Stolpen CastleThe fateful years of a mistress

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A fortress of “ruined wood” is said to have been already standing there in the year 1100, where today the castle of Stolpen shows itself to the visitor. The castle was first mentioned as having been secured in the year 1222. The following 800 years saw much light but even more shadow, for Stolpen was to suffer greatly in the storms of European feuds.

Hussites, Swedes, Prussians and the French were to leave scars on the fortress, just as plague and fire were too. But the castle was not to achieve fame through war and catastrophes, but instead through intrigues at the Saxon court due to its most famous and lasting resident.

For almost half a century, until her death in 1765, Anna Constantia Countess von Cosel was to remain banished behind its walls. This cheerful, beautiful and clever woman, long-time mistress of Augustus the Strong and mother of three of his children, had made enemies due to her apparent interference in political affairs and eventually was to become a victim of her princely bedmate. The stone on which the castle is built is as hard as the fate suffered by Countess Cosel. Basalt, which forms the base of the fortress, was first described by scientists in Stolpen, for whom the characteristic stone of the castle mountain, just as the deepest, unbuilt basalt fountains in the world, has achieved the status of a national geological peculiarity.

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