Forgotten Land (15 page)
Authors: Max Egremont
Iwi
ski says that a huge change in Poland has been the fall in the size of its minorities. Before the war a third of the population were Jews, Ukrainians and Byelorussians. Now minorities make up only 1 to 2 per cent of Poland; in his constituency, most of the Germans (or German Poles) who had stayed after 1945 had gone to Germany, lured by the German government’s grants for resettlement. The Holocaust had ended seven hundred and fifty years of one of the world’s largest Jewish communities. The few post-war Jewish survivors mostly left because of continuing persecution by the communist regime. Of the hundred and twenty MPs in the first Israeli Knesset, sixty-two spoke Polish; among these were great personalities like Peres, Begin, Dayan and Golda Meir.
ski says that a huge change in Poland has been the fall in the size of its minorities. Before the war a third of the population were Jews, Ukrainians and Byelorussians. Now minorities make up only 1 to 2 per cent of Poland; in his constituency, most of the Germans (or German Poles) who had stayed after 1945 had gone to Germany, lured by the German government’s grants for resettlement. The Holocaust had ended seven hundred and fifty years of one of the world’s largest Jewish communities. The few post-war Jewish survivors mostly left because of continuing persecution by the communist regime. Of the hundred and twenty MPs in the first Israeli Knesset, sixty-two spoke Polish; among these were great personalities like Peres, Begin, Dayan and Golda Meir.Tadeusz Iwi
ski is keen on the new Europe. He was part of the Polish delegation to the Dublin summit in 2004, when Poland joined the European Union. But this closeness brought problems, such as Germans claiming back land in the old East Prussia. The legal basis for these claims was said to be a failure to put the change of ownership into the Polish land registry during the communist times. A European aim was to have free movement of land ownership – with member states open to buyers from anywhere in the EU. But this wasn’t a reality yet, at least not in northern Poland. You still have to buy through a Polish nominee.
ski is keen on the new Europe. He was part of the Polish delegation to the Dublin summit in 2004, when Poland joined the European Union. But this closeness brought problems, such as Germans claiming back land in the old East Prussia. The legal basis for these claims was said to be a failure to put the change of ownership into the Polish land registry during the communist times. A European aim was to have free movement of land ownership – with member states open to buyers from anywhere in the EU. But this wasn’t a reality yet, at least not in northern Poland. You still have to buy through a Polish nominee.The loss of their old property where their ancestors and fellow countrymen had been for centuries was a wound for many Germans, Iwi
ski says; he can understand this. Had I known the Countess Dönhoff? he asks. He’d been one of the Polish
representatives at Marion Dönhoff’s funeral in Hamburg in 2002. Yes, I’d met Marion Dönhoff a long time ago. There was a time when if you wanted to know about East Prussia you went to Hamburg, to call on one of the most famous, and most admired, women in Germany.
ski says; he can understand this. Had I known the Countess Dönhoff? he asks. He’d been one of the Polishrepresentatives at Marion Dönhoff’s funeral in Hamburg in 2002. Yes, I’d met Marion Dönhoff a long time ago. There was a time when if you wanted to know about East Prussia you went to Hamburg, to call on one of the most famous, and most admired, women in Germany.
Born in 1909, into one of those three historic East Prussian families – Dohna, Dönhoff and Lehndorff – the Countess Dönhoff, often known (usually with affection) as ‘die Gräfin’, was one of the founders of the great post-war German liberal newspaper
Die Zeit
. Now, some seven years after her death, a large photograph of Marion Dönhoff hangs above the reception desk in its Hamburg offices: the first image, for a visitor, of what the paper should be. Her determined, tense lips hint at a smile, her round face is wrinkled beneath shortish grey hair that curls up slightly at its edges. It is an austere image perhaps – although I may be imagining this after hearing her described often as ‘very Prussian’.
Die Zeit
. Now, some seven years after her death, a large photograph of Marion Dönhoff hangs above the reception desk in its Hamburg offices: the first image, for a visitor, of what the paper should be. Her determined, tense lips hint at a smile, her round face is wrinkled beneath shortish grey hair that curls up slightly at its edges. It is an austere image perhaps – although I may be imagining this after hearing her described often as ‘very Prussian’.
