Guided tour with Gunnar Möller | Participation: 7 euros
With the acquisition of the Niederhof estate in 1761, the Stralsund chamber councillor and founder of the Stralsund faience manufactory Joachim Ulrich Giese (1719-1780) not only had a prestigious summer house built, but also a park with a rose garden and zoo. Giese, who joined the masonic lodge founded in 1762, provided his estate park with a number of masonic attributes such as an altar and grotto. Contemporaries considered the grounds to be one of the most famous and beautiful in the whole of Swedish Pomerania. Visitors included the well-known landscape painter Jakob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807) and the Swiss reform theologians Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801), Felix Heß (1742-1768) and Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741-1825).
In 1776, Giese granted Stralsund's Jewish community permission to bury their dead in a small consecrated cemetery in the north-west of his park-like garden. The small castle-like summer house burnt down to the ground in 1947 and the park is now completely overgrown. The Kormorankolonie nature reserve is located here. The Jewish cemetery is the only visible evidence from the 18th century.
During his guided tour, Gunnar Möller follows the traces of the estate park, which was highly regarded at the time of its creation.