© Eichborn Verlag
FAMILY STORIES I – ILLUSTRIOUS ANCESTORS
((pp. 25 to 34 in the original edition))
Young Count Heinrich was a Lehndorff. Even if it apparently didn't mean a great deal to him during his childhood and school days, a person with that kind of heritage grows up with history, and with many family stories as well.
The Lehndorffs number among the grand and notable families of East Prussia, along with names such as Dohna, Dönhoff, Eulenburg, Groebens, and Kanitz. Today, none of these families still live where they originated, nor have they retained their former prominence. This is the point where the difficulties begin when one is searching for the distant roots of an individual destiny that cannot be understood apart from its origins. Every childhood has a background story, and many a background story shapes an individual’s later life more than he or she perceives.
Many of the grand aristocratic families arrived in East Prussia at the beginning of the 16th century along with the Order of Teutonic Knights. The roots of the Lehndorffs reach even further into the past. They are descended from West Prussian/Baltic Prussian stock and therefore inhabited these Eastern tracts of land from time immemorial. The family seat, which would later become Steinort, is mentioned for the first time only in 1420. But the family's origins are to be found in West Prussia’s Kulmerland in the House of Stango. Long before the arrival of the Teutonic Knights, they settled in a place named Mgowo. During the rule of the knights, this village was called "Legendorf." The Lehndorffs’ ancestors must have played a leadership role in their tribal territory, either through open election by the local yeomen or through fortunate victories in family feuds. It was only when the century of foreign colonization began that they had to submit to the Order of Knights or were forced to reach an accommodation. What had previously belonged to them was now declared a fiefdom (Ger. Lehen). As a result, they were called "von Legendorf" and later "von Lehendorf" or "von Lehndorff."
Politics, the military, land ownership, and above all, horses determined the fate of all Lehndorff family lines. One of the best known members of the family from this period of cooperation with the Teutonic Order State was Paul Legendorf, Bishop of Ermland. The first owners of the estate received the title of "Lord Seneschal of Prussian Eilau or, respectively, Oletzkow.” The expanded estate was probably granted to Fabian von Lehndorff, even though East Prussian historical literature generally reports that it was not until the beginning of the 16th century that the Order of Teutonic Knights issued the deed of tenure for the "great wilderness by the lake" (the later Steinort) jointly to Fabian, Caspar, and Sebastian von Lehndorff. In 1590, Meinhard was born, one of their grandchildren who would later plant the avenue of oaks which is the most famous point of interest on the Steinort grounds. It is a site of natural beauty and has a magical aura to this day. Meinhard was a lieutenant colonel and the district administrator of Rastenburg. It is his son who marks the Lehndorffs’ entry into the arena of high-level politics and grand adventure far from their origins in Kulmerland, but also far from the marshy wilderness surrounding Steinort, where horse-drawn coaches regularly became deeply mired in the mud during the long severe winter months, even as the first oaks had begun to grow.
[marginal note p. 26:
Information obtained in 2009 from Count Stanislaus Dönhoff, Schönstein.]
Hans von Lehndorff wrote a captivating little family story about this first of his political forebears.
"Meinhard's son, who bore the curious name of Ahasverus (Ahasversus Gerhard 1637–1688), was born in 1637; he was only two years old when his father died. His mother, née zu Eulenburg, appointed her brother to be his legal guardian. Ahasverus spent his childhood at Steinort and was then sent to various schools where he received a broad-based education.
