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...

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...