Schloss Leopoldskron is a rococo palace and a national historic monument in Leopoldskron-Moos, a southern district of the city of Salzburg, Austria. The palace, and its surrounding seven hectare park, is located on the lake Leopoldskroner Weiher. The palace has been home to Salzburg Global Seminar since 1947. In 2014, the palace and the neighboring Meierhof building were opened as a privately owned hotel, Hotel Schloss Leopoldskron. [1]
Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg Count Leopold Anton Eleutherius von Firmian (1679-1744) [2] commissioned the palace in 1736 on the shores of an existing pond after he had enriched himself in the process of expelling over 22,000 Protestants from Salzburg. He acquired the area between the palace and the Untersberg as a family estate, which he passed on in May 1744 to his nephew Count Laktanz Firmian, who used it to house his large collection of paintings. This included works of Titian, Dürer, Poussin, Rubens and Rembrandt.
After the death of the Archbishop in 1744, his heart was buried in the chapel of the palace, while the rest of his body was placed in the cathedral of Salzburg. The palace was owned by the Firmian family until 1837, even after the death of Count Laktanz in 1786. George Zierer, the owner of a local shooting gallery, bought the palace and stripped it of most of the valuable interior decorations, including paintings, etchings, and sculptures.
The palace had several owners during the 19th century (including a banker and two waiters who wanted to use it as a hotel, King Ludwig I of Bavaria). In 1918 it was bought by Max Reinhardt, the noted theatre director and co-founder of the Salzburg Festival. [3] By this time the palace was in urgent need of repair. With the work of local artisans, Reinhardt spent twenty years renovating the palace. Besides restoring the staircase, the Great Hall, and the Marble Hall, he created the Library, the Venetian Room and a garden theatre. He used the whole building for his theatre productions (the audiences had to move from room to room). He also used it as a gathering place for writers, actors, composers and designers from across the globe. Reinhardt escaped to the United States as persecution of the Jews increased, hoping the Nazis would be defeated in the war. He worked in Hollywood during World War II and died in New York in 1943, before the Allied victory.
In 1939 the German government confiscated the palace as a national treasure during the taking of "Jewish property" throughout Austria. During the same year, Hermann Göring assigned the palace to Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, an Austrian who had been spying for the Nazis in Britain and Europe and who had many influential contacts. She was charged with transforming it into a guest house for prominent artists of the Reich, and to serve as a reception facility for Hitler's Berghof home. Von Hohenlohe, who knew Reinhardt before the annexation of Austria, was able to secure from the Nazis sixteen crates of Reinhardt's books, porcelain, silver and furniture and had them shipped to California, though the consolation of his tangible possessions were little comfort against the loss of the Leopoldskron. Once it came to light that Stephanie von Hohenlohe may have been a double agent, she fled to England, then America, returning the palace to Nazi hands until the end of the war. [4]
By the end of the war, a bomb had exploded in the garden. It shattered the windows, destroyed a chandelier in the library on the ground floor and sent shrapnel fragments into the wall murals in the Chinese room. It also damaged the stucco work in the south facade. Traces of the damage can still be seen today. [4]
After the war, the property was returned to the Reinhardt estate. In 1946 Helene Thimig, the widow of Max Reinhardt, offered use of the palace to Clemens Heller, who founded the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, a "Marshall Plan of the Mind," together with Scott Elledge and Richard Campbell, all Harvard graduate students. [5] The Salzburg Seminar brought together young people from the countries that had been in conflict during World War 2 and originally offered education on American history, art, literature and culture, in a period when United States armed forces occupied parts of Germany and Austria. This was later transformed into a "global forum". Since 1947, more than 500 sessions of the Seminars have been held on a wide variety of issues.
In 1959 the Salzburg Global Seminar purchased the palace, and in 1973 the adjacent Meierhof, which was part of the original Firmian estate. They have made extensive renovations and restorations to enable the palace to be used as a conference center and venue for events other than the Salzburg Seminar. In early 2014, 50 rooms in the Meierhoft, the Meierhof Café and the reception area underwent a substantial two-month renovation. The renovation included three "The Sound of Music" themed rooms. In February 2014, the property reopened under its new name, Hotel Schloss Leopoldskron. [6]
Hotel Schloss Leopoldskron is a member of Castle Hotels & Mansions, [7] Historic Hotels of Europe, and partner of Climate Alliance Austria, Europe's biggest climate-protection network.
In 2015, the Historic Hotels of Europe awarded the Schloss the "Best Historic Hotel of Europe" award. In the same year, the Schloss achieved a Certificate of Excellence from TripAdvisor. [8] In 2016, the Schloss placed second in the Historic Hotels of Europe's award for a "Best Historic Hotel with 'A Story to Tell'". [9]
Notable hotel guests have included Prince Charles, Bill Gates, Kofi Annan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and many more. [10]
 |  |  |  |
In 1964, the film The Sound of Music , directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews, was produced in Salzburg with the grounds of Schloss Leopoldskron as one of the main exterior locations. In fact, 10 outdoor scenes were filmed there portraying the Von Trapp home. [11] The interior of the palace was never used as the Von Trapp villa. Scenes were actually filmed on an adjacent property (known as Bertelsmann, at the time), including the family drinking pink lemonade ("not too sweet, not too sour, just too... pink!") on the terrace, Maria and the Captain arguing on the terrace and the children and Maria falling off the boat into the lake. Also, only shots showing the lake were filmed at Bertelsmann, using a replica of Leopoldskron's terrace and "horse-gates" that lead to the lake. Shots of the building itself were filmed at Schloss Frohnburg and the decor of the ballroom used for the interior scenes is identical to that in Leopoldskron's Venetian Room (the Venetian Room is much smaller than the ballroom).[ citation needed ]
The setting for the two main love scenes, one between Liesl and Rolf (featuring the song Sixteen Going on Seventeen) and the other between Maria and the Captain (Something Good) was the glass gazebo originally situated in the gardens of the palace. The gazebo interiors were shot on a Hollywood sound stage and only long shots of the Austrian gazebo are seen in the film. The gazebo was later moved to the other side of the lake to allow tourists to visit it, but after their numbers became too big, it was again relocated, to the Hellbrunn Palace outside of the city.
