Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis first became known for her high-spending hijinks and wild parties in the 1980s, surrounding herself with a mix of European nobles, tycoons, and era-defining names like Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, and Michael Jackson. Though she reinvented herself as a devout Catholic businesswoman in the 1990s, the princess still knows how to coax the powerful into attending her parties, and according to The New York Times, that meant striking up a friendship with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
In a sit-down interview at her 500-room palace in Regensburg, Thurn und Taxis told the newspaper that Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, visited for her annual music festival in July 2023. The Alitos arranged for their own transportation, but meals and lodging for the couple and 20 other guests were paid for by the princess. “It was a great honor for us that he accepted the invitation,” Princess Gloria said. “Of course I didn’t charge him any expenses. That’s rude.”
In the financial declaration form Alito filed in August 2024, he declared a gift of concert tickets worth $900 from “Gloria Thurn und Taxis.” The Times noted that financial disclosure rules do not require judges to list gifts like meals and lodging that could be considered personal hospitality. The July 2023 trip came during the period when Alito’s Virginia neighbors told reporters that an “Appeal to Heaven” Christian nationalist flag was flying on the Alito household’s flagpole.
Thurn und Taxis told the Times that she admires Alito for his antiabortion stances. Like a variety of conservative thinkers, she is also concerned about lower birth rates. “The only thing that I care about in politics is that somebody is fighting abortion and helping reproduction rates go up,” she said. “I think that killing our own offspring and reducing our reproduction rates, eventually, we will kill our own kind.”
She also spoke of her friendship with fellow Catholic Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist who is currently serving a four-month federal prison sentence for contempt of Congress. (Bannon, who calls Donald Trump a “fucking moderate,” recently said he hopes to be released before the election.) The German princess denied that she offered Bannon her palace for use as a “gladiator school” to train conservative nationalist politicians. “It’s so far away from reality that it’s ridiculous to even think about it,” she said, calling Bannon a “salesman.”
The princess and Alito were introduced by a mutual friend, Father Thomas Joseph White, who currently serves as rector of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, most likely during a 2018 conference where Alito gave a keynote speech titled “The Value of Tradition in the Global Context.”
Thurn und Taxis said she immediately took a liking to Alito and his wife. “If I meet people and I like them, I will immediately invite them to come,” she said. “I have admiration and great respect for the judge, and I have respect for his wife, who is the manager behind a man.”
