Matzdorf Castle
Palac Maciejowiec
Matzdorf Castle (since 1945 Palac Maciejowiec) today belongs to the House of Luxburg-Carolath, a noble family that was allied in 1869 from an alliance marriage between the Houses of Luxburg of Thurgau and Carolath-Beuthen-Schoenaich of Lower Silesia and had already left Europe before World War I and acquired properties in South America, mainly in Maracaibo Venezuela and Merida Argentina. House Luxburg-Carolath returned to its Lower Silesian roots with the acquisition of Schloss Matzdorf in 2017. The former Matzdorf Castle already belonged to an ancestress named Henriette Friederike Amalie Reichsgräfin von Schöneich, née Burggräfin von Dohna, between 1795 and 1829. At that time, Lower Silesia already belonged to the Kingdom of Prussia.
The New Matzdorf Castle (Palac Maciejowiec)
The new Maciejowiec Palace, built between 1833 and 1838 by the Scholz brothers from Löwenberg on behalf of the then owner of the manor Johann Dolan, is now in ruins and is about to be renovated. The architect Arkadiusz Sumislawski from Upper Silesia and based in Wroclaw, who was commissioned to carry out the renovation, was ordered by the head of the House of Luxburg-Carolath Friedrich Ulrich Maximilian Johann Graf von Luxburg Fürst zu Carolath-Beuthen und Prinz von Schoenaich-Carolath to undertake the renovation. For this purpose, large parts of the old interior, which over the course of time had spread over the area without being secured, were secured. In close cooperation with the Löwenberg monument conservation office and the friends of the castle, it was possible to reconstruct part of the interior. Today, about 60 hectares belong to Palac Maciejowiec again. In this way, the foundations for revitalisation have been laid so that the Luxburg-Carolath House can make a sustainable contribution to the preservation of the castle buildings and the castle park, and to the uncovering of the more than 300-year-old trees. Initial measures from 2017 to 2019 in collaboration with the dendrologist Grażyna Polanica-Traczyńska from Bolesławie to preserve the tree population of (dwarf) oaks, copper beeches and tulip trees already show a healthy structure again. The large landscape garden surrounding the castle, which descends southwards in terraces to the Bobertal valley, was laid out between 1835 and 1838 by the Muskau garden inspector Rehder according to the design of the garden architect Eduard Petzold.
Ecological and sustainable agritourism
In Poland, the Luxburg-Carolath House is involved, among other things, in the development and expansion of environmentally friendly and sustainable NGO resorts in the field of agro-tourism. By architecturally integrating the landscape, buildings with popular and cultural added value are created, which in turn attract agritourists. The Hirschberg valley area between Schneekope and the volcanoes, where Rübezahl lived, is one of the most Romanist cultural landscapes in Europe.