Forgotten Land (22 page)
Authors: Max Egremont
Yasnaya Polyana (‘clear glade’, the same name as Tolstoy’s country house in central Russia) is a village about twenty or so miles from Kaliningrad. To reach it, you drive quite far down a rutted side-road enclosed by those lime trees that the Governor of Kaliningrad hates. I’m south of the main highway and west from Gusev which, as Gumbinnen, was one of the first German towns taken by the invaders in 1914 and 1944.
On this bright early autumn day a large coach and Mercedes and BMWs and Audis with German number plates are stretched along the side of a narrow road here, snaking into one of the fields. I see the diplomatic number plate of the car of the German Consul, whom I had called on the day before. A few, smaller Russian vehicles are here but only a few.
Before 1945, Yasnaya Polyana was called Trakehnen, and there’s a meeting to celebrate the two hundred and seventieth anniversary of the famous stud, original home of the tough, elegant Trakehner horse. Hans von Lehndorff’s father was director of the stud before the war and Hans passed some of his boyhood here. A white-painted arch still leads into what had been a tight thoroughbred world, but the fame of this place has become a memory. The centre of the Trakehner breed is now in Germany, some of the best examples having been taken west before the Red Army came.
Bunting flutters outside some of the old German buildings and little Russian flags are brilliantly clear in the sunlight. Before reaching the village, on the way from Gusev, you pass through undulating derelict land, interrupted by a few bands of trees or scrubby hedges. Johann van der Decken’s farm, with its cultivated fields and planned cropping, could be in another country. But the landscape is the same – with few natural defences against a force wanting to destroy it.
Some of Yasnaya Polyana is of the old or restored red brick: the rest – including the stud’s most prominent buildings – is of painted white stone, the windows edged in pale grey or blue. White picket fences make enclosures where thin horses stand, some saddled, perhaps for the visitors to ride, others covered with faded rugs. The grass is short only near the buildings, and the largest of these, perhaps once the stud’s offices, looks like a German country house: a protruding white centre block with a gable over the tiled roof and two lower flat wings. Now a school, it has a small museum with photographs of the life before 1945 – the fox hunting, Hans von Lehndorff’s severe-looking father and the sleek Trakehner horses and foals in immaculate paddocks. Some distance away is a line of one-storey buildings, also painted white, where stud workers probably once lived. Now these sprout the occasional Russian satellite dish.
In front of the school, on the green lawn, which has a few circular flower beds, some of the elderly visitors mix with the less expensively dressed locals. Other guests are in a long barn-like building nearby, listening to an elderly woman speaking German from a lectern, an interpreter repeating her words in Russian. Many of the women have silk scarves decorated with horse motifs like bridles and chains and wear chained bracelets or loose gold chains looped around their necks – and they are wrapped in quilted jackets, for it is cold. The men, tanned and with shining silvery hair, are in Loden or tweed. Several wear name-tags; on one I see the words ‘Dohna-Schlobitten’.
On the lawn, after the meeting, lunch will be served; and caterers are removing clingfilm from plates of cold food on long wooden tables. From an adjoining paddock, a horse leans over the white fence towards the plates, to be joined by another, both within reach of a pile of buns. Just in time, two of the caterers shift the table, preventing an incident that might have reinforced some of the Western visitors’ ideas of the place and led to talk later in the coach or the limousines – ‘The horses got most of the lunch’, then a shrug that implies, what do you expect in Kaliningrad?
As if to remind the Germans of this new identity, there’s another party going on in Yasnaya Polyana, outside the Elk Hotel, a red-brick building away from the old stud. Slow music comes from loudspeakers, three or four Russian couples dance sedately and a man sings in a deep, not quite tuneful voice.
As if to remind the Germans of this new identity, there’s another party going on in Yasnaya Polyana, outside the Elk Hotel, a red-brick building away from the old stud. Slow music comes from loudspeakers, three or four Russian couples dance sedately and a man sings in a deep, not quite tuneful voice.
To reach Trakehnen in 1922, after the Treaty of Versailles, you had to go through the Polish Corridor, giving rise to the sense of a territory under siege – and in April that year there was still snow on the ground. Hans von Lehndorff found himself in a traditional and efficient place, with oaks planted around the buildings, neat paths and avenues, only one metalled road (from the stud to the railway station) and a horse-drawn wagon that took the children to school. The East Prussian place names seemed strange – Jonasthal, Bajohrgallen, Kalpakin – but most important were the mares, stallions and foals, now a litany for a dead world: Pirat, Pirol, Parsival, Per Aspera, Panna, Feuertaufe, Polona, Traumkönigin, Tageskönigin, Paetitia, Polanka: then those of English blood – Priceless Cherry, Fiddle String. It was much wilder than Graditz.
