Image Copyright: Stadt Dinklage

The castle is Dinklage's landmark. The present Benedictine monastery St. Scholastika is situated off the main road in the beautiful surrounding of the Burgwald. In its substantial parts the moated castle is still a half-timbered building, which stem mostly from 16th and 17th-century. The people of Dinklage are very proud of this gem, the prettiest still existing moated castle of the old lower monastery Münster.

The castle gives a long look back into history. The name Dinklage is first mentioned in a certificate in 1231. Even then the noble family of the masters von Dinklage existed, ministers of the Earl von Ravensberg, who had their main seat in the castle Vechta.

Image Copyright: Stadt Dinklage

The Dinklage nobles, from 1252 onwards commissionaires of the bishop Münster, in the 14th-century they fell out with their lords, were defeated and punished harshly. Only at the beginning of the 15th-century were they allowed to built new castles. One of those is the Dietrichsburg – the present Dinklage moated castle.

Successor of the masters of Dinklage was the family von Galen in the 17th-century. The noble family stemming from the Münsterland held the court office - the highest administration post – in Vechta and selected the castle Dinklage as their residence. Dinklage was the ancestral home of the earls von Galen well into the 20th-century. Then they moved into the house Assen near Münster and gifted the castle and parts of the forest to the order of Benedictine sisters. Today all buildings around the moated castle Dinklage belong to the monastery complex. The Benedictine sisters keep a guesthouse here, the monastery café and a monastery shop where they sell also products from their own production.

Image Copyright: Stadt Dinklage

The most important son of the city Dinklage is Clemens August Earl von Galen.
He was born on the castle Dinklage in 1878. As bishop from Münster (1933 to 1946, the 'Lion of Münster') he was one of the most engaged opponents of the National Socialist regime. Galen, who became a cardinal just before his sudden death in 1946, was beatified in the St. Peter's Basilica in Rome on the 9th of October 2005. Pope Benedict XVI himself honoured him as 'great witness of faith, who set up a light in the dark times of truth and showed the courage of resistance against the power of tyranny'.

Clemens August von Galen is remembered in Dinklage apart from the castle and chapel mostly by the large monument in front of the church St. Catharina and the Galen-chapel in the church with one of the blessed relics.

The monument in front of the church St. Catharina remembers the of the 'Lion of Münster'.