Confessions of a Castleholic

When it was announced in late November that the former Royal Family of Hanover would sell their family seat Schloss Marienburg to the state of Lower Saxony , it all seemed like a done deal despite some noise from opposition politicians. January 1, 2019, should have seen the handover between Hereditary Prince Ernst-August of Hanover, the owner of the Schloss , and the Klosterkammer , a part of the State Ministry of Science and Culture running several foundations and administrating the state-owned monasteries and churches. However, it wasn't to be. Why? The ever-present family quarrels within the Guelph family. As soon as the sale of  Schloss Marienburg  was announced a little more than a month ago, the dear relatives of the Hereditary Prince, who lives at the  Fürstenhaus  in Hanover with his growing family, made sure to make their voices heard.  After years of not-so-secret negotiations, Hereditary Prince Ernst-August struck a deal with the state gover...

It’s kinda surprising I introduced you to the concept of a Rittergut only about a week ago considering that there are hundreds and thousands of them scattered all over the German countryside. A Rittergut , literally a knight’s estate, were usually and often still are owned by the untitled or occassionally lower titled nobility. Today’s knight’s estate - Rittergut Remeringhausen - owes its existence to the Münchhausen family , you may recall from one of the other times they popped up here on Castleholic. In 1565, Börries von Münchhausen inherited a feudal estate in Remeringhausen, alongside with another one in nearby Oldendorf, from his father-in-law Claus van Büschen and, in turn, later bequeathed it to his son Ludolph. It was Ludolph who, in 1594, turned the farm run by a serf into an estate run directly for the family and decided to build a manor house to rival other knight's estates. Only one wing of the Weser-Renaissance-style building dating to the year 1599...