They hunted the fox over country drained in the eighteenth century – each ditch and fence having a name, the scarlet huntsmen’s coats startlingly bright across flat land that was only sparsely wooded until Rominten forest. Rominten had the biggest red deer in Germany; once the preserve of the Emperor, it was, in the post-1918 republic, used by ministers and their guests, but evidence of William II remained – the Norwegian wooden buildings put up by him, his chair shaped like a saddle. The Lehndorffs hoped that the monarchy might be restored, that the Weimar Republic would not last.
The great Weimar inflation of the early 1920s hit even Trakehnen, where the stud’s land produced food for its employees. Hans von Lehndorff and his brothers kept guinea pigs and goats and shot hares and killed crows, sometimes selling these for millions of marks. Christmas became more modest although accompanied by the ritual of a big hare shoot in the snow.
Another big day was the tough obstacle race at the end of September, to which people came from all over Germany; and during the sales of young horses more than a hundred guests would be entertained in the house. The coldest time was at the end of January and in February, when the air seemed to clutch at you ‘like an animal with a thousand claws’. Hans von Lehndorff came to love the solitary thrill of stalking, looking for a deer’s footprints, probing the forest and fields, searching for roe in April when the country revived after the long winter. The human world was more anxious and uncertain. Hans and his brothers visited their cousins – the Dohnas, the Dönhoffs or the Lehndorffs of Preyl. One evening he and Heinrich von Lehndorff were walking with their guns round a lake and saw lights over the water. Heinrich said he was sure it was a communist meeting and fired two shots in its direction. Aged fifteen, Heinrich had already been to a meeting of the newly formed Stahlhelm, a right-wing group, making a speech of fiery and intense patriotism.
Another big day was the tough obstacle race at the end of September, to which people came from all over Germany; and during the sales of young horses more than a hundred guests would be entertained in the house. The coldest time was at the end of January and in February, when the air seemed to clutch at you ‘like an animal with a thousand claws’. Hans von Lehndorff came to love the solitary thrill of stalking, looking for a deer’s footprints, probing the forest and fields, searching for roe in April when the country revived after the long winter. The human world was more anxious and uncertain. Hans and his brothers visited their cousins – the Dohnas, the Dönhoffs or the Lehndorffs of Preyl. One evening he and Heinrich von Lehndorff were walking with their guns round a lake and saw lights over the water. Heinrich said he was sure it was a communist meeting and fired two shots in its direction. Aged fifteen, Heinrich had already been to a meeting of the newly formed Stahlhelm, a right-wing group, making a speech of fiery and intense patriotism.
At Januschau, when Hans went to see his mother’s parents, they talked, of course, about the old times. There was no doubt in his grandfather’s mind: before the First World War had been best – when the world was ‘still in order’. The house at Januschau was typically Junker – ponies and horses in the paddocks, hunting trophies on the walls, not a vast palace but a neo-classical manor, set back from the village street. Oldenburg-Januschau had done well from protectionist policies that had helped agriculture east of the Elbe; when he was a member of the Reichstag he’d bought another estate in Lichterfelde, west of Berlin, so that he could have a country residence near the capital. But the couple didn’t go easily into the post-1918 world. She was astringent and sceptical, apparently severe, terrifying in her photographs; he was a tough, unashamed defender of his class and farming interests, but jovial, a great teller of anecdotes and specialist in rhyming telegrams (one was sent to Göring on the occasion of his engagement). The Januschaus sparred with each another. She complained about his meanness, asking why they got everything
– telephone, electric light, a car – twenty years after everyone else, to which he responded that this meant they would go bankrupt twenty years later as well. There were often three or four elderly female relations staying at Januschau. During the First World War and afterwards, in hungry times, these went back to their homes in Berlin or Hanover with berries from the woods.
– telephone, electric light, a car – twenty years after everyone else, to which he responded that this meant they would go bankrupt twenty years later as well. There were often three or four elderly female relations staying at Januschau. During the First World War and afterwards, in hungry times, these went back to their homes in Berlin or Hanover with berries from the woods.
