Confessions of a Castleholic

Truth be told, I haven't done a lot of castle hunting in Germany's most north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. I have been to the Schloss in Schwerin and that's about it. As its name suggests, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern consists of two entities who do not share a lot of common history. Mecklenburg consists of the two former (Grand) Dukedoms of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Mecklenburg-Schwerin as well as the part of the former Prussian province of Pommern that stayed German after the Second World War. Mecklenburg was for most of its history somewhat of a backwater without much political influence. Friedrich II of Prussia actually went so far as to call the Mecklenburg royals living at Schloss Mirow plain, uneducated and hilarious after visiting during the 1730's and coined the derogatory term ' Mirokesen '. But - depending on how well you know marriage politics of the European monarchies prior to World War I - what are small and insignificant but reigning hous...

It's been 10,316 days since the fall of the Berlin Wall meaning it has now been gone for the same number of days that it existed. When I saw the hashtag #OhneMauerfall ("without the fall of the wall" in German) on Twitter, it made me think of all the places I wouldn't have been able to go with the wall still standing. I was born in a town not too far from but on the Western side of the inner German border that, having been born in late 1989, has just very recently essentially lost its meaning. (Germany was reunified a year later in 1990.)  I have no recollections of the wall or living in a divided Germany. For me, it was quite normal to go  to East Germany, both during my early childhood and later in my teenage years when my parents took my sister and me there not only but especially on October 3, the German Unity Day, to discover places they had never been to themselves because during the Cold War, there was no such thing as simply popping over the border for a...

Today's post is a bit of a throwback - at least for me as it has actually been almost three years since I visited the Festung Dömitz . Festung means fortress in English and, truth be told, I don't find fortresses the most fascinating of stuctures. (In case you hadn't noticed yet, Baroque and Rococo are way more up my alley.) But when I'm in a region, I hardly pass up the chance to visit any historical structure. The Festung Dömitz  is a bastion fort located on the banks of the Elbe, one of the major rivers of Central Europe that has always been one of the greatest natural divisions in what is now Germany. Already between 1559 and 1565, Duke Johann Albrecht I of Mecklenburg-Güstrow built the fort to secure Mecklenburg's south-western border. It was built on the site of an older fort, which had been built in the 13th century. The Duke commissioned Italian military engineer Francesco a Bornau to draw up plans for the fortress that would become the largest and s...

When a bad Monday is followed by a worse Tuesday and on Wednesday you decide to be in a good mood because you would otherwise be totally mad with the world in general and yourself in particular, it is time for a spontaneous castle adventure. And so I visited the Schweriner Schloss just yesterday. Three hours on the train going there and another three hours back isn't too bad for this stunner of a palace, often nicknamed the "Neuschwanstein of the North".  Today the seat of the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the palace used to be the residence of the Dukes of Mecklenburg and Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Originally Slavic princes of the Obotrite tribes, the family was established by Pribislav of Mecklenburg, who converted to Christianity and was made Lord of Mecklenburg by Duke Heinrich the Lion, his father's enemy, in 1167. The family had owned a fortress standing in place of today's  Schweriner Schloss since at least 973. Though he w...