You Can Imagine That You Are Crown Princess Cecilia: Review of Schloss Cecilienhof Tudor Romanticism and World Politics
The Cecilienhof was the last residence built by the Hohenzollerns , the Royal Family of Prussia, during the early years of World War 1. They converted it into a country estate with extensive gardens around a lake which I toured last summer when we were visiting Potsdam. The easy-to-read guide takes you from the family room downstairs (where Churchill, Truman, and Stalin met during the Potsdam Conference in 1945) up a carved wooden staircase to the Crown Princess’s music salon with a marble fireplace. The Tudor-Revival Gothic touch is that there is a secret door to one side of the fireplace. When you push it you enter the Crown Princess’s secret writing room with a view of the gardens and the lake. You can also make your way to a room she had designed to mimick a ship’s cabin. The Cecilienhof is clearly more comfortable than a typical European palace or castle. You can see why the Crown Prince and Princess chose to live here until February of 1945 when they fled to escape the invading Russians at the end of World War 2. You might even want to live here yourself. The Cecilienhof nowadays is a hotel. I didn’t stay there, but this book makes me wish I had.
The Cecilienhof was the last residence built by the Hohenzollerns , the Royal Family of Prussia, during the early years of World War 1. They converted it into a country estate with extensive gardens around a lake which I toured last summer when we were visiting Potsdam. The easy-to-read guide takes you from the family room downstairs (where Churchill, Truman, and Stalin met during the Potsdam Conference in 1945) up a carved wooden staircase to the Crown Princess’s music salon with a marble fireplace. The Tudor-Revival Gothic touch is that there is a secret door to one side of the fireplace. When you push it you enter the Crown Princess’s secret writing room with a view of the gardens and the lake. You can also make your way to a room she had designed to mimick a ship’s cabin. The Cecilienhof is clearly more comfortable than a typical European palace or castle. You can see why the Crown Prince and Princess chose to live here until February of 1945 when they fled to escape the invading Russians at the end of World War 2. You might even want to live here yourself. The Cecilienhof nowadays is a hotel. I didn’t stay there, but this book makes me wish I had.