After 1918, the old boisterous anti-democratic, monarchical politics of Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau faced something much harder. At first this had seemed controllable; Januschau sat near Joseph Goebbels in the Reichstag, patronizing and joking, teasing the National Socialist (‘mein lieber Joseph’) about his two-hour speeches. Goebbels’s diary shows a certain awe of this throw-back to imperial days. On 19 October 1930 he enthuses about Januschau’s ‘sensational’ speech opposing the arrest of army officers for distributing Nazi propaganda, and on 13 October the following year Januschau apparently embraced Goebbels, saying he was going to plead for the Nazis with Hindenburg. A couple of months later, Goebbels found the old man the most ‘tolerable’ of the reactionaries, although in August 1932 he feared that Januschau might influence Hindenburg in favour of the German Conservative Party. He felt confident enough, however, on 28 January 1933, just before Hitler became chancellor, to write of using Januschau to dispel Hindenburg’s doubts about the Nazi leader. A strange postscript came in January 1940, when Hitler told Goebbels that he thought Winston Churchill was like the old Junker, ‘bold’ yet lacking in powers of ‘reflection’.
The jokes were ending. Hans von Lehndorff, the grandson, saw this. After some months learning languages in Geneva, Paris and England, he went to study medicine in Königsberg and Munich, and, in 1931, in Berlin, where old Januschau was back in the Reichstag. Like his grandfather, Hans had little admiration for Weimar. He met the charismatic philosopher Carl von Jordans – who was a conservative and opposed to Hitler – and, the evening before Hindenburg made Hitler chancellor, Hans and his brother, at the suggestion of the Jordans circle, went to the presidential
palace, where they saw an aide who said that the appointment of the Führer was for the best. Who could have known what was to happen? Hans von Lehndorff asks in his memoirs.
palace, where they saw an aide who said that the appointment of the Führer was for the best. Who could have known what was to happen? Hans von Lehndorff asks in his memoirs.
When the Reichstag burned down, Lehndorff thought no one would weep for it, sharing his grandfather’s view that the parliament was ‘die Quatschbude’ (the nonsense stall). But the murderous Night of the Long Knives on 30 June, followed by the moves against the conservative Franz von Papen (Hitler’s Vice-Chancellor) and his circle, showed the true face of the regime. Hans von Lehndorff went east to Januschau to ask his grandfather to speak to Hindenburg. The old man called Neudeck, to be told by an aide, ‘Don’t worry, the Führer has everything in hand.’ Januschau answered, ‘Yes, now they are dead, he has all in his hand.’ The smooth Papen knuckled under, going as ambassador to Austria and scarcely remonstrating about the murder of his associates.
In the autumn of 1934, Hans von Lehndorff’s father was pensioned off, his career over. The old Lehndorffs came to Berlin, to live in a second-floor flat. Hans’s mother liked the capital and its cultural life even if this was darkened by National Socialism. While in Braunsberg – where her husband had gone after Trakehnen, to run another stud – she had shown her courage. After Hitler came to power, the Jewish dentist in Braunsberg found a sharp drop in the people coming to him for treatment because most of them feared the Nazis and wished to obey the new rules. The old Countess, however, refused to be cowed – and frequently and loudly expressed her loathing for Hitler in front of others in the waiting room, telling the dentist to let her know if ever he needed help. After the persecution became worse, he wrote to her in Berlin and she did not hesitate, having given her word; a letter duly arrived from a friend of the Lehndorffs in London offering the dentist shelter. By then it was hard to leave. The dentist did not write to the Countess again for fear of incriminating her. In the end he reached England through the help of a Jewish refugee group.
The Lehndorffs were in Berlin for Hitler’s Olympics in 1936. Hans’s mother got into trouble for too lukewarm a welcome of the Olympic torch, but the authorities were impressed by her Mother Cross, a Nazi award for having had six children. Hans von Lehndorff had to admit that Berlin was fun at this time; he and his friends tried to celebrate as they would have done in the old imperial days. A year later he left Berlin for East Prussia, to work in the hospital at Insterburg, partly to escape the National Socialists’ relentless takeover of the capital and also to return to what he thought of as his homeland. In East Prussia sometimes he was able to get away to Steinort, which, after the death of the bachelor Carol in 1936, had passed to the eldest son of the Lehndorffs of Preyl, Heinrich.
