Heinrich Berges

Walther Stechow, Schloss Hohenhaus, from circa 1885;

thence by descent to the present owner.

From 1819 to 1820, Heinrich Berges was a student in the drawing class at the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin and in the studio of the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch, where he worked until his death in 1852. Together with August Kiss and Albert Wolff he visited Bertel Thorvaldsen in Copenhagen in 1843. In 1849, Berges became a member of the Berlin Art Academy. He died on 9 October 1852 during a trip to Rome.

Johann Friedrich Tamnau (d. circa 1859) was a protestant merchant from Königsberg. His son Friedrich Tamnau (1802-1879) was a German banker, mineralogist, and collector, who became famous amassing one of the largest and best-equipped private collections of minerals of its time.

The Tamnau family were also related to Walther Stechow (1852-1927), a wealthy senior general physician and radiologist of the Prussian army. Stechow acquired Schloss Hohenhaus in 1885 from the heirs of the previous owner, August Thienemann, and re-built and re-decorated the castle to its present Neo-Renaissance appearance.