We had a stop on our transit today at Augustusburg Schloss, which is a castle/hunting lodge on an elevation outside the town of Augustusberg in Lower Saxony. It was built between 1567 and 1572 in the Ore Mountains near the city of Chemnitz.
It was built by Prince Elector, Augustus (how unusual that a man would name a castle after himself!), as not only a prestigious palace for his hunting trips, but also to cement his sovereignty of Central Germany. There were several other castles on this hill; first in the 12thC and later in the 14thC, but the later was destroyed by fire and lightning, and it was an obvious site for Prince Elector Augustus’ new palace.
The castle has famous lime trees… famous for what, you might ask? We have no idea! lol There is scant little information in this entire place in English – it seems to be a destination for school groups (you’ll see what I mean later, on that), and it’s a site used by the local town for weddings, functions, and things like car exhibitions and motorbike rallies.
Much of it looks very modern and recently renovated (and I gotta say, some of the painting on the murals and trompe l’oeil work isn’t all that sophisticated.
Panorama of the courtyard…
Fantastical display of arms – though I couldn’t find any information on what families were represented here.
Entrance to the castle museum… first things first, let’s get you up the four flights of steps that no one mentioned and you didn’t see anything about when you searched about how noompty friendly the castle is. *rolls eyes*
As befits a hunting lodge, there are loads of antlers everywhere – not so many as your average Scottish castle, but still plenty of them present. However, on closer inspection, you can see that the antlers are real but the heads they’re mounted on are all facsimiles. Turns out most of these are very old, and the poorly stuffed heads hadn’t aged that well.
Collection of firearms – mostly percussion shotguns, muskets, and flintlock rifles from 19thC and early 20thC. :/
Again, mostly percussion shotguns, muskets, and flintlock rifles from 19thC and early 20thC.
Powder bottles, early 19thC.
More antlers mounted on what looks like plastic heads. WEIRD!
Armbrust – Crossbow, German, c.1573 used for hunting smaller animals and large bird species.
Chest bench, Cassapanca, Italy, 16thC. Carved walnut.
Armchair, Spanish, 17thC. Carved walnut and embossed leather.
Chair, Spain, 17thC, carved walnut and embossed leather.
Chair, Italian, 17thC. Walnut with relief carving.
Chair, German, 16thC. Carved walnuts.
Trunk, Italian, c.1560. Carved walnut.
Balester, German, c.1550. marked HSB.
Pastoral cutlery.
German, 1538. Pastoral knife and sheath.
Percussion shotguns, powder horns, flintlock pistols and rifles… from 1677-1800.
Recreated costumes c.1600. Lower Saxony, Germany.
LEFT: Jug, Steinzeug, Annaberg. RIGHT: Birnkrug, Steinzeug, Annaberg, both c.1621.
Plate – Majolica, Italian, 17thC.
Credenza, Italian, 16thC. Mahogany relief carved.
Sideboard with drawers, Germany/Württemberg, 1647. Used for plate and tableware storage; the small chair is firmly attached to the sideboard and likely used by a table servant.
Modern frescos…
And then things got even stranger – as I said, it seems likely that this castle museum is used as a local excursion site for school children, as it morphed very quickly and without warning from firearms and hunting to a natural history museum space stuffed full (pun intended) of taxidermied local animals!
I love me a good stuffed animal as much as the next person – sadly, no a single overstuffed platypus in sight as all of these were local creatures and species. Scroll to the end for the *best* stuffed thing in this collection.
*where BEST usually means the most bizarre or odd stuffed creature; in this case the weird arse owl above… I think his name could be DUO!
Back in the main room, the trompe l’oeil work is a bit so so.
Small chapel space. They hold weddings and other functions here.
And of course, no decent medieval castle (for kids) would be complete without a dungeon space. Not a lot of information on most of these displays – but you can use your imagination and see how they were put to use.
Catherine’s Wheel.
Chastity belt, pear, scold’s bridles.
Scold’s bridle and a ‘schandgeige’ or ‘shameful violin’… no idea what that is; not sure I want to Google it. Ok, Googled it, not as bad as it could have been… the device was used around the neck to restrain the hands as well to stop people fighting or bickering.
A Doppelgeige – similar the the restraining device above, only it could be used to restrain two people at the same time.
Does she weigh more than a duck?
Stocks.
Yep.
The diagrams on the top right, remind me of a demonstration I saw at an SCA A&S lecture on medieval torture that Mynjon did years ago… people left because they found it offended their delicate sensibilities! lol. Good times.
Augustusburg Schloss wasn’t out of our way more than 2kms off the highway and then back to it, so I was kinda glad we hadn’t made a special trip to see it. As castles go, it ranks somewhere above Bli Bli Castle and lower than Magical Kingdom.
After this short stop, it was back on the road and we ended up driving straight into an unexpected thunderstorm doing 130kph+ on the autobahn! Everyone responded really well, I was super surprised. All lanes slowed down to 40-60kmph, people put their hazard lights on to make their vehicles more visible and were basically super sensible given visibility dropped to probably less than about 30m really quickly. Angus was driving and he handled the sudden super-shitty conditions really well.
