Wülmersen Castle

The first documented mention of the village of Wülmersen occurred in 1108 when the Bishop of Paderborn transferred the property to Helmarshausen Monastery. For over two centuries, it served the monastery as a demesne. In 1316, Knight Johann von Stockhausen married the heiress Gertrud von Markessen, through which the Stockhausen family received the fief in 1330 and held it until 1848. Until 1844, they managed the estate themselves, after which it was leased as a knight's estate. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, the southeast side of the estate was surrounded by a moat, earning the property the nickname Wülmersen Water Castle. After being sold to the settlement company "Hessische Heimat" in the 1950s and a thirty-year period of vacancy and decay, the ruin was acquired in 1987 by the Aus- und Fortbildungsverbund (AuF) association. This association enabled unemployed young people to gain professional qualifications through the monument-appropriate renovation and and reconstruction of the buildings. In 2005, the Kassel district took over the water castle.