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>>17190516
Some pretty evil things occurred there but WAPO likes to make it sounds Great! I'm going to do more research on this place, you're right something very weird there
Müller-Elmau said his grandfather justified his paradoxical stance with the argument that Hitler’s unexpected assumption of power could be interpreted only as a fate willed by God “and that one could recognize a God-sent leader precisely by the fact that he would not correspond to rational and wishful thinking.”
There was one particular Nazi slogan that struck a chord with Müller: “Du bist nichts; dein Volk ist alles.” (“You are nothing; your people are everything.”) Müller drew similarities between the Nazis’ collective nationalist ideology and his own emphasis on rebuffing self-interest.
His opposition to antisemitism and his ban on the Nazi salute at Schloss Elmau would have landed most people in a concentration camp — but Müller’s unwavering support for Hitler left Nazi officials with a dilemma. Ultimately, his connections and following protected him.
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Still, he was constantly interrogated by the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police, and eventually his works were banned — although that didn’t shake Müller’s faith in Hitler.
In 1942, in a bid to prevent confiscation of the castle by the SS, the Nazi paramilitary group, Müller rented the castle out to the Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany’s army, as a vacation resort for soldiers coming back from the front.
But two years later, Müller was placed under house arrest and Schloss Elmau was turned into a military hospital for German soldiers. The following year, as the Nazis surrendered, the U.S. Army took control of Elmau, and it briefly became a prison camp for the soldiers who were being treated there, then a military training school.
The war might have been over, but in its aftermath, Müller’s contradictory stance toward the Third Reich remained problematic.
In 1946, Philipp Auerbach, the Bavarian state commissioner for persecuted people and a Holocaust survivor, sued for a denazification trial to be brought against Müller on the grounds of his “glorification” of Hitler.
“My grandfather chose not to defend himself,” Müller-Elmau said. “He confessed to his political error, but not to the theological error on which it was based.” Given that Müller was neither a member of the Nazi party nor involved in acts of war, his conviction was controversial.
Schloss Elmau founder Johannes Müller and his wife, Irene Sattler. Followers of Müller’s work — which criticized individualism, materialism and capitalism, as well as the established church — flocked to the castle, where they were immersed in dance and music. (Courtesy of Schloss Elmau)
Auerbach, frustrated that legal appropriation of the castle was taking too long, took possession of it without legal title. Between 1947 and 1951, the castle served as a sanatorium for Holocaust survivors and displaced people.
Ernst Landauer, a Jewish journalist who survived several Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz, wrote about marking the Jewish holiday of Purim in Elmau in a text published in 1946. Silence prevailed during the religious readings, “at times interrupted by sobbing,” he wrote.
Auerbach’s control of Elmau was short-lived. His vigorous pursuit of former Nazis irked parts of the political establishment, and he was arrested on allegations of corruption. In 1952, he was convicted of fraud and embezzlement. Days after the verdict, he took his own life.
The reason for his conviction was the antisemitism that was pervasive at the time, German historian and author Michael Brenner said. “Three judges of the court were former Nazi party members,” he said. In 1954, two years after Auerbach’s death, an inquiry cleared his name.
Müller-Elmau became proprietor in 1997 and set out to reestablish Schloss Elmau as a “cultural hideaway,” although he shunned his grandfather’s philosophy. Cutting up the communal dining tables, he said, was as symbolic as it was practical to the hotel’s new mantra: the freedom to choose.
“Previously, it had been a forced community,” he said, adding, “For me, it’s all about individualism.”
The opportunity to make the biggest changes came in 2005, when a fire ripped through the building. Most of the hotel had to be demolished and reconstructed.
“Watching the hotel in flames — well, was a great relief,” Müller-Elmau said. “It was the best thing that could ever happen to me because before I was putting new wine into old bottles. And now I could make a new bottle for a new wine. I could design Elmau as a place for cosmopolitans and for individualists.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/26/schloss-elmau-castle-g7-germany/
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A fire at Schloss Elmau in 2005. Most of the hotel had to be demolished and reconstructed. (Courtesy of Schloss Elmau)