Confessions of a Castleholic

This feels like the weeks of the lasts here on Castleholic... While Burg Hardenberg was the last castle to cover of this autumn's castle adventure to southern Lower Saxony, Festung Marienberg was the last of my castle travel to Würzburg and beyond - and now Schloss Alverdissen is the last of last year's castle hunt in Eastern Westphalia - or the county of Lippe, actually, as any local would make sure to point out.  Schloss Alverdissen near Detmold, residential town of the Lippe family who gave their name to the region, and thus close to this goodie , owes its to Count Philipp I of Schaumburg-Lippe, ancestor of the Schaumburg branch of the House of Lippe. Philipp, born as a younger son of Count Simon VI of Lippe, was given a previous castle located in the small village of Alverdissen in 1613. At the time, he took the name of Lippe-Alverdissen though being a younger son, he did not wield any power. This changed in the 1640's, when Philipp's sister Elisabeth...

Let's go back to the beginning of the year when spring was just around the corner and the first flowers had sprung. On a Sunday afternoon, I went and saw Schloss Stadthagen . Today the seat of the local tax office, it used to be a residence of the Counts and later Princes of Schaumburg-Lippe. Construction started in the year 1535 at the behest of Count Adolf XI of Schaumburg. He commissioned Thuringian master builder Jörg Unkair to draw up the plans for a four-winged castle in the style of the Weser-Renaissance. The Schloss is actually considered the oldest and one of the most influential Weser-Renaissanc style castles in all of Lower Saxony. Master builder Unkair personally chose the sandstone from a local mine. Construction on the castle was already finished four years after it was started. In 1539, the castle became the new residence, seat of government and was also used by the tax and finance authority of the time. Like many other Weser-Renaissance style buildings, the...

Today's CastleMemory is a bit of a different one. It is a castle I did not visit years and years ago in the day before this blog but last weekend: Schloss Bückeburg where there was an Indian-themed market going on. To learn more about the history of the stunning residence of the Princes of Schaumburg-Lippe, check out  our previous post .

Truth be told: During the last few weeks I haven't always felt the most motivated to write about my castle adventures. It's been more than two months since I visited my last castle - Schloss Glienicke  that was - and I really need a castle fix. (I'm an addict after all, you see.) However, winter isn't the best of times to visit a castle. For one, many of them aren't actually open. Plus, they don't usually look as nice when it's grey and cold. In addition, it's quite difficult to actually find a castle I haven't seen in the vicinity of where I live. So instead, I decided to have a look back at the time I last needed a castle fix (and that I never actually wrote about.)  That time I went to Detmold to see their  Residenzschloss . It's not actually that far from where I live and I always knew that it was the residence of the former Princely Family of Lippe. Somehow for some strange reason, I just never had a look what it looked like. Turns ...

Almost a week ago, Hereditary Prince Ferdinand of Leiningen and Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia celebrated their religious wedding in Amorbach with yours truly in attendance as an onlooker. High time for my last post on the wedding guests. I'm sure there were many more royals and nobles in attendance without being recognised by my friends or me.   Duke Konstantin of Oldenburg.  Duchess Esther of Oldenburg.  From left (but not with certainty): Princess Johanna Reuss (?), Sophia Mautner-Markhof (?), Baroness Nina (née Countess of Zech) and Baron Otto-Magnus of Stackelberg, as well as Prince Heinrich XXIV Reuss.  On the left: Prince Jean Friedrich of Lippe and half-hidden on the right Prince Rudolf of Lippe. Princess Anastasia of Wertheim-Löwenstein-Rosenberg. Count Christian-Henri of Stolberg-Stolberg. On the left Gabriella and Hans Rainer Heubach, parents of Princess Isabelle of Leiningen, and on the right Carlotta Heubach, ...

In the scenic landscape surrounding Detmold, residence of the Lippe family, lies Schloss Schieder . It were Count Casimir and his son Count Rudolph of Lippe-Brake, a junior line of the family, who built the castle starting in 1703. His family had come into the possession of the estate about 150 years earlier following the reformation. A small cottage used during hunting trips had been located there previously. They commissioned Tyrolean architect Joseph Falck, who had previously worked on Schloss Corvey . Falck drew up plans for a baroque gem following the example of Dutch classicism. Construction works were finished by 1708. When the Lippe-Brake line died out in 1773, Schloss Schieder  fell to their Schaumburg-Lippe relatives. During their ownership, they changed the layout of the garden directly surrounding the castle and also added a larger English landscape garden. In 1789, the main line of the Lippe family finally came into the possession of the Schloss . The Counts an...