History

FRIDERICI MEMORIAE stands above the entrance portico of Schloss Friedrichshof, which Victoria, née Princess Royal of Great Britain, widowed Empress Frederick and Queen of Prussia, had built from 1889 to 1893 near Kronberg in the Taunus mountains. After her husband, the 99-day Emperor Friedrich III, had died of laryngeal cancer, she made the care of his memory her life’s purpose. For with Frederick she had also had to bury the hope of establishing a contemporary parliamentary system of government in autocratically ruled Prussia-Germany based on the model of her English homeland.

The Development of Friedrichhof Palace

An inheritance of Duchess Galliera (1811-1888) enabled her to design a residence in Kronberg according to her own ideas without financial restrictions and to develop it into a large estate by purchasing surrounding plots of land. In 1889 the director of court architecture, Ernst Ihne (1848-1917), began planning the building; the Frankfurt company Philipp Holzmann was responsible for the construction work. From Potsdam, Victoria brought the court gardener Hermann Walter (1837-1898) to Kronberg, who laid out an English-style park, a rose garden rising staircase-shaped in terraces, a rock garden with a waterfall and a nursery with greenhouses. Although it was initially intended only for a summer stay, it was equipped with unprecedented innovations such as central heating, a freight elevator and electric light.

Empress Friedrich, who died of cancer in Friedrichshof on August 5, 1901, left her youngest daughter Princess Margarethe (1872-1954), married to Prince Friedrich Karl of Hesse (1868-1940) in 1893, in possession of her property. Both felt obliged to the Empress’s wish to preserve this property as unchanged as possible. In 1902 the family moved from Frankfurt to Kronberg, but the winter months were still spent in Frankfurt, where Friedrich Karl served in his regiment. Schloss Friedrichshof once again became the centre of his life when Greek cousins and cousins came to visit during the summer months.

The consequences of the I. & II. World War

After the First World War in 1918-1920, military authorities of the French occupying power were housed in the castle. Due to inflation, the maintenance of the castle had become very difficult for the family. Individual works of art had to be sold, but the empress’s inventory remained largely untouched. In the 1920s there were structural changes due to time. In 1922 Margarethe transferred the ownership of Schloss Friedrichshof to her four sons – the two oldest had already fallen in the First World War. Her husband, Friedrich Karl, took over the administration of the Hessian estate in 1924 from his older brother, Landgrave Alexander Friedrich von Hessen (1863.1945). They had transferred the cultural heritage of the former ruling Electoral House to the newly founded KURHESSISCHE HAUSSTIFTUNG. Heinrich Lange (1877-1959) was appointed lieutenant colonel a.D., who, after the death of the landgrave in 1940, was solely in charge of Friedrichshof Castle and the Hessian Family Foundation until the end of the Second World War.

In April 1945, the American occupying forces confiscated Friedrichshof and used the castle as an officers’ club. The castle and cottage were vacated by the family. During this time a significant part of the collections and art treasures were lost. Two paintings were returned in 2015 thanks to the mediation of the Monuments Men Foundation. A few years earlier, a Belgian director and a Hollywood author tried to prepare this time for a feature film “The Hessen Affair” (2009).

Preserving the heritage of the Hessian Princely House

In the summer of 1948, after the denazification proceedings had been completed and the trusteeship had ended, Prince Wolfgang (1896-1989) became managing director of the Kurhessische Hausstiftung. In an ideal complement to his commercial talent, his organisational vision and entrepreneurial courage, he added the art-historical knowledge and stylistic confidence of his twin brother Landgrave Philipp von Hessen (1896-1980). Both were united by the unconditional desire to preserve the legacy of the Hessian Princely House as a foundation.

After the damage caused by the occupation had been repaired and the castle thoroughly renovated, Friedrichshof was converted into a modern 40 room spa hotel. The 250-acre old park was transformed into a golf course without any major alterations. It was not easy to open the rooms, which had been kept as a special legacy and were the epitome of happy childhood memories, to the public. They were changed as little as possible and the old style of the house was to be retained in order to give the guests a more private atmosphere.

The opening of the Schlosshotel Kronberg

The Schosshotel opened in 1954 under the management of the hotelier Richard Pertram, who had also been the tenant of the family hotel Hessischer Hof in Frankfurt since 1952. Among the guests were King Paul and Queen Friederike of Greece as well as the King of Sweden. The castle hotel was also used by the state government for festive receptions of foreign state guests.

In the 1960s, the heirs transferred their ownership shares in the property to the HESSISCHE HAUSSTIFTUNG, the Hessian HOUSE FOUNDATION. On 8 March 1967, a fire broke out on the upper floors of the castle hotel, destroying all the roofs, the attic and the second and third floors. The fire as well as the considerable quantities of water required to extinguish it caused damage running into millions. Persons were not injured. The art objects accommodated in the hotel were largely rescued. As it turned out, the fire was set by a kitchen apprentice, who felt treated wrongly by the chef. The restoration of the castle was entrusted to the Holzmann company, which had already built Schloss Friedrichshof 75 years earlier and still had the building plans from that time. In 1973 the management of the hotel was taken over. From 1988 until his retirement in 2004, the hotelier Gerhard Köhler was director of the two hotels Hessischer Hof and Schlosshotel Kronberg.