Haut Konigsberg - Again

The castle at Haut Konigsberg is another staple of sight-seeing trips. Amanda had not been up there, so we stopped for our first visit since spring had come.

As a side note, Haut Konigsberg was mentioned in a previous post where I went on a bit of a tangent about the history of Alsace. This castle was occupied and built over the course of many centuries until it finally was bombarded and burned into ruins during the Thirty Years War. It remained in ruins for over 200 years. Then, in the late 1800's, Kaiser Wilhelm II was going through a phase of romanticizing his German heritage and listening to a little too much Wagner. He decided he needed a castle befitting a warrior knight. So, he brought in an architect to rebuild the old castle at Haut Konigsberg so that it might become his romantic little hideaway. At the time, Alsace was 20 or so years into it's annexation by Germany and the castle served as a powerful symbol of Alsace as part of the traditional German homeland.

Unwittingly, the Kaiser made an excellent investment in the future. Today, the castle is probably the number one tourist attraction in all of Alsace.

The castle has a nice assortment of old furniture and the armoires are especially attractive. The picture below gives a taste of the lovely woodworking.