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The Bloodless Royals | Hohenzollern Crypt · The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales

0:14
Kristin: Good morning and welcome to the Grim.
0:16
Kristin: I'm your host, Kristen.
0:18
Kristin: On today's episode, we'll be opening the gate and entering the Hohensoller Crypt, located in Berlin, Germany.
0:25
Kristin: The aroma of coffee mingles in the air.
0:28
Kristin: The gates stand open.
0:30
Kristin: So grab your favorite mug and cozy up.
0:32
Kristin: It's time to descend into the hauntings of history.
0:36
Kristin: For many Americans, German history begins with one event: World War II.
0:43
Kristin: It's the dividing chapter most of us were taught in school, and the one most associated with Germany around the world, the Third Reich, Hitler, the Holocaust.
0:53
Kristin: A war that consumed a continent and left Germany forever marked by what happened between 1933 and 1945.
1:00
Kristin: But Germany's history didn't begin here.
1:03
Kristin: Long before the Third Reich existed, nearly thousands of years of rulers, wars, religious upheaval, political alliances, and dynastic ambitions had already transformed Central Europe.
1:15
Kristin: And one of the best places to confront that forgotten history is beneath Berlin Cathedral, the Berlin Dom.
1:21
Kristin: In beneath the magnificent dome is the Hohensalerin Crypt, the largest dynastic burial vault in Germany.
1:27
Kristin: With its dimly lit chambers rest 91 members of the House of Hohensolerin, their burials spanning nearly four centuries.
1:35
Kristin: From the late 16th century into the early 20th, the crypt isn't arranged as a grand royal mausoleum, or one towering monument dominates the room.
1:45
Kristin: Instead, it feels almost like a timeline in stone, wood, and metal.
1:49
Kristin: Simple wooden coffins rest beside massive bronze sarcophagi adorned with crowns, coats of arms, angels, military insignias, and intricate Baroque carvings.
2:00
Kristin: Some monuments celebrate military victories and political triumphs.
2:04
Kristin: Others reflect deep religious devotion.
2:07
Kristin: And some speak of something much darker.
2:10
Kristin: The grief of families who lost children far too young.
2:13
Kristin: Together they tell the story of one family, whose influence stretched across centuries and whose decisions helped reshape Europe.
2:21
Kristin: But who exactly were the home in the Zolerans?
2:24
Kristin: The dynasty traces its origins to the rugged Swabian Alps of southwestern Germany.
2:30
Kristin: Their ancestral seat, Hohenzollerin Castle, stands atop an isolated mountain rising more than 815 meters above the surrounding countryside.
2:39
Kristin: The castle visitors see today is largely a 19th-century reconstruction commissioned by King Frederick William IV of Prussia.
2:46
Kristin: But it occupies the site of the fortress established in the early 11th century.
2:51
Kristin: The family itself first appears in historical records in 1061, with Burkhardt I, Count of Zollerin, making the Hohenzollerins one of Europe's oldest continuously documented noble houses.
3:03
Kristin: But being old doesn't necessarily make a family powerful.
3:07
Kristin: Their rise, though, was anything but inevitable.
3:10
Kristin: Like medieval nobles, the early Hohenzollerans expanded their influence through loyalty to the Holy Roman Emperors.
3:17
Kristin: They gained land, titles, and political favor by supporting imperial campaigns and forging strategic marriages.
3:24
Kristin: One of the dynasty's most significant turning points came in 1192, when Frederick III married Sophia of Robs, heir to the Bogaviate of Nuremberg.
3:33
Kristin: Through that marriage, the Hohenzollerins acquired one of the Holy Roman Empire's most influential territories, dramatically increasing both their wealth and political standing.
3:43
Kristin: It was one marriage, one inheritance, but it changed the trajectory of the entire family.
3:49
Kristin: Over the following centuries, the Hohenzollerans divided into two distinct branches.
3:54
Kristin: The Catholic Schwabian branch remained in the family's ancestral homeland, ruling the principalities of Hohenzollern and Heschingham and Hohenzollering Zygmarian.
4:04
Kristin: Though smaller in territorial influence, this branch would eventually extend the Hohenzoller name beyond Germany, providing kings for Romania.
