DE-4577351 The château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg

The château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg (German: Hohkönigsburg) is a medieval castle located at Orschwiller, Alsace, France, in the Vosges mountains just west of Sélestat. It is situated in a strategic location on a rocky spur overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain; as a result it was used by successive powers from the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years' War when it was abandoned.
The ruins had been listed as a monument historique of the Second French Empire since 1862 and were purchased by the township of Sélestat (Schlettstadt) three years later. When after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 the region was incorporated into the German Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine, the citizens granted the remnants of the castle to the German emperor Wilhelm II in 1899. Wilhelm wished to create a castle lauding the qualities of the medieval time of Alsace and more generally of German civilization stretching from Hohkönigsburg in the west to (likewise restored) Marienburg Castle in the east. He also hoped it would reinforce the bond of Alsatians with Germany, as they had only recently been incorporated into the newly established German Empire. Work proceeded from 1900 to 1908. On May 13, 1908, the restored Hohkönigsburg was inaugurated in presence of the Emperor.
After World War I, the French state confiscated the castle according to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. In 1993, the restored castle was officially designated as a national historic site by the French Ministry of Culture. Today, it is one of the most famous tourist attractions of the region.
For many years it was considered fashionable in France to sneer at the castle because of its links to the German emperor. Many considered it to be nothing more than a fairy tale castle similar to Neuschwanstein. However, in recent years many historians have established that, although it is not a completely accurate reconstruction, it is at least interesting for what it shows about Wilhelm II's romantic nationalist ideas of the past and the architect's work.  Source: Wikipedia

This postcard came from Sibylle (5 November 2015) Postcrossing.