Today, when we read his letters to his mother and to friends, and the diary entries he wrote as a young man, it seems almost inconceivable that a person could acquire such sweeping knowledge under the conditions prevailing in his times. At 19, he and his same-aged cousin, Georg Friedrich zu Eulenberg, accompanied by a “Hofmeister,”[1] were sent on a so-called "cavalier's tour," which in his case lasted for seven years (1656—1663) and took him to Denmark, Holland, England, France, Italy, and Spain. Since he was extremely communicative, his letters provide an exceptionally vivid picture of the circumstances at the focal points of European life during his day. His written records also impressively depict the traveling conditions of the era and the drudgery they entailed. He describes making landfall in England by night, and how they were forced to wander long and aimlessly before they could find shelter from the rain; how they were robbed before they were able to continue their journey, but then, several days later, were the guests of Oliver Cromwell and were allowed to be present when he and his family took their midday meal; and how Cromwell's cupbearer led them to the wine cellar afterwards. In Paris, where Ahasverus remained for three years, he experienced Louis XIV at close range, frequented the houses of many prominent personalities, and met innumerable young people from all over the world who, like he, were striving to expand their horizons. He was an appreciated guest in the house of King Gustav Adolf’s daughter, Queen Christine of Sweden, who had emigrated to Paris and whom he later encountered again in Rome. One time, when he asked his mother to increase the financial support she regularly supplied, she informed him that she was not in a position to do so because enemy troops and other marauders had leveled a number of farms attached to the Steinort estate, burning the castle itself almost completely to the ground. She was, however, in a position to send a coach with two horses to Paris for his use. From Italy, he later visited the Knights of Malta on their island, where he established friendships with many knights of the order and was taken along on naval raids against Turks and pirates. The knights accorded him the honor of being the first to jump across to a pirate ship, where he realized that the entire crew was ill with the plague or had already succumbed to it. Lastly, he sent reports from Venice and his journey across the Pyrenees to Spain, returning from there to Prussia via Paris. A greatly experienced man of 26, he placed himself at the disposal of his sovereign, the great Electoral Prince of Brandenburg, for important political tasks. Yet since he was apparently a difficult and demanding person, no agreement could be reached on the nature of his posting within the government. Instead, he accepted a military assignment from King Casimir of Poland which busied him in Warsaw for six years. Here, he mustered a German infantry regiment and was the sometime commander of all German troops serving in Poland. During these years, he enjoyed the special trust of King Casimir as well as his successor, Michael. As a matter of fact, the latter once asked him to travel to Vienna and take a look at Kaiser Leopold's sister whom he intended to marry. Ahasverus found a way to sidestep the precarious assignment, however. It is also unlikely that he would have been able to prevent this unhappy marriage. After his stint in Warsaw, he served the great Electoral Prince and the state of Holland for six years in the era’s desperate wars. The reports in his letters focus more on soldiers dying from hunger and disease than on his losses in battle. This was followed by another several years of military service to Denmark, whereupon he returned to Steinort as a four-star general at age 42."
[marginal note p. 29, top:
Count Hans Lehndorff, Menschen, Pferde, weites Land
(People, Horses, Open Country), p. 204–206.]
The much-traveled count barely had enough time to look after the restoration of his own landholdings – the whole village and the castle itself had been almost totally destroyed in a Tartar attack in 1656 – when he was appointed Lord Burgrave of the Prussian Electoral Prince in 1683 and charged with administering nearly the entire gamut of his distant sovereign’s affairs. A number of historical sources indicate that he remained independent-minded in this new position as well. "The permanent state of war had paralyzed business and trade in Prussia, sapped the country's strength, decimated the ranks, rendered property insecure, and opened the door for all manner of crime. The tax burden was horrible; the billeting of soldiers had risen to an almost unbearable level with some households lodging four people. Naturally, attacks by foreign troops did not fail to materialize. On top of this, heavy taxes were levied on food."
[marginal note p. 29, center:
Count Hans Lehndorff, ibid. p. 206.]
In his letters and in the reports he submitted, Ahasverus repeatedly confronted the Electoral Prince with the deplorable state of affairs, appealing in plainspoken terms to his sense of honor as a sovereign. Basing his opinion on his own bitter experience, he maintained that great monarchs and lords could not afford to treat their subjects in such fashion if they wanted to defend their country in the long term.
