Riddagshausen is identified as the forest setting of the Reichsfalkenhof, a vast, half-timbered State Falconry Centre built under Nazi rule. Though the book does not describe a visit there, the centre gives a concrete institutional form to the political uses of falconry in Germany and links that history to the story of T. H. White and Gos.

Setting and Construction

By the time of the 1937 International Hunting Exhibition in Berlin, the Reichsfalkenhof had recently been built in the forest at Riddagshausen. The book distinguishes this site from the Berlin exhibition: British falconers Gilbert Blaine and Jack Mavrogordato travelled to Berlin with a display of British falconry, while the centre at Riddagshausen appears in the account as part of the wider German falconry infrastructure. Its scale and half-timbered construction mark it as a substantial institution, not simply a private place for keeping trained birds.

Falconry and State Patronage

The Reichsfalkenhof was associated with a broader official promotion of falconry. Germany had no more than fifty falconers, yet the Deutscher Falkenorden had received state patronage, and falconry’s symbolism flourished in the Reich. At the Berlin exhibition, hawks and falcons appeared amid red banners and displays of thousands of antlers; the catalogue cover presented a stylised, naked Übermensch holding a golden hawk. These details locate Riddagshausen within a political culture that made the raptor an emblem of power and hierarchy, rather than treating falconry only as a practical hunting tradition.

That hierarchy resonates with the book’s account of falconry’s social history. Falconry with falcons depended on access to expansive hunting grounds, such as grouse moors and large estates, and was described as an aristocratic privilege. The German centre belonged to a different political setting, but the book likewise shows falconry being invested with meanings beyond the training of birds: institutions and images could turn it into a statement about who held power and what kind of power was admired.

Renz Waller and the Gos Connection

Renz Waller links the Reichsfalkenhof to the book’s account of White’s goshawk. Waller headed the Deutscher Falkenorden, arranged state patronage for falconry, and designed the centre at Riddagshausen. He was also the man who sent White Gos. The location therefore enters the narrative not as a scene White or the later narrator visits, but through the network of people and institutions that shaped the bird’s passage to him.

Narrative Significance

Riddagshausen gathers the book’s political and personal histories of falconry into one place. The centre represents the Reich’s organised investment in the sport, while Waller’s connection to Gos draws that history into White’s intensely personal training of a hawk. The juxtaposition complicates any simple separation between falconry as private practice and falconry as public symbol: the same network could sustain a state-backed institution and supply the bird at the heart of a solitary, troubled undertaking.