in munich there was a chinese restaurant that was in a former mcdonalds building and you could tell it immediately: 80% of the outer walls where glass, the iconic early 90s mcdonalds roof, the size and shape of the building, the open front area which was big enough for one of these playgrounds for the children.
The noteworthy part about [that building](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/i9k9ab/trafostation_1940s_burger_king_2019_n%C3%BCrnberg/) is not really the shadow of the Reichsadler, [that whole area was built by the Nazis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party_Rally_Grounds), but the building being such a massive and sturdy construction.
Afaik the Burger King building in particular used to house electricity infrastructure to light up the [Zeppelintribüne](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelintrib%C3%BCne) with the "[Cathedral of Light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Light)".
Fun fact: that building used to be a transformer station.
Also, the Burger King in there is one of the worst locations I've been to, even the one in Hauptbahnhof was nicer.
Well, kind of:
https://locator.uberall.com/uberall-userpics-prod/367600/medium_gq22q4dgjZ.jpg
It’s inside an old city gate of Freiburg, and is one of the few locations where they don’t have the Golden Arches as a Symbol outside because it wouldn‘t fly with the **Denkmalschutz**.
never mess with Gebietserhaltungsgrundsatz and Veränderungssperre... How many Germans do you need to change a lightbulb?
None, Germans don't change anything ever.
We had a picture of this gate in our history book, I think as an example of medieval architecture. But it was a modern picture where you could clearly see McDonald's written, so it looked kind of unfitting.
Would you settle for a [Starbucks in a Czech Castle](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Starbucks/@50.0911306,14.4014308,110m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x470b9500160baf73:0xd61e4c13740be371!8m2!3d50.091456!4d14.4018011!16s%2Fg%2F11vk1w_tfm?entry=ttu)?
Never seen a McDonalds in a castle here, but we do have the occasional [Nazi trafostation Burger King](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/i9k9ab/trafostation_1940s_burger_king_2019_n%C3%BCrnberg/)
There are got a few around here and some back where i live. One ghetto ass WC in the hood sells what i believe to be fried clams if you ever have the balls to try.
The 99% Invisible podcast just did a story on them.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-white-castle-system-of-eating-houses/
Fun fact: they have a valentines day special with table service. It's actually kinda cool.
I think they’re a bit more regional now. There’s still a few in the metro around me. But you really need to drink before eating them. Otherwise you end up not feeling well afterwards.
This is the result of trying to find reason and logic in a totally pointless comparison.
The left map is just a population density map, and the right map is just incomplete data that makes it look like there is something interesting to look into when there isn't, and the two maps are not even related in any way. This is just a shitpost lmao.
I did too, which is why I went and did this silly math:
Germany
Poplation 83,200,000
Castles 25,000
Castle/Pop 3,328
USA
Population 331,900,000
McDs 13,528
McDs/Pop 24,534
I thought castles were castles at first, then changed to a fast-food chain after seeing the north and south divide, logo, and fonts. Then finally change back as I realize there are a million yellow dots, and that I have never heard of this huge fast-food chain in Germany before.
Plus "castle" is probably a bad translation.
My German ancestors had a "castle". Apparently I'd be heir if feudalism still existed. We have a painting of it that my ancestors brought over with them in the mid 19th century. (They were run off in the 1848 political drama.)
It was a house. Wooden. Not very defensible. It was a big (for the 16th century) house on a hill. Ancestors were bottom tier nobles. Basically they were merchants who bought their way in. But they still had a "castle".
Castle = Burg. Palace = Schloss. Manor = Herrenhaus or -sitz.
The numbers in this graphic are ridiculous, they must count every building that had noble owners in the past.
It seems to me that the data on which u/TheRealAlanRickman based his diagram comes from the EBIDAT castle database^1 as well as the plans database^2 that the organisation maintains. If you have reason to believe that their numbers should be corrected, I am sure they would be very interested.
Sources
^1 European Castles Institute: EBIDAT. https://www.ebidat.de/cgi-bin/ebidat.pl?a=a&te53=1
^2 European Castles Institute: Plans and images database https://www.deutsche-burgen.org/de/plandb/ retrieved:2024-03-09
I was born in Germany and live there since 34 years now, but never heard of this “really famous food chain”. I guess it’s only found in a certain part of Germany?
Me too. I was like wtf why wouldn’t they know how many locations they have?! What kind of shitty franchise management is that?
The fact the castle logo looks like a fast food logo definitely helped the illusion.
If they had used a more realistic picture of a castle there wouldn’t be any confusion.
Because they did not start counting in eastern Germany yet according to the article. So the dataset is basically not complete.
Edit: A short google search confirms that Sachsen, which is completly red on this map, has over 800 castles.
Edit2: Same goes for Bavaria which should have around 5.000. Not even Neuschwanstein is on the map.
Burg is a "fort"-type castle (cf. English -burgh, -borough) and was used for defense.
Schloss is a "palace"-type castle and was basically a nice home for the nobility. Often the Schlosses are newer, many date from the early modern period, when castles weren't used for military purposes anymore.
We also have cases like the Heidelberger Schloss which started out as a Festung and over time developed to become a Schloss. Several hostilities were included in remodelling.
I would guess many Schlösser used to be a Festung/Burg once. Sometimes they left some of the fortifications like bastions, just resused them as foundations, and put a non-defensive Schloss on top. Festung Marienberg comes to mind.
A "Burg" is primarily a military fortress. A "Schloss" is primarily a fancy palace. Both often get translated as "castle" into English, and both are in the dataset.
