The best traffic-free bike rides around Flörkendorfer Teich

Today a hotel, formerly a huge farm complex.

The round tower is unusual, making it a "fortified church." The interior is rather plain.

Bad Segeberg can be seen in the distance.

Here, dedicated contributors report on forced labor, death marches, and schools during fascism in Schleswig-Holstein. For two months, this building served as a concentration camp. Torture took place in the basement. The attic housed approximately 70 people who had done nothing more than hold a different opinion or favor a party other than the Nazi Party.

Beautiful place

The Marienkirche Ahrensbök is the oldest building in the community and the only surviving building of the former Ahrensbök Carthusian monastery. The church is surrounded by a cemetery. It is a Gothic building, approximately 40 m long and 20 m wide, made of red brick on a foundation of hewn field stones, with pointed arch windows and a gable roof covered with roof tiles. In 1328, a parish church was founded by Count Johann III in place of the Marienkapelle. The oldest parts of the current church date from this period. In 1408, the church finally became the monastery church of the Ahrensbök Carthusian monastery, founded in 1387, and remained so until the monastery was dissolved in 1564. The current baroque church tower was built in 1760/61. In 1883, the interior of the church was completely redesigned. Inside the church, on the south wall, is the Ahrensbök Cross - a 3.07 m high cross made of Gotland limestone, which is located on a 1.25 m high gravestone of the Rose family, also made of Gotland limestone. It is considered the most important cross of its kind in Schleswig-Holstein. Originally, the cross was on the northern outer wall of the church. Since 2019, there have been three bronze bells in the tower, which were cast by the Klokkengieterij Eijsbouts from Asten. They have the strike tones e1, g1, a1. Until April 2019, three chilled iron bells from the Ulrich & Weule foundry had hung in the tower since 1919, as after the First World War no bronze bells could be afforded to replace the older bells that had fallen victim to the metal donation from the German people. These chilled iron bells were already in very poor condition at the end of the 20th century and were taken out of the tower in April 2019 and placed in front of the church. The chimes of the chilled iron bells are the same as the new bells. A bell cast by Heinrich von Kampen from 1510 with a tracery frieze, the donor's coat of arms and an image of John the Baptist has also been preserved. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marienkirche_(Ahrensb%C3%B6k)

The building, originally built as the house of the director of a neighboring sugar factory, stands quite inconspicuously on Neustädter Landstrasse. And yet it has a bitter history. In 1933, immediately after the Reichstag disempowered itself by signing the "Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich" (Enabling Act) and empowered the NSDAP as government to enact laws without the consent of the Reichstag and Reichsrat, a concentration camp was set up here. Politically dissidents were imprisoned here. Just six months later, it was disbanded at this location and moved to the center of Ahrensbök. No one died here, but torture was carried out in the basement. The former director's house has been a memorial since 2001. Here you can find out about the "social causes and developments in the East Holstein region" using picture and text panels and some objects about the Nazi era and its atrocities. It's worth a visit! https://www.gedenkstaetteahrensboek.de/ https://www.bundestag.de/visits/ exhibitions/verfassung/tafel22

A superbly preserved old church with an extraordinary church tower and facade. Definitely a must-see!