4:12
Kristin: The Romanian branch ruled from 1866 until the monarchy was abolished in 1947.
4:19
Kristin: The Protestant Franconian branch, though, had become far more powerful.
4:23
Kristin: In 1415, Emperor Sigmund granted Frederick VI of Nuremberg, the Electric of Brandenburg, the title that mattered.
4:31
Kristin: As one of the Holy Roman Empire's prince electors, Frederick gained this prestigious right to participate in choosing the Holy Roman Emperor, elevating the Hohenzollerans into the highest ranks of European nobility.
4:43
Kristin: They were no longer simply regional nobles, they now had a place at the center of imperial politics.
4:48
Kristin: Another pivotal moment arrived in 1525, when Albert of Brandenburg secularized the lands of the Teutonic Order, transforming them into the Duchy of Prussia, under Hohenzolleran control.
5:00
Kristin: Prussia had entered the story.
5:03
Kristin: When Brandenburg and Prussia were united under a single ruler in 1618, the foundations of Brandenburg and Prussia were established.
5:11
Kristin: It was a state that would steadily grow into one of Europe's most formidable military powers.
5:16
Kristin: But that growth wasn't immediate and it nearly didn't happen at all.
5:20
Kristin: Just as the Union was taking shape, the Thirty Years' War tore through Central Europe.
5:24
Kristin: Brandenburg, Prussia sat directly in its path.
5:28
Kristin: Armies marched across the territory for decades, and the family's own ancestral home wasn't spared.
5:34
Kristin: In 1634, Hohenzoller and Castle itself was besieged and devastated by Swedish and Wurttemberg forces.
5:42
Kristin: The seat of the dynasty's oldest line lay in ruins, recaptured only the following year by Imperial troops.
5:48
Kristin: By the time the war ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, much of Brandenburg Prussia had been ravaged, the population had been decimated, and the territory had to be rebuilt from almost nothing.
6:01
Kristin: It was rebuilt by one man more than any other, Frederick William, who came into power as elector in 1640 at just 20 years old, and who history would come to know as the Great Elector.
6:12
Kristin: Over nearly 50 years on the throne, the Great Elector turned a devastated, fragmented territory into a genuine power.
6:20
Kristin: He secured full sovereignty over Prussia, no longer answering to the Polish crown for it.
6:25
Kristin: He rebuilt a standing army.
6:27
Kristin: He centralized administration in a way few German states had managed.
6:31
Kristin: And when French Protestants were driven out of France, he opened Brandenburg-Prussia's doors to them, welcoming skilled refugees who helped rebuild the state's economy and industry.
6:41
Kristin: By the time he died in 1688, the great elector had laid the groundwork for everything that came after.
6:48
Kristin: Germany, though, still didn't exist as we know it today.
6:51
Kristin: Instead, Central Europe was divided among kingdoms, duchies, principalities, free cities, and other territories loosely connected under the Holy Roman Empire.
7:01
Kristin: Brandenburg Prussia was becoming something different.
7:05
Kristin: Its territory expanded, its bureaucracy became increasingly efficient, and its military developed a reputation for discipline and strength.
7:14
Kristin: Then in 1701, Elector Frederick III crowned himself king in Prussia, becoming Frederick I.
7:20
Kristin: It was more than a change in title.
7:23
Kristin: It marked the birth of the Kingdom of Prussia, a state whose disciplined army, efficient bureaucracy, and expanding influence would dominate German politics for generations.
7:33
Kristin: The Hohenzollerans had gone from medieval counts in southwestern Germany to King's ruling one of the most powerful states in Europe.
7:41
Kristin: That kingdom reached a new level entirely under the ruler history members simply as Frederick the Great.
7:48
Kristin: Frederick II came to the Prussian throne in 1740, and he would spend nearly half a century reshaping what Prussia meant to the European stage.
7:57
Kristin: He led Prussia through the Seven Years' War, fighting off a coalition of Austria, France, and Russia, and somehow emerged with the kingdom intact and his reputation as a military power cemented.
8:10
Kristin: In 1772, the title his ancestor had claimed 70 years earlier finally became official.
8:17
Kristin: Prussia's rulers were no longer merely king in Prussia.
8:21
Kristin: Frederick was king of Prussia, full stop.
