CastleMemory: Vaxholms Fästning

Let's have a walk down memory lane to 
a Swedish holiday of my teenage years
and Vaxholms Fästning near Stockholm.


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Ernst-August vs. Ernst-August: A Family Feud

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What it's about: Schloss Marienburg On Thursday and Saturday, Hereditary Prince Ernst-August of Hanover will first civilly and then religiously marry his long-time girlfriend Ekaterina Malysheva in, you guessed it, Hanover. Local, national and even international media have been covering the lead-up to the wedding, with a very special article popping up over the weekend: Handelsblatt writes that the groom's father, the even more (in)famous Prince Ernst-August of Hanover, has set his son an ultimatum for Friday of this week to give back several family possessions he received in 2004. Otherwise Ernst-August (the father) will, in his capacity as head of the House of Guelph, deny his son consent to his marriage. So, what happened? It has long been an open secret that the relationship between the two Ernst-Augusts is quite rocky to non-existent. Many have speculated that Ernst-August Senior will actually not be among the guests for Ernst-August Junior's wedding. Back w...
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The (In)Famous Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg Will, Round 3: When There Is An Estate Worth Half a Billion Up For Grabs, That's Apparently Where Cordial Family Relations End

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Schloss Berleburg , the main residence of the Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg family ...at least here on Confessions of a Castleholic , I'm sure it has been more rounds for the family. Just the other week I said over on Twitter that deposed royal families without their family disputes would only be half the fun - and one of the most intriguing family disputes within the German nobility has reared is ugly head again as of late: The inheritance dispute within the Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg family. It is based on a will that was drawn up during the days of the Third Reich and includes some, well, racist, to say the least, stipulations. Yours truly still has a hard time to understand that someone would actually try to enforce those... Then again, there is an estate said to be worth about a half of a billion euros up for grabs - and that's probably where most friendships (or cordial family relations) end. (To catch up: What is this will? What is the dispute about? ) To ...
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CastleTalk #2: The German Royal- and Nobility, the Third Reich and July 20

View image | gettyimages.com Today is July 20, one of the most famous dates in German history. 71 years ago, a group of conspirators around Claus Schenk Graf (Count) von Stauffenberg tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Many of those surrounding Stauffenberg were also of noble descent and mainly based on their actions, there has long been the underlying assumption that much of the German nobility was against the Nazis, which they weren't. Well, first off: There wasn't the German nobility. Looking back, there are two main indicators for a noble family - or, as you'll see later, members of a noble family - to either be supporters of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) or to be against them. On the one hand, the wealth of the family seems to have played a role; on the other hand, their faith. The staunchly Catholic well-off royal and noble families from western and especially southern Germany often weren't closely associ...
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