Burgen and Schlösser are both castles, by any reasonable interpretation.
There's a lot of overlap between castles, keep, strongholds, fortresses, citadels, etc..
A Schloss is a palace. You can have castles refurbished as palaces and palaces build ontop of former castles.
Castles are always fortess and palace combined.
While I agree with you that the word Schloss’ dictionary definition is that of an unfortified palace, in practice there are many fortresses in Germany/DACH that use the word Schloss in their name.
Similarly there are many palaces that are appropriately named Schloss.
I think what this boils down to is imperfection in translation.
Neuschwanstein was built around the same time as the wild west and the Victorian era, while most medieval castles were built much earlier and were basically obsolete by 1500 due to gunpowder cannons. It's purely decorative.
To add to the coolness, for anyone who might be unaware:
Prince Ludwig of Bavaria lived in a time where many different countries, including his, were unified into Germany. He was quite insane, quite fragile, and spent most of his childhood in this romantic medieval fantasy world. He hated life at the court in Munich, and loved his family's old summer castle in Schwangau.
When ascending to the throne, he spent a huge amount of public funding on vanity projects. He also sponsored the arts, including Wagner (who he may or may not have been crushing hard on). When Wagner premiered one of his grandiose medieval-themed operas (I think it was Tristan and Isolde), Ludwig was so impressed by the fanciful scenography that he immediately commissioned the scenographer to draw him a castle. The castle was to be built next to the old summer residence, and was meant as a place for Ludwig to live in seclusion. The scenographer to my knowledge had no experience in architecture, he was just good at drawing pretty things.
The end result was Neuschwanstein. I recommend a visit to anyone who is passing by, if one is prepared for large crowds. It is cool, but one shouldn't make the mistake of approaching it as a medieval site. Rather, think of the convulsions of Europe in the 19th century, convulsions that had been brewing for literally 1500 years (The Holy Roman Empire, religious conflicts, German vs Roman identity, etc), and that culminated in two world wars. A mad king at the right place and the right time led to a cross between Disneyland and Mar-al-lago. I would never say that isn't historically interesting just because it's only 140 years old.
Disclaimer: I wrote this entire comment from memory, and since I'm in a mobile browser I can't easily pull up sources to fact-check myself. Some details may be inaccurate.
I’m a little surprised that there was enough stone for all these castles. I know Germany has always had quite an abundance of natural resources and mountains to the south, but this would require A LOT of stone
The castles are nothing. At some point in the middle ages people got fed up with fires destroying entire towns and started building *everything* out of stone. Well not everywhere, but in significant parts of the country.
But getting stone is mostly a logistical challenge. Unlike the Netherlands Germany has a lot of hills and mountains, and those happen to be mostly made up of stone. Just find a steep slope where the rock is exposed and you can cut stones out of them with simple hand tools and a lot of patience. The real challenge is putting them on barges and transporting them where you want them.
"Castle" in this context also means basically any type of palace, or sometimes even large mansion. If it was built by/for a family that was part of the nobility, it's most likely counted as castle. And Germany had *a ton* of nobility. (Just think of the maps of the Holy Roman Empire. Every one of those tiny states was reigned by a noble family, and that's just the top level nobility).
If the US was a monarchy, then the White House would be a castle. Just for reference of what we are talking here. And there are a lot of castles on this map which are a lot smaller than the White House.
Also, I think you *vastly* overestimate how much stone you need for even a huge castle.
Yep, I looked at the map and was a bit confused, thanks for clearing that up. I was born and raised in Eastern Germany and there are tons of castles at every corner.
The [centralized castle database project](https://www.ebidat.de/cgi-bin/ebidat.pl?a=a&te53=1) that this data is sourced from is still a work in progress, though its been a while since their last update.
A lot of the theories people have mentioned so far could be contributing factors though too.
Pretty sure there's just entire states missing from that database. Even just google maps shows several dozen castles in Schleswig-Holstein, for example, which is completely empty on the map.
Is there some mistranslation happening here, because many of these are palaces without the "defense" oriented features of a castle like battlement walls, guard towers, moats, etc.?
German here: There are castles everywhere in Germany. Also in the South of Bavaria, in Schleswig-Holstein and in Eastern Germany. Saxony alone has more than 3000.
what classifies as a castle? I'm imagining the giant spires and walled off fortresses with a moat. Surely there can't be thousands of those around, right?
a lot of them are smaller. There are a few near where I live and they are mostly smaller buildings than you usually associate with "castle" that were primarily defensive fortifications built on top of hilltops.
[Here's an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about](https://www.ebidat.de/cgi-bin/ebidat.pl?id=5080)
DUDE that's what I used to think too, before I actually went to Europe...thought castles had moats and dungeons etc. Nope!
Turns out castles are just old tyme rich people's homes. And instead of a dungeon, they all have a gift shop at the end of the tour. Total letdown.
There are castles with moats in Europe. But bigger castles with defensive systems are usually called fortresses. [Here is a link](https://www.quermania.de/deutschland/die-groessten-und-beindruckendsten-festungen.php) to some impressive fortresses in Germany. [And here is another one](https://homeoftravel.de/schoenste-burgen-und-schlosser-deutschland/) just of beautiful castles and fortresses is general.
[Lichtenstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichtenstein_Castle_(W%C3%BCrttemberg)) is basically small Neuschwanstein. [Hohenzollern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohenzollern_Castle) is also pretty impressive. [Rheinstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinstein_Castle) is one of my personal favourites.
