I learned of Burg Isenberg, a ruined medieval fortress in the Ruhr Valley, in 2006 and decided to visit. This Victorian house was built later, and the historians who excavated the site live inside. "We cannot confirm that your family name comes from here," they said, "but we cannot for certain deny it, either." The fantasy was good enough for me. This photograph summarizes the ghostly experience of visiting: Friedrich von Isenberg accidentally murdered his cousin, the Archbishop of Cologne, in the early 13th Century, and was broken on the wheel as punishment. My actual ancestral home or not, the castle and its story inspired my first book, "The Iron Mountain."
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Neil Woo added a link (4 Dec 2008):
