The story of this place
This unusual triangular Renaissance castle in Westphalia was leased by Heinrich Himmler in 1934 and transformed into an ideological centre for the SS, intended as a pseudo-religious 'centre of the world' for his black-uniformed order. In the North Tower he installed a crypt and a hall with a dark sun mosaic in the floor, staging occult-tinged ceremonies for SS leaders. The grandiose expansion plans were built by prisoners from a dedicated concentration camp, Niederhagen, where over 1,200 people died. In 1945 the SS tried to blow the castle up as US troops advanced, gutting much of it. Rebuilt after the war, it now houses a sober memorial and museum documenting the ideology and crimes of the SS.