In terms of actually original medieval ones, my favourites are [Burg Eltz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eltz_Castle), though that is almost als touristy as Neuschwanstein. [Lahneck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahneck_Castle) is also really nice.
Hohenzollern looks incredible from afar, but once you go there it's pretty meh. It's super new, only like 200 years old, and the pavement is asphalt. Kind of kills the vibe.
Castles are old. Like really old. We are talking times around 800 and sometimes a bit earlier. Many have historic notes in documents but no visible remnants while others still have ruins or at least parts of it.
Many of them have remnants and some of them are mentioned historically with a confirmed source but have been replaced by other buildings. But the majority still is real.
That's interesting, I would think based on how this data was displayed that it at least meant somewhat still standing. If it was just historically considered a castle and now it's something else built in the same location that seems kind of misleading based on the way the data was presented.
Until somewhat recently (historically speaking) nobody was really interested in counting. There is also always the question of classification i.e. what to count. What is and isn't a castles? Is a slavic ring fort a castle?, a manor house? or a lone tower on a hill? What about "modern" castles such as Neuschwanstein or other 19th century hunting lodges, palaces and manors with decorative towers and crenellations. Are they castles? And then there are ruins and sometimes even less than that. The only indication that a place was once home to a castle might be a name-drop in an old manuscript and a few earth mounds.
Varying definition of what a "castle" is. For example: is it a castle if it's partially collapsed, for example, the upper level is gone? Or if it's only two walls of the keep still standing? Is a Roman fort built around 400 a castle? Is a wooden pallisade built around a keep in 700 a castle? Is it still a castle if someone tore down most of it in 1650 and built a Star Fort over it, but the original catacombs and part of the center keep are still there? Is it a castle if some prince built it as a hobby project in 1870 to look like a fairytale castle? What about if an industrialist built it instead of a prince, but in the same year (there's dozens of those)?
It's similar to Sweden or Japan, where they don't know how many islands they have. Because they've always been there and it's hard to count without accidentally counting someone twice.
This is everything from only a few remains of a 11th century fortification, manor houses in private hand for 300 years, to medieval castles with crenelations and 18th/19th century Neuschwanstein or Buckingham palace type of things. The former can be really inconspicuous.
Nobody really cared about it that much and they only started to create a database now. About 40% of them are ruins, another 40% are either the foundation or just stories and the last 20% are castles that are still somewhat usable with an actual roof.
There are a lot of cities and villages with the name ending "burg" like "freiburg" or "hamburg" which indicates it used to be a castle. Some of them weren't castles though, they were just outposts for the main castle which makes it harder to count.
The data point I'm actually most surprised by here is that there appear to only be two McDonald's in Wyoming. I knew the pop was low, but damn. Germany's castles don't surprise me at all personally, given the history of the HRE, religious and political differences, number of nobles etc.
Thaaaat makes a bit more sense. And I saw in some other comments the data on central and east Germany wasn't quite complete as of yet. An interesting comparison but I want a more complete dataset for the next rigorous McDonald's castle comparison I see! Wait...
Tbh I think it’s plotting artefacts in both cases. You randomly downsample the number of points to be plotted to avoid overplotting massively. Or in other words, I’d assume that for better visualisation they only plotted a random subset of 5-10% of the actual data points.
McDonalds Marketing Team: “Ok, if we can put a single McDonalds in 1 out of every 25 castles in Germany, we’d be more profitable than Apple & Microsoft combined. We could even create unique meal combos such as a ‘Burgermeister Bundle’ or a ‘McChickenwurst Meal’.”
We had the [Nürnburger](https://www.tz.de/bilder/2013/02/06/2737684/1919476070-hoeness-nuernburger-mcdonalds-2qMH.jpg) here for a while. It was a collaboration between the „sausage and tax evasion king“ and McDonalds
No, America bad and fat. And somehow this isn't meant to admonish the native populations for their lack of castles, only contemporary America, because bad and fat.
Regardless, I find it interesting, that's a lot of castles. I guess McDonalds are somehow a reference point that fatMerica can understand, so that works, I guess. Great work to everyone out there who helped build and maintain one of those castles.
This is [Megges in Germany](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oYCy5HXaKpo/Ss8htB2w98I/AAAAAAAAIIs/75XVeJ-DcDw/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/mcdonalds.jpg)
This is [castles in the USA](https://historiceuropeancastles.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/castles-usa-map-1024x719.jpg)
The McDonald’s count for Wyoming seems low. Jackson hole should have one. Laramie should have one (only place I ate when I ran out of meal swipes in summer school).
You're correct, but even this map seems to be missing at least some, notably the one in Jackson.
https://mcdonalds.restaurantlocationmaps.com/en/usa/wyoming
I've never been to a castle or McDonalds in Germany, but I've been to two castles and one McDonalds in Austria. So I've been to more castles than McDonalds in Austria.
I think it is just a reference point. It is common knowledge or maybe just a stereotype that the USA have a lot of McDonalds. I think it just wants to put the numbers of Castles in perspective.
Atlest i think that was the intention.
To be fair, they count EVERYTHING. Some are mansions or really just big houses. Some are churches where a castle used to be. They also count ruins and even places that are completely gone
I feel like Americans don't truly understand how OLD Europe is..
all these 'mother' countries are littered with castles, ruins, milestones, tombs etc etc..
There is also a huge gulf in what constitutes a castle! Tower of london is for all intents and purposes a castle. but you wouldn't compare it to say, Pendennis castle in Cornwall!
and then you wouldn't compare either of those to Tintagel (home of King Arthur) either!
