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SourcesWhat this is built on
This register is a compilation from published work. Nothing on it rests on unpublished archival material, and where the published sources disagree the disagreement is reported rather than resolved.
General
- The UNESCO World Heritage nomination file and the periodic reporting for the Upper Middle Rhine Valley (inscribed 2002, criteria ii, iv, v) — for the boundary, the areas and the statement of outstanding universal value.
- The standard regional castle inventories for Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse, for foundation dates, ownership descents and building phases.
- The published guides issued by the individual castle operators, which are the best source for current condition and the worst source for chronology.
On particular sites
- Marksburg — publications of the Deutsche Burgenvereinigung, which has owned the castle since 1900 and has published on it continuously since.
- Rheinfels — the museum's own guide to the mine galleries, and the older nineteenth-century topographical accounts written before the worst of the quarrying.
- Rheinstein and Stolzenfels — the Prussian building accounts and the literature on Lassaulx, Schinkel and Stüler, which are indispensable for separating reconstruction from original.
- Stahleck — the hostel association's histories of the 1909–1935 campaign, which are candid about how much is new.
A note of caution
Two categories of statement circulate widely and should be treated carefully. The first is the foundation date drawn from a nineteenth-century local history with no cited document. The second is the visitor-capacity or garrison figure, which is almost always a modern estimate presented as a fact. Both appear on this site where they are conventional, and both are flagged where they are.