German friend of Buchman
On 3 July 1920 Frank Buchman embarked for Europe with two students from Yale and as a result of this trip met the von Hessen family through Sophie of Greece at a well-known hotel in Lucerne. She also visited Switzerland with her son Paul, her cousin Landgravine Margarete of Hesse and her two sons Richard and Christoph. Prince Richard wrote about it 40 years later: "We young people who came from an impoverished and humiliated Germany after the First World War felt attracted and fascinated by this luxurious milieu. My mother, who had a strong sense of a person's inner worth, was suspicious of this luxury. (...) With Frank Buchman, however, it was quite different. He moved in that atmosphere in the most natural way, without being in the least influenced or infected by it. That's why we were able to trust him." But what Prince Richard remembered best was Buchman's "infectious laugh";-one only needed to hear it to feel immediately at ease. Since then, Buchman and his friends regularly visited the family every summer at their Kronberg Castle in the Taunus region - it was even said in the family that the "Buchman season" had then begun. From: Prince Richard of Hesse: Memories of Dr. Frank Buchman. February 1958 (unpublished) in: Garth Lean: The Forgotten Factor - On the Life and Work of Frank Buchman. Moers 1991.
