The Lords of Hohenlohe may have served the Hohenstaufen emperors faithfully, rising to become counts and then princes of the Holy German Empire, but unlike their neighbours the Württembergs they never developed the same imperial favours and they proved incapable of bringing their many estates under one rule. The region of Hohenlohe, between Stuttgart and Würzburg, fell victim to assorted marriages, splitting into countless little territories whose names would delight any fan of the Almanach de Gotha: Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Hohenlohe-Neuenstein, Hohenlohe-Kirchberg, Hohenlohe-Pfedelbach and, of course, Hohenlohe-Weikersheim.
The only good outcome of this was that the different branches of the Hohenlohe family strove to outdo one another with the palaces and castles that still bear their names. Today, with the additional glory of the surrounding imperial towns such as Rothenburg, they make Hohenlohe one of the most picturesque of all German regions. ‘What a magical place. I felt as though I were suddenly back in the Middle Ages,’ wrote the early 19th-century artist Adrian Ludwig Richter, whose paintings capture perfectly the charm and tranquillity of this fairytale landscape. It is the rich country of the German patriarch, with fine forests and wealthy market towns, where the priests are poets and musicians, and the citizens desert their peaceful toil only to dance or feast beneath the benevolent protection of the palace walls. It is that idyll of German life so familiar from the paintings of Carl Spitzweg, who might well have used Weikersheim as the setting for one of his favourite subjects: Arrival of the Coach, or Serenade beneath the Window. The square’s substantial bourgeois houses, its green, yellow and pink inns and its two Rococo arches framing a monumental gateway make a perfect setting for the palace, whose uneven outline – with a most unforbidding onion-domed dungeon on one side – stands out against the vine-clad hills.
Weikersheim, at the confluence of the Vorbach and Tauber rivers, was one of the first palaces to profit from the Hohenlohe’s matrimonial developments, with 40-year-old Wolfgang II making it his principal residence from 1587. This minor Franconian aristocrat was exceptionally well-travelled for the time. At 15 his Grand Tour had taken him to Paris, where he mastered French – and the ways of polite society – and had been presented at court. After a trip to England in 1562 he spent some time at the ducal palace of Stuttgart and then in Vienna, before coming home. Might this noble traveller have seen the great hall and gallery at Fontainebleau? Might not Androuet du Cerceau’s popular work Les Plus Excellents Bâtiments de France have passed through his hands?
At any rate Du Cerceau’s book had a number of buildings constructed on central geometrical plans that corresponded to the sort of thing Count Wolfgang was looking for: a modern palace of rational, harmonious design. He opted for the triangle, and being, it appears, more interested in outward show than domestic comforts, he directed work to begin on the wing housing the ceremonial and banqueting apartments. (The small chapel was also included.) Viewed from outside, the style is simple: a row of uniform windows with oeils-de-boeuf above them and an arched terrace below. The walls are unplastered and there is no hint of the splendour within – a baronial hall (Rittersaal) virtually unparalleled in all Germany.
As in the Galerie du Rosso at Fontainebleau, for instance, or Mantua’s Palazzo del Te, the rich abundance of painting or sculpture is confined to the upper walls and ceiling, leaving large expanses of wall free to be decorated or hung with tapestries as the occasion required. As with all ‘imperial’ halls (as they came to be known), which were the central feature of German palaces until the late 18th century, the Rittersaal was intended to convince the visitor of its proprietor’s importance. At Weikersheim no symbol has been overlooked in the allegories designed to exalt the power of the Hohenlohes. First there are the painted stucco figures of the count and his wife, Madeleine de Nassau, who are shown reclining in the poses of Jesse and the Virgin either side of the monumental fireplace just above the moulded cornice. The branches extending from their bodies are those of a long family tree, with alliances spreading throughout Europe.
The fireplace itself symbolises power: God the Father is seated on the globe with, to one side, the Judgment of Solomon – revealing the family’s wisdom and justice – while, to the other, Victory over the Turks shows their military and religious fortitude (the subject of the Turk in chains was standard decoration for imperial halls throughout Germany and Austria). The master of Weikersheim’s power extends over the animal kingdom, and St George defeating the dragon serves as a reminder of prowess in the hunt. The victims lining the walls form an impressive zodiac of creatures indigenous (bears and stags) and exotic (lions and elephants). Sculpted into stucco and painted, they jut life-size from the walls, each one in its protective natural habitat. They are disturbingly realistic and must have been all the more alarming when seen by flickering torchlight. The coffered ceiling is also copiously decorated with hunting scenes from all over the world.
