Oranienburg – Prussian Memorial Sites

Oranienburg Palace
The magnificent centrepiece of the town of Oranienburg is the palace built and extended under Elector Frederick William and King Frederick I. From 1744 to 1758, Frederick’s brother Augustus William (1722-1758) used it as a country estate. Prince Augustus William had the palace wings widened in 1750 by adding an open colonnade on the ground floor on the courtyard side and corridors on the upper floor. At that time, the palace garden was supplemented with an attractive building in the form of the Orangery – now a popular venue for cultural events. The former main forestry, the forest treasury and a number of residential buildings still survive from the time of Frederick II. The restored Oranienburg Palace also offers exhibitions in association with Oranienburg District Museum and the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation (Schlossmuseum Oranienburg).

Spinnerdorf Sachsenhausen
In what is now the district of Sachsenhausen, Frederick II established a “spinning village” in 1752 which was populated with a colony of weavers from Saxony, Bohemia, Mecklenburg, Württemberg and Thuringia, also creating a mulberry plantation nearby.
During the National Socialist era there was a concentration camp in Sachsenhausen, commemorated today with the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum .