Confessions of a Castleholic

From the Prussian palaces of Potsdam to plentiful noble homes scattered all around the state, we have probably covered dozens and a dozen more of castles located in Brandenburg, the German state surrounding Berlin. (Find all of them here .) But still, there are a gazillion more to discover, so here are ten castles you have probably never heard of. Most of them actually aren't open to the public yet many of them have surrounding parks you can stroll through. How I visit them? These sorts of castles usually aren't the main destination of my days out castle hunting. I either see them on the way to or back from places open to the public or I try to include them in a hike. Schloss Wiesenburg Schloss Wiesenburg may just be the most idyllically located of all idyllically located castles on this list. Looking over a large park, its origins date back to the Middle Ages when a fortified castle was located on the same site. The oldest parts of today's Renaissance-style  Schloss dat...

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...