As early as mid-January, Joachim Odenthal, Managing Director of Schloss Drachenburg gGmbH, had announced that they wanted to remain cautious in view of the developments in the Corona pandemic. Instead of starting the 2022 season with the "Schlossleuchten" light show staged by Wolfgang Flammersfeld at the end of January, as originally planned, they went into the winter holidays. By the end of January, they wanted to check whether and under what conditions the "Schlossleuchten" could possibly still be staged in February. In view of the rapidly increasing numbers in the Omikron wave, the decision has now apparently been made earlier.

Since 2015, the light spectacle in the park and castle has attracted guests in January and February. According to Odenthal, the location of the castle makes it impossible to simply postpone the light spectacle for a few weeks: "We are in a nature reserve and have to observe the breeding times of birds, for example. A permit for the light-intensive spectacle is only available until the end of February. The closure was deliberately scheduled for the coming weeks, when "the overall visitor frequency is not so high", as Odenthal said in January.

Last year, around 116,000 guests visited Schloss Drachenburg and the extensive park, which is known far beyond the region through film and television productions such as "Bares für Rares" and "Babylon Berlin".

Original text: Heike Hamann. Translation: Mareike Graepel