Conference hotel Landgut Stober in the Berlin area on the lake
Newly built from ruins and rubble

Conference hotel in the Berlin area by the lake

Historische Tagungslocation - auferstanden aus Ruinen - vorher Historische Tagungslocation - auferstanden aus Ruinen - nachher
 

The magic of the place. In the end, Michael Stober can trace everything back to this moment when he considers how the huge project that is being built on the Stober estate came about. Because when he decided to buy this special place, he knew almost nothing about the great history of the Stober estate, about the spirit, about the possibilities. “I stood here and felt it,” he says simply. Today everyone who comes to visit feels it. But that's easy now, because Michael Stober has already achieved the great miracle.

The estate was a ruin when he took over, classified as no longer capable of being restored, actually just a plot of land full of stones - and rubbish that local residents had dumped into the empty buildings here for years - or even decades.

During GDR times, the Stober estate was an LPG (agricultural production cooperative), later individual buildings were still used, for example as a daycare center. But like everywhere else in Havelland, here too more people move away than are born. What can you do with such a large property in such an area? Who should fill all this with a life again? “It probably caught me at a perfect moment,” says Michael Stober. And then, with a slight grin: “The gravity of age drives you to do things that have a deeper meaning.” He is only 54 years old, so age is relative, but he already has at least a professional life as a building contractor behind him.

The energy with which he forms the center of this company - constantly approachable, with an overview of every little detail - suggests that it was an intensive entrepreneurial life. This man seems like he can't do things by halves.

 

Conference hotel Landgut Stober near Berlin on the lake
Before and after the renovation

 

You can imagine what the whole property must have looked like when Stober came here for the first time, in 2000, actually looking for a house for himself. “A friend told me that this property was for sale.” , he says, “and I, an idiot, went there.” The trees grew through the roofs of the houses. But Stober, who has had some experience with renovations as a builder — “a few thousand units” — was able to see something that no one but him thought possible. “You could say I had a vision,” he says today, “and unlike Helmut Schmidt, I don’t believe that people with visions should go to the doctor.” He began to implement his vision.

It took a while until the concept was finalized because it was clear that the Stober estate was not suitable as a family home. “I was looking for an implementation that had a public impact, a sustainable business activity that served a cultural background.” The cultural background that August Borsig and later his descendants set could not be broader. Technology, agriculture, biology (all Borsigs were dendrologists - non-utility tree researchers) - combined with social and community commitment right up to the Kreisau Circle, the Nazi-era opposition group around James von Moltke and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, who were friends with the resistance fighters of June 20, 1944 to Count von Stauffenberg. The “Kreisauers” developed ideas for the time after what they saw as the inevitable downfall of the Third Reich, and they discussed their ideas on agriculture here, with Dr. Ernst von Borsig junior (the Borsigs had since been ennobled)

The Landgut Stober is located in the Berlin area: approx. 30 minutes from Berlin Central Station (train) approx. 20 minutes west of the Berlin city limits (car). Located on the German avenue, you can reach Nauen/Groß Behnitz via the B5 (Heerstraße). Just follow the brown signs. Only 50 minutes drive from the Brandenburg Gate (car)