Count Wolfgang was a cultured man, a philosopher and an aesthete who dabbled in alchemy. He seems to have been a man of simple habits little concerned with comfort. His personal apartments are modest and include a laboratory and a still room. His son Georg Friedrich continued in the heroic style, decorating the rooms that are today named after him with allegories of virtue and feats of gallantry taken from ancient Roman and Greek history.
It was a hundred years until any additions were made to Weikersheim, by Wolfgang’s great-grandson Carl Ludwig. He too was well travelled, and his Grand Tour had taken him to Italy, Holland and Paris, where he had learned dancing, the basics of military architecture, and mastered the hunting horn. Due perhaps to lack of money, or out of sympathy and respect for the originality of his ancestors’ work, Carl Ludwig resisted the then current fashion to redecorate the Rittersaal in Baroque style and confined himself to hanging it with large family portraits (along with those of the Emperor and his spouse) and having ‘Europe’s most beautiful palaces’ painted in a rather naive style along the panelling to remind him of his travels. It was he who placed the astrological clock in the great hall and installed the enormous Augsburg silver-plated copper chandelier, typical of the belated taste for the Baroque that reigned in minor German courts well into the 18th century.
The same bold style dominates the domestic apartments, which today are among few examples of the period to remain complete and unaltered. It is not that the furniture is particularly fine or rare – in fact much is quite crude – but it remains both in its original state and in its intended positions. Chests of drawers, console tables, mirrors and wall lamps, all carved by craftsmen from the surrounding district, line the corridors on every floor leading to apartments, which consist of an ante-chamber, reception room and bedroom. The stucco ceilings, carved and moulded door frames, fabrics, tapestries and cordovan leather were all bought or made between 1708 and 1709.
The greatest treasures, then as now, are the Venetian mirrors carried over the Alps on men’s backs. Carl Ludwig used locally made Stuttgart looking-glasses in the Chamber of Mirrors (along with porcelain figures), which he had installed in his wife’s apartment as a gift, rather than build her a new great hall.
But it was in the garden that this new lord gave full rein to his taste for splendour and – in common with his ancestor – allegory. Formerly a simple Renaissance pleasure garden, the park was transformed into a jardin à la française, laid out on an axis from the centre of the palace, to which had been added a terrace and a balustrade. At the end of the garden two orangeries were built, creating a theatrical setting on either side of a statue of the sovereign on horseback with the horizon as its backdrop. Perched on the ridges of the orangery roofs and balanced on pedestals stand a host of symbolic figures made of pink sandstone.
The elements, the seasons and the regions of the world, accompanied by all manner of mythological deities, have been summoned to sing the praises of the Hohenlohe. And on the terrace balustrade – for the prince was a man of wit and learning – perches another group of figures to make fun of such an august gathering. These grotesque dwarves are the cook, the prince’s jester, the shepherd, the aulic Jew and counsellor, the steward and the lady’s companion, the chambermaid and the gardener, not forgetting the cellarman, master of the wines of Hohenlohe: a complete caricature of the prince’s household.
After Carl Ludwig’s death only one further change was made: in 1766 an apartment was decorated in a deliciously rich Rococo confection of raspberry and vanilla. After this, like the palace in the story of Beauty and the Beast, Weikersheim went to sleep for almost 200 years, until Prince Constantin (Hohenlohe-Langenburg) arrived from Bohemia in 1945 with the power to awaken it from slumber. He was both artist and connoisseur, and in his careful hands the fading beauty of the palace was meticulously restored to its former glory. Apparently unaware of this effort and achievement, in 1973 the Hohenlohe family was all set to sell off the contents of Weikersheim when the state of Württemberg stepped in to buy it. They turned it into a museum – now regarded as the jewel in the crown of the dynasty’s architectural legacy.
Schloss Weikersheim, 11 Marktplatz, 97990 Weikersheim, Germany. Visit schloss-weikersheim.de
A version of this article appeared in the July/August 1991 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers
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