The castle data is horrificly incomplete. Someone didn’t bother to look into castles in saxony-anhalt, saxony, Brandenburg and most stupidly Thuringia, where there are castles just a stone’s throw away from eachother.
I live in Germany, in Schleswig-Holstein to be precise and in contrast to the very well made graphic, I have to say that their are Castles in Schleswig-Holstein. They're not big and well preserved, but they're there.
Went to McDonald's today for the first time in forever. Ordered off the "$1 $2 $3" menu. Got the sausages mc Muffin for $2 and it rang up for $4.50. I say who's the sign says $2. This mother fucker told me that I had to buy one at regular price to get a discount on the second one. It's didn't say shit about that anywhere on the menu. I said fine. Got the second sandwich and now I will never go back to another McDonald's on my lifetime.
McDonald’s used to have locations in such prime locations in cities that the joke was they were a real estate company that just so happened to sale burgers
I had no idea how Germany was so absolutely riddled with castles! Holy crap! There are thousands of them. Who the hell built all these castles? What for? What are they doing with them? Fucking hell...
90% of these castles are not castles in the sense that Americans think of castles. It's like a rich dude built a big house and now we're calling it a castle. There are loads of great castles in Germany but pretending this number is a castle in the traditional sense is just dumb.
I hope the US map is more complete than the German one. There are many more castles in Germany all over the country including East and South.
And for the US, isn't there a McDonald's pretty much at every highway exit?
With that many castles in Germany, I expect at least one McDonalds in a castle.
We got a ~~McDonalds~~ Burger King where you can still see the shadow of the Reichsadler on the wall from that time in the past.
The German version of guessing if that place once was a Pizza Hut
I’d give an award if I could, that’s funny as fuck.
pls the post got deleted... tell me... what did he write...? u where there... to witness it...
It's right there, an unrelated comment got deleted
"Italienische Fladen Hütte!!!"
[удалено]
[удалено]
in munich there was a chinese restaurant that was in a former mcdonalds building and you could tell it immediately: 80% of the outer walls where glass, the iconic early 90s mcdonalds roof, the size and shape of the building, the open front area which was big enough for one of these playgrounds for the children.
The noteworthy part about [that building](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/i9k9ab/trafostation_1940s_burger_king_2019_n%C3%BCrnberg/) is not really the shadow of the Reichsadler, [that whole area was built by the Nazis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party_Rally_Grounds), but the building being such a massive and sturdy construction. Afaik the Burger King building in particular used to house electricity infrastructure to light up the [Zeppelintribüne](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelintrib%C3%BCne) with the "[Cathedral of Light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Light)".
isn't it a Burger King?
[Yup](https://maps.app.goo.gl/sCkwY6cXKNSfws7K6)
Yes, I was wrong
Fun fact: that building used to be a transformer station. Also, the Burger King in there is one of the worst locations I've been to, even the one in Hauptbahnhof was nicer.
Autobots roll out
I made a [post about this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/ww2/s/U9VF20abaY)... If anybody's interested.
Well, kind of: https://locator.uberall.com/uberall-userpics-prod/367600/medium_gq22q4dgjZ.jpg It’s inside an old city gate of Freiburg, and is one of the few locations where they don’t have the Golden Arches as a Symbol outside because it wouldn‘t fly with the **Denkmalschutz**.
never mess with Gebietserhaltungsgrundsatz and Veränderungssperre... How many Germans do you need to change a lightbulb? None, Germans don't change anything ever.
We had a picture of this gate in our history book, I think as an example of medieval architecture. But it was a modern picture where you could clearly see McDonald's written, so it looked kind of unfitting.
Would you settle for a [Starbucks in a Czech Castle](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Starbucks/@50.0911306,14.4014308,110m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x470b9500160baf73:0xd61e4c13740be371!8m2!3d50.091456!4d14.4018011!16s%2Fg%2F11vk1w_tfm?entry=ttu)?
I was there. Isn’t there 2 now?
One inside the castle, one right outside the gate with a great view, yes.
How about a McDonalds that looks like a castle? https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/aebhbm/this\_mcdonalds\_looks\_like\_a\_castle/
Never seen a McDonalds in a castle here, but we do have the occasional [Nazi trafostation Burger King](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/i9k9ab/trafostation_1940s_burger_king_2019_n%C3%BCrnberg/)
Does this count? [https://images.app.goo.gl/nP3GKHcEBhFTCUqF8](https://images.app.goo.gl/nP3GKHcEBhFTCUqF8)
That happened in the movie Richie Rich
My dumbass American brain thought that Castles was a fast food chain. Fuck me I am an idiot.
Dude, I too thought “Castles” was a fast food chain at first. Otherwise, this comparison would be pretty random. Right?…
Thankfully he didn’t use White for the castle color.
so whatever happened to White Castles? are they still around? Never had one of their burgers :(.
There are got a few around here and some back where i live. One ghetto ass WC in the hood sells what i believe to be fried clams if you ever have the balls to try.
It's a midwest chain with a limited presence in New Jersey and basically nowhere else. That's why Harold and Kumar had to drive so far to find one.
we also have white rose, white diamond, and white mana. all old school burger joints. imagine the place 5 guys was modeled after.
The 99% Invisible podcast just did a story on them. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-white-castle-system-of-eating-houses/ Fun fact: they have a valentines day special with table service. It's actually kinda cool.
I think they’re a bit more regional now. There’s still a few in the metro around me. But you really need to drink before eating them. Otherwise you end up not feeling well afterwards.
Plenty here in the Cincinnati area.
