North Tower - Schloss Drachenburg

Guest-of-Honour Suite
The Guest-of-Honour Suite, a second private apartment, is situated next to the Private
Apartment on the second fl oor of Schloss Drachenburg, to the north.
Its living room is impressive for its wood-grained stucco ceiling with stencil paintings. The
ceiling also features several unrestored sections through which one can see the original coat
of paint as uncovered. The room is now furnished in accordance with historical descriptions.
The brownish wallpaper, the large buffet cabinet made of light oakwood by the Cologne fi rm
of Pallenberg, the richly ornamented walnut chairs and the dark-red materials lend the room
a subdued atmosphere entirely attuned to Wilhelmine taste. Of all the original coloured-glass
skylights, one was rescued from the rubble of the Second World War and recently returned
to the castle. It shows a youth “with his fondness for music and song” and a lute. The adjacent
windows depicted childhood (fruit and sweets), adulthood (with the tools and weapons of the
active full-bodied male) and old age (the Bible).
Next to the living room in the suite, the bedroom conveys a different impression, being painted
in friendly, almost cheerful, bright colours. On the basis of the historical evidence available –
the nailing system for the wall covering, the written records and a photo handed down from
1903 – the room has been refi tted with a fl oral wall covering and white lacquered furniture.
Johannes Proelss, for example, writing in the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1884; spoke of “a guestroom
with brightly patterned furniture and light textured wallpaper in a Marie Tudor style”.
Today, the ceiling radiates once again in white with blue & apricot coloured stencilling. The
through door to the living room has also been returned to its original colour.
The oriel in the south-west originally served as a dressing room area – which invokes the
charming notion of getting dressed or freshening up with such a wonderful view over the
Rhine Valley! Like many of the rooms in the castle, the Guest-of-Honour Suite has had a
turbulent history. From the 1930s onwards, it functioned as a classroom of various sorts.
The last private owner of Schloss Drachenburg, Paul Spinat, set up a parrot aviary in the
oriel with the guest-of-honour bedroom providing a fanciful brilliant ambience of baroque,
rococo and Chippendale elements.
In line with written records and inventory catalogues, the “small guest-of-honour room”
situated to the east of the side corridor is also furnished as a bedroom for feminine requirements.
Yet in the early 20th century the room was not reserved for guests of honour but for
girls – i.e. for the maids in service to the guests.
The corridor leads straight to the side staircase south which, like the staircase north, links
all the fl oors together and through which the servants could directly access the house-keeping
area in the basement.