8:24
Kristin: He was also, by most accounts, an unusual king, a patron of the arts and philosophy who also corresponded with Voltaire, a brilliant military strategist who spent his private life immersed in music and ideals.
8:36
Kristin: And in death, he left one final oddly personal request.
8:40
Kristin: He wanted to not be buried in the Hohenzoller crypt with his ancestors, but at Sescucci, alongside his dogs.
8:48
Kristin: His family considered the request though improper, and for over 200 years went unhonored.
8:54
Kristin: Frederick the Great wasn't laid to rest where he asked until 1991.
8:58
Kristin: The Hohenzollerans reached the height of their power in the 19th century.
9:02
Kristin: During Otto van Bismarck's campaign to unify the German states, following Prussia's victories over Denmark, Austria, and France, the German states were brought together under Prussian leadership.
9:13
Kristin: Then on January 18, 1871, King William I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor, and the Holomirs at Versailles in France.
9:23
Kristin: The German Empire was born.
9:25
Kristin: The Hohenzollerns became Kaisers of the newly unified Germany while continuing to rule Prussia.
9:31
Kristin: For nearly 50 years they presided over Europe's fastest growing industrial and military powers.
9:37
Kristin: Germany industrialized rapidly.
9:40
Kristin: Its cities expanded, economy grew, and its military became increasingly powerful.
9:45
Kristin: The Empire the Hohenzollerens had spent centuries building had finally reached its height of its influence.
9:51
Kristin: And then it unraveled almost as quickly as it had risen.
9:55
Kristin: Germany's defeat in World War I triggered revolution across the country.
10:00
Kristin: In November 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and fled into exile in the Netherlands.
10:06
Kristin: The German monarchy collapsed almost overnight.
10:10
Kristin: The Weimar Republic replaced the Empire, and the once dominant dynasty faded from political power.
10:16
Kristin: After more than 800 years of Hohenzollern political influence, the family was no longer ruling Germany.
10:22
Kristin: And that may help explain why so few people recognize their name today.
10:26
Kristin: World War II, the rise of Nazism, and the Holocaust reshaped German's historical narrative so profoundly that the centuries of Hohenzollern rule often receive only a passing mention outside Europe.
10:39
Kristin: Yet many of the institutions, borders, and political traditions that defined modern Germany were forged under their regime, and beneath Berlin, that history still survives in a crypt among the dead.
10:52
Kristin: Descending into the Hohenzoller crypt is almost like walking backward through German history.
10:57
Kristin: Every coffin represents a ruler, a queen, a prince, or a child, whose life unfolded against wars, religious upheavals, political alliances, and the rise and fall of kingdoms.
11:09
Kristin: And the crypt isn't simply important because its famous members of the dynasty are buried there.
11:15
Kristin: It's a record of how this ruling family understood death, remembrance, and its own place in history.
11:21
Kristin: The Hohenzollern Crypt is considered the most important dynastic burial site in Germany, along with the Capuchin Crypt in Vienna, the royal tombs in the Cathedral of St.
11:31
Kristin: Denis in Paris, and the crypt of the Spanish kings at the Escoral near Madrid.
11:36
Kristin: It's among the most significant dynastic burial sites in Europe.
11:40
Kristin: Princes and kings of the House of Hohenzollern rest here, many of whom shape the city of Berlin itself.
11:46
Kristin: The Great Elector lies in a marble sarcophagus designed by Johann Arnold Nerling, alongside both his wives, Louise Henriette of Nassau and Dorothy of Schleswig-Holstein, whose enormous gilded sarcophagus remains one of the most visited tombs in the crypt.
12:03
Kristin: Nearby rests King Frederick I and his wife Sophie Charlotte, in a sarcophagus considered one of the finest Baroque funeral works in existence, carved by the sculptor Andrea Schutler.
12:14
Kristin: On Sophie Charlotte's tomb, a gilded statue of death himself stands behind bars, scratching names into a massive ledger.
12:23
Kristin: Queen Elizabeth Christine, wife of Federic the Great, is here too, or at least she's meant to be.
12:29
Kristin: Her coffin was believed to be destroyed in the 1944 bombing until an unmarked casket, long assumed empty, was opened during restoration and found to hold bones that may be hers.
