Reichsfalkenhof

Reichsfalkenhof was a state falconry centre in the forest at Riddagshausen, built shortly before the 1937 International Hunting Exhibition in Berlin. Its construction connected falconry to the state-sponsored culture of Nazi Germany, where hawks and falcons were made to signify power and hierarchy. The surviving account identifies the centre’s setting, designer and political context, but does not describe its internal organization or routine activities.

Establishment and Setting

By 1937, Reichsfalkenhof had recently been built as a vast, half-timbered centre in the forest at Riddagshausen. Renz Waller, head of the Deutscher Falkenorden, designed it. The association had received state patronage, placing the centre within a broader official promotion of falconry rather than presenting it simply as a private sporting venue.

Falconry and Political Symbolism

The centre’s construction coincided with a period when falconry’s symbolic importance in the Reich was flourishing, despite there being no more than fifty falconers in Germany. This contrast gives the institution significance beyond the scale of the sport itself: falconry could serve as a conspicuous national emblem even when relatively few people practised it. The exhibition catalogue’s cover depicted a stylised naked Übermensch holding a golden hawk, while the Reich’s imagery associated hawks with power, blood and violence. Reichsfalkenhof belonged to this political setting, although the account does not specify how its facilities were used to promote particular practices or policies.

International Context and Connections

The centre enters the narrative through the 1937 exhibition, where Gilbert Blaine and Jack Mavrogordato presented British falconry. Germany won first prize and the British Falconers’ Club came second. Waller linked Reichsfalkenhof to wider falconry networks: he also headed the Deutscher Falkenorden and had sent a goshawk to T. H. White. These connections place the centre at the intersection of state patronage, falconry’s international exhibition culture and individual exchanges between falconers; they do not, by themselves, establish that White’s hawk came from the centre.