History
Schatthaus – 'Schgatthuus' in the local Low German dialect – 'treasure house' would be the correct translation, and it already hints at its historical significance: treasure houses always stood in the immediate vicinity of a chieftain's castle and were the economic treasure of its lords and ladies, as they housed the livestock and the grain.
It was the same with our Schatthaus: it originally stood in Pewsum in front of the mighty Manninga Castle, of which a remaining building is preserved today and cared for by the local heritage society.
In 1828, long after the age of the chieftains had ended and East Frisia belonged to the Kingdom of Hanover, King George had the treasure house relocated and rebuilt at its current site as a Gulf farmhouse. The only relic carried over from the old Schatthaus into the new one is the lion's head with the nose ring above the front barn door.
After the end of the Kingdom of Hanover, East Frisia became part of Prussia, and Schatthaus became imperial property. Once that era too had passed, Schatthaus became a state domain, farmed by successive domain tenants. Under the present-day government of Lower Saxony, we were finally able to purchase the domain, and it has been our private property ever since. Dairy farming was already given up in the early 1970s, when my grandfather handed the farm over to my father – Schatthaus became a purely arable farm.
