Today on Monday Mysteries we take a look at what I call the mystery of the faces on the castle walls.  It was a mystery Chris and I ran across last week, when we were invited to speak at a castle.

Well, technically we were invited to speak at a workshop held at the Fraunhofer Institute in Sankt Augustin near Bonn. But it turned out that workshop took place at the Schloss Birlinghoven (“Castle Birlinghoven”) which is part of the Institute’s campus. The Schloss is perhaps, more like an over-sized mansion than a castle. But still – it’s big, it’s got towers and turrets, and it is called a Schloss  It’s not every day you get to give a presentation in a castle, eh?

Schloss Birlinghoven, Sankt Augustin, Germany

Now, I once took photos of a charity event that was held in a castle in Bolzano, and at a different time I took photos in gigantic, luxury underground wine cellar near Bolzano.  But this was the first time I’d ever given a presentation about software usability at a castle surrounded by giant oil paintings. Here’s a look at part of the Green Salon, a room that was next door to where our meeting was held:

Green Salon, Schloss Birlinghoven

And here’s our meeting room, the Red Salon:

Red Salon with projection screen for meeting

We asked some of the folks who work at the Institute what they knew about the history of the castle, since it is a building they use for meetings and events. (I should note that the regular offices are in modern low-rise buildings on the grounds nearby.)  The head of one of the groups said that the castle wasn’t very historic, as it was built in the late 1800s. He said it belonged to a great industrialist who went bankrupt and then had to sell the castle.

Oddly enough, there is a similar story about the late 19th century Castle Mareccio in Bolzano, the castle where I took those charity event photos. This a slight digression, but only because I’m now wondering if that story about either castle is really the whole story about how they came to be built. Today on the Internet I read that the guy who built Schloss Birkenhoven wanted to house his paintings there, and he might have lived in it for a while, but he died young. The castle then passed through his family until after WWII, when it was owned by the British for a while (they were post-war administrators of that part of Germany). So, it’s hard to know for sure exactly what the real story is.

But now I have really digressed. Because the main mystery I wanted to talk about is the wooden paneling that covered the lower walls in the “Red Salon” where our meeting was held:

Red Salon, Schloss Birlinghoven

Carved head, Red Salon

Plaque with 1699 Date, Red Salon

Here’s a question: if the Schloss wasn’t built until the late 1800s, why does that plaque say 1699, eh? Well, that same website I found this morning speculates that these carvings once decorated a choir stall in Belgium.  Hmm. OK, so they were bought for the purposes of decorating the Schloss, then. That could make sense. But seriously, they are from a church in Belgium? Why in Belgium? Yet another mystery.

But at some level the primary mystery about these wooden carvings is that not only do all the heads have slightly different faces, but there are also faces in the areas that are seemingly more decorative that figurative:

A face in the carving, Red Salon

A face in the carving #2, Red Salon

On the face of it, there is a definite mystery to be solved about who the designer was who had the inspiration to incorporate such fascinating designs into the wooden carvings that now decorate the Red Salon at the Schloss Birlinghoven.