Confessions of a Castleholic

Firstly mentioned as Widenkindigstein in 1187, the origins of Schloss Wittgenstein located in the south-Westphalian town of Bad Laasphe were owned by the House of Battenberg who tried to secure their holdings on the upper Lahn river with the help of the castle. In 1190 Count Werner I of Battenberg and Wittgenstein signed a contract with the Archbishop of Mainz, Konrad I of Wittelsbach, to sell the castle to the Archbishopric though it was agreed that the castle would be given back to Count Werner as a fiefdom. However, the Archbishop failed to pay the whole sum of money promised to the count and so the castle remained in his family's hands though not for long. On September 2nd, 1223, Count Werner I's three sons, Werner II, Widekind I and Hermann, sold the castle to the new Archbishop of Mainz, Siegfried II of Eppstein. In turn the sons received Wittgenstein castle back as a fiefdom.  About 15 years later the historical House of Battenberg - which shouldn't be confu...

Above the town of Bad Berleburg lies a Schloss by the very same name (minus the 'Bad' part) that has been in the possession of the (ancestors of the) Sayn-Wittgenstein family for more than 700 years. It is actually one of the few castles with a similar age that have been owned by the same family for the entire time of its existence. The House of Sayn-Wittgenstein was created through the marriage of heiress Countess Adelheid of Wittgenstein and Count Salentin of Sayn-Homburg of the House of Sponheim in 1345. The two counties of Sayn and Wittgenstein, however, only merged some 40 years later when their son inherited them both. Later the family split into three main branches, the Houses of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn and Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein. Not too hard to guess, it is the first and genealogically most senior one of the three branches who owns Schloss Berleburg today. Originally co-owned by Count Siegfried I of Wittgenstein and Adolf I of...

While the two surviving branches of the House of Nassau have been calling the Netherlands and Luxembourg their respective homes for decades and centuries now, their roots are located in an area which comprises of parts of today's German states of Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, and the Oberes Schloss in Siegen is witness to this rich history. It was here - not exactly the castle but an adjacent building - where Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens was born after his family had to flee the Spanish Netherlands for religious reasons and moved to Cologne where his father started an affair with Anna of Saxony, wife of Willem I of Orange, which he was imprisoned for in nearby Dillenburg and later placed under house arrest in Siegen. The Oberes Schloss , a medieval fortified hilltop castle, was firstly mentioned in 1259. There are, however, other documents which indicate that the castle had already existed in 1224 when Archbishop Engelbert I of Cologne and Coun...

Today's castle I visited last spring and probably is not very familiar to you though it does have some very royal connections. The ruined castle complex Ginsburg lies high above the constituent community of Grund of the town of Hilchenbach in the Siegen-Wittgenstein district of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. To be honest, it probably isn't a place that you would go to for itself but friends and I included it in a longish Sunday hike and it was a nice place to take in some of the scenery around. The Ginsburg is believed to have been built between the years 1220 and 1240 by Count Heinrich II of Nassau, the most common ancestor in Nassau-line of the heads of the two branches of the House of Nassau , King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg. The Counts of Nassau used the building as a border fortress against the Counts of Wittgenstein and the Sauerland properties of the Electorate of Cologne. The Ginsburg was firstly mentioned...