TNT

The formal uniforms of the Regensberg Palace of St. Emmeran's personal servants & huntsmen from 1890, and still used on special occasions. -photograph by Todd Eberle

PRINCESS MARIAE GLORIA THURN UND TAXIS

photograph by Todd Eberle

While it's true there are explosive juxtapositions at the Regensberg Palace of St. Emmeran, there is a certain symmetry too. That precarious balance of the ancient & modern is held in the hands of Gloria, Countess von Schoenburg-Glauchau, known in the 1980's as Princess TNT. I well remember the Princess sauntering across the pages of Vogue & Vanity Fair in haute couture (Lacroix was a particular favorite) during the decade she was married to Prince Johnannes Thurn und Taxis. With over 500 rooms & still a private residence, Schloss St. Emmeran has been Gloria von Thurn und Taxis' life's work. A new book HOUSE OF THURN UND TAXIS is an extension of her dedication to this magnificent estate-and its fabled history.

Plates by Keith Haring hanging in the Princess' private apartments.

photograph by Todd Eberle

The enormity of maintaining such a residence is staggering. The mind boggles. As a widow after just ten years of marriage, left with three small children, Princess TNT took on the enormity of the estate's administration. With the best of the best to guide her, today the house has fully renovated facades and a new twenty-thousand-square-meter roof, and it is alive with modern art that evokes her emersion into the art and artists she has fearlessly collected.

Princess Elisabeth Margarethe Maria Anna Beatrix Thurn und Taxis

photograph by Todd Eberle

(works of art by Ena Swansea, Francesco Clemente, Pierre et Gilles and Rinecke Dijkstra)

Collections from two centuries reside in the palace, and Princess Gloria has left her distinctive mark on the one time Benedictine Monastery, built in 739 A.D. Throughout the centuries Romanesque-Gothic, neo-Renaissance, Rococo, and Baroque styles have become a part of the grandeur of the Palace. From this vista, Gloria Thurn und Taxis' passion for contemporary art, her study and collection of artists like Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jeff Koons, has followed in the same tradition. Aptly mind blowing- a maze of 500 rooms, the Scholoss St. Emmeran has absorbed the canvases of these artists with aplomb. Her private rooms were decorated by Gabhan O'Keeffe and primarily house her modern collection-along with countless period portraits. She says, "[the past] lives, and I want it to go on living at Regensburg." The book is the result of this desire-a history, a photographic record marking the past-and celebrating the present.

(above) Princess Gloria's Drawing Room, a sculpture of her son Prince Albert by Stefan Hablutzel hangs on emerald damask walls. (below) In Princess Gloria's private rooms elaborately dressed windows flank Cindy Sherman's Carravaggioboy.

Glorious, the book lives up to the grandeur that is the world of Princess TNT. Todd Eberle, who photographed the house over a three year period has captured the scale & enormity of the palace-along with its beauty. Contributor, Sir John Richardson has a conversation with the Princess that elaborates on the ancestry of the estate-Empress Sisi's sister Helene was Princess Thurn und Taxis as well. Essays by Andre Leon Talley, Jeff Koons, Martin Mosebach, and Princess Elisabeth Thurn und Taxis also appear within the pages of House of Thurn und Taxis.

HOUSE OF THURN UND TAXIS, SKIRA RIZZOLI, 2015. I happily received this book from the publisher-with thanks.