1896: Prince Philipp born - a man close to Hitler
In 1902, the landgrave family gave up their residence in Rumpenheim and moved to Friedrichhof Palace in Kronberg im Taunus, which had been acquired by the Prussian state. It was there that the last head of the Hessian landgrave family grew up, who was still born in Rumpenheim and spent his early childhood there: Prince Philipp, born in 1896. He lives on in the history books as a dazzling personality. In any case, he was one of the most striking Rumpenheim residents ever.
The great-grandson of the British Queen Victoria, nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm II and son-in-law of the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III was available to the National Socialists as a blue-blooded figurehead. A friend of the future Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring since 1924, he joined the NSDAP as early as 1930.
He attained the high rank of group leader in the brown-uniformed SA. Adolf Hitler valued him as an art historical advisor. Even when Philipp had already fallen out of favor, Hitler kept him close to him. The prince was a guest at the "Führer's headquarters" when he was arrested in 1943 and sent to a concentration camp as a "special prisoner of the Führer".
He was freed by the advancing Americans. But they arrested him again when it leaked out who the liberated man was. He was last imprisoned in an internment camp in Darmstadt until 1947. Philipp, who had been able to use the traditional title of "Landgrave of Hesse" since his father's death in 1940, died in Rome in 1980. His wife Mafalda, the daughter of the King of Italy, died in the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944. She had been kept there under the code name "Mrs. Weber".
However, the prince was still a respected National Socialist when Hermann Göring appointed him Chief President of the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, based in Kassel, in 1933. Administrative work was completely foreign to him. He had studied art history and architecture, albeit without a degree. The appointment was not celebrated in Kassel, but the following day in Berlin with Adolf Hitler. In the period that followed, Philipp was hardly seen more often in Kassel than in his wife's native Italy.
It was there that he established the first contacts between Hitler and the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. The "Führer's" confidant increasingly took on diplomatic missions in Rome, bypassing the Foreign Office. But when the Italian king dropped Mussolini in the war year of 1943 and established contacts with the Allies, the star of the prince from Rumpenheim also sank. He was suspected of high treason and also lost his office as Chief President in Kassel. In 1944, the province of Hesse-Nassau was divided into Kurhessen in the north and Nassau with the Rhine-Main region in the south. After the end of the war, the intention was to turn the south into a "Reichsgau Rhein-Main", to which Darmstadt would also belong.
When the last Landgrave from Rumpenheim died in 1980, his son Moritz, born in Italy in 1926, inherited the head position in the House of Hesse-Kassel-Rumpenheim. Under Moritz, the Kassel-Rumpenheim and Darmstadt traditions were reunited, 400 years after the division of the old Landgraviate of Hesse. Landgrave Moritz still maintained occasional contact with Rumpenheim. However, he no longer has anything to do with the castle. In 1965, the Hessian House Foundation sold it and the park to the city of Offenbach. Today's castle residents are middle-class homeowners.
Lothar R. Braun