12:41
Kristin: It was never confirmed though.
12:43
Kristin: Dozens more rest alongside her, their lives spanning centuries of Brandenburg and Prussian history.
12:50
Kristin: Together with a magnificent sarcophagi and grave monuments in the breaching church, the collection documents roughly 500 years of Brandenburg Prussian burial culture.
13:00
Kristin: But here's the strange part.
13:02
Kristin: Despite the name, none of the actual German Kaisers rest in the Hohenzollern Crypt.
13:08
Kristin: Wilhelm I is buried in the Charlonsburg Mausoleum, Frederick III at the Friedenskirche in Potsdam, William II died in exile in the Netherlands, and never came home at all.
13:19
Kristin: The men who built the empire this crypt is named for aren't actually in the room.
13:24
Kristin: Not everyone here can be even accounted for either.
13:27
Kristin: In 1747, during a transfer of coffins between crypts, three electors, Joe and Cicero, Joachim I and Jochem II went missing.
13:37
Kristin: Despite official searches, their whereabouts have never been established.
13:41
Kristin: They remain unaccounted for to this day.
13:44
Kristin: And elsewhere in the crypt sits a tomb marked only as the tomb of the nameless princess.
13:49
Kristin: No name, no explanation, just the title.
13:52
Kristin: And you can see that history is in the coffins themselves.
13:56
Kristin: All the artistic styles from the late Gothic period onward are reflected in the tombstones and coffins, some simple, others extraordinarily elaborate.
14:06
Kristin: Some wooden coffins are even covered in velvet and brocade, a particular rare form of funeral decoration, including one oak coffin from 1820, lined in red silk velvet, standing on gilded lion paws.
14:19
Kristin: Some of the bronze sarcophagi weigh 11 to 13 tons.
14:23
Kristin: Thirty-three others belonging to children are strikingly small by comparison.
14:28
Kristin: And then there are the coffins that remind you that behind all the titles and political history were families who experience the same thing every family eventually does.
14:38
Kristin: Loss.
14:39
Kristin: A dynasty might concern itself with succession, territory, alliances, and power while its members were alive, but death has a way of making those distinctions feel much smaller.
14:50
Kristin: A king could be laid to rest beside a child.
14:53
Kristin: A powerful ruler can lie only a few steps away from someone whose life never held the opportunity to become politically significant, and together they became part of the same burial ground.
15:04
Kristin: The last person ever buried here wasn't a king.
15:07
Kristin: It was the stillborn daughter of Prince Alderbert of Prussia, the final name added to a room that held royalty for nearly 400 years.
15:16
Kristin: Elsewhere in the crypt, visitors can see Frederick I's actual death mask and his small dress that once belonged to Princess Charlotte Abertine of Prussia, who died at just 13 months old.
15:28
Kristin: But even the dead weren't protected from the violence of the 20th century.
15:32
Kristin: During World War II, the Hohenzollern Crypt was severely damaged.
15:36
Kristin: When the cathedral above was struck by bombs, the main dome was hid, and the collapsed in portions of the structure downward through the cathedral, while fire tore through the building.
15:46
Kristin: Eventually that destruction reached the crypt below.
15:49
Kristin: Some coffins were almost completely destroyed.
15:52
Kristin: These were the remains of people who had lived through war centuries earlier, people who had built armies, people who had ruled territories, people whose descendants had created the German Empire.
16:03
Kristin: The dynasty's political power was already gone, and now even its tombs were vulnerable.
16:08
Kristin: The coffins that had survived centuries were suddenly exposed to bombs, fire, collapsing stone, and the destruction of Berlin.
16:16
Kristin: The crypt had become part of history, it had preserved.
16:19
Kristin: The crypt was eventually repaired after the war, but time found another way in.
16:24
Kristin: Decades later, hundreds and thousands of visitors passing through each year brought moisture and heat that let mold take hold across the sarcophagi.
16:32
Kristin: Preserving the Hohenzollern crypt became once again a race against decay, this time for the very people coming to see it.
16:39
Kristin: After more than ten years of planning and six years of construction, the Hohenzollern Crypt in Berlin Cathedral reopened to the public.
