Confessions of a Castleholic

Castle visits can be fun, majestic, educational - and sometimes even very moving. It's been almost a year since I visited the Wewelsburg near Paderborn. Every time I have since wanted to write about this place, I never knew what to say for this castle is the place that caused the most ambivalent feelings within this Castleholic. Many castles and palaces in Germany and elsewhere have very varied history. Within Germany it is also a common part of the history of many castles that there is a connection to the darkest days of German history, the Third Reich. But the Wewelsburg - or rather what people made of it - took it to the next level.  And I will admit: Suddenly I stood there during my visit and had tears in my eyes... It was towards the end of my tour of the Wewelsburg, a Renaissance-style castle of the Prince-Bishops of Paderborn turned SS cult-site during the Third Reich, that my ambivalent feelings about this place came to light. I was looking at a mosaic made of gla...

Visiting castles that aren't open to the public is always a bit of gamble. You never quite know how much you will be able to see and how close you are going to get. Burg Vernaburg is definitely one of the places I wish I could have gotten closer to. This ruin with some somewhat more modern looking buildings in its direct vicinity looks utterly fascinating. Of the original structure, only a handful of towers and walls still stand and form the backdrop for a modern residential building.  The original Burg Vernaburg dates back to the year 1607 and owes its existence to Wilhelm von Krewet. Occasionally also called Krewetsburg based on the name of its first owner, the Krewets were an important lower noble family of the Prince-Bishopric of Paderborn. Wilhelm subsequently moved his family's residence to Vernaburg from Salzkotten, a place the family had held as a fiefdom. As with many other castles all over Germany and Europe, the Thirty Years' War also left its mark on B...

Whenever I go on a castle hunting adventure, I try to find a few lesser known castles, oftentimes not open to the public, on the way to my actual destination. On my way to Paderborn to see Schloss Neuhaus , I stopped by in the little town bearing the name of today's castle and what I beauty I found! The sunny yellow of Schloss Holte in the town of Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock sure did bring a smile to my face and was perhaps my favourite non-open castle of the whole trip. The Renaissance- and Baroque-style moated castle dates back to the early 17th century. The area surrounding the castle originally belonged to the Counts of Rietberg. When they died out in male line, a previous castle located on the same site passed to Countess Walburgis of Rietberg and then her daughter Countess Sabina Catharina of East Frisia, who had married her uncle Count Johann III of East Frisia. Under the Treaty of Berum, Sabina Catharina was awarded the County of Rietberg. The couple built Schloss Ho...

With more than 30,000 castles in Germany, it's no wonder that current usage is very varied. Case in point: Schloss Hamborn , which serves as a centre for anthroposophy and is home to a school and rehabilitation clinic named for the 19th century esotericist Rudolf Steiner, who was the founder of both anthroposophy and the ideas of Waldorf education. It was also during the 19th century that Schloss Hamborn came to be even though its Weser Renaissance-style architecture might suggest it is a century or two older. During the mid-1800's, the noble von Hartmann family from nearby Borchen purchased two feudal estates in the area and united them into one. Construction on the Eastern wing of today's  Schloss  started in 1868. The coat of arms of the family featuring a heart and three roses can still found above the main entrance of that wing. Already three years later, in 1871, Schloss Hamborn passed from Bernhardine von Hartmann to her nephew Hermann von Mallinckro...

While the history of the little village of Wewer, today a part of Paderborn, can be traced back to the 9th century, today's Schloss by the same name isn't quite as old. This relatively simple Baroque-style castle was built for Baron Jodokus Godfried of Imbsen between the years 1684 and 1686 in stead of a former castle nearby. At the time, the historical district of Wewer was split between the Imbsen and the Brenken families after one half had been sold by the Imbsens to a female line of the family who had married into Brenken family at the beginning of the 16th century. The Barons of Brenken in Wewer died out in male line in 1817 with their inheritance going to another line of the family who home was Schloss Erpernburg . Only a few years later, in 1833, the Barons of Imbsen also died out in male line. Their indebted estate, including Schloss Wewer , went to the daughters of the family who decided to sell it to pay the debts. It was their heirs of the Barons of Brenken ...

Thinking about it, there are an awful lot of Fürstenbergs around... About a dozen cities and villages in Germany alone bear that name literally translating as "hill of the Prince", a handful of mountains as well as not one but two nobles families. With that last bit of information, it also won't come as a major surprise to you that there are several castles called Fürstenberg around. Today, we are going to have a closer look at one of those,  Schloss Fürstenberg in North Rhine-Westphalia. But here is a little surprise for you though: The Schloss isn't actually owned by either of the two Fürstenberg noble families but by the Counts von Westphalen zu Fürstenberg.  It was one of the most prominent members of the family, Friedrich Wilhelm von Westphalen, who commissioned the construction of the castle in stead of a medieval castle located on the same site. At the time, Friedrich Wilhelm served as the Prince-Bishop of Hildesheim and would later go on to also hold...

Castle hunting tip #5438: Spring (when the trees don’t have their leaves yet) is the best time of the year to see castles that aren’t open to the public while the weather is often warm and sunny. Case in point: Schloss Alme I saw during my most recent castle adventure. While we can trace back the history of the Schloss to the first half of the 18th century, several others castles had been located in the small village of the same name, which today forms part of the city Brilon, as early as the 14th century. The current Schloss Alme owes its existence to Dietrich Adam von Meschede, who demolished some parts of an older Burg  located on the same site in favour of the new Baroque-style castle and integrated other parts into the new structure built likely built between 1719  and 1744.  Dietrich Adam, however, had no male-line heirs to leave his new castle to. After he left it to his second wife Franziska Dorothea, it later passed via his oldest daughter to the ...

This Castleholic never ceases to learn... While I have written a post with no less than 13 pro castle hunting tips , I learned another one the other week: If possible do not visit a castle that is also a registrar's office for civil weddings on a Saturday morning when it actually serves as a place to tie the knot. Because when I visited Schloss Neuhaus in Paderborn, that is exactly what happened to me and I saw no less than five or six bridal couples. So it's a bit of a wonder I managed to actually sneak a few pictures without not one but several bridal couple in them. It also meant that I could not actually visit all of the rooms usually open to the public. While today a school, a museum and, obviously, a  registrar's office, Schloss Neuhaus was once the residence of the Prince-Bishops of Paderborn with its history going back all the way to the year  1257 when the first fortified house was erected there just outside of the city of Paderborn. It was Bishop Heinri...

Confession of a Castleholic: I like castles more than castle ruins. So when Burgdame - visit her blog here - recommended to me to pay a visit to the ruins of Burg Ringelstein in Büren-Harth, I was a little hesitant as it was slightly out of the way of my latest castle adventure. But guess what happened? I loved it, it was a wonderful little piece of quiet during an otherwise very busy day including some eight other castles - more on all of them to come in the coming weeks, so make sure to stay tuned! The plans to build a castle on a mountain high above the Alme valley was firstly mentioned in 1383 though it isn't certain whether it was an entirely new castle or the reconstruction of a yet older, destroyed one of the same site. It was the Lords of Büren who were tasked with the construction of the new Burg to guard the outskirts of the Archbishopric of Cologne. Rather shortly after its completion, the castle was pledged to the Scharfenberg line of the House of Padberg un...