In , after 500-years of ownership by the
Rau von Holzhausen family, the industrialist and diplomat
Ferdinand Eduard Stumm (1843–1925), later ennobled as
Baron von Stumm, bought the property which included 1,900
fields of meadows and forest areas. The last Lord Rau von Holzhausen as an officer in the
Hessian Army and when
Hesse-Kassel became part of
Prussia during
German unification, he refused to join the
Prussian Army and sold all his property to Stumm, the ambassador's delegate, and moved out of Germany shortly thereafter. After taking over ownership, Stumm commenced construction activity on the estate by demolishing the old moated castle, the adjacent farm and the
tithe barn. On the hill behind it, Stumm built a new manor house, called Rauischholzhausen Castle, and nearby farm yard. Architect
Carl Schäfer was commissioned to design the castle in the style of Klein-Potsdam, and the park was designed by , the creator of the
Frankfurt Palmengarten. Construction took place between 1871 and 1878, however, the building collapsed in 1873, because of poor foundation work. Carl Jonas Mylius and
Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli (students of
Gottfried Semper), were hired to redesign the castle in line with Schaefer's original designs. Construction of the roof and the south-east wing was completed in 1875 and the main building was completed a year later with the
half-timbered section of the building completed in 1878. In 1937, Stumm's son
Ferdinand Carl von Stumm, who had also been in the diplomatic service until 1918 and had been Lord of the Castle since his father's death in 1925, sold the manor, castle and park.
Present day After having been confiscated as Nazi property by the
Allied Forces in 1945, the castle and the park became property of the
State of Hesse and in 1949, the
University of Giessen acquired the castle and have been using it as a conference and training center ever since. The Hesse
Department of Agriculture - Rauischholzhausen Educational Seminar is also housed at the castle. ==See also==