Confessions of a Castleholic

Lo and behold: a new castle for Castleholic! Located on a 218 metres high hill by the same name, Burg Wohldenberg was built as a strategic defensive post. Hard to capture due to the steep hill it stands on and located above two important medieval trading routes, it was originally owned by the Counts of Wöltingerode. The Burg was built between 1153 and 1160 by the counts who had recently come into the possession of land in the area.  While only parts of the castle still remain to this day, it originally consisted of three courtyards. It's most striking feature to this day is a 32 metres high Bergfried tower offering views over the surrouding area. In 1174, it was Count Ludolf I of Wöltingerode who made Burg Wohldenberg his residence after turning his ancestral home in Wöltingerode into a monastery. His descendants started to call themselves after their new home and so the family name evolved via Waldeberch to Wohldenberg. During the dispute between Holy Roman Emperor ...

Time for another little known castle from around the area I live in: Schloss Henneckenrode was built by Heinrich of Saldern starting in 1579. Already during the 13th century, a manor, owned by the Counts of Wohldenberg, had been located in the same area. Towards the end of the 13th century, the Bishops of Hildesheim came into the possession of the estate and it was enfeoffed to the noble Heere family. When they died out in male line in 1567, Burchard of Saldern was given Henneckenrode as a fiefdom. It was Burchard's son Heinrich who built the Schloss in the locally very popular Weser Renaissance-style between 1579 and 1580. Only eight years later, a fire broke out in the castle and parts of it were reerected but it isn't known which ones exactly. In 1684, Aschwin of Saldern sold his family's castle to Baron Adam Arnold of Bocholtz, bailiff of the Bishop of Hildesheim. A few decades later, in 1820 to be precise, Schloss Henneckenrode came into the possession of ...

To be perfectly honest with you, where I come from, you don’t think very highly of Salzgitter. To be perfectly honest once again, I had previously only been there to go ice skating and also to the local lake once. The town of Salzgitter was only founded in 1942 and it looks like it; it’s quite grey, many 1950’s to 1970’s buildings, industry as well as more industry. I knew that the town, which actually does not have a real centre, was originally made up out of several villages but I had never been to one of the village-y villages. That changed this past weekend and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. The village of choice was Salder, which most prominently features a castle by the same name - obviously as otherwise I wouldn’t tell you about it on this blog - but also lots of other nice old building. As so many castles around Hanover and Brunswick, Schloss Salder was once owned by the Guelph family but its history started out with another few (noble) families. In the be...

Schloss Nettlingen located in a small village by the same name in southern Lower Saxony was built by Kurt von Salder around 1570. The Salder family, who changed their name to Saldern during the 17th century, had been present in Nettlingen since the 14th century.  However, the castle was sold to the brewer guild of Hildesheim in 1611 after five years of negotiations. Yet another year later, the guild sold the Schloss to Arend of Wobersnow for 28,000 Reichsthaler . The Landdrost (an official with local jurisdiction) Wobersnow had made a lot of money when he, as coin commissioner of of Duke Friedrich Ulrich of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, minted inferior coins but he was found out and, in 1620, it was Nettlingen where Wobersnow flew to when being persecuted by the imperial chamber. Somehow the Salder family apparently got the Schloss back after that though it also seems that the Bennigsen family owned it at one point or the other after the Wobersnows. Whoever owned the castle...