Qualla: Burg Castle (Solingen)

Burg Castle (Solingen): Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Morty, CC BY-SA 3.0. There is a whole region of Germany — the Bergisches Land — that takes its name from a single noble family, and that family took its name from a single mountain, and on that mountain stands the castle. The Counts of Berg built Schloss Burg above the Wupper river sometime after 1133, abandoned their old seat at Berge near Altenberg, and from this hilltop ran a dynasty that would eventually rule Düsseldorf, marry into the Tudors, and survive almost every catastrophe except an electrical fire in November 1920. Burg is the rare medieval castle whose name is shorthand for an entire landscape, and the entire landscape is shorthand for a family that has been gone for centuries.

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Image: Morty | CC BY-SA 3.0

Burg Castle (Solingen): From Berge to Berg

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit André Schäfer from Radevormwald, Deutschland, CC BY-SA 2.0. Count Adolf III of Berg made the move shortly after 1133. The family's old castle at Castle Berge in Odenthal, near what would become Altenberg Abbey, was abandoned for a new site on a steep mountain above the Wupper. The new castle's first name was Castle Neuenberge — Newmountai...

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Image: André Schäfer from Radevormwald, Deutschland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Burg Castle (Solingen): An Archbishop Murdered by His Cousin

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 4.0. Engelbert II of Berg was, by the standards of his time, almost unimaginably powerful. He was simultaneously Archbishop of Cologne, Count of Berg, chief administrator to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and guardian and tutor of the future king Henry VII of Germany. Men with t...

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Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 4.0

Burg Castle (Solingen): Worringen and a Wedding

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tuxyso, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sixty years after Engelbert's death, Count Adolf VIII of Berg fought at the Battle of Worringen on June 5, 1288 — the decisive Limburg-succession battle that ended Cologne archbishopric power along the lower Rhine. The defeated Archbishop Siegfried II of Westerburg was brought to...

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Image: Tuxyso | CC BY-SA 3.0

Burg Castle (Solingen): Two Fires and a Restoration

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit H005, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Thirty Years' War caught up with Burg in 1632, when Swedish soldiers laid siege. In 1648, after the war ended, Imperial troops methodically demolished the castle's defenses — keep, walls, gates. Partial rebuilding in 1700 turned what remained into local administrative offices...

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Image: H005 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Burg Castle (Solingen): Burg Today

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Globe-trotter, CC BY-SA 3.0. Schloss Burg is now the largest reconstructed castle in North Rhine-Westphalia and a major tourist attraction. It houses the Museum of the Bergisches Land, a memorial to the deportations of the twentieth century, and the Memorial of the German Eastern Provinces — preserving bells...

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Image: Globe-trotter | CC BY-SA 3.0