Prince Makes Castle A Guest House

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28012, 5 July 1956, Page 11

Prince Makes Castle A Guest House

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, July 4. For 22s a day a tourist can get a single room and for £5 16s a day a double room with bath in 700-year-old Langenberg Castle, South Germany. And his hostess will be the eldest of the Duke of Edinburgh’s three sisters. Princess Margarita MohenloheLangenburgh, and the host her husband Prince Gottfried, a great-grand-son of Queen Victoria. The “Daily Mail” says that the Prince and Princess after the lead of the impoverished English owners of stately homes have thrown open their ancestral home to visitors. . They have opened a cafe m the rose garden, and going one better than English castle owners, are taking in paying guests. The Prince said: “With taxation so high in Germany—on some incomes you have to pay 92 per cent.—it is the only wav to keep the castle going. . I “We do not advertise we take in I paying guests. We rely on personal | recommendations. In this way we get

the right sort on whom we can look as friends.” . The castle is two hours drive from Stuttgart on the top of an 800-foot hill and has a moat 20 feet deep. Its walls are scarred from the countless sieges it has withstood. Most of the paying guests are wealthy Americans. They are especially awestruck by the array of cannon and armour in the castle entrance. “Gee, isn’t this swell,” they say. ‘A real genuine castle.” Smiling, Prince Gottfried said: “Nobody has called me ‘Princie’ yet but I do recall one American who wanted to know just when I would get to be a king.” For his guests the Prince wall organise sightseeing tours of the neighbourhood, pike fishing in the river or—for the adventurous —a wild boar hunt in the forests.

Princess Margarita supervises catering and plans the meals, served in the chandelier-hung dining-room by pinafored village girls who give each guest an old world curtsy.