His family speak of Heinrich as accepting, optimistic, not at all earnest – perhaps unpolitical. His younger brother had opposed the Nazis earlier and was arrested for eight days, then released before meeting his death on the eastern front, but Heinrich seemed to take life less seriously. When Hans visited him at Steinort, in October 1940, Heinrich talked of strange building works nearby, of aeroplanes going east. In November, officers were sent to find a field headquarters for Hitler – and chose the site near Rastenburg. By June 1941, the area had become a huge supply depot for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Heinrich von Lehndorff too went east with the Wehrmacht, to see horrors there that changed everything for him and led, indirectly, to his own end.
Soon after the war, Marion Dönhoff was in London, with her friends the Astors, whom she’d known since before 1939. They went to the theatre in a large family party. The play was a comedy and she was particularly aware that night that any hope she might have of going back to Friedrichstein was dead. As facetious lines drove the silly plot forward – and the audience laughed politely – the courteous, gentle, safe, British evening seemed, for her, a desperately lonely one, even during the talk afterwards, which was far removed from her own homeland’s tragic end.
After 1945, she made a new world for herself, becoming not only one of the most admired women in the new Germany but a bright point in recent German history. However, even she wasn’t exempt from swirling doubts and rumours as myths formed and dissolved. The extent of her work against Hitler was debated; her name was not on any of the lists of the conspirators found in July 1944 and, although interrogated, she hadn’t been arrested. There was also ambivalence and difference of opinion about the motives (although not the courage) of many of the plotters, several of whom had been her close friends.
Those involved in the attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944 are often portrayed as knightly paladins –
chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche
– who took up their lances against a hideous modern power: brave people of elegance and honour whose drama still moves, partly through the power of martyrdom. Marion Dönhoff linked them to an old Prussia, of honour and duty, of the sacrifice of the self for the general good. Many of the conspirators were conservative nationalists who, having seen the disorder and
humiliation of the Weimar years, had grown suspicious of parliamentary democracy. They had welcomed the Nazi revival of national pride, the tough anti-communism and early diplomatic and military successes. Many had held high civil or military rank in the Hitler state and tolerated the pre-war measures against the Jews. In the interrogations after the arrests in July 1944, some said that they had been sympathetic to Hitler at the start of his regime, even fundamentally anti-Semitic. It was, they claimed, the Nazis who had corrupted their own ideals, by brutality and adventurism.
chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche
– who took up their lances against a hideous modern power: brave people of elegance and honour whose drama still moves, partly through the power of martyrdom. Marion Dönhoff linked them to an old Prussia, of honour and duty, of the sacrifice of the self for the general good. Many of the conspirators were conservative nationalists who, having seen the disorder and
humiliation of the Weimar years, had grown suspicious of parliamentary democracy. They had welcomed the Nazi revival of national pride, the tough anti-communism and early diplomatic and military successes. Many had held high civil or military rank in the Hitler state and tolerated the pre-war measures against the Jews. In the interrogations after the arrests in July 1944, some said that they had been sympathetic to Hitler at the start of his regime, even fundamentally anti-Semitic. It was, they claimed, the Nazis who had corrupted their own ideals, by brutality and adventurism.
Claus von Stauffenberg, the planter of the bomb, had thought before 1939 that it was right to curb excessive Jewish influence. He and his brother belonged to the idealistic, self-consciously exclusive circle of the poet Stefan George, an opaque advocate of Teutonic exceptionalism and of a spiritually revitalized Europe under German leadership. Out of discipleship and cliques can come contempt for those outside the circle. In 1939, when Stauffenberg took part as a brave officer in the brutal conquest of Poland, he described Polish civilians as ‘an unbelievable rabble, very many Jews and very much mixed population. A people which surely is comfortable under the knout.’ His words are reminiscent of Alfred Knox’s anti-Semitism in August 1914. Later he found out about the mass murders by the SS and the Gestapo of Polish intellectuals and Jews, of the mentally backward. By the summer of 1942, Stauffenberg had turned against Hitler.
