Pinneberg

Pinneberg is a town in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany, about 18 km northwest of the centre of Hamburg, and the capital of the district that bears its name. It has roughly 43,500 inhabitants. A castle stood here from about 1200, on a site long used as a Germanic assembly place; Count Adolf VIII of Schauenburg and Holstein-Pinneberg took it in 1370, and the town was first named in official documents as a seat of courts in 1397. A Renaissance castle replaced the old one in 1472 and was pulled down in 1720, while the Baroque Drostei of 1765 to 1767 survives as the most important Baroque building in the district. Pinneberg received municipal rights only in 1875 and absorbed Pinneberger Dorf in 1905 and Thesdorf and Waldenau in 1927. Its population doubled after the Second World War with the arrival of expellees. Today it is the terminus of Hamburg S-Bahn line S3 and lies beside the A23 motorway.