Constantin Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg

Place of activity of Constantin zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg: Weikersheim Palace and Park

Gottfried Constantin Erwin Maria Prinz zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg , also Konstantin Prinz zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (born September 11, 1893 at Rothenhaus Castle near Komotau , † June 2, 1973 in Bad Mergentheim ) was a German painter , monument conservator and museum director . He was co-initiator of the international summer courses for orchestra, opera and chamber music of the Jeunesses Musicales Germany at Weikersheim Castle and the tourist cultural axis Romantic Road .

biography

Gottfried Constantin zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg came from a Catholic branch line of the line of the entire Hohenlohe-Langenburg house, which today carries the title of prince . He was the son of the Kuk privy councilor Prince Gottfried Karl Joseph and Countess Anna von Schönborn-Buchheim. His direct ancestor was the first Prince Ludwig zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg . As a first lieutenant in the 14th Windisch-Graetz Dragoon Regiment , he took part in the First World War.

After his discharge from the army, Constantin zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and Munich . After that he lived and painted for a short time in Ávila and Ronda . The Museo de Arte Moderno in Madrid presented 52 of his pictures taken during this period in an exhibition. They met with keen buying interest and he was able to make a living from his art. After friends in Paris had given him jobs, he wanted to rent a studio there for a short time , but he spent 17 years in the French capital , interrupted by several trips to America . He created landscapes, portraits and figurines and furnished some villas of wealthy Americans with his decorative paintings. After his father's death in 1933, he inherited the Eidlitz estate , which, however, was managed by a brother for him.

After the end of the Habsburg Monarchy , the family had automatically obtained Czechoslovak citizenship, but since families previously ruling in Germany never lose their German citizenship, they turned to the Württemberg government and thus obtained a Württemberg passport. For Germans living abroad in Czechoslovakia, the consequences of the land reform were not quite as far-reaching as for Czechoslovak citizens, but the family lost 4,000 hectares of forest and eleven of the thirteen large farms.

The annual Prince Constantin Concerts take place in the knight's hall at Weikersheim Castle

During the Second World War Constantin zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg took part as adjutant to the Commander- in -Chief in Belgium before he was assigned to the military administration in Reval , where he took over the economic department. In Estonia , for example, he called for equal food rations for Germans and Estonians and recommended the autonomy of the Baltic states. Of the assassins of June 20, 1944 , about whose plans he was informed, he was designated as head of the military administration in Estonia. After the putsch failed, Rittmeister Hohenlohe was released from the Wehrmacht . Shortly before the Red Army marched into Bohemia, he managed to escape to Langenburg , where he was able to catch up with his mother and sister.

The city of Weikersheim paid tribute to Prince Constantin's work by naming a circular route around the city and castle after him.

By Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg , his nephew 5th grade, he was Weikersheim assigned as a residence. The family had not lived in the castle continuously for almost 200 years and only used it occasionally for summer retreat. Constantin zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg soon began, financed by the entrance fees to the park and the palace, with the restoration of the entire complex and the almost completely preserved baroque furniture. As the “lord of the castle without a castle”, he also felt responsible for the rose bushes in the park and, in his green apron, was sometimes mistaken for a gardener by visitors. He played a key role in establishing the international summer courses of Jeunesses Musicales Germany in Weikersheim and their opera performances in the historic castle courtyard. In his honor, the Prince Constantin Concert of the JMD's International Chamber Music Course takes place in the knight's hall of the palace every year. The hall of the rifle house in the castle park, today part of the Weikersheim Castle Music Academy , is named after him. Constantin zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg was also a co-initiator of the Romantic Road , which still significantly shapes the image of Germany abroad.

After Langenburg Castle was badly damaged in a fire in 1963, the family was forced to sell the Weikersheim facility to the state of Baden-Württemberg . From then on, Constantin zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg took over the administration of the castle as a state employee, which was preserved as a museum of family history. His other major work is the establishment of the Museum of the Dynasty and Art Landscape Hohenlohe in Neuenstein . He had Joachim Georg Creutzfelder von Kirchberg an der Jagst's coffered ceiling installed in the Knights' Hall of Neuenstein Castle : “Ten pictures were missing. No, I then painted them, each about four by two meters sixty. ” He also worked as an artistic consultant for the establishment of the Schlosshotel Friedrichsruhe near Zweiflingen as well as in Langenburg, Tierberg Castle near Braunsbach , Schillingsfürst , Bartenstein , Büdingen and Herrenhausen .

After his death in 1973, Constantin Prince zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg was buried in the Princely Cemetery of the Hohenlohe-Langenburg family.

Publications

Neuenstein Castle

• Neuenstein Castle and its museum. 5th edition. (Arrangement by Gerhard Taddey ) Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich / Berlin 2001 ( DKV Art Guide No. 155).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Musikakademie Schloss Weikersheim ( Memento of the original from January 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Carlheinz Gräter: Hohenloher rarities. History and stories. Page 152.

literature

• Carlheinz Gräter: Hohenlohe rarities. History and stories. Silberburg-Verlag , Tübingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-87407-901-3 .
• Thomas Kreutzer: Prince Konstantin zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1893–1973). A life in the conflict between inclination and a sense of duty. In: Alma Hannig, Martina Winkelhofer-Thyri (eds.): The Hohenlohe family. A European dynasty in the 19th and 20th centuries . Verlag Böhlau, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-41222201-7 , pp. 331–355.

Web links

• Literature by and about Constantin Prinz zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg in the catalog of the German National Library