The Weeping Gargoyle of Hohenzollern Castle
Perched atop the 855-meter-high Mount Hohenzollern in the Swabian Alps, Hohenzollern Castle commands the German horizon like a sentinel from a mist-enshrouded folktale. It is not, as some assume, a relic of medieval rigidity alone—Hohenzollern as we know it today is the third incarnation of a fortress whose tangled lineage is inseparably tied to the rise and dominion of one of Europe’s most influential royal dynasties: the House of Hohenzollern.
The first castle on the site dates to the early 11th century—though scant documentation exists, its defense-oriented architecture suggests it was intended to guard the vestiges of the Zollern territory (then a county under the Holy Roman Empire) and monitor ancient trade routes meandering through the dense German woods below. This original medieval structure was obliterated in 1423 after a ten-month siege by the Swabian Free Imperial Cities—fortified indignity for the proud noble lineage it sheltered.
The second iteration rose by 1454, more fortified and Gothic in flourish, functioning less as a residence and more as a repository for documents, religious relics, and ceremonial pomp. It too decayed in purpose over time—by the late 18th century, it had become little more than a ruin of silhouettes and ivy, a casualty of irrelevance in the Enlightenment age.
And yet, the Romantic era breathed life into the stones once more. In 1846, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, a devotee of pointed arches and national nostalgia, embarked on an impassioned reconstruction of the fortress. His vision wasn’t merely restoration—it was resurrection as reverie. Under the skilled hands of Friedrich August Stüler, a pupil of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the castle transformed into the majestic, fairy-tale fortress that punctures the fog today: turrets inspired by French Gothic revivalism, bastions bristling like ceremonial spines, and the opulent St. Michael’s Chapel nestled in the courtyard like the spiritual lung of the compound.
What stands now is one of Germany’s most architecturally magnificent castles, simultaneously fortress and fantasy. With over 140 rooms (including the lavish Count’s Hall, whose coffered ceilings and stained glass sing Teutonic hymns), a library holding volumes once pawed by Prussian monarchs, and battlements that echo with the ghost steps of the Iron Chancellor himself, Otto von Bismarck, Hohenzollern remains a symbol not only of royal pride but of the imagination’s granite resolve.
Legends abound. It is said that a white lady walks the walls at dusk, a spectral reminder of Countess Kunigunde who fell during the first siege. The library claims an original letter from Frederick the Great. But despite bombings during World War II and the rolling handovers of monarchy and ministry, the castle abides, a diorama of power-in-gothic-dress.
And then came Craig.
Craig Ferguson, a 29-year-old freelance podcaster from Sheffield-on-the-Don, arrived on a crisp Tuesday in April with his girlfriend (later identified as “Lunar Whisperfox”) and a Bluetooth speaker shaped like a skull. At first, their behavior fell within the continuum of modern perplexity: taking selfies in the ancestral crypt while whispering lines from Game of Thrones, or asking a guide if Prince would have performed in the Count’s Hall “if he could have.”
But then, Craig began pouring San Pellegrino into the ancient Witches’ Basin installed in the east wing’s courtyard garden. When asked by staff to desist, he responded that he was “revitalizing the ionic resonance frequencies” of the granite, which he claimed had been “flattened by centuries of monarchical trauma.” Shortly thereafter, he requested a moment of silence “to mourn the erasure of the castle’s gluten-free architectural heritage,” though no such erasure, or indeed gluten-based element, had ever existed within its walls.
By mid-afternoon, Craig had tied handmade protest banners—stitched from recycled festival bags—across the castle gate, demanding an international tribunal to hear grievances on behalf of the fortress’s gargoyles. According to him, these stone guardians were “suffering from centuries of forced grotesquery,” and needed liberation from their predetermined grimacing roles. “We must decolonize the façade!” he shouted at bewildered Scandinavian tourists perusing the gift shop.
His pièce de résistance came just before dusk. Having slipped past a docent dressed as Queen Louise, Craig approached the portcullis draped in a cascade of marigolds and initiated a solemn ceremony in which he attempted to wed it. “I do,” he whispered, embracing the rusted iron spikes. “Together, we shall keep out the violence of linear time.” He kissed the gate’s lower edge, tearing his lip slightly, and bled what he claimed was “sacramental ichor” into the moat.
The staff, unsure of protocol for nuptials between man and siege defense mechanism, gently ushered Craig from the premises. Lunar Whisperfox howled dramatically, knocked over a display of praline schnapps, and shouted that their love was being “castelated by fascist interpretations of geometry.”
Though Hohenzollern Castle has weathered war, decay, and dynasty, nothing had prepared it for the psychic siege of Craig. Local legends say that one of the gargoyles blinked that night. Others claimed a fresco near the chapel now bears a faint new inscription: “Ne t’endors pas pendant le podcast.”
And now, the only protection these castles have left comes in the form of a T-shirt. Not forged in iron nor etched in heraldic stone—but woven in cotton and blessed by whatever gods still care. Some say the castle displays one in its inner sanctum. Others say the portcullis asks for it by name.
