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On Saturday, August 10, 2019, we drove into the northern Harz Mountain town of Ballenstedt, once the seat of the Duchy of Alhalt-Bernburg and very near to Brocken peak, of witch- and ghost-story fame. We reached the local Tourist Office at its specified opening hour, and found it…closed. Undeterred, we walked past a bear-themed fountain (bears are big in Ballenstedt thanks to a 12th-century member of the local count's family, nicknamed Albert the Bear) and made our way up the tree-lined Schlossallee (at top left beyond the bear in the first photo, below) to Ballenstedt Castle, where the Dowager Duchess Friederike (1811-1902, seen in the second photo as painted by 19th-century Ballenstedt artist Caroline Bardua) had once inhabited the south wing (visible beyond the castle courtyard gate in the third photo) and, from 1868 to 1871, listened to chamber music performed by her resident string quartet, the Schroeder Brothers: Hermann, Franz, Alwin, and Carl (see Friederike’s music room in the fourth photo).
Read on….
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