Castle Quest - Reply to Topic

Forum:	Castles In General & Medieval History
Topic:	Cat & Mouse Castles

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T O P I C R E V I E W
JH
I have been trying to find the answer to the following for 2 weeks now - and have just seen this site! Please help if you can!!

Where and on which famous river would you find the Cat & Mouse Castles?

Hoping for a favourable response to solve my problem

Many thanks

Jonathan Hammond
jonathan@hammondharwood.co.uk

Philip Davis A quick search on the web got this answer to your query. St. Goarshausen on the river Rhine -- This ancient town is known for its cat and mouse castles. The Burg Katz (Castle Kat) was built in 1372 by aristocrats who gave the neighboring Durenberg Castle the name Burg Maus (Castle Mouse).
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Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them,
Psychiatrists charge the rent, art therapists do the interior design
and nurses clean out the garderobes!
jfm1963 Do you have any idea where I can find some information as to who live in the Castle Maus? I have records that indicate that some of my ancestors left the Castle Maus around the 1830.
ipflo Hi
more information about castle Maus, you can find on their website (in German):
http://www.burg-maus.de

Unfortunately it doesn't say much about the owners after 1800s. It only says that the castle became a ruin, but maybe you can email them for more info.
Merlin More history-info on this website:
http://www.bti-net.com/burgen/burg/1601.htm
They say there that the family von Nassau sold Burg Maus 1806 for deconstruction. From www.burgenreich.de I got the information that the ruin was bought by a local wine-maker at 1819. At the end of the 19th century, it came in the posession of an architect named Gärtner who did the reconstruction from 1900 to 1906.
jfm1963 I need help in translating those websites into English. Anyone out there willing to help?
ipflo on www.altavista.com you can find a tool with which you can translate websites from german to english.
jfm1963 Merlin, do you have any idea what the wine makers name was? And thanks ipflo for the translation site!
Merlin I'm sorry, but searching the net I couldn't find his name. More sites with information about the castle:
www.rheinreise.de/Rheinburgen/BurgMaus.html
www.loreleytal.com/rheinburgen/rechts/maus/
jfm1963 Do any of you have any contacts that you can check out the family of a Johann Georg Maus? He apparently lived in the castle until they fled from the area for America around the 1830 or 1840's.
Merlin Are you sure about that? In the time period you suggest, castle Maus was already in ruins. And the 'Maus' in the castles name was not connected to the name of a family - it's original name was Durenberg. The neighboring castle on the other side of the Rhine is castle 'Katz' - named after the counts of Katzenellnbogen (which means "cat's ellbow"). It was more kind of a joke that the bishop who owned Durenberg in the 14th century und who was not a freind of the counts named his castle 'Maus'.
jfm1963 This is the account I have from a relative of mine and it suggests that they came from their castle on the Rhine:
"The Maus family fled from Germany about 1830. Their home was the ancestral castle, the Maus Tower on the Rhine, province of Hesse-Darmstadt. The father was a Lutheran Bishop. Son Frederick was also studying for the ministry and had been to Munich and absorbed revolutionary ideas. The duke of the province was in the habit of coming personally to the village on the Maus estate to gather taxes. On one occasion he encountered Frederick on the street and the young man stubbornly refused to lift his hat to the duke. The duke lifted his cane and knocked the hat off. Frederick seized the cane, whacked the duke on the head and threw the cane beside him on the ground. It was dusk, and people of the village had gone into their homes for the night, so there was no witness to the scene. Frederick immediately hastened up the hill to the castle to tell his family what he had done. The table was set and the family was ready to sit down to the evening meal. Instead, however, they hastily gathered whatever valuables they could carry, mounted horses, crossed the Rhine, and escaped into France under cover of darkness. "
Merlin Sounds like a film-plot. But is it true or just a good story?
jfm1963 That is what was passed to me from my older family members.