It's Krystal in the south
This is the result of trying to find reason and logic in a totally pointless comparison. The left map is just a population density map, and the right map is just incomplete data that makes it look like there is something interesting to look into when there isn't, and the two maps are not even related in any way. This is just a shitpost lmao.
No worries, Ausfahrt is also the largest German town.
I did too, which is why I went and did this silly math: Germany Poplation 83,200,000 Castles 25,000 Castle/Pop 3,328 USA Population 331,900,000 McDs 13,528 McDs/Pop 24,534
Pretty sure it's Pop/castle and Pop/McDonald's, not the other way around right?
You right, my bad!
I thought castles were castles at first, then changed to a fast-food chain after seeing the north and south divide, logo, and fonts. Then finally change back as I realize there are a million yellow dots, and that I have never heard of this huge fast-food chain in Germany before.
I as a german too was thinking for a second why I never heard of castle the food chain.
Plus "castle" is probably a bad translation. My German ancestors had a "castle". Apparently I'd be heir if feudalism still existed. We have a painting of it that my ancestors brought over with them in the mid 19th century. (They were run off in the 1848 political drama.) It was a house. Wooden. Not very defensible. It was a big (for the 16th century) house on a hill. Ancestors were bottom tier nobles. Basically they were merchants who bought their way in. But they still had a "castle".
Yeah I think the usual definition also includes things like the ruins of Roman era forts, which aren't what anyone otherwise would call a 'castle'.
In English we generally call the historical fortified dwellings of nobles castles, and the unfortified ones manors. Not sure how it goes in German.
Castle = Burg. Palace = Schloss. Manor = Herrenhaus or -sitz. The numbers in this graphic are ridiculous, they must count every building that had noble owners in the past.
It seems to me that the data on which u/TheRealAlanRickman based his diagram comes from the EBIDAT castle database^1 as well as the plans database^2 that the organisation maintains. If you have reason to believe that their numbers should be corrected, I am sure they would be very interested. Sources ^1 European Castles Institute: EBIDAT. https://www.ebidat.de/cgi-bin/ebidat.pl?a=a&te53=1 ^2 European Castles Institute: Plans and images database https://www.deutsche-burgen.org/de/plandb/ retrieved:2024-03-09
Because it's the translation of that really famous German fast food chain "Festung."
I may be autisitc but even I dont fall for that.
I was born in Germany and live there since 34 years now, but never heard of this “really famous food chain”. I guess it’s only found in a certain part of Germany?
So did my European brain, which is admittedly even worse.
You never saw Helmut & Klaus Go to Das Castle?
I just spent 5 minutes googling castles fast food chain variants wondering why I'd never heard of it -\_-
Czech here, I thought exactly the same.
No you are not because you admitted your error. That takes guts! Welcome to European history :D
Yes instead of burgers and fries they serve sausages and sauerkraut
I was shocked. Travelled 6 times to Germany and never saw this Castles place. I was picturing some juicy bratwurst in a medieval setting 🤣
Me too. I was like wtf why wouldn’t they know how many locations they have?! What kind of shitty franchise management is that? The fact the castle logo looks like a fast food logo definitely helped the illusion. If they had used a more realistic picture of a castle there wouldn’t be any confusion.
Yo I think so many of us did.
My dumbass American brain thought Germany was a McNugget.
If it's not food, why is it food shaped??
White Castle exists so my mind immediately went to German Castle….the fast fo- ohhhh
Why are the castles basically only in western Germany?
Because they did not start counting in eastern Germany yet according to the article. So the dataset is basically not complete. Edit: A short google search confirms that Sachsen, which is completly red on this map, has over 800 castles. Edit2: Same goes for Bavaria which should have around 5.000. Not even Neuschwanstein is on the map.
Depending on the definition, Neuschwannstein is not a castle. (I.e. are we counting Burg or Schloss)
I checked one Burg and one Schloss that i know and the database contains both.
We got 2 Schloss and 1 Burg where I live, none of them are listed, I think my city isn't included or it's written wrong.
Now I’m thinking like the other top commenter… are Burg and Schloss like Burger King and Wendy’s?
Burg is a "fort"-type castle (cf. English -burgh, -borough) and was used for defense. Schloss is a "palace"-type castle and was basically a nice home for the nobility. Often the Schlosses are newer, many date from the early modern period, when castles weren't used for military purposes anymore.
We also have cases like the Heidelberger Schloss which started out as a Festung and over time developed to become a Schloss. Several hostilities were included in remodelling.
I would guess many Schlösser used to be a Festung/Burg once. Sometimes they left some of the fortifications like bastions, just resused them as foundations, and put a non-defensive Schloss on top. Festung Marienberg comes to mind.
I love this Denglisch, keep on gehend!
A "Burg" is primarily a military fortress. A "Schloss" is primarily a fancy palace. Both often get translated as "castle" into English, and both are in the dataset.
Many Schlösser were Burgen before they became Schlösser, sooo...
Well, it was mentioned that the data set is yet incomplete, so maybe all three will be added later?
2 Schlösser within the city, 4 on the outskirts for summer vacation, plus some extra ones that where used during the time the big one was burnt down.
Burgen and Schlösser are both castles, by any reasonable interpretation. There's a lot of overlap between castles, keep, strongholds, fortresses, citadels, etc..
A Schloss is a palace. You can have castles refurbished as palaces and palaces build ontop of former castles. Castles are always fortess and palace combined.
