Reagan Staying at Castle Owned by Hitler Godson

BONN —  Baron Joerg Adolf Sigismund von Holzschuher, who owns the 17th-Century castle where President Reagan is staying this week, says his godfather was Adolf Hitler.

Holzschuher, owner of Gymnich Castle, said he was named Adolf after the Nazi leader and was given a silver dish as a gift from Hitler at his christening in a small village in northern Bavaria in 1934.

Hitler was not present at the christening, and Holzschuher never saw him, he said in a telephone interview Wednesday. Nor, he said, did Hitler ever visit the castle about 18 miles outside Bonn.

“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” White House deputy press secretary Peter Roussel.

Holzschuher said Hitler never had any connection with the castle where Reagan and his wife, Nancy, arrived Wednesday and will spend the next five nights during the economic summit meeting.

He said he did not know why Hitler became his godfather, but thinks that Hitler had many godchildren born to important German officials of the time. Holzschuher’s father, Wilhelm, was a Nazi party member and governor of two districts in Bavaria, he said.

Late in the 1930s, Holzschuher said, his father opposed the Nazis, and they placed him under house arrest at the end of the war.

The castle, which has been leased by the West German government as a guest house for more than a decade, has been used by numerous other world figures, including the late Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev. Reagan stayed there during an Atlantic Alliance conference three years ago.