History
The castle was first mentioned in 1319, Bishop Reiner of Havelberg having purchased it from Margrave Waldemar of Brandenburg.
In 1548 Plattenburg became the seventh Prignitz district. After the death of the last bishop of Havelberg, Busso II, the Elector of Brandenburg, Joachim II, who had recently converted to the Lutheran Church, had his son Frederick IV elected as Bishop of Havelberg in 1551.
In 1552, the preacher Joachim Ellefeld burned the Wilsnack's holy blood hosts and was incarcerated at the Plattenburg. Elector Joachim II pledged the castle to his chamberlain, Matthias of Saldern. In 1560 he was given the castle and estate (including Wilsnack) as a heritable and personal enfeoffment.
Around 1600 an expansion of the upper castle was carried out in the Late Renaissance style under Burchard von Saldern. In 1631, during the Thirty Years' War, the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus issued a writ of protection (Schutzbrief) for the lords of Plattenburg. Some time later taught Burchard von Saldern built a new castle chapel in the bakehouse and brewery. In 1675, Swedish troops laid siege to the castle.
In 1724 the construction of timber-framed wing was carried out. The architect was Johann Jakob Müller from Brunswick. In 1883 the brick tower burned down at temperatures of minus 15 °C, but was rebuilt even higher by Siegfried von Saldern.
Between 1925 and 1945 Sieghard von Saldern took over lordship of Plattenburg. In 1940 French prisoners of war were billeted in the chapel wing, part of the castle serving as a military hospital.
After the estate was expropriated by the state from the von Salderns in 1945, refugee families lived in the castle until 1960. In 1969, the keep was converted into a holiday home for the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn, and it was used as such until 1991. That same year, an association was founded to promote and preserve the Plattenburg and restoration began which has continued to the present (2008). In 1995, a memorial stone was erected in front of the varlets' house by the Federation of Expellees to the victims of forced displacement after the Second World War.
The Prince-Bishopric of Brandenburg was an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire from the 12th century until it was secularized during the second half of the 16th century. It should not be confused with the larger Diocese of Brandenburg established by King Otto I of Germany in 948, in the territory of the Marca Geronis east of the Elbe river. The diocese, over which the prince-bishop exercised only spiritual authority, was a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Magdeburg, its seat was Brandenburg an der Havel.
The Berlin Palace, formally the Royal Palace, on the Museum Island in the Mitte area of Berlin, was the main residence of the House of Hohenzollern from 1443 to 1918. Expanded by order of King Frederick I of Prussia according to plans by Andreas Schlüter from 1689 to 1713, it was thereafter considered a major work of Prussian Baroque architecture. The former royal palace was one of Berlin’s largest buildings and shaped the cityscape with its 60-meter-high (200 ft) dome.
Perleberg is the capital of the district of Prignitz, located in the northwest of the German state of Brandenburg. The town received city rights in 1239 and today has about 12,000 inhabitants. Located in a mostly agricultural area, the town has a long history of troops being stationed there and as an administrative center for local government.
Bad Wilsnack is a small town in the Prignitz district, in Brandenburg, Germany. The former pilgrimage site of the Holy Blood of Wilsnack has been officially recognised as a spa town (Bad) since 1929. It is the administrative seat of the Amt Bad Wilsnack/Weisen.
Havelberg is a town in the district of Stendal, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated on the Havel, and part of the town is built on an island in the centre of the river. The two parts were incorporated as a town in 1875. It has a population of 7,687 (2004).
Wittstock/Dosse is a town in the Ostprignitz-Ruppin district, in north-western Brandenburg, Germany.
Schönhausen is a municipality in the district of Stendal in Saxony-Anhalt in Germany. It is the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde Elbe-Havel-Land.
Schloss Johannisburg is a schloss in the town of Aschaffenburg, in Franconia in the state of Bavaria, Germany. It was erected between 1605 and 1614 by the architect Georg Ridinger for Johann Schweikhard von Kronberg, Prince Bishop of Mainz. Until 1803, it was the second residence of the Prince Bishop of Mainz. It is constructed of red sandstone, the typical building material of the Spessart, the hills near Aschaffenburg.
The Bishopric of Havelberg was a Roman Catholic diocese founded by King Otto I of Germany in 946, from 968 a suffragan to the Archbishops of Magedeburg. A Prince-bishopric (Hochstift) from 1151, Havelberg as a result of the Protestant Reformation was secularised and finally annexed by the margraves of Brandenburg in 1598.
The Holy Blood of Wilsnack was the name given to three hosts, which survived a fire in 1383 that burned the church and village to the ground. The hosts were thus seen as miraculous. The relics became the destination of medieval religious pilgrimages to Bad Wilsnack, Germany for nearly two centuries. Revenue from the many pilgrims enabled the town to build the large St. Nicholas' Church at the site. The hosts were destroyed by reformers in 1558 during the Protestant Reformation.
Dietrich Man, known as Dietrich II, was Bishop of Havelberg from 1370 to 1385.
Georg von Blumenthal was a German Prince-Bishop of Ratzeburg and Bishop of Lebus. He also served as a Privy Councillor of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and Chancellor of the University of Frankfurt (Oder), commonly called the Viadrina.
Schloss Köpenick is a Baroque water palace of the Hohenzollern electors of Brandenburg which stands on an island in the Dahme River surrounded by an English-style park and gives its name to Köpenick, a district of Berlin.
Heinrich von Bülow also known as Big Top (Grotekop) was a knight born in the middle of the fourteenth century. He died either before 1395 or during 1415. He prospered as a warrior-supporter of Prince Albrecht of Mecklenburg. Outside Mecklenberg, Heinrich Grotekop is still remembered in many quarters as an archetypal robber baron on account of his appetite for feuding.
Saldern or von Saldern, is the name of an old German aristocratic family from the areas of Hildesheim and Brunswick Land. The family seat of the same name is an eponymous castle on the River Fuhse in Salzgitter-Salder. Originally the family, whose branches are still alive today, only owned estates in the Lower Saxony area, but from the middle of the 16th century they also owned extensive property in the March of Brandenburg.
Rheinsberg Palace lies in the municipality of Rheinsberg, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of Berlin in the German district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin.
The Swedish invasion of Brandenburg (1674–75) involved the occupation of the undefended Margraviate of Brandenburg by a Swedish army launched from Swedish Pomerania during the period 26 December 1674 to the end of June 1675. The Swedish invasion sparked the Swedish-Brandenburg War that, following further declarations of war by European powers allied with Brandenburg, expanded into a North European conflict that did not end until 1679.
Glöwen station is the station of the town of Glöwen, which is in the municipality of Plattenburg and the German state of Brandenburg. It lies on the Berlin–Hamburg Railway and was opened in 1846. The Glöwen–Havelberg railway branched at the station from 1890 to 1971. The former Light Railway of the District of West and East Prignitz from Viesecke, a small town now in the municipality of Plattenburg, ended in Glöwen from 1900 to 1967. The Neoclassical entrance, which was built at the same time as the line, has heritage protection.
The Jagdschloss Grunewald, a hunting lodge, is the oldest preserved castle of Berlin, Germany. It is on the south waterfront of the Grunewaldsee and is part of the locality Dahlem in the borough Steglitz-Zehlendorf.
Dietrich von Bülow was a German Bishop of Lebus-Fürstenwalde.