The 1987 special production of the "Sound of Christmas" starring Julie Andrews, John Denver, and Plácido Domingo was also filmed at the Schloss Leopoldskron. [12]
Salzburg is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872.
Max Reinhardt was an Austrian-born theatre and film director, intendant, and theatrical producer. With his innovative stage productions, he is regarded as one of the most prominent directors of German-language theatre in the early 20th century. In 1920, he established the Salzburg Festival with the performance of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Jedermann.
Werfen is a market town in the district of St. Johann im Pongau, in the Austrian state of Salzburg. It is mainly known for medieval Hohenwerfen Castle and the Eisriesenwelt ice cave, the largest in the world.
Heart-burial is a type of burial in which the heart is interred apart from the body. In medieval Europe heart-burial was fairly common among the higher echelons of society, as was the parallel practice of the separate burial of entrails or wider viscera: examples can be traced back to the beginning of the twelfth century. Evisceration was carried out as part of normal embalming practices, and, where a person had died too far from home to make full body transport practical without infection, it was often more convenient for the heart or entrails to be carried home as token representations of the deceased. The motivation subsequently became the opportunity to bury and memorialise an individual in more than one location.
Stephanie Julianne von Hohenlohe was an Austrian princess by her marriage to the diplomat Prince Friedrich Franz von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, a member of the noble Hohenlohe family. She was born a commoner, allegedly of Jewish family background.
Salzburg Global Seminar is a non-profit organization that convenes programs on health care, education, culture, finance, technology, public policy, media, human rights, corporate governance, philanthropy, and the environment. Programs regularly occur at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, Austria. Since 1947, Salzburg Global has welcomed more than 40,000 participants, known as Salzburg Global Fellows, from more than 170 countries.
Schloss Hof is a palace located in Marchfeld, Austria near the border of Slovakia. It once belonged to Prince Eugene of Savoy who purchased it late in his life in 1726. He had it enlarged in the Baroque style by the architect Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt in 1729, and used it as an elaborate hunting lodge. He left it to a niece in his will, and it was later purchased by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and became part of the imperial estates.
Anif Palace, also known as the Water Palace Anif, is located beside an artificial pond in Anif on the southern edge of Salzburg, Austria. The palace was once the seat of the bishops of Chiemsee, and then later was used as a court until the nineteenth century. It was remodeled between 1838 and 1848 in the neo-Gothic style. Anif is most famous for its use in several movies, including The Sound of Music, The Great Race, and Frederick Forsyth's The Odessa File.
Schloss Klessheim is a Baroque palace located in Wals-Siezenheim, 4 km (2.5 mi) west of Salzburg, Austria. The palace was designed and constructed by Austrian architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach for Prince-Archbishop Johann Ernst von Thun in 1700. It became the summer residence of the Archbishops of Salzburg. Since 1993, the palace has been used by Salzburg Casino.
Paul Troger was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, and printmaker of the late Baroque period. Troger's illusionistic ceiling paintings in fresco are notable for their dramatic vitality of movement and their palette of light colors.
Leopold Anton Eleutherius Freiherr von Firmian was Bishop of Lavant 1718–24, Bishop of Seckau 1724–27 and Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg from 1727 until his death.
Stephen Salyer is the former president and chief executive officer of Salzburg Global Seminar, an independent, non-governmental organization based in Salzburg, Austria and Washington, D.C. He has been president and chief executive officer of Public Radio International and in 1981, he was made vice president and director of the educational division at WNET/Thirteen in New York City, the flagship producer for the PBS television network.
Mirabell Palace is a historic building in the city of Salzburg, Austria. The palace with its gardens is a listed cultural heritage monument and part of the Historic Centre of the City of Salzburg UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Salzburg College is a small, private Austrian institution specialized on study abroad and located in Salzburg, Austria. Students come to Salzburg College to study:
Archduke Maximilian of Austria was a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and the younger brother of the Emperor Charles I of Austria.
The Historic Hotels of Europe (HHE) is an umbrella organisation established to promote like-minded independent hotel associations throughout Europe. Castles, manors, convents, palaces, monasteries, townhouses, villas and residences which have maintained their historic character are part of the HHE.
Helene Ottilie Thimig was an Austrian stage and film actress.
Schloss Fuschl is a castle in the gemeinde of Hof bei Salzburg, in the Land Salzburg in western Austria. It stands on a peninsula at the western end of Lake Fuschl, a glacier lake. It contains a collection of old master paintings, and a museum holding objects relating to the film Sissi, parts of which were filmed in the castle.
Simon Hatzl is an Austrian TV, fim and stage actor.
This Salzburg is a guide book for people visiting Salzburg. It contains text by Count Ferdinand Czernin von und zu Chudenitz and drawings by Count Eugen Ledebur.
Media related to Schloss Leopoldskron at Wikimedia Commons
47°47′17.74″N13°2′19.29″E / 47.7882611°N 13.0386917°E
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
