Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (71 page)
Read Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations Online
Authors: Norman Davies
Tags: #History, #Nonfiction, #Europe, #Royalty, #Politics & Government
In short, those who are inspired to reflect on the past in the beguiling environment of Berlin’s
Lustgarten
should not allow their thoughts to be constrained by their immediate surroundings. They should certainly read and learn about the Hohenzollerns’ ‘Iron Kingdom’; but they should also read something about other Prussian worlds that have vanished even more comprehensively. On this subject, the popular poet Agnes Miegel (1879–1964), a KÖnigsberger, skilfully invokes the anguish of her compatriots:
| O kalt weht der Wind über leeres Land, | Oh cold blows the wind o’er the empty land, |
| O leichter weht Asche als Staub und Sand! | Ashes waft lighter than dust and sand. |
| Und die Nessel wächst hoch an geborstner Wand | And nettles grow high on the broken wall, |
| Aber höher die Distel am Acker rand! | Higher yet is the thistle on the acre’s edge. |
| Es war ein Land – wir liebten dies Land – | There once was a land which we dearly loved; |
| Aber Grauen sank drüber wie Dünensand . | Horrors engulfed it like sand- dunes. |
| Verweht wie im Bruch des Elches Spur | As the spoor of the elk is dissolved in the bog, |
| Ist die Fährte von Mensch und Kreatur | So, too, is the passage of man and beast. |
| Sie erstarrten in Schnee, sie verglühten im Brand, | They froze in the snow, or burned in the fire, |
| Sie verdarben elend in Feindes- land, | Or perished in misery on hostile ground. |
| Sie liegen tief auf der Ostsee Grund, | Deep they lie on the East Sea’s bed, |
| Flut wäscht ihr Gebein in Bucht und Sund, | The tides wash their bones round bays and straits, |
| Sie schlafen in Jütlands sandigem Schoss – | They sleep in Jutland’s sandy lap – |
| Und wir Letzten treiben heimat- los, | And we, the last of them, wander homeless, |
| Tang nach dem Sturm, Herbstlaub im Wind – | Like storm-tossed seaweed, or wind-blown leaves. |
| Vater, Du weisst, wie einsam wir sind! | Father, You alone know Your children’s desolation. 113 |
Berliners in particular might keep constantly in mind that the Iron Kingdom was only one of several Prussias. In the not too distant future, they will be able to visit the exhibition and documentation centre of the proposed Centre for Flight and Expulsion, approved by the Bundestag in March 2008 amidst great controversy. The Centre is the brainchild of the League of German Expellees (BdV) and its doughty chairperson, Erika Steinbach, who is determined to add a story of German wartime suffering to the more familiar narrative of German guilt. Among the two million members of her League, there is a strong contingent of East Prussians and Königsbergers, whose perspective does not chime with that of the typical Berliner or casual visitor. For they and their descendants, like assorted Poles from the former Royal Prussia or Russians from Kaliningrad, are likely to show little inclination for nostalgic Prussian fashions. They will know that in the long centuries before Friedrich Wilhelm’s coronation in Königsberg, the land where Kaliningrad now stands was ruled by grand masters of the Teutonic Order, by dukes of Prussia, by duke-electors and by kings of Poland. They may even have heard of
Tvangste
and of the shadowy, anonymous, ‘People of the Lagoons’.
All the nations that ever lived have left their footsteps in the sand. The traces fade with every tide, the echoes grow faint, the images are fractured, the human material is atomized and recycled. But if we know where to look, there is always a remnant, a remainder, an irreducible residue.
In this case, the residue is quite large. The last of the Prussias is not long dead. There are living people who remember it. There are men and women who were born Prussian and who, in part at least, have retained their Prussian identity. They have been scattered to the ends of the earth, but some still belong to the associations of exiles and expellees, who talk of the old times, and who write books about the
Unvergessene Heimat
, the ‘Unforgettable Homeland’.
114
There are even those who dream of Prussia’s resurrection. Yet these are all relicts from just the latest Prussian generation. They are descendants not only of German forebears but also of several earlier incarnations of Prussia. Somewhere among them roam the genes of the
Prusai
.
*
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the predecessor of the present-day Russian Federation and prior to 1992 the largest of fifteen constituent Republics of the Soviet Union.
*
It is not true that Kaliningrad houses the mission control centre of the Russian Space Agency (ROSKOSMOS). Numerous misleading comments on this subject derive from the fact that prior to 1996 the small town of Korolev near Moscow, which does house the centre, also used the name of Kaliningrad.
10
*
An anonymous author, the Geographus Bavarus, probably a monk of Reichenau; his work entitled
Descriptio civitatum et regionum ad septentrionalem plagam Danubii
was not discovered until 1772, in Munich in the Bavarian State Library.
*
So-called by historians to distinguish them from the Crusades in the Holy Land, in Languedoc or in Iberia.
*
The
Livlandische Reimchronik
, composed in Low German by anonymous authors and intended to be read aloud to the Knights during their mealtimes, covers the years 1180–1290.