Marion Dönhoff.
She was a writer. She couldn’t, she told me, think of life without writing – it came naturally to her. Much of what she wrote shows pride in her old homeland, evoking a different past to Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau’s contempt for democracy or the shameful Nazi time. Her theme is often the Germans in the east, how, since the Middle Ages, most, if not all, intellectual development had been brought to this part of Europe by them: Christian belief, Luther’s Reformation, the Enlightenment, humanism. Until the Second World War, German had been the lingua franca in eastern Europe. She points to the great romantic Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz’s fascination with Schiller, to Nicolaus Copernicus’s mixed German and Polish ancestry. Her best books are about her early years in Friedrichstein, the vast house on one of the Dönhoff estates some fifteen miles from Königsberg, before her flight west in January 1945:
Names That Are Named No More
(published in 1964) and
Childhood in East Prussia
(1988). They are unsentimental but loving depictions of a beautiful place, of a world of integrity and duty.
Names That Are Named No More
(published in 1964) and
Childhood in East Prussia
(1988). They are unsentimental but loving depictions of a beautiful place, of a world of integrity and duty.
From 1709 to 1714, Friedrichstein was built for Otto Magnus Graf von Dönhoff, a general in the Prussian army. Designed by the French architect Jean de Bodt, who had worked at Berlin and Potsdam, its neo-classical façade covered a baroque interior – as at Schlobitten, an outward plainness over an inner extravagance. Like the Dohnas, the Dönhoffs installed elaborate tapestries from Flanders; rococo commodes and Danzig cabinets; collections of porcelain and medals; an accumulation of stiff images of ancestors: and, in the taste of Marion Dönhoff’s father, statues and pictures of naked nymphs, goddesses and, in an unconscious glimpse of future horror, the rape of the Sabine women. There were formal gardens in the French style and some landscaping like an English park. It was Schlobitten again – a palace, even further east, nearer to the Baltic.
Marion Dönhoff’s books show that with all this came the family’s idea of duty, brought to what sounds like a Kantian pitch of importance. The Dönhoff children’s lives at Friedrichstein were not luxurious, she writes; sometimes they went hungry because there wasn’t enough food to go round, and ostentation was despised. It was a good and austere world, of responsibility for the workers on the property, of pride in the Dönhoff history, of an absolute integrity. Was it any wonder, she implies, that many of those involved in the July 1944 bomb plot against Hitler came from such a background? They had seen it as their duty to act against evil, even if this meant risking their own lives.
I’ve wondered often why they didn’t make a move earlier – and when I met Marion Dönhoff in Hamburg in 1992 I asked this, not at all in a challenging way. It made her quite – but not very – angry. How hard it is, she said, for someone who hasn’t lived under a totalitarian regime to understand the difficulty of any kind of opposition. Hitler was very popular; she conceded that. During the war, when she managed the family’s properties, one of her secretaries was an ardent Nazi and several of her relations were in the party. You were watched all the time, especially someone like her whose views were known to colleagues and acquaintances. She realized from early on that her flight west in 1945 was inevitable – it was just a question of how soon.
You can buy books of photographs of the routes she took on her journeys – not only on the flight of 1945 but also during a ride through Masuria with her cousin in the early autumn of 1941, when Hitler’s Germany was at its most triumphant. I told her that I was going to see that country – still, in 1992, not easy to reach. I asked if she knew what had happened to the house of her Lehndorff cousins, Steinort, where the last owner, Heinrich von Lehndorff, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, in front of his wife and children. The property had been called the great wilderness – and Heinrich had fled across it, trying to escape his hunters and their dogs. She said she’d heard that the place is a ruin.
Dönhoff never fell for what lured many of her class to
National Socialism: its power to protect them from communism, its restoration of order and prosperity, the cunningly dangled hope that the monarchy might be restored, its revival of national pride. She was a clever, hard-working student, studying economics at Frankfurt and, after the Nazis came to power, going to Basel in Switzerland for her doctorate. In Basel she had wanted to write on some aspect of Marxism but the professor suggested that the history of an East Prussian estate, based on the archive at Friedrichstein, would be a more original subject; the research brought her even closer to her home. Her family’s money also let her travel before the war – to Kenya, to the United States and to see her older brother Heinrich in the Berlin of the artistically exciting Weimar years.
