A wave of heavy perfume issued from the dark room as the door swung open. When our eyes had become accustomed to the dim light, we saw that we were in the original _Waffenraum_ of the castle. But, in addition to the clustered weapons affixed to the walls, there were five sarcophagi in the center of the vaulted room. Around them stood vases filled with spring flowers. On the central sarcophagus rested a spiked helmet of the first World War. The others were unadorned. The old caretaker explained that the central tomb was that of the Landgraf of Hesse who had died thirty years ago. Those on either side contained the remains of his two sons who had likewise died in the first World War. The other two coffins were those of the elder son’s wife and of a princess of Baden who had been killed in one of the air raids on Frankfurt in 1944. All five sarcophagi had originally stood in the little chapel across the courtyard. It had been destroyed by an incendiary bomb the winter before. We left this funerary chamber with a feeling of relief and continued our inspection of the castle. A winding ramp in one of the towers led to the floors above. From the top story we had a superb view of the broad Frankfurt plain spread out below. The caretaker told us he had watched the bombings from that vantage point. The great banqueting hall, with a musicians’ gallery at one end, had been emptied of its original furnishings and was now a jumble of papers stacked in piles of varying heights. These were part of the Frankfurt archives. Others were stored in two rooms on the ground floor. All of the rooms were dry and weatherproof, so there was nothing further to be done about them for the present. There was no place in Frankfurt as yet to which they could be moved. “Off Limits” signs had been posted. They would discourage souvenir hunters from unauthorized delving. On our way back to the car the caretaker told us that the castle still belonged to Margarethe, Landgräfin of Hesse, the youngest sister of the last Kaiser. Although she was now in her seventies, she came every day to put fresh flowers beside the tombs of her husband and her two sons. She lived at a newer castle, Schloss Friedrichshof, only a few kilometers away. He apparently didn’t know that Schloss Friedrichshof had been taken over by the Army and was being used as an officers’ country club. The old Landgräfin was living modestly in one of the small houses on the property. Her scapegrace son, Prince Philip, as I learned later, had played an active role in the artistic depredations of the Nazi ringleaders. I was to hear more of the Hesse family before the end of the year.