*
The Gothic Myth among Germans and the Sarmatian Myth among Poles propagated the idea that the modern descendants of ancient Goths and Sarmatians inherited their forebears’ inborn love of freedom.
*
Together with the kings of Bohemia, the counts palatine of the Rhine and the dukes of Saxony, the margraves of Brandenburg served as one of the Holy Roman Empire’s four secular and hereditary electors, participating in imperial elections and enjoying the prestigious title of
Kurfurst
or ‘Prince-Elector’.
*
Junker
, literally
Jung Herr
or ‘Young Lord’ and originally a colloquial phrase, came to denote a whole social class. Its members often had roots in Germany’s medieval aristocracy, the
Uradel
, but in early modern times, as the ‘Ostelbien nobility’, they were concentated in Brandenburg-Prussia, whence they later migrated into all the Hohenzollern provinces. Their surnames were usually preceded by
von
or
zu
.
*
Das Königreich in Preussen
as distinct from
Das Königreich Preussen
from 1772.
*
From 1795 to 1806, following the Third Partition of Poland.
*
Hindenburg’s attack on 29 August 1914 centred on the 2th Russian Army, which was surrounded near the village of Frogenau. Tannenberg, nearly 20 miles away, did not feature until a report was written that evening.
*
The
Dolchstosslegende
, traced to a conversation between General Ludendorff and Sir Neil Malcolm in 1919, gained wide currency by claiming that the German military had been betrayed by politicians.
*
The Soviet assault of April 1945 is the second event which features in the Amber Room mystery. A recent study claims that the treasure was destroyed on 9–11 April by high explosives and fire, but this assumes that no attempt had been made to crate the treasure up or remove it to safety in the previous five months, and that six tons of amber could evaporate in heat without leaving even microscopic chemical traces. So the hunt continues. One theory holds that the Amber Room sank with the
Wilhelm Gustloff
; a second that it was buried with Nazi gold in a Saxon mine; a third that it lies beneath a Lithuanian lagoon; and a fourth that it forms part of the undeclared loot in Moscow’s Trophy Archive. The word on the street in Kaliningrad is that it was drowned in the concrete foundations of the
Dom Sovietov
.
100
*
Thanks to the work of the French scholar Pierre Nora, in
Les Lieux de mémoire
(1984–92), ‘memory site’ now forms part of the established vocabulary of studies on collective memory. It refers to places, objects and buildings that are deliberately selected and promoted over others to preserve the memory of people or events.
Sabaudia
The House that Humbert Built
(1033–1946)
I
Rome, 2 June. Italy’s Day of the Republic, the
Festa della Repubblica
, is celebrated on the same date every year. The president comes down from the Quirinale Palace, lays a crown of laurels on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and gives the signal for a grand military parade. RAI news, the Italian news agency, issues the usual bulletin: ‘The celebrations of the anniversary of the Republic were initiated today by the President… Escorted by the cuirassiers of the guard of the Corps of Carabinieri, he laid the Crown on the Altar of the Fatherland, and sent the parade on its way from the Imperial Forum…’
1
Italian commentators liken their republican
Festa
to Bastille Day in France or to Independence Day in the United States. A similar event will be staged on 4 November,
la Giornata dell’Unità
, to mark Italy’s annual Armed Forces Day.
In 2010 Giorgio Napolitano (b. 1925), Italy’s eleventh president, had reached the fifth year of his seven-year term. Trained as a lawyer, he used to be an activist of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), until it was dissolved in 1992; he then served as a member of the European Parliament. His nicknames include
Il Principe Rosso
, ‘The Red Prince’, and
Il Re Umberto
, ‘King Umberto’. His personal contribution to the national day was to invite the public into the house and gardens of the Quirinale.
2
He has been characterized as Italy’s ‘enduring president’,
3
a pillar of stability in an unstable country.
The tomb of Italy’s Unknown Soldier, the
Milite Ignoto
, stands beside the Altar of the Fatherland at the centrepoint of the monumental complex on the Piazza Venezia – the
Vittoriano
. It dates from 1911, and is surrounded by an array of patriotic symbols – including the columns of Winged Victory, the four-horse chariot, the
Quadrighe
, and the Fountain of the Two Seas.
4
On the steps of the altar, the president of state is awaited by the presidents of the Senate, of the chamber of deputies, of the constitutional court and of the council of ministers. After laying the crown of laurels, he reviews the guard of honour, presents a short address, then leaves the square with the minister of defence and the chief of the defence staff.
The military parade presents a stunning show made up from all branches of the Italian armed forces and police. The crowds applaud, listening to the bands of the
Esercito
(army), the
Marina Militare
(navy), the
Aeronautica
(air force), the
Arma dei Carabinieri
, the
Polizia di Stato
(state police), and other formations. The traditional
Corsa degli Bersaglieri
raises a special cheer: the ‘Sharpshooters Regiment’ (including its musicians) does not march past the stands, but runs. The soldiers step out most willingly to the strains of the ‘
Canzone del Piave
’, the ‘Song of the Piave’, a popular melody from the First World War. Warplanes scream overhead, releasing jetstreams of green, white and red. (In 2008 heavy rain was falling, and no planes flew.)