Wewelsburg

What do you think of when you see a castle?  There's a good chance that there are at least slightly romantic notions tied up with castles.  For me at least, that's the case, even though I know the historical reality is really not so pleasant.  However, even though castles conjure up notions of the past, they can in fact exist with perfectly modern functions.

So two weeks ago, I went as an assistant for the intense practice week of my school's music ensembles. We stayed and practiced at the above youth hostel, Wewelsburg, which also happens to be a castle.

Of course, I was rather excited to escape into a little rural idyll.  The town was in the middle of nowhere, the kind of place where tractors drive down streets, the one village church has very active bells, and cats roam around.  It was truthfully a beautiful nowhere, with lots of fields full of cows, a creek, and a beer garden in the valley.  For more than a few days, it would probably grow boring, but I was only there for a few days.  The castle itself fit the bill of a typical medieval castle.  Towers, suits of armor in the entry way, bridge, moat.  However, this being Germany, there are definitely many sides to the story.

There are Renaissance inscriptions of the portal.  However, on the bridge, it's a different story.  

Notice the date.  

According to a plaque in the entrance, a castle already existed in the 12th century, which was rebuilt in the 17th century to the main structure it is today.  During this time, it belonged to the diocese of Paderborn and also played host to some witch trials.  In the 18th and 19th century, it was left to deteriorate. In the 1920s it served briefly as a hostel and a museum was opened.  However, in 1934, it became headquarters for the SS.

The SS were the elite Nazi troops who carried out some of the worst terror of WWII.  After acquiring the castle, they began renovating it.  The bridge I'd admired was built by the Nazis, wide enough for cars to drive across.  The moat was expanded by prisoners in a nearby labor camp and the plaster was removed to just show the stones to look more "authentic."  Overall, the Nazis wanted to draw on romanticism and link themselves to a perceived glorious German past by shaping this castle to fit that image. They had plans to completely rebuild the town in grandiose terms, but this was never carried out.  Near the end of the war, the Nazis blew up the castle to prevent it falling into American hands.  However, it was rebuilt and reopened as a youth hostel in one half and a museum in the other.  Beside the castle is a memorial museum documenting the Nazi history of the castle.

It's definitely difficult to grapple with varying notions of the past and my visit to the memorial museum raised many questions.  Suddenly the bridge and moat weren't neutral constructions.  Can you appreciate their aesthetics, but with proper remembrance?  What does it mean that the castle was rebuilt to keep many of its renovated elements?  How should you deal with one tower now being a cult site?  Can you draw a line between past and present? I don't know as much as I'd like about the period directly following the war, but I think in many ways, Germans tried to make a break with architecture styles, language choices, fonts, etc. with the past.  At the same time, historical preservation and bearing witness is also important.  Coming to the terms with the (Nazi) past is something that continuously pops up here, and as an American I usually don't have to struggle with this as much as the Germans do.  Yet the history of Wewelsburg and how I relate to it is something that is problematic to me and I still haven't figured out my own thoughts on it.