r/interestingasfuck • u/The_Love-Tap • 22h ago

Germany has more castles than the United States has McDonald’s. This is the Eltz castle, located in Wiershem. It has been owned and occupied by the same family for 33 generations over 800 years

Post image
47.9k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

9

u/zatalak 20h ago

There's a solid definition:

A 'Schloss' is a building or compound that members of the nobility had built for their usage. That's it.

17

u/HardWirez 20h ago

That's not very solid. By your definition, if some noble put up a shed to store his collection of bicycles, it would be called a schloss.

7

u/Square-Singer 18h ago

No, a Schloss is what you use to lock up the bicycles.

1

u/itishowitisanditbad 18h ago

Another castle for the list!

-1

u/[deleted] 20h ago

[deleted]

2

u/Exotic_Cranberry8175 19h ago

As a German: No, we most definitely would not call it a Schloss. Schloss entails some kind of (former) glamour or pomp or at least something more spacious so that the noble family and their servants could live in it.

1

u/nalaloveslumpy 19h ago

What if they sleep on the bicycle?

6

u/thedirtyknapkin 20h ago

well that's basically a "manor" in English and is very much not considered a "castle". to call those castles in English just sounds like bad translations work.

1

u/zatalak 19h ago

Yeah, ah castle would be more like a 'Burg'.

Chateau could be better fitting for Schloss.

1

u/Ok-Dragonknight-5788 18h ago

Actually, alot of thouse manors would have been considered castles by the English back in the day to.

Most people don't realize how low the floor is for what counts as a castle. It's more a result of survivorship bias thar when we think about castles we think about the upper 25-10%

0

u/Marauder777 20h ago

There's a Reddit definition: A 'Schloss' is what I unfurl from my pantaloons when thy fair maiden bares her ankles.