Castle Bleijenbeek, often written in German Blyenbeck, is a ruined castle in the district Afferden of Bergen in the Dutch province of Limburg. 1405 belonged to the plant Wijnand Schenck van Nijdeggen. There resided Martin Schenk of Nideggen, who had brought it to the army leader in Spanish and Dutch services. In 1589, during the Eighty Years War, the castle was occupied by the Spaniards. From 1708 the moated castle was owned by the counts of Hoensbroech. As from 1872 as part of the Kulturkampf the Jesuits were expelled from Germany by virtue of the Jesuit laws, the owner, Count Franz Egon von Hoensbroech (1805-1874), the father of the later ex-Jesuit and Jesuit critic Paul Graf von Hoensbroech, the country castle this order as asylum available. Among others, there lived the famous priest writer Joseph Spillmann, who worked on the story of Blijenbeek and his former inhabitants, the gift of Nideggen, in the novel The Paradise Room. To the plant belonged the teahouse (theehuisje) at a pond. The castle was destroyed by a bombing in February 1945. The ruins of the outer walls have been preserved. The moat around Bleijenbeek Castle is leased by the resident fishing club HSV de Voorn Afferden and houses a rich stock of freshwater fish. Joseph Spillmann describes Bleijenbeek in 1885 in the introduction to his novel The Paradise Room as follows:
Source: Wikipedia