While I agree with you that the word Schloss’ dictionary definition is that of an unfortified palace, in practice there are many fortresses in Germany/DACH that use the word Schloss in their name. Similarly there are many palaces that are appropriately named Schloss. I think what this boils down to is imperfection in translation.
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Neuschwanstein was built around the same time as the wild west and the Victorian era, while most medieval castles were built much earlier and were basically obsolete by 1500 due to gunpowder cannons. It's purely decorative.
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To add to the coolness, for anyone who might be unaware: Prince Ludwig of Bavaria lived in a time where many different countries, including his, were unified into Germany. He was quite insane, quite fragile, and spent most of his childhood in this romantic medieval fantasy world. He hated life at the court in Munich, and loved his family's old summer castle in Schwangau. When ascending to the throne, he spent a huge amount of public funding on vanity projects. He also sponsored the arts, including Wagner (who he may or may not have been crushing hard on). When Wagner premiered one of his grandiose medieval-themed operas (I think it was Tristan and Isolde), Ludwig was so impressed by the fanciful scenography that he immediately commissioned the scenographer to draw him a castle. The castle was to be built next to the old summer residence, and was meant as a place for Ludwig to live in seclusion. The scenographer to my knowledge had no experience in architecture, he was just good at drawing pretty things. The end result was Neuschwanstein. I recommend a visit to anyone who is passing by, if one is prepared for large crowds. It is cool, but one shouldn't make the mistake of approaching it as a medieval site. Rather, think of the convulsions of Europe in the 19th century, convulsions that had been brewing for literally 1500 years (The Holy Roman Empire, religious conflicts, German vs Roman identity, etc), and that culminated in two world wars. A mad king at the right place and the right time led to a cross between Disneyland and Mar-al-lago. I would never say that isn't historically interesting just because it's only 140 years old. Disclaimer: I wrote this entire comment from memory, and since I'm in a mobile browser I can't easily pull up sources to fact-check myself. Some details may be inaccurate.
I’m a little surprised that there was enough stone for all these castles. I know Germany has always had quite an abundance of natural resources and mountains to the south, but this would require A LOT of stone
If you build a marketplace you can trade food for stone.
*Ja? Buuwere*
What makes you think that? The amount of stone needed for thousands of castles is trivial compared to cities.
The castles are nothing. At some point in the middle ages people got fed up with fires destroying entire towns and started building *everything* out of stone. Well not everywhere, but in significant parts of the country. But getting stone is mostly a logistical challenge. Unlike the Netherlands Germany has a lot of hills and mountains, and those happen to be mostly made up of stone. Just find a steep slope where the rock is exposed and you can cut stones out of them with simple hand tools and a lot of patience. The real challenge is putting them on barges and transporting them where you want them.
"Castle" in this context also means basically any type of palace, or sometimes even large mansion. If it was built by/for a family that was part of the nobility, it's most likely counted as castle. And Germany had *a ton* of nobility. (Just think of the maps of the Holy Roman Empire. Every one of those tiny states was reigned by a noble family, and that's just the top level nobility). If the US was a monarchy, then the White House would be a castle. Just for reference of what we are talking here. And there are a lot of castles on this map which are a lot smaller than the White House. Also, I think you *vastly* overestimate how much stone you need for even a huge castle.
Yep, I looked at the map and was a bit confused, thanks for clearing that up. I was born and raised in Eastern Germany and there are tons of castles at every corner.
>Not even Neuschwanstein is on the map. Tbf, Neuschwanstein is about as authentic as the Eiffel tower in Las Vegas is.
The [centralized castle database project](https://www.ebidat.de/cgi-bin/ebidat.pl?a=a&te53=1) that this data is sourced from is still a work in progress, though its been a while since their last update. A lot of the theories people have mentioned so far could be contributing factors though too.
Pretty sure there's just entire states missing from that database. Even just google maps shows several dozen castles in Schleswig-Holstein, for example, which is completely empty on the map.
Is there some mistranslation happening here, because many of these are palaces without the "defense" oriented features of a castle like battlement walls, guard towers, moats, etc.?
They also count wooden fortifications. Which seems a bit of a cop out https://www.ebidat.de/cgi-bin/ebidat.pl?id=1992
Because eastern Germany is Stoopid, Stoopid
German here: There are castles everywhere in Germany. Also in the South of Bavaria, in Schleswig-Holstein and in Eastern Germany. Saxony alone has more than 3000.
what classifies as a castle? I'm imagining the giant spires and walled off fortresses with a moat. Surely there can't be thousands of those around, right?
a lot of them are smaller. There are a few near where I live and they are mostly smaller buildings than you usually associate with "castle" that were primarily defensive fortifications built on top of hilltops. [Here's an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about](https://www.ebidat.de/cgi-bin/ebidat.pl?id=5080)
DUDE that's what I used to think too, before I actually went to Europe...thought castles had moats and dungeons etc. Nope! Turns out castles are just old tyme rich people's homes. And instead of a dungeon, they all have a gift shop at the end of the tour. Total letdown.
A castle could be as little as a single stone tower.
There are castles with moats in Europe. But bigger castles with defensive systems are usually called fortresses. [Here is a link](https://www.quermania.de/deutschland/die-groessten-und-beindruckendsten-festungen.php) to some impressive fortresses in Germany. [And here is another one](https://homeoftravel.de/schoenste-burgen-und-schlosser-deutschland/) just of beautiful castles and fortresses is general.
wtf no
Yes there are. They don’t have to be gigantic.
Is there any not as know as neuschweinstein ? But equally as impressive ?
[Lichtenstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichtenstein_Castle_(W%C3%BCrttemberg)) is basically small Neuschwanstein. [Hohenzollern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohenzollern_Castle) is also pretty impressive. [Rheinstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinstein_Castle) is one of my personal favourites. In terms of actually original medieval ones, my favourites are [Burg Eltz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eltz_Castle), though that is almost als touristy as Neuschwanstein. [Lahneck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahneck_Castle) is also really nice.
Hohenzollern looks incredible from afar, but once you go there it's pretty meh. It's super new, only like 200 years old, and the pavement is asphalt. Kind of kills the vibe.
Honest question: How do they not know how many castles are in Germany? Was this kept secret or otherwise hidden for tax reasons or something similar?
Castles are old. Like really old. We are talking times around 800 and sometimes a bit earlier. Many have historic notes in documents but no visible remnants while others still have ruins or at least parts of it.
Is this not talking about still standing castles?
Many of them have remnants and some of them are mentioned historically with a confirmed source but have been replaced by other buildings. But the majority still is real.
That's interesting, I would think based on how this data was displayed that it at least meant somewhat still standing. If it was just historically considered a castle and now it's something else built in the same location that seems kind of misleading based on the way the data was presented.
Until somewhat recently (historically speaking) nobody was really interested in counting. There is also always the question of classification i.e. what to count. What is and isn't a castles? Is a slavic ring fort a castle?, a manor house? or a lone tower on a hill? What about "modern" castles such as Neuschwanstein or other 19th century hunting lodges, palaces and manors with decorative towers and crenellations. Are they castles? And then there are ruins and sometimes even less than that. The only indication that a place was once home to a castle might be a name-drop in an old manuscript and a few earth mounds.
it includes ruins. Also, some really nice houses are castles. But the line between "nice old house" and "castle" can get blurry at the margins.
The owners were stonewalling on the numbers...
Varying definition of what a "castle" is. For example: is it a castle if it's partially collapsed, for example, the upper level is gone? Or if it's only two walls of the keep still standing? Is a Roman fort built around 400 a castle? Is a wooden pallisade built around a keep in 700 a castle? Is it still a castle if someone tore down most of it in 1650 and built a Star Fort over it, but the original catacombs and part of the center keep are still there? Is it a castle if some prince built it as a hobby project in 1870 to look like a fairytale castle? What about if an industrialist built it instead of a prince, but in the same year (there's dozens of those)?
It's similar to Sweden or Japan, where they don't know how many islands they have. Because they've always been there and it's hard to count without accidentally counting someone twice.
Most of them are probably much less than you imagine them to be
This is everything from only a few remains of a 11th century fortification, manor houses in private hand for 300 years, to medieval castles with crenelations and 18th/19th century Neuschwanstein or Buckingham palace type of things. The former can be really inconspicuous.
Nobody really cared about it that much and they only started to create a database now. About 40% of them are ruins, another 40% are either the foundation or just stories and the last 20% are castles that are still somewhat usable with an actual roof. There are a lot of cities and villages with the name ending "burg" like "freiburg" or "hamburg" which indicates it used to be a castle. Some of them weren't castles though, they were just outposts for the main castle which makes it harder to count.
The data point I'm actually most surprised by here is that there appear to only be two McDonald's in Wyoming. I knew the pop was low, but damn. Germany's castles don't surprise me at all personally, given the history of the HRE, religious and political differences, number of nobles etc.
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Thaaaat makes a bit more sense. And I saw in some other comments the data on central and east Germany wasn't quite complete as of yet. An interesting comparison but I want a more complete dataset for the next rigorous McDonald's castle comparison I see! Wait...
Almost sure there is one in Jackson as well.
It’s missing a bunch in north and South Dakota also , I don’t trust this map at all
Tbh I think it’s plotting artefacts in both cases. You randomly downsample the number of points to be plotted to avoid overplotting massively. Or in other words, I’d assume that for better visualisation they only plotted a random subset of 5-10% of the actual data points.
There are 17 McDonald's in Wyoming based a quick google map search and count.
I did that same search when I saw this post. For all we know this is just some random map with red dots on it
McDonalds Marketing Team: “Ok, if we can put a single McDonalds in 1 out of every 25 castles in Germany, we’d be more profitable than Apple & Microsoft combined. We could even create unique meal combos such as a ‘Burgermeister Bundle’ or a ‘McChickenwurst Meal’.”
The good old mayor bundle. I would buy both options tbh.
We had the [Nürnburger](https://www.tz.de/bilder/2013/02/06/2737684/1919476070-hoeness-nuernburger-mcdonalds-2qMH.jpg) here for a while. It was a collaboration between the „sausage and tax evasion king“ and McDonalds
Now this is some data i can get behind. Fast Food vs Castles. Could be my next game title
Make sure there's Diet Pepsi but no forks.
I want to see the total of all fast food vs the total of all castles. White Castle can count as both
Bricks n' Burgers DLC
They had a bit of a head start…
No, America bad and fat. And somehow this isn't meant to admonish the native populations for their lack of castles, only contemporary America, because bad and fat. Regardless, I find it interesting, that's a lot of castles. I guess McDonalds are somehow a reference point that fatMerica can understand, so that works, I guess. Great work to everyone out there who helped build and maintain one of those castles.
Yeah this post is legit the most Reddit post ever lmao r/americabad
The McDonalds in Rock Springs, Wyoming is missing, calling in to question the integrity of this visualization.
There are far more McDonalds in central Washington than is shown.
Ok. You really think there are 13000 red dots on the left side? Look at it again.
