March 1993
On Matt's First Big Trip to Germany, the first place MAP and I visited after I was settled in Stuttgart was Burg Hohenzollern. I remember M said to his Mom and me, "I want to take Matt there because it looks how Americans think castles should look in Germany." Truer words were never spoken. The castle sits on a hilltop and looks straight out of the Brothers Grimm.
Hohenzollern Castle is the ancestral seat of the imperial House of Hohenzollern. The third of three hilltop castles built on the site, it is located atop Mount Hohenzollern, above and south of Hechingen, on the edge of the Swabian Jura of central Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
The location of the castle was indeed stunning. Castles should be on small mountains overlooking everything.
...an ornate design influenced by English Gothic Revival architecture and the Châteaux of the Loire Valley in 1846. The impressive entryway is the work of the Engineer-Officer Moritz Karl Ernst von Prittwitz, considered the leading fortifications engineer in Prussia. The sculptures around and inside the castle are the work of Gustav Willgohs. Like Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, Hohenzollern Castle is a monument to German Romanticism which incorporated an idealized vision of a medieval knight's castle. Lacking some of the fantastic elements and excesses of Neuschwanstein, the castle's construction served to enhance the reputation of the Prussian Royal Family.
The third iteration of the castle was absolutely beautiful. Castles also must be beautiful. As noted, it was not Neuschwanstein, the model for Disneyland's Castle. Burg Hohenzollern was very much a real castle but with beautiful architecture and stylization.
After the castle was rebuilt, it was not regularly occupied, but rather used primarily as a showpiece. None of the Hohenzollern Kaisers of the German Empire lived there; only the last Prussian Crown Prince William stayed for several months following his flight from Potsdam ahead of Soviet army forces during the closing months of World War II. He and his wife Crown Princess Cecilie are buried there, as the family's estates in Brandenburg had been occupied by the Soviet Union at the time of their deaths.
(Wikipedia)
Castles must have been built by important people. The Hohenzollerns were the last Kaisers of Germany before WWI so the castle represents not only an archetypal castle, but also an important chapter of German history.
All I can say is, MAP well-done. I not only got to visit an incredibly beautiful (and historically significant) castle, but we also saw it in March with very few other guests. Even though we had seen Heidelberg Castle a day before, that city was all about the university (which happened to have a castle nearby). Burg Hohenzollern was a totally different feeling and experience,
German castle, check. It was time to experience more of what I expected Germany to be.