Qualla: Steinfurt https://qualla.com/steinfurt en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:34 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/0/steinfurt-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Steinfurt https://qualla.com/steinfurt Steinfurt: Introduction https://qualla.com/steinfurt/ Photo credit Woehlecke at German Wikipedia, Public domain. Stemmert, the locals call it - and they have been calling it that since before the Reformation reshuffled the religious map of northern Germany. The official name, Steinfurt, simply means stony ford: a passage of flat rock across the little river Aa where, in the twelfth century, coaches could cross without sinking into the marsh. Whoever controlled the ford collected the tolls. Whoever collected the tolls built a castle. And whoever built the castle drew a town toward it, one cobbled lane at a time.

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Image: Woehlecke at German Wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/0/steinfurt-wp/u1m0-steinfurt-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Steinfurt: Two Towns, One Stone Ford https://qualla.com/steinfurt/ Photo credit NordhornerII, CC BY-SA 3.0. Modern Steinfurt is really two old towns stitched together in 1975 - Borghorst, which grew prosperous on textiles, and Burgsteinfurt, which preferred culture and administration. It is Burgsteinfurt that nineteenth-century travelers nicknamed the Paradise of Westphalia and the Roy...

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Image: NordhornerII | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/0/steinfurt-wp/u1m0-steinfurt-two-towns-one-stone-ford.mp3 0:06 2 full Steinfurt: An Island of Heretics https://qualla.com/steinfurt/ Photo credit NordhornerII, CC BY-SA 3.0. Steinfurt's most peculiar achievement was theological. In the 1560s, Count Arnold II converted to Lutheranism for his wife's sake, and on 25 January 1564, while the count slept, townsfolk seized the Great Church from the Catholic Knights of St. John. They still call it the Robber...

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Image: NordhornerII | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/0/steinfurt-wp/u1m0-steinfurt-an-island-of-heretics.mp3 0:06 3 full Steinfurt: The Bagno and the Counts' Whims https://qualla.com/steinfurt/ Photo credit NordhornerII, CC BY-SA 3.0. East of the still-inhabited castle, the counts laid out something Westphalia had never seen: an amusement park. Count Charles Paul Ernest founded the Bagno in 1765, taking his name from the Italian word for bath, and filled it with French-style geometry. His heir Louis ripped tha...

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Image: NordhornerII | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/0/steinfurt-wp/u1m0-steinfurt-the-bagno-and-the-counts-whims.mp3 0:06 4 full Steinfurt: The Stones That Watched Everything https://qualla.com/steinfurt/ Photo credit NordhornerII, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk the old market square and the buildings name their owners aloud. The Weinhaus from around 1450, the count's guesthouse. The Town Hall of 1561, its Renaissance gable climbing in seven peaked pyramids around the city crest, the turret resting on a single great beam the locals ...

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Image: NordhornerII | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/0/steinfurt-wp/u1m0-steinfurt-the-stones-that-watched-everything.mp3 0:06 5 full Steinfurt: Stemmert Today https://qualla.com/steinfurt/ Photo credit NordhornerII, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Gymnasium Arnoldinum still teaches under the name of the count who founded the old Hohe Schule - a direct line stretching back to 1591. The Fachhochschule Munster's engineering faculties moved into town and never left. Trains leave Steinfurt-Burgsteinfurt station every hour f...

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Image: NordhornerII | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/m/0/steinfurt-wp/u1m0-steinfurt-stemmert-today.mp3 0:06 6 full