Feelings of dizziness: Eccentricity in the Lüneburg Heath

This text is a deception. Pardon. The site inspection took place some time ago, but unfortunately the site is currently inaccessible. But maybe he will again. And it belongs to the category for which the beautiful Anglicism has become established: You can't unsee.

It starts with the name. “Heide-Kastell” is used by the tourist information office, “Landschaftspark” also appears often. The 23 hectare property is located in Bispingen in the Lüneburg Heath. Most used adjectives: “bizarre” or “original”.

The creator of this total work of art, the Berlin master painter Uwe Schulz-Ebschbach, also once spoke of a “Neuschwanstein of the North”, with which he wanted to apply for the title of World Heritage Site. Evil commentators speak of an attack on good taste and all sorts of other senses.

The house in the center of this property is made of wood and you can smell it. It is not a fortress, but a hunting villa and probably the first prefabricated house in the Lüneburg Heath. It was built by the Berlin steel construction entrepreneur Ernst Nölle, who is said to have discovered the model at the Brussels World Exhibition in 1910.

The hunting villa has an eventful history: it had already been a staff recreation home, a military hospital and a country school home when Schulz-Ebschbach bought it from the Reemtsma family in the mid-1980s.

He redesigned one room after the other - and lived in it with his family: the fireplace room with turn-of-the-century furniture and heather pictures, the Biedermeier hunting room, the hall of mirrors and the "Diana Sanssouci Room" in all its brutally kitschy, baroque gold splendor, of which the owner of the house was particularly proud. His voice blared from loudspeakers in every room, operated by bad-tempered employees when you booked a tour.

Each room is dedicated to a different era or much more: Schulz-Ebschbach's idea of ​​it. Most of it is so exaggerated and overloaded that it seems more like a caricature. The builder himself doesn't miss out either: in the entrance hall there is a proud celebrity photo with the “Frogs” (Friends of Gerhard Schröder) from the 1998 Chancellor election campaign. And memories of the “Funeral March for the Mark” that he organized in 2001.

There is also a memento mori: a self-designed sitting coffin. It is unclear whether it was actually used when Schulz-Ebschbach died last summer at the age of 84.

The showpiece of the complex is in the garden behind the house: the Montagnetto, an artificial mountain with a strange fairy-tale castle and a “volcano” from which a gas flame hisses every hour. The whole thing is vaguely reminiscent of the papier-mâché props from open-air theaters or the Augsburger Puppenkiste on LSD.

Inside, the bizarre structure houses rooms called the Bread Oven Grotto, ArachneRie and Wedding Forge (actually a recognized branch of the registry office). Weddings can be celebrated straight away in the “Sala del Monte” if you can tolerate the wall paintings.

An eccentric with a big ego and more money than taste has been immortalized in the bizarre work of art consisting of a historic building and a magical park. You don't have to find it nice, but you can admire the chutzpah and drive.

Children's minds, collectors and people who want to have a pleasant scare.

Unfortunately the property is currently closed. But why not ask your local Rossmann when it will open again?

Above all, the Montagnetto is also the “mountain of collecting passion”. Schulz-Ebschbach has acquired 150 collections over the years. These include the “world’s largest” beer and matchbox collection (which actually offers a fascinating look at commercial art and advertising over a century). But also thousands and thousands of miniature liquor bottles, figurine candles, bottle openers, coffee cream lids, Ü-egg figures and other tinnef.

Psychologists associate a passion for collecting with the need to create clarity and order in a chaotic world. By collecting collections, Schulz-Ebschbach has somehow managed to break down order and chaos in equal measure. You get slight shortness of breath.

So let's get out into the wonderfully beautiful park, where other crazy or never-finished projects lurk: the replica of Noah's Ark, which is in danger of collapsing, for example.

This text first appeared in wochentaz, our weekly newspaper from the left!

Every week, wochentaz is about the world as it is – and as it could be. A left-wing weekly newspaper with a voice, attitude and the special taz view of the world. New every Saturday at the kiosk and of course by subscription.

Years ago, however, it was clear from the site that the joy of creating was usually greater than that of preserving. Everything musty, dusty, crumbling, despite the hefty entrance fees. After the death of the great eccentric, the heirs also had to deal with building law issues that had never been fully clarified. Schulz-Ebschbach found pretty much every requirement that the community imposed on him to be an imposition and ignored it.

In September 2026 it was announced that the entrepreneur Dirk Roßmann had taken over the whole thing - probably because of old ties. His drugstore chain has so far remained silent about its future plans for the property.