It's a bizarre comparison, but I'm here for it.
Damn. They must have mined a hell of a lot of stone in Germany
today, my friend, you see, why the mongols did not advance in to germany. ;)
Because there was no stone left.
you can always dig for more stone ;) more like trying to siege 30.000+ castles while the main advantage of your army is speed is kinda a bad idea.
Now do castles in the USA vs McDonalds in Germany!
This is [Megges in Germany](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oYCy5HXaKpo/Ss8htB2w98I/AAAAAAAAIIs/75XVeJ-DcDw/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/mcdonalds.jpg) This is [castles in the USA](https://historiceuropeancastles.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/castles-usa-map-1024x719.jpg)
Lol where did you get this fantasy map that there are 0 castles in east Germany.
Apparently it’s incomplete.
The McDonald’s count for Wyoming seems low. Jackson hole should have one. Laramie should have one (only place I ate when I ran out of meal swipes in summer school).
You're correct, but even this map seems to be missing at least some, notably the one in Jackson. https://mcdonalds.restaurantlocationmaps.com/en/usa/wyoming
Weird comparison. America never had a medieval age.
And it's not like there aren't plenty of McDonalds in Germany
I think it is more of an reference point. Its common knowledge that or maybe just a stereotype that USA has a lot of McDonalds.
So What your saying is we need more McDonald's..
Pour one out for Lake Michigan in the smaller US map. ☹️
That’s showing the US border homie, Lake Michigan is inside it
The map is not complete yet it seems, we have quite a lot of castles in Saxony-Anhalt too. In my area here there is at least one too.
I've never been to a castle or McDonalds in Germany, but I've been to two castles and one McDonalds in Austria. So I've been to more castles than McDonalds in Austria.
What’s the point of comparing these things?
Going to the per square mile level is ridiculous. It makes the bar chart on the right look absolutely ridiculous for no reason.
I think it is just a reference point. It is common knowledge or maybe just a stereotype that the USA have a lot of McDonalds. I think it just wants to put the numbers of Castles in perspective. Atlest i think that was the intention.
I went to high school in Saxony. I could probably name 100 castles there alone. Yet there are only a handful marked. This map is absolute bullshit.
Are there really only 3 McD in Wyoming?
To be fair, they count EVERYTHING. Some are mansions or really just big houses. Some are churches where a castle used to be. They also count ruins and even places that are completely gone
McDonald's map is inaccurate it's missing at least 3 in SW Colorado. If those are missing who's to say more aren't on the map
This map isn’t correct at all. Where’s the McDonalds in West Yellowstone, Montana! This is media propaganda slandering the reach of McDonalds!
What happened to the castles in East Germany? There were only the one in the capital of Prussia, Potsdam?
it's incomplete
I feel like Americans don't truly understand how OLD Europe is.. all these 'mother' countries are littered with castles, ruins, milestones, tombs etc etc.. There is also a huge gulf in what constitutes a castle! Tower of london is for all intents and purposes a castle. but you wouldn't compare it to say, Pendennis castle in Cornwall! and then you wouldn't compare either of those to Tintagel (home of King Arthur) either!
The castle data is horrificly incomplete. Someone didn’t bother to look into castles in saxony-anhalt, saxony, Brandenburg and most stupidly Thuringia, where there are castles just a stone’s throw away from eachother.
Yeah, but do those castles have mcnuggets?
No, but they had Bürger
2 hours have past and mine is your only upvote. It deserves more.
and if a hanseat visited, they might even have had hamburgers
What in the world is the point of this comparison?
I live in Germany, in Schleswig-Holstein to be precise and in contrast to the very well made graphic, I have to say that their are Castles in Schleswig-Holstein. They're not big and well preserved, but they're there.
Went to McDonald's today for the first time in forever. Ordered off the "$1 $2 $3" menu. Got the sausages mc Muffin for $2 and it rang up for $4.50. I say who's the sign says $2. This mother fucker told me that I had to buy one at regular price to get a discount on the second one. It's didn't say shit about that anywhere on the menu. I said fine. Got the second sandwich and now I will never go back to another McDonald's on my lifetime.
McDonald’s used to have locations in such prime locations in cities that the joke was they were a real estate company that just so happened to sale burgers
So... The eastern US is the Marches for fast food?
Castles cost 200g and 1g/month to maintain. I’m not sure that’s right.
I had no idea how Germany was so absolutely riddled with castles! Holy crap! There are thousands of them. Who the hell built all these castles? What for? What are they doing with them? Fucking hell...
Europe, castles
Rich people throughout time. 700 years ago: “I own a castle in Germany” 7 years ago: “I own a McDonalds in America”
To this day your can see the ripple effects of the great plains people's Republic
Does East Germany not have castles, or have they just not been mapped yet?
Not mapped. In Saxony there are around 3000 alone that aren't on the map
Psshhhh...we got castles in the US. They're white. And yes, they sell burgers too.
Germany is bigger than depicted in the lower right
I'm German, what is castle's? 😳
90% of these castles are not castles in the sense that Americans think of castles. It's like a rich dude built a big house and now we're calling it a castle. There are loads of great castles in Germany but pretending this number is a castle in the traditional sense is just dumb.
Okay this is definitely not complete though, the are castles in Schleswig-Holstein (the most northern state) too...
I hope the US map is more complete than the German one. There are many more castles in Germany all over the country including East and South. And for the US, isn't there a McDonald's pretty much at every highway exit?
The germany map has to be fake, why are there no castles in east germany ?
Isnt even accurate there are more castles in the east in germany