The Moorish Estate
In the 1850s, a cloth-maker, merchant and peat-ditch owner acquired the "Bald Mountains" near an Eastern German town. Together with his son, he built a model farm on the premises. The distinctive granary was built around 1860, and the impressive manor was built in the 1870s in the style of "orientalizing historicism" by the great-uncle of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius.
For over five decades between 1880 and 1934, the estate was sold back and forth, traded and sold again. In 1934, the Wehrmacht got their hands on the place and used it for ammunition storage and as a shooting range. In 1945, the Red Army took over and added a lot of buildings. The Soviets built a theater, two apartment blocks, two barracks, a heating plant, a kindergarten, a sauna and a food store for up to 5.000 inhabitants.
After the Red Army left Germany in the early 1990s, the buildings started to deteriorate, and of the newer buildings, not many are left. In the year 2000, an investor bought the buildings and the surrounding area with intentions to build a hotel - a plan that was put aside due to the already high density of hotels in the region. New owners bought the area in 2010 and tasked an architect with planning and renovation. Nothing has happened since.
