History

Ernst Ferdinand von Knoch – Chamberlain of Augustus the Strong – bought Rammenau Manor in 1717 from the von Seydewitz family, who had gone bankrupt. Four years later, he started to erect the new building of the Baroque Castle. This is said to have been designed by Johann Christoph Knoeffel. In 1744, Knoch fled from Rammenau as he had run up high debts. The yet unfinished castle became the property of the von Hoffmann family. They completed the building and, after their ascent to nobility in 1778, called themselves »von Hoffmannsegg«.

In 1788, Johann Centurius von Hoffmannsegg acquired Rammenau Manor and sold it in 1794 for 100,000 Thalers to his brother-in-law Friedrich von Kleist, a Prussian cavalry captain. He had several rooms converted in the Classicist style and had the symmetrical garden redesigned in English style. In 1820, Johann Centurius Graf von Hoffmannsegg repurchased the castle. 59 years later, Hans Curt Christoph Ernst von Posern bought it from the von Hoffmannsegg family.

During the First World War, the Baroque Castle was used as a military hospital. In those times, it belonged to Margarete Gisela Gabriele Alexandra von Helldorff, née von Posern. After the castle had been seized by the Red Army in 1945, von Helldorf was expropriated in the course of the Land Reform in the Soviet Occupation Zone. From 1951, the rooms were used for schooling purposes, as a summer studio for the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and, until 1962, as a countryside studying resort.

It was only in 1967 that the Historical Museum was inaugurated and that the existing exhibition on Johann Gottlieb Fichte was extended by the section of the castle history. In summer 1968, the castle restaurant was opened and public concerts started to be performed the Mirror Hall. In the early 1990s, the entire Rammenau complex became the property of the Free State of Saxony and was given the status of a state-run castle operation.