It was the atrocities on the eastern front that persuaded many of the July conspirators that they must get rid of Hitler. Among Marion Dönhoff’s sources were her cousin Heinrich von Lehndorff, from whom she heard of the brutal destruction in Ukraine and western Russia; also of the SS murder squads. Like her friend Helmut Schmidt, she said that not until after the war did she know about Auschwitz and the death camps. Heinrich von Lehndorff, the heir to Steinort, had been Marion’s ally since childhood, someone whom she loved, before and after his marriage. He shared with her and with the others of their small, privileged
circle what she saw as Prussian virtues: the acceptance of responsibility, a seriousness of purpose, frugality even in their grand houses, a contempt for display.
circle what she saw as Prussian virtues: the acceptance of responsibility, a seriousness of purpose, frugality even in their grand houses, a contempt for display.
Etched into all this was military duty and tradition. Early in 1939, in a Königsberg hotel, the cousins gathered to say farewell to Heinrich von Lehndorff’s younger brother, who had been summoned at the age of twenty-three to rejoin his infantry regiment. To Marion Dönhoff, the scene became a romantic memory: the serious boy, whom she thought classically beautiful, his eyes brighter than she had seen them since childhood, calling out as he left, ‘We will meet again on the barricades.’ By then none of them doubted that war was coming. Two months after the invasion of Russia, the young Lehndorff was killed on the eastern front. Marion’s ally Heinrich was hanged after the failed bomb plot in 1944.
I said to her when we met that the land must have been full of ghosts when she went across it in August 1989, for the first time since the war. She shrugged, turning back to the beautiful linen-backed map on which she was showing me the route of her journey; it was better to stick to the facts. I wondered if the dislocation could have been as great as that between her childhood world and the rulers of Hitler’s Germany. How intensely different the Dönhoffs’ life had been from the beginnings of the Nazi movement in the smoke-choked, sweaty beer halls of Munich. By 1989, both had gone: the resentful hysteria of one and the beautiful exclusion of the other. The journey with Kant’s statue would reveal a new land.
Even the way east was different. Before 1945, Marion Dönhoff could drive the three hundred and thirty miles from Königsberg to Berlin in a day, leaving German territory only to cross the Polish Corridor. In 1989, the Soviets blocked this direct route, even if Kant was a passenger. So she and her nephew Hermann had to take his little Citroën through Warsaw and Brest and Vilnius (Dönhoff called it by its pre-war Polish name, Wilno), one thousand instead of three hundred and thirty miles: a two-day trip to Kaliningrad.
Communist central Europe unveiled itself outside the windows of the
deux chevaux
: treeless roads; sparse traffic; well-cultivated fields (in the centre and south of Poland, agriculture hadn’t been collectivized); the Soviet frontier at Brest; Lithuania with its tree-lined villages, timber houses, brightly painted doors and gardens overflowing with sunflowers and geraniums in the summer heat. It was a replay of the pre-war world: a farmer walking with a single cow, and cattle grazing beside the empty highway: then the sign for Wirballen, now Lithuanian but still with its old German name, and East Prussia’s old border, now the gateway to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
deux chevaux
: treeless roads; sparse traffic; well-cultivated fields (in the centre and south of Poland, agriculture hadn’t been collectivized); the Soviet frontier at Brest; Lithuania with its tree-lined villages, timber houses, brightly painted doors and gardens overflowing with sunflowers and geraniums in the summer heat. It was a replay of the pre-war world: a farmer walking with a single cow, and cattle grazing beside the empty highway: then the sign for Wirballen, now Lithuanian but still with its old German name, and East Prussia’s old border, now the gateway to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
For Marion Dönhoff there had been a preparation for all this. In September 1962 she had gone, as a journalist, to Poland, finding herself under Eastern European skies for the first time since 1945, in a cold, wet, early autumn. Then too she had felt the past, with hay gathered in sheaves, geese on the roads, horses working on the farms. It was extraordinarily familiar, as if part of her life had been resurrected, with a new backdrop – the atrocities committed by the Germans. As hosts, the Poles were, she found, the most courteous and chivalrous people in the world. Only when pressed did they talk of their suffering in the Warsaw uprising, of relations murdered in the camps: one aged professor in Warsaw apologized for his wife’s poor German because she didn’t have enough time to learn the language while a prisoner in Auschwitz. Only once, in her subsequent piece in
Die Zeit
, did Dönhoff explode – over a Polish Foreign Ministry paper that exaggerated the number of Poles who had lived in the former German territories before 1945. What remained unavoidable in 1962 was the grimness of communism.
Die Zeit
, did Dönhoff explode – over a Polish Foreign Ministry paper that exaggerated the number of Poles who had lived in the former German territories before 1945. What remained unavoidable in 1962 was the grimness of communism.
