MANOIR DE LOUHISAARI

Open during the summer, mid-May to end of August, Monday to Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm. Admission €12, children (aged 6-17) €6.

History

The first known owner of Louhisaari was a woman named Elin. Elin married squire Magnus Fleming around the middle of the 15th century.

Several Flemings from Louhisaari held important positions in the kingdom of Sweden-Finland. Among the most prominent were the Fleming son of Governor Herman Pehrs (died 1573), the Fleming son of Claes Lars (1592-1644), admiral and chairman of the Board of Trade, and the Fleming son of Herman Claes (1619-1673), admiral, governor-general of Finland and head of the Inland Revenue Department, who built Askainen Church (1653) and Louhisaari Manor (1655). The heirs of Herman Claes's Fleming son (1734-1789), courtier and "the last rich Fleming", sold the manor in 1791.

It was bought four years later by Carl Eric Mannerheim, who was one of the key leaders of the period of Finnish autonomy, a member of the committee organizing the administration of Finland and later vice-president of the Senate's economic department. In 1826, Mannerheim, who had been appointed count a few years earlier, relinquished his appointments and took over the management of Louhisaari, taking a keen interest in agriculture and horticulture.

Louhisaari's next owner, his eldest son Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (1797-1854), was provincial governor and president of the Viipuri Court of Appeal, and gained international renown as an entomogolist. The estate passed to his son Carl Robert Mannerheim, a businessman whose third child, Marshal of Finland Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, was born in Louhisaari in 1867 and spent his childhood there. The Mannerheim family owned Louhisaari until 1903, when Baroness Wilhelmina Mannerheim sold it to Mr. Oskar Hannus and moved to Sweden.

On Oskar Hannus's death, the estate passed to his daughter Mrs. Inkeri Hovinen, from whom the Committee for an Equestrian Monument to the Marshal of Finland purchased the main building, surrounding park and avenue, and donated them to the Finnish state to be administered by the National Museum.