2001.09.05           Germany Sights Series - Kirchheim Castle and Wartburg Castle
Kirchheim Castle is located in the Mindel valley, some 50 kilometres southwest of Augsburg in Southern Germany. In 1551 Anton Fugger, the nephew and successor of Jakob Fugger the Rich from Augsburg, purchased the Kirchheim territory from the estate of the knight Hans Walther von Hürnheim. His son Hans assumed the lordship over the mediaeval castle in 1575 and commissioned the Augsburg master builder Jakob Eschay to design a new palace, an impressive Renaissance edifice with more than 100 rooms, which was constructed between 1578 and 1585. Eschay used the former castle keep as a belltower, and the former chapel was what would become the future castle church's choral hall. The pièce de résistance of the castle is the "Zedernsaal", named for the cedar used in what is regarded as Europe's most beautiful coffered ceiling, created in 1585 by Wendel Dietrich in the Manierist style. The ceiling is one of the reasons why Kirchheim Castle is one of Germany's most important examples of this style.

Wartburg Castle near Eisenach, in the middle of the Thuringian Forest, boasts almost one thousand years of history and is undisputedly one of the best-known and most popular castles in Germany. The castle, which was the main seat of the landgrave (or Landgraf) and a centre of high-mediaeval spoken and sung poetry, became the residence of Saint Elisabeth, offered exile to the reformer Martin Luther, who was persecuted by both the pope and the Emperor, and was the venue of the German fraternities' Wartburg festival which marked the beginning of a free and democratic nation. The Romanesque main block of the castle with its impressive architecture bears witness to the heyday of the Middle Ages. In 1999, Wartburg Castle became the first German castle to be included in UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites.

The Sights series draws attention to major cultural and technical achievements, but is also supposed to be an incentive to seeing the subjects in real life.
 

Date of issue 5 September 2001
Denomination and Motif 50 Pf/0.26 €,  Coffer ceiling in the Cedar Hall of the Fugger castle in Kirchheim
400 Pf/2.05 €, World Heritage Site: Wartburg Castle in Eisenach
Design Sibylle and Fritz Haase, Bremen
Size 21.5 x 25.5 mm
Paper White fluorescent stamp paper DP 1 M
Printing Indirect two-colour letterpress
Printer the Bundesdruckerei GmbH, Berlin

 
Original information from Deutsche Post