The oldest surviving water castle in northern Germany

Plattenburg is a water castle in the municipality of Plattenburg in the Prignitz district of Brandenburg. It was first documented in 1319 when Bishop Reiner of Havelberg purchased the castle from Margrave Waldemar of Brandenburg. During the Middle Ages, the castle served as the summer residence of the bishops of Havelberg.

In 1552, the preacher Joachim Ellefeld was incarcerated at the Plattenburg after burning Wilsnack's holy blood hosts. Elector Joachim II pledged the castle to his chamberlain, Matthias of Saldern, in that same year. By 1560, Joachim II gave the castle and estate as a heritable and personal enfeoffment to Matthias of Saldern.

During the 1600s, Burchard von Saldern carried out an expansion of the upper castle in the Late Renaissance style. He also built a new castle chapel inside the bakehouse and brewery. Conflict arrived during the Thirty Years' War; in 1631, King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus issued a writ of protection for the lords of Plattenburg. Later, in 1675, Swedish troops laid siege to the castle. Architecture shifted again in 1724 when Johann Jakob Müller from Brunswick designed a timber-framed wing.

Fire struck in 1883 when the brick tower burned down at temperatures of minus 15 °C. Siegfried von Saldern rebuilt the brick tower to be even higher after the fire. In 1940, French prisoners of war were billeted in the chapel wing as part of a military hospital. After 1945, refugee families lived in the castle until 1960. From 1969 to 1991, the keep was used as a holiday home for the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn.

Today, the castle houses a wedding room for the municipality of Plattenburg and offers overnight accommodation for around 30 people. Visitors admire the Late Renaissance sandstone staircase and fireplace in the Great Hall. The castle is the last station on the Pilgrim Way from Berlin to the Church of the Holy Sacrament in Bad Wilsnack. In the cellar, a medieval banquet persists at the Plattenburg Round Table.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons