15: The staircase today
The first thing you see is the marble bust of Field Marshal Peter Sayn-Wittgenstein by Samuel Halberg. At some point, it fell from the pedestal and lost the tip of its nose.
The filigree neo-Gothic stucco that characterises the large staircase was exposed to wind and rain after the destruction of the palace during WW II and was severely damaged. It was masterfully restored on this floor, while the fragments above and below are reminiscent of the damage that was found when reconstruction began in 1995. Originally, this room with its double cast-iron staircase was an ancestral gallery with large-format paintings of the Sayn family ancestors and fire-gilded wall lamps.
We head past the bust of the Marshal’s wife Antonia, carved in marble by the famous Christian Daniel Rauch, towards the chapel wing.