Schloss Leopoldskron is a rococo palace and a national historic monument in Leopoldskron-Moos, a southern district of the city of Salzburg, Austria. The palace is located on the lake Leopoldskroner Weiher. Leopoldskron-Moos, an affluent residential area, reaches to the foot of the 1853m high Untersberg and features a number of still working farms as well as a peat-bog. The palace has been home to the Salzburg Global Seminar since 1947.
Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg Count Leopold Anton Eleutherius von Firmian (1679-1744) commissioned the palace in 1736 on the shores of an already existing pond after he had enriched himself in the process of expelling over 22,000 Protestants from Salzburg. He acquired the area between the palace and the Untersberg as a family estate which he passed on in May 1744 to his nephew Count Laktanz Firmian, who used it to house his large collection of paintings, which included works of Titian, Dürer, Poussin, Rubens and Rembrandt.
After the death of the Archbishop in 1744 his heart was buried in the chapel of the palace, while the rest of his body was placed in the cathedral of Salzburg. The palace stayed in the possession of the Firmian family until 1837, even after the death of Count Laktanz in 1786. It was then sold to the owner of a local shooting gallery, George Zierer, who stripped the palace of most of the valuable interior decorations, including paintings, etchings, and sculptures.
The palace had several owners during the 19th century (including a banker and two waiters who wanted to use it as a hotel, King Ludwig I. of Bavaria) until it was bought in 1918 by the famous theatre director Max Reinhardt, co-founder of the Salzburg Festival . By this time the palace was in urgent need of repair. With the help of local artisans Reinhardt spent twenty years revitalizing the palace. Besides renovating the staircase, the Great Hall, and the Marble Hall, he created the Library, the Venetian Room, and a garden theatre. He used the whole building for his theatre productions (the audiences had to move from room to room) and as gathering place for writers, actors, composers, and designers from across the globe.
While Reinhardt was in Hollywood during World War II the palace was confiscated as a national treasure and "Jewish property". Reinhardt himself, however, never returned and died in 1943 in New York. During the same year, the estate was turned over by Hermann Göring to Stephanie von Hohenlohe who was given the assignment of transforming it into a guest house for prominent artists of the Reich and to serve as a reception facility to Hitler's Berghof home. The property was later returned to the Reinhardt estate.
After the war the palace was used by the Salzburg Seminar after it was offered in 1946 by Helene Thimig, the widow of Max Reinhardt, to Clemens Heller who founded the "Marshall Plan of the Mind" together with Scott Elledge and Richard Campbell, all Harvard graduate students . The Salzburg Seminar originally offered education on American history, art, literature, and culture and was later transformed into a "global forum". The first session took place in 1947, and has been followed since then by more than 400 sessions on a wide variety of issues.
In 1959 the Salzburg Global Seminar purchased the palace and in 1973 the adjacent Meierhof, a part of the original Firmian estate. Extensive renovations and restorations also allow the palace to be used as a conference center and venue for events beyond the sessions of the Salzburg Seminar.
In 1965 the film The Sound of Music, directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews, was produced in Salzburg with the grounds adjacent to those of Schloss Leopoldskron as one of the main locations. The palace was never used as the back of the Von Trapp villa, although even some tours of Salzburg claim that it is. Scenes filmed on the adjacent property (known as Bertelsmann, at the time), include the family drinking pink lemonade ("not too sweet, not too sour, just too... pink!") on the terrace, Maria and the Captain arguing on the terrace, and the children falling off the boat in the lake. Only shots showing the lake, were filmed there, using a replica of Leopoldskron's terrace, and horse-gates, leading to the lake. Any shots showing the building itself, were filmed at Schloss Frohnburg. The ballroom for the interior shootings, which were done in a studio, is a copy of the Venetian room from the palace.
The setting for the two main love scenes, one between Liesl and Rolf (featuring the song Sixteen Going on Seventeen) and the other between Maria and the Captain (Something Good) was the glass gazebo originally situated in the garden of the palace. The gazebo interiors were shot on a Hollywood sound stage, only long shots of the Austrian gazebo are seen in the film. The gazebo was later moved to the other side of the lake to allow tourists to visit it, but after their numbers became too big it was again relocated to the Hellbrunn Palace outside of the city.
