Eutin Castle
The Duke asks
It could hardly be more impressive in Schleswig-Holstein: The four-winged complex of the Eutin Castle, from the outside North German brick, with entrance and south tower, southern-looking inner courtyard with fountain and moat around the building is located directly on the lake and is surrounded by an expansive English language Landscaped garden.
Already around 1160 one suspects the first settlement of the Lübeck bishops here in Eutin. Quarrel with the stubborn secular citizenship of the Hanseatic city forced the clergymen from their ancestral city into the local "exile". From 1586, the Gottorf dukes, who had meanwhile been elected bishops of the prince-bishopric of Lübeck, converted the property into a prince-bishop's residence, and from 1773, when the area was united with Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, the Oldenburg (grand) dukes became lords of the house: Eutin was first their seat of government, later only summer residence. The representative castle was built for hundreds of years, in the meantime it burned down to a large extent, like so many buildings of the time, until it was given its present form around 1840 with an increase and the design of the castle square.
The future Tsarina Katharina the Great also reports in her memoirs about life in the Eutin Castle - after all, her mother grew up here, she visited the court for a long time and finally met her future husband, Prince Karl Peter Ulrich von Holstein, here for the first time. Gottorf, later Tsar Peter. Other famous personalities such as the Goethe painter Wilhelm Tischbein or the father of the famous composer Carl Maria von Weber left their mark on the court. Progressive dukes introduced hygienic innovations and garden-philosophical redesigns and shaped the regional history for a long time, but this ended with the abdication of the Oldenburgs in 1918.