16:46
Kristin: The project received funding from the state of Berlin and the Federal Ministry for Culture and Media, and the work also made the crypt in a cathedral accessible for people with disabilities.
16:56
Kristin: It wasn't the first time the crypt had to be engineered around disaster either.
17:00
Kristin: Back in the 19th century, the crypt flooded, not once but twice.
17:04
Kristin: When it was rebuilt, the burial floor was deliberately set just above the highest recorded groundwater level.
17:10
Kristin: Thanks to the funding from the Cornelston Cultural Foundation, the burial site now includes a dedicated informational area with an interactive model of the crypt, showing visitors how the coffins are arranged within this space.
17:22
Kristin: So even today, the crypt continues to tell the story of the family, not through a history book, not through the list of dates, through the physical remains of the people who lived that history.
17:33
Kristin: Their political story ended above ground, but their physical story continued below it.
17:38
Kristin: And perhaps that's what makes a Hohensalerin crypt so haunting.
17:42
Kristin: The further down you go, the further back you travel, past the German Empire, past the Kings of Prussia, past Brandenburg, past the wars and alliances that built the dynasty, until eventually all there remains is the dead, not the empire, not the army, not the crown, not the throne, just the people who once possessed them.
18:04
Kristin: And beneath the capital of modern Germany they remained together, still surrounded by the symbols of the world they built, still occupying their spaces in the family timeline, still telling a story that existed long before the Germany most of us learned about in school, because long before World War II changed the way the world remembered Germany.
18:23
Kristin: The Hohenzollerants had spent centuries changing Germany themselves, and now their final chapter is written underground.
18:32
Kristin: Unlike so many places we've covered on the Grim, the Hohenzoller crypt doesn't have a ghost story of its own down here.
18:39
Kristin: No reported sightings in the burial chamber itself, no local legend tied to these specific coffins.
18:46
Kristin: But the Hohenzollerans had a ghost, one that stayed behind at the family's ancestral castle in the Swabian Alps.
18:54
Kristin: For centuries, members of the dynasty told stories of a woman dressed in white who appeared inside their palaces shortly before death.
19:02
Kristin: They called her the White Lady.
19:04
Kristin: She wasn't said to cause death, she was the warning.
19:07
Kristin: According to legend, whenever she appeared, someone within the Hohenzollern family was about to die.
19:13
Kristin: Her story takes on several forms, and even her identity is uncertain.
19:18
Kristin: One tradition claimed she was Kunagundy of Orlemunda, a medieval noblewoman condemned to wander after murdering her children.
19:26
Kristin: Another identified her as Anna Saido, the mistress of Elector Jochim II.
19:31
Kristin: After Jokim's death, Anna was imprisoned in the Spandau Citadel, where she eventually died.
19:37
Kristin: Legend says she never truly left the Hohenzollerins behind.
19:41
Kristin: Instead, she returned as the White Lady.
19:43
Kristin: And then came the sightings.
19:45
Kristin: She was said to move silently through the halls of the Hohenzollerin residences, covered by a long widow's veil.
19:52
Kristin: She never spoke, she didn't need to.
19:54
Kristin: According to the stories of those who encountered her, understood what her presence meant.
19:59
Kristin: Death was coming.
20:00
Kristin: There were even accounts of members of the court discussing whether they had seen her, and traditions connected her appearances with the deaths of several Hohenzoller rulers over the centuries.
20:11
Kristin: Whether anyone truly saw ghosts is impossible to know, but the legend endured.
20:17
Kristin: And perhaps that's what makes it so fitting that we're standing among the Hohenzollerin dead, because the White Lady was never really a ghost story about death itself.
20:26
Kristin: She was a story about anticipating it.
20:28
Kristin: For centuries, this family lived surrounded by power, kings, electors, emperors, military victories, or political alliances.
20:38
Kristin: But beneath Berlin Cathedral, all that eventually comes to an end.
20:42
Kristin: For now, the stories of the Hohenzollerin slip back into the stone, and the dead return to their uneasy rest.
20:50
Kristin: Thank you for walking with us through the veil into the Hohenzoller crypt, descending once more into the hauntings of history.
20:58
Kristin: The gate is sealed, the veil drawn, yet death keeps no calendar, and so we shall return, as we always do, on the grim.