We will never know what inspired the wealthy iron and coal merchant Christian Jürgen Kühlcke and his wife Dorothea to buy the plot of land on the Kehdingertors-Ravelin from the Stade City Administration in the year 1897/8 and to build the imposing Villa Salve on it. The three children had long grown up and were ready to begin their own lives.
“The need for prestige” in the Wilhelminian period certainly played an important role in it. The well-preserved family album is witness to exuberance and enjoyment of life, large society gatherings and fun family parties (always with dog), celebrated in the brand-new villa. On other occasions, they occupied themselves with modern inventions: trips out with the newly invented two-wheeler (the first car was not registered until 7 years later in Stade) and romantic rowing parties on the castle moat. Of course, the Imperial family were revered and meetings were recorded in the family album – although taken from a far distance.
The party lasted for a good 12 years, however, the Kühlcke couple then had to move out and rent out the villa. City chronicles lost track of the family’s activities afterwards, but they are credited with giving the town of Stade one of its most beautiful villas.