Confessions of a Castleholic

Time flies when you are having fun... It has been a more than a month since yours truly moved to Berlin and actually also already a couple of weeks since I visited the first castle after moving to the German capital. So where did my first Berlin castle hunting adventures take me? To  Schloss Biesdorf , a fairly little known Neo-Classical palace in the east of the city. Laying in a small village just outside of the city of Berlin at the time of its creation, Schloss Biesdorf owes its existence to Hans-Brunno von Rüxleben, who purchased the estate it is situated on in 1853, and his son Baron Hans-Hermann of Rüxleben, who inherited the estate about a decade later. After his marriage to Anne Pauline Griebenow, and presumably thanks to parts of her dowry, he added several surrounding estates to the family's portfolio. At the same time, he also commissioned architect Heino Schmieden to draw up plans for an Italian-inspired palace to serve as the family home. Co...

With more than 30,000 castles in Germany, it's no wonder that current usage is very varied. Case in point: Schloss Hamborn , which serves as a centre for anthroposophy and is home to a school and rehabilitation clinic named for the 19th century esotericist Rudolf Steiner, who was the founder of both anthroposophy and the ideas of Waldorf education. It was also during the 19th century that Schloss Hamborn came to be even though its Weser Renaissance-style architecture might suggest it is a century or two older. During the mid-1800's, the noble von Hartmann family from nearby Borchen purchased two feudal estates in the area and united them into one. Construction on the Eastern wing of today's  Schloss  started in 1868. The coat of arms of the family featuring a heart and three roses can still found above the main entrance of that wing. Already three years later, in 1871, Schloss Hamborn passed from Bernhardine von Hartmann to her nephew Hermann von Mallinckro...