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Hi there! I watched a series today that was so bad it made be write the first blog post in one and a half years. Will I write more again in the future? I don't know, I guess we'll see. In the meantime, follow all my latest castle adventures over on Instagram . See you there! Empress Elisabeth of Austria, the immortal Sisi, has inspired the imagination of the people for more than a century now. Her life, her love, her tragedies, her death. Adored, free spirited and one of the original royal IT girls. A face that could launch a thousands ships, well, bring peace to two feuding nations by simply being her charming self. A woman that, 120 years after her death, can still draw crowds and be the foundation stone of what seems like half the tourist industry of several regions. (Okay, that might have been slightly exaggerated but have you ever been to Vienna and seen the souvenir shops?) So it's not too surprising that time and time again, cinema and TV productions have tried to ca

The "Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds" or How the Bavarians Probably Got the Best Deal When the Monarchy Ended

January 05, 2020

The Great Hall of Schloss Nymphenburg They came to power during the 12th century in the days of Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa - and on November 7, 1918, their head of the family was the first German King forced to abdicate. But in the end, the former Royal Family of Bavaria may just have gotten the best deals of all the formerly reigning families in Germany. You see, the German nobility is full of curious inheritance cases like the Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg's or the Thurn und Taxis' . In addition to these internal family matters, there are also some interesting constructions between former German reigning family and the German state - or one of its federal states. Case in point: The Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds . It was established as a public foundation in 1923 within the framework of the apportionment of assets and liabilities between the Free State of Bavaria and their former royal family, the Wittelsbachs. Five years prior, in 1918, the monarchie

Schloss Callenberg

August 11, 2019

Schloss Callenberg is the third of the four famous Coburg castles we are covering here on Confessions of a Castleholic , after Schloss Ehrenburg and Schloss Rosenau . While all of them were once the property of the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Schloss Callenberg is the last of the castle to be owned (or rather owned again) by the family that was once perhaps even more famous for their marriage alliances than for their little Dukedom located on the edge of the Thuringian Forest. While firstly mentioned in the 13th century as the property of a member of the Chalwinberch family, the castle was later sold to the Bishopric of Würzburg and given as a fiefdom to the Counts of Henneberg and Knights of Sternberg at different points in history. It was during the course of the 16th century, that Schloss Callenberg came into the possession of the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg. It was Duke Johann Casimir who acquired the castle following the death of the last male heir of the Sternberg family

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