Jagdschloss Lopshorn

Lopshorn was a summer palace built for the princes of Lippe on the southern slope of the Teutoburger Wald in the Senne heathland east of Augustdorf. Close by stood the stud farm where the Senner horses were bred. A fire in 1945 destroyed the palace and the ruins gradually vanished, leaving little trace today. Plans exist to rebuild both palace and stud farm exactly as they once stood.

The first hunting lodge appeared in 1657 under Count Hermann Adolf, and his son Count Simon Heinrich replaced it with a full baroque palace in 1685. The symmetrical layout included stables, a storehouse bearing baroque coats of arms, and a dairy. A deep well with a treadmill powered by human runners supplied water, though it rarely met demand. By the mid-19th century the palace had two storeys, a classical porch and a small tower topped by a horse weathervane. Inside, Prince Woldemar later remodelled rooms in the neo-Renaissance style.

Visitors today find only foundations and a few scattered stones where the palace once stood. The surrounding heathland still carries the marks of centuries of horse grazing that shaped the open landscape. A single bar of the old stud-farm gate remains upright, and fragments of the baroque coats of arms can be seen near the vanished storehouse. Plans for reconstruction draw on surviving copper engravings and written records to recreate the symmetrical arrangement of buildings and gardens exactly as they appeared before the fire.