Some people are just.. that little bit stranger than most people. Or , in this case. a Lot stranger.
Most of the stories you read about royalty are somewhat boring, i guarantee you this guys is not!
Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau was an entirely different breed on his own.
An eccentric from the 1800s who lived a life that would most accurately be described as a rockstar with a tendency to peacocking.
oh deer
Where to even start with this guy. Lets begin with his favored means of transportation shall we.
Prince Hermann didn’t like having the same thing as everyone else. So you can imagine how people would stare when this guy casually rolled down the street in a carriage pulled by 4 deer.
Yes..Deer. He actually had tame deer for his carriage.
Forcing Nature
The deer was just a small tasting thought, wait till you hear what the guy did to his backyard.
You see one of the heavy status icons in the 1800s were the gardens that the elite had.
The more variety and the layout , everything, they spent enormous amounts of money on this.
Prince Hermann went all in on this trend, he wanted THE most extravagant garden in all of Europe that everyone would envy. Quite the ambitious project considering some of the royal palace gardens at that time.
He would dig lakes, and little streams, and made sure his lawn was near today’s golf course standards.
But this wasn’t enough by a long shot. Prince Hermann suffered from , i guess “park-o-mania” is an accurate term. A sickly obsession to shape nature after his own head. He would remove entire villages, yes, actual villages because they were disturbing and ruining the perfect view from the castle.
if a tree needed to be elsewhere he couldn’t wait 50 years for a new one to grow.. it would be dug up. and moved. Heck he even went to the extreme, and had the river Neisse redirected , so the water ran precisely where it looked the best from his windows. That’s rather excessive isn’t it?
The Castle itself would be painted as well in an aggressive red colour.
He wanted the red colour to contrast against the green grass and the blue lakes he had created.
He was basically the 1800s instagrammer in a way. Turning his entire property into a fever dream.
Turns to Scam and Slavery
As you can probably vividly imagine, having over 200 people just working in the gardens, that can get rather expensive. Well make no mistake, it is incredibly expensive. And naturally the funds would run out.
and so to continue his garden insanity he developed a rather a plan that was so remarkably coldblooded, that you damn near had to respect the hustle he came up with.
The plan was rather simple. He was going to divorce his wife Lucie.
“Oh no Poor Lucie, now she pays the price for his garden madness” you might think.
But you are sorely mistaken, I’m afraid, because there was absolutely no bad blood between the couple.
In fact they still loved each other dearly and Lucie would keep on living in the castle as though nothing had changed. She was in on the entire thing. You see the divorce was ofcourse a pure scam designed to let Prince Hermann travel to England and pose as a “single” man. And then hopefully seduce some British billionaires heiress who would then unknowingly bankroll even more trees and lakes and staff so the Prince could finish his green nightmare. All this absurdly happening while his loyal wife Lucy waited at home in the castle, writing him letters , even packed them with advice on how to charm the wealthy ladies of London.
You have got to love a loyal wife.
Exotic Princess
Fate would have it that even though he received dating advice in the mail, the dear Prince Hermann wasn’t as seductive a catch as he thought. Bitter that his surefire had failed he turned his sights to the middle east instead. Here he had ….well..some success if you can call it that.
He purchased a young Ethiopian woman named Machbuba.
If you recall the deer caravan we mentioned earlier, and the red castle etc etc , the sharp reader will notice that Prince Hermann is quite a visual man, and he had a plan with this young woman.
He dragged this poor girl home to stiff-necked 1800s Germany , dressed her up in the finest colourful silks and completely without a sliver of shame, pareded her around , presenting her as his new “Oriental Princess” to the gasping society.
This happy new couple sadly didn’t last long . Turns out Machbuba had picked up a nasty tuberculosis and tragically died shortly after.
A Grand Finale
In the end, reality caught up with the Prince. His gardening madness ended up ruining him.
His crushing debts force him to sell his beloved Muskau Castle and his magnificent park that he had sacrificed everything to build. Prince Hermann died completely broke, but an eccentric man till the very end. A man like that can’t simply be buried in a regular grave or sarcophagus.
So naturally he had to be buried in an extraordinary manner, and so he was.
Travel to Branitzer Park in the city of Cottbus, Germany. you’ll find a lake.
and you’ll notice something is off right away and go “ooooooh,,i know now!”
He is, in fact, buried inside that big green grass pyramid in the middle of the lake.
He kept his personality trait till the very end.
In the end, reality caught up with him. Crushing debt forced him to sell his beloved Muskau Castle and the magnificent park he had sacrificed absolutely everything to create. He died completely broke. Yet, he outright refused to leave this world without one last dramatic gesture: He had himself buried inside a giant grass pyramid right in the middle of a lake at his new, somewhat scaled-down estate
