I love when a house is arranged with its farm buildings around a garth or a gaard or a hof.
At Gut Wolfshagen in Schleswig-Holstein the barns are arranged flanking a narrow pinch that gives just a hint of the manor house beyond, lending an air of baroque surprise.
This house was built by Andreas Pauli von Liliencron at the very end of the seventeenth century and was acquired by the von Qualen family in 1787.
When the last of the von Qualens here died childless in 1903 they bequeathed Gut Wulfshagen to the uxorial nephew Ludwig Graf zu Reventlow.
Ludwig had fallen in love with a beautiful Jewish girl, Sophie Eysen, and in 1890 was engaged to her but his Protestant parents prevailed upon him to break it off.
Two years later he married another woman and in 1896 they moved to Gut Wulfshagen in preparation for his inheritance.
He died ten years later, but his descendant Moritz still owns and looks after the estate today.