So in August 1989, Marion Dönhoff was prepared for the new Soviet world. Almost immediately, no doubt partly in her imagination, the landscape seemed to change, bringing a revival of a sense of solitude through its emptiness yet also the feeling that this was where she belonged. The alleys of trees began along roads unimproved since the Russian conquest: the thick dark
trunks smothering the little Citroën between lines of limes, ashes and oaks or a shadowy stretch of birches that seemed dreamlike in the blurred tumbledown villages and neglected fields at twilight. Around eleven o’clock in the evening, Hermann and the Countess reached the edge of Kaliningrad. She had no notion of where to go; the city seemed scarcely recognizable, like an old torn poster advertising Soviet life. At the centre, opposite an empty tower block, stood the Hotel Kaliningrad, a bleak Intourist place across from the site of the old royal castle. There’d been a muddle; the hotel had no record of their reservations. After some frantic telephoning, a taxi arrived to take the visitors to a guest-house in the suburbs. She and Hermann paid the driver with two packets of Marlboro cigarettes.
trunks smothering the little Citroën between lines of limes, ashes and oaks or a shadowy stretch of birches that seemed dreamlike in the blurred tumbledown villages and neglected fields at twilight. Around eleven o’clock in the evening, Hermann and the Countess reached the edge of Kaliningrad. She had no notion of where to go; the city seemed scarcely recognizable, like an old torn poster advertising Soviet life. At the centre, opposite an empty tower block, stood the Hotel Kaliningrad, a bleak Intourist place across from the site of the old royal castle. There’d been a muddle; the hotel had no record of their reservations. After some frantic telephoning, a taxi arrived to take the visitors to a guest-house in the suburbs. She and Hermann paid the driver with two packets of Marlboro cigarettes.
Much of suburban Königsberg remains. Dönhoff felt that she could be in Dahlem, a green district of Berlin. But in the centre – despite the ruins of the cathedral, the forts, the ninetenth-century gates and old government buildings – she thought of Irkutsk, deep in Siberia. Although the House of Soviets seemed to her to be the ugliest building she had ever seen, Dönhoff praised the rapid reconstruction later in
Die Zeit
, remembering the annihilating raids of August 1944. The Countess thought it unforgivable what the British had done, not only to Königsberg but later – when German defeat was inevitable – to Dresden and to Potsdam. She admired Kaliningrad’s large-scale urban planning and the many memorials to the war dead. Surely the statues of Red Army soldiers, their defiant generals and the names of men and units engraved on slabs of stone meant a wish for peace.
Die Zeit
, remembering the annihilating raids of August 1944. The Countess thought it unforgivable what the British had done, not only to Königsberg but later – when German defeat was inevitable – to Dresden and to Potsdam. She admired Kaliningrad’s large-scale urban planning and the many memorials to the war dead. Surely the statues of Red Army soldiers, their defiant generals and the names of men and units engraved on slabs of stone meant a wish for peace.
She wanted to see the remains of Friedrichstein. A Russian visitor to Germany had given her a tile from the site, from a stall in the old stables – all she had seen since the end of her childhood home, the vast Dönhoff shrine. It had been, she told me, the most beautiful of all the East Prussian great houses. In fact, the destruction hadn’t been the complete, symbolic smashing of an old world that she implies in her memoirs. In January 1945, after Marion and her brother Dieter had fled, drunken Red Army troops had
burned much of the top floor and the roof but a recognizable shell remained. Rumours spread that it had been a fascist palace, used by Göring, and the place became a target. By 1950, the windows and doors had been gone; in 1957 stones and bricks went for housing at a nearby school for military engineers, once a German panzer training ground. By the end of the decade little was left, after this gradual disintegration.
burned much of the top floor and the roof but a recognizable shell remained. Rumours spread that it had been a fascist palace, used by Göring, and the place became a target. By 1950, the windows and doors had been gone; in 1957 stones and bricks went for housing at a nearby school for military engineers, once a German panzer training ground. By the end of the decade little was left, after this gradual disintegration.
Kaliningrad was only a dozen miles away from the old Friedrichstein. The writer and post-war pioneer of links to the old Königsberg, Yuri Ivanov, one of the Russians who saw Marion Dönhoff in 1989, recalls the small grey-haired woman, a red shawl about her neck, a hand held out in friendly greeting, obviously tired after her trip in what Yuri called the sardine box, with Kant in the back. After leading her part of the way in his car, Ivanov felt that she must see Friedrichstein alone. The road, away from the rebuilt city, soon became familiar – through empty fields and scrappy woodland before you turned left at what had once been Löwenhagen (now Komsomolsk), where the Dönhoffs had worshipped in the now destroyed church.
