Youth hostel

Stahleck Castle looks more like a medieval stately home than a youth hostel, and that's precisely what it once was. Previously the castle was the seat of the descendents of Count Stahleck and the home of some of the most influential members of the nobility in the Palatinate region of western Germany.

The castle first appears in historical records dated around 1135 and has enjoyed a very colourful history since. The counts of the region once used it as their headquarters, preserving their fortune through taxes on the local population and customs charges for visiting traders. But they weren't to have things all their own way. The castle changed hands many times during the Thirty Years War, and was eventually conquered - and virtually flattened - by French soldiers in the 17th century.

After a lengthy rebuilding process during the early 20th century, the castle was officially reopened as a youth hostel in June 1926. While this may have signalled the end of the castle's involvement in conflict, it was once again accosted by warmongers when the Nazis moved in during the 1930s and converted the castle into a Hitler Youth hostel, a place for indoctrination and training courses for younger children or would-be soldiers.

Stahleck Castle's rebirth

After the war, Stahleck Castle was put back to use as an ordinary hostel, and has been playing host to a very different breed of invaders since, going from strength to strength as a popular destination for young travellers and students passing through Europe. It has certainly proved a hit with many of its guests: foreign visitors to German youth hostels have voted Stahleck Castle the best hostel in Germany.

The castle’s attraction may have something to do with the landscape that it dominates. It overlooks the once busy yet picturesque market town of Bacharach from a dramatic outcrop on the Rhine River with rolling hills, forests, and vineyards either side. But the hostel’s manager Michael Kumpfe believes that another factor contributes to its appeal.

"Who can say that they have slept in a castle before?" Kumpfe asks, chuckling. "Not to mention one in such a location - 100 meters above the Rhine river. If you look out to the horizon, the view is just breathtaking. I think it's one of the most beautiful views of the Rhine in all of Germany."

Special school trip

The hostel can house up to 168 guests, in anything from single rooms to twelve-bed dormitories. Roughly 38,000 people stay here each year, the majority of them schoolchildren, looking for a place which can bring their school history to life.

"It's really a different feeling, actually being in a medieval castle," says Jasmin, an adolescent girl who's staying at Stahleck Castle on a school trip. "You can really begin to imagine how the place might have looked back in those days."

Andrea Kumpfe, who runs the hostel with her husband Michael, considers it part of her job to be a historical tour guide, rather than just to make the beds and arrange the meals. She says that children who visit the castle should be encouraged to do something more productive with their time than play table tennis or have pillow fights.

"Sometimes we even take the children out into the forests, perhaps making them create something - like a shelter - with the things that they find in the forest. It's almost like survival training," she says.

For Michael and Andrea, running Stahleck Castle is quite a change of pace from their last place of work, a four star hotel in Munich. Michael says that a part of him misses the anonymity of a big city, although he adds that he and Andrea were warmly welcomed on their arrival.

"The main difference is that everything is so much louder here," he jokes. "If there are 150 children here, along with their carers, then there will be shrieking, games and general frivolity. Before dinner-time our visitors really live the high-life!"

What better place to do so than in a castle that for years housed some of the most powerful people in modern day Germany?

Author: Christiane Hoffmann/msh/nda

Editor: Chuck Penfold

To learn more about the 100 year history of youth hostels in Germany, click on the picture gallery below.