Rietberg

Rietberg lies on the Ems in Westphalia. Mentioned around 1100 as Rietbike, it became the seat of the County of Rietberg in 1237. The small territory retained its own laws and minted coins into the seventeenth century. Its government was housed in a castle built in the fourteenth century until the eighteenth century.

Through marriage the county passed to the Kaunitz family in 1699. It lost its separate territorial status in 1807, when it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Westphalia, and later became part of Prussia. The old castle was demolished in the early nineteenth century; its chapel of Saint John, built in 1748, survived.