Her breath seemed constricted; would the old avenue of trees be standing? Yes, although some had died, which was scarcely surprising, and the leaves were already turning after the short north-eastern summer. They reached the lake and a grave, still with the stone to her brother Heinrich, who had been killed in Russia, with its inscription ‘Der Tod ist das Tor zum Leben’: death is the gateway to life. But Friedrichstein (to the Russians, Kamenka), with its plain neo-classical exterior and its baroque rooms, had vanished. Of the outbuildings – the old mill, the stables, the brewery – there were either overgrown walls or nothing; it was the conquest of civilization, Dönhoff thought, by a wild growth. Of the palace, the most obvious survival seemed to be a small wooden surround of a bell that had once rung each day at noon.
This obliteration must have darkened the next day’s events when she handed over the statue of Kant. In the Kaliningrad city
hall, Yuri Ivanov declared that the philosopher belonged not to the Russians or the Germans but to all of humanity. Dönhoff noted how Kant’s tomb near the cathedral and the statue of Schiller by the city’s theatre were honoured by the Russians – a welcome sign of reconciliation. What might happen to Kaliningrad, she wondered later? The answer was already in the air: the creation of a duty-free zone, the encouragement of joint ventures with the West, the development of the port as an entry to north-western Russia. In 1989, however, the old bureaucracy still ruled. Marion Dönhoff and Hermann had hoped that they might save many miles on their return journey by crossing directly from the Kaliningrad district into northern Poland. The local officials pleaded with Moscow but permission was refused. So the empty roads began again, exhausting for Hermann with his long legs in the small car (his aunt often had to put her left foot on the accelerator pedal from the passenger’s seat to relieve his cramp).
hall, Yuri Ivanov declared that the philosopher belonged not to the Russians or the Germans but to all of humanity. Dönhoff noted how Kant’s tomb near the cathedral and the statue of Schiller by the city’s theatre were honoured by the Russians – a welcome sign of reconciliation. What might happen to Kaliningrad, she wondered later? The answer was already in the air: the creation of a duty-free zone, the encouragement of joint ventures with the West, the development of the port as an entry to north-western Russia. In 1989, however, the old bureaucracy still ruled. Marion Dönhoff and Hermann had hoped that they might save many miles on their return journey by crossing directly from the Kaliningrad district into northern Poland. The local officials pleaded with Moscow but permission was refused. So the empty roads began again, exhausting for Hermann with his long legs in the small car (his aunt often had to put her left foot on the accelerator pedal from the passenger’s seat to relieve his cramp).
The frontier had long queues of cars and lorries, as did the rare petrol stations in Poland – which gave her time to reflect on the visit. She recalled the extraordinary kindness of the Russians and wondered about Friedrichstein’s reality. Was it the wreckage that she’d seen or the dream world of the past? The eighteenth-century house, its history and its end had given a memory and a drama that stayed in her writing. She might have reflected too that when places are destroyed, those who were once a part of them can rebuild them as they wish – for themselves or for others. With the end in 1945 came a new freedom, potentially without limit: what Kant had seen as dangerous in spite of the immense value of being free.
Devastation – the end of most of what she had loved – brought Marion Dönhoff into journalism. When she looked back in old age to 1946 – the year she had gone to Hamburg to work on the new
Die Zeit
– she saw that time as the most exciting of her life. To be with the four founders of the paper, although the venture had no money and Germany’s future was uncertain, seemed to her to be a life without limit, partly because the ruins
and the well-meaning victors made room for almost anything. It had taken her a day, a night and then another half-day to reach Hamburg from where she was staying with relations in Lower Saxony – a lift for twelve miles on a lorry and the rest of the journey on foot.
Die Zeit
– she saw that time as the most exciting of her life. To be with the four founders of the paper, although the venture had no money and Germany’s future was uncertain, seemed to her to be a life without limit, partly because the ruins
and the well-meaning victors made room for almost anything. It had taken her a day, a night and then another half-day to reach Hamburg from where she was staying with relations in Lower Saxony – a lift for twelve miles on a lorry and the rest of the journey on foot.
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