his castle in Wernigerode. From 1897 Ilsenburg was the dowager seat for Princess Anna of Stolberg-Wernigerode and her daughter, Elisabeth. In 1929 Prince Christian Ernest rented the house, the remains of the former cloisters and the adjacent park for 30 years to the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union. After several renovations, in January 1930 the Ecclesiastical Mission Seminary (Kirchliches Auslandsseminar) began training theologians for mission abroad. Because the seminar was supported by the Confessional Church that resisted Nazification of the Protestant churches, it was dissolved in 1936. That same year the Old Prussian Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council (Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, EOK) established a convalescent home for church workers in several of the rooms. Two years later an Evangelical Preaching Seminary was added. During the Second World War the house was also home to a military medical facility for reserves as well as a refugee camp. In May 1945 shortly before the war's end it was plundered and, several months later, the Stolberg-Wernigerode family were dispossessed. Its new owners, the municipality of Ilsenburg, struck a new agreement for its beneficial use with the Old Prussian Union. In addition to a College of Pastors and an Academy of Singing it also housed, in the years that followed, the Evangelical Academy of Research (Evangelische Forschungsakademie) founded in 1948. With the creation of the exclusion zone around the Inner German Border in 1961, all church activity had to cease and the Stasi took over the whole estate until 1972. From 1974 to 1990 a convalescent home was established in the building for employees of the Ministry for Rural Affairs and Food (Ministerium für Land- und Nahrungsgüterwirtschaft). From 1990 until its purchase by the Ilsenburg Abbey Foundation in 2005 it was used as an hotel. Sources Heinrich Heffter: Otto Fürst zu Stolberg-Wernigerode, T. 1 (= Historische Studien, H. 434), ed. by Werner Pöls, Husum 1980, Ferdinand Schlingensiepen (ed.): Theologisches Studium im Dritten Reich. Das Kirchliche Auslandsseminar in Ilsenburg/Harz.Düsseldorf 1988. Gottfried Maron: Tausend Jahre Ilsenburg im Spiegel der Geschichte von Kloster und Schloß. Darmstadt 1995, Stadt Ilsenburg (Hg.): 995-1995. 1000 Jahre Ilsenburg/Harz.Ilsenburg/Wernigerode 1995 Claudia Grahmann: Vom gräflichen Haus zum Schloß Ilsenburg. In: Neue Wernigeröder Zeitung 16/2003 External links Material on Ilsenburg House in the Duncker Collection of the Central and State Library of Berlin (pdf; 298 kB) Harz Castles in Saxony-Anhalt Ilsenburg Buildings and structures in Harz (district) Houses in Germany