National Socialism: its power to protect them from communism, its restoration of order and prosperity, the cunningly dangled hope that the monarchy might be restored, its revival of national pride. She was a clever, hard-working student, studying economics at Frankfurt and, after the Nazis came to power, going to Basel in Switzerland for her doctorate. In Basel she had wanted to write on some aspect of Marxism but the professor suggested that the history of an East Prussian estate, based on the archive at Friedrichstein, would be a more original subject; the research brought her even closer to her home. Her family’s money also let her travel before the war – to Kenya, to the United States and to see her older brother Heinrich in the Berlin of the artistically exciting Weimar years.
Heinrich took over the management of the family estates and Marion helped him; this, in addition to her studies, was her work. Their efforts were made easier after 1933 by the National Socialist government’s support for agriculture, even if, at the harvest celebrations, the workers toasted Hitler instead of Count von Dönhoff. National Socialism, however, could strike the Dönhoffs with vicious cruelty. Marion had a sister, Maria, who had been born with Down’s syndrome. The family managed to protect Maria from the official murdering of the afflicted that began in 1939 and she survived in a home until the protests of the churches led Hitler to curb the campaign.
Dönhoff’s liberalism mixed with an older, more rigid world, even when she was young. In June 1938, her brother Heinrich married a Roman Catholic from the Rhineland, Dorothea Gräfin von Hatzfeld. ‘Dodo’ refused to give up her religion and the Dönhoff family decided that any Catholic child of the marriage should not inherit. Dieter, another brother, became the heir. Years later, Marion Dönhoff said that for a Catholic to be the squire of Friedrichstein had been unthinkable. Roman Catholics were thought of as foreign hypocrites; the head forester, for instance, would never have employed one.
Until June 1941, Friedrichstein and Quittainen (another Dönhoff
property, south-west of Königsberg, where Marion Dönhoff lived for much of the war) were far away from any fighting. That summer, however, the bombers droned overhead in support of the invasion of the Soviet Union. There was a service for the newly confirmed young in Quittainen’s onion-domed church, with the congregation aware that these young boys would soon be sent to the Russian front. Incoming soldiers, transferred from the west, relaxed on the village green during a break in their journey, at a time of farewells. In September, Marion went with her cousin Sissi Lehndorff on a five-day autumn ride through Masuria, the wild country east of Allenstein, near the battlefields of Grunwald and Tannenberg and the Tannenberg Memorial. She evoked this symbolic journey some twenty years later in one of her books, mostly through her old letters to her brother Dieter, Sissi’s husband, who was then on the Russian front.
property, south-west of Königsberg, where Marion Dönhoff lived for much of the war) were far away from any fighting. That summer, however, the bombers droned overhead in support of the invasion of the Soviet Union. There was a service for the newly confirmed young in Quittainen’s onion-domed church, with the congregation aware that these young boys would soon be sent to the Russian front. Incoming soldiers, transferred from the west, relaxed on the village green during a break in their journey, at a time of farewells. In September, Marion went with her cousin Sissi Lehndorff on a five-day autumn ride through Masuria, the wild country east of Allenstein, near the battlefields of Grunwald and Tannenberg and the Tannenberg Memorial. She evoked this symbolic journey some twenty years later in one of her books, mostly through her old letters to her brother Dieter, Sissi’s husband, who was then on the Russian front.
Already, the Dönhoffs had begun to evacuate part of the art collection to the houses of friends. Some was lost en route or later because it hadn’t been sent far enough west. The family had imagined that the Red Army might reach the River Oder – but not the Elbe. In September 1941, there would not have been much talk of resisting Hitler, for Sissi’s husband was a loyal soldier at a time of German triumph. The land – the wide lakes, the changing leaves, the silence, the softly lit horizon, the friendly people who must often have recognized the riders’ names – was what Marion Dönhoff loved, then and afterwards: a memory set apart from the barbaric regime that had been celebrated by most of her fellow Germans and almost all of her class. So among the tasks that she gave herself after 1945 was to make two different countries – a good present and a past that hadn’t been nearly as bad as the post-war view of Germany.
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