Why a daughter could bring Vollenschier and Plutowo into a marriage but not Vinzelberg is recorded in a file of the Prussian ministry of justice: “The entail established by the provincial director von Kröcher at Vinzelberg”, running from 1858 to 1936 (Secret State Archives, I. HA Rep. 84a no. 45084). Vinzelberg was tied and descended in the male line; Vollenschier and Plutowo the Brünn pocketbook expressly calls “allodial estates”, that is, freely heritable. The difference between the two forms of tenure decided what entered this marriage and what did not.

5. 25 June 1861
   25 June 1861

   The first record

   The Staats-Anzeiger announces the appointment of the “Landraths-Amts-Verwesers, Gerichts-Assessors Jakob von Gerlach auf Vollenschier” (acting Landrat, court assessor Jakob von Gerlach of Vollenschier) as Landrat of the Gardelegen district. Five months after his father-in-law’s death on 12 January 1861 he is already styled “of Vollenschier” – the transfer out of the Kröcher estate must have taken place in those months.

6. 1869
   1869

   The Schloss

   In this year the building went up that the monument list calls Schloss Vollenschier: unrendered brick in neo-Gothic forms, two full storeys and an attic above a high plinth, stepped gables, pointed-arch windows, an armorial stone over the doorway. The designer was Conrad Wilhelm Hase of Hanover, founder of the Hanover School; the client was August von Kröcher. The red bricks came from the estate’s own brickworks. The older, rendered manor house of the mid-eighteenth century remained standing beside it.

7. 1875 to 1877
   1875 to 1877

   The estate church

   The same client and the same architect built the church in which Jakob von Gerlach would later be buried: foundation stone 1875, consecration 1877, churchyard wall and gate by 1878. In 1876 the “Archiv für kirchliche Baukunst und Kirchenschmuck” published it on nine plates with a full description. The church was built for the lord of the estate and his people, and the seating kept the two apart: first the family, then the inspector and the steward, then the people, for whom a hundred and twenty-one places were provided. The family pew lies at the level of the chancel, has its own entrance and is, in the words of the account, “kept as far as possible out of the people’s sight”. Inside, the church is 18.7 metres long and 12.2 wide; without its fittings it cost some thirty thousand marks.

8. 1876
   1876

   The altar

   Hase drew the altar himself and explained it in the same volume of the same journal. Above the table stands the Crucified within a wheel of tracery, at his feet the four Old Testament sacrificial types Abel, Melchizedek, Isaac and Aaron, at the ends of the cross four kings of the house of David; on the antependium the Lamb bears the banner of victory between Alpha and Omega. It was executed by the Heinersdorff works for church ornament in Berlin for about nine thousand marks. It was meant for the Munich applied arts exhibition; the detail drawings were not finished in time.

9. Two sheets in Vienna

   How the church was drawn is preserved in Vienna. The MAK, the Museum of Applied Arts, holds in its print collection two photolithographs of the Vollenschier estate church, made in Berlin, 22.9 by 26.2 centimetres, under the numbers KI 16459-16 and KI 16459-17. They are the only known architectural drawings for a building of the family. We may not show them: the museum lists them as in copyright.

10. 2 April 1889
    2 April 1889

    The brother-in-law

    On this day August Hennig von Kröcher died in Berlin, privy senior councillor of government (retired), latterly a reporting councillor in the ministry of the interior and from June 1865 to March 1873 a member of the House of Lords, in his seventy-second year. He was the client for both Schloss and church and held the other half of the estate. The obituary list of “Der deutsche Herold” names his siblings: his brother Wilhelm, a district administrator (retired), and his sisters Ehrengard, widowed von Alvensleben, Agnes, and Sophie, married to Jakob von Gerlach. That settles what could previously only be supposed: Udo von Alvensleben’s wife was a sister of Jakob’s wife.

11. 1892
    1892

    The Brünn pocketbook

    The Brünn Genealogisches Taschenbuch der adeligen Häuser, volume 17, lists him as “co-owner of the Vollenschier estate in the Altmark (one half) and owner of the Plutowo estate” – a half, then, not the whole; the other half stayed with the von Kröchers.

12. 1894 and 1896
    1894 and 1896

    Marienbad

    The Bohemian spa lists carry him twice, in 1894 “with his wife, from Vollenschier”, in 1896 at the Friedrich Wilhelm foundation house. The place-name stands in the lists where others have a town – for the spa administration Vollenschier was his address.

13. 1899 to 1907
    1899 to 1907

    The name in the gazette

    In 1899 the Reichsanzeiger lists “Frau Privy Councillor von Gerlach, née von Kröcher of Vollenschier” among those decorated; in 1901 the “Privy Councillor and Landrat (ret.) at Vollenschier” receives 11,400,604 votes in the election to the Imperial Insurance Office; in October 1903 the “Landrat (ret.) von Gerlach-Vollenschier” speaks at the general synod against the proposition that duelling is sin; in January 1904 “Privy Councillor von Gerlach, Vollenschier” signs the appeal for the social work of Protestant Christendom; in 1907 “von Gerlach of Vollenschier” receives the Red Eagle Order third class with bow.

14. 27 June 1908
    27 June 1908

    The commercial register

    The district court of Berlin-Mitte enters the new statutes of the Berlin Missionary Society. At the head of the board stands “Privy Councillor Jakob von Gerlach at Vollenschier”. It is the last official entry under his name in his lifetime (Deutscher Reichsanzeiger, 6 July 1908).

15. 29 November 1908 · The grave

    On the first Sunday of Advent Jakob von Gerlach is buried at Vollenschier, three and a half years after his wife. The memorial address is given by his nephew, Pastor Martin von Gerlach of Silberhammer, the final blessing by Pastor Albrecht-Staats. As a widower he had lived on the Kröcher estate (Hallesche Zeitung, 3 December 1908, after the Kreuzzeitung).

16. 1908
    1908

    The administration changes hands

    From the year of his death the Erxleben estate archive holds a file “Administration of the Vollenschier estate”, dated 1908 (Saxony-Anhalt State Archives, H 66 no. 4044). It is filed there among the “other estates of the von Alvensleben family” – where Vollenschier belonged through Sophie von Kröcher née Countess von Alvensleben. What was settled that year is in this file.

17. Today
    Today

    Vollenschier is a part of the Hanseatic town of Stendal and belongs to the locality of Wittenmoor; until 2010 it was a part of the separate municipality of Wittenmoor. Vinzelberg, where the marriage of 1858 took place, lies two and a half kilometres to the north. Schloss, manor house, church, churchyard gate and the old school still stand together – a complete piece of the Hanover School in the middle of the Altmark.