North Tower - Schloss Drachenburg

The Iconographic Programme
at Schloss Drachenburg
Due to the turbulent history of Schloss Drachenburg, the original iconographic programme
(or series of paintings) has not survived completely. After the Second World War and during
the time the castle stood vacant in the 1960s, souvenir hunters and vandals left their mark in
more ways than one. Nevertheless, historical photos and document sources at our disposal,
not to mention the canvases still in existence, give a good indication today of what Stephan
von Sarter, the owner/builder and a “man of artistic sensibility”, had in mind for Schloss
Drachenburg as a “bastion of German art […] in whose splendid rooms the poetry and beauty
of the Rhine, its history and its myths would be given a unique memorial”.
(Johannes Proelss in Frankfurter Zeitung, 24.9.1884)
In the days of old, a visitor to the castle would be welcomed in the vestibule by two fairytale
pictures now long lost: Schneewittchen (Snow White) and Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty) as
painted by the Munich artist Joseph Flüggen (1842-1906).
The re-awakening symbolism of the fairytales, a direct reference to the revival of the German
Empire in 1870/71, was a generally known and frequently used image. The prince rouses
Sleeping Beauty from a hundred years of slumber and Germany, liberated by Kaiser Wilhelm I,
becomes a new imperial power.
Seen here as a photo-reproduction on the wall, the depiction of Snow White – whose blond
hair harks back to the early Grimm Brothers‘ version of 1808 – shows her sitting somewhat
elevated in a hollow gnarled (German) oak-tree whilst her six (!) dwarves bear gifts of homage
such as crystals and minerals etc.
The two fairytale-themed paintings were superimposed by two river allegories, also by Joseph
Flüggen, in the pointed-arch sections under the vault. These paintings have disappeared too.
A river allegory of Father Rhine with the Mosel was depicted in the middle section above the
corridor towards the Reception Room. His daughters, the rivers Neckar and Lahn were on
the left and the rivers Ahr and Main on the right, next to the Rhine. The paintings originally
alluded to territorial annexation and local landscapes.
In the higher section of the Main Staircase, above the landing, there used to be depictions (no
longer extant) of the Loreley and the Maid of Drachenfels by Eduard Unger(1853-1894) which
also created a link to the fairytale pictures of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.