"On the day after his installation as Lord Burgrave, he took his third wife, marrying a young Countess Dönhoff. His first two wives had both died after childbirth, as was often the case in the ‘good old days’; most of the children did not survive much longer. In 1686, Kaiser Leopold elevated Ahasverus to the rank of Count. Two years later, Ahasverus died suddenly and unexpectedly. When news of his death reached the great Electoral Prince, he is reported to have burst out, ‘I’ve lost my best statesman!’ He himself also died in 1688."
[marginal note p. 29, second from the bottom:
Das Herold-Jahrbuch, volume 12, New Series, Special Edition,
p. 63, cites the year 1687.]
[marginal note p. 29, bottom:
Count Hans Lehndorff, ibid. p. 207.]
The next Lehndorff to play a political role was Ahasverus’s grandchild, Ernst Ahasverus Heinrich. He was lame in one leg because of an early foot injury and therefore could not become a soldier. Brilliantly educated, he held the position of legation counselor by the early age of 19, and at 21 became chamberlain to Queen Elisabeth Christine, the ever-shunned wife of Frederick the Great. He remained in her service at the Prussian court for nearly 30 years and wrote numerous diaries in French which are stored in the Lehndorff Archive in Leipzig to this day. He became friends with the three brothers of Frederick the Great, and Prince Heinrich's nearly 800 letters show that their friendship remained intact even after Ahasverus’s late retirement from court office. His diary accounts were translated from French into German and were celebrated in the early 20th century for the witty period atmosphere they conveyed.
Born in 1770, Ernst Ahasverus’s son, Carl Ludwig, was the next Lehndorff to become entangled in European politics. He was the common great-grandfather of Heinrich and Hans von Lehndorff, and the latter composed a brilliant little profile of him as well: "Carl Ludwig, my great-grandfather, had therefore already reached the age of 16 when Frederick the Great died. Initially, he was raised at Steinort. He attended the Joachimsthaler Gymnasium[2] in Berlin at age 15, and then entered the École Militaire. Much like his great-grandfather Ahasverus, whom he must have resembled in terms of character, temperament, talent, and verve, he was predestined for a military career. After serving for some time in Potsdam, he participated in the 1793 and 1794 campaigns against the armies of the French Revolution, from which he returned unscathed. In the year 1800, he was transferred to the cavalry, in keeping with his keen desire, and for a number of years commanded a company of the Rouquette Dragoon Regiment in southern East Prussia. He participated in the ill-fated war against Napoleon as a major in this regiment, was wounded in 1807, and captured by the French. What emerges from his letters is the unimaginable degree of freedom that prisoners of war enjoyed during that era, based on their word of honor. Initially, he lived without restrictions of any kind in Nancy, renting a private apartment with his own means. However, he had himself transferred to Paris. From there, he could better negotiate his release, which subsequently came about as part of an exchange. He felt a compelling need to return to East Prussia, his war-torn homeland. Retiring from the military for the time being, he devoted himself intensively to rebuilding the country and especially Steinort, his much loved estate, where enemy forces had lodged with particular abandon. When Napoleon's defeated armies flooded back from Russia, he marshalled a cavalry regiment that was financed with monies from local Prussian landowners and distinguished itself in the 1813/14 Wars of Liberation. He called it the "East Prussian National Cavalry Regiment"; it would later form the basis of the Guard Hussars. After the war, he continued to serve in France as a colonel and brigade commander in the occupation forces. In 1819, after the occupation was lifted, he was transferred to Cologne as Commander of the 15th Cavalry Brigade. It was here, at almost 53 years of age, that he took his family by surprise and decided to do something which he himself had always rejected. In 1823, he became engaged to the still very young Countess Pauline Schlippenbach. How little he had thought of ever marrying becomes clear when we consider his longstanding plan to bequeath Steinort to the son of his especially loved sister, who was now married to a Dönhoff. But this changed the situation completely. His mother, with whom he had shared an intimate bond from childhood and who enjoyed his confidence in all personal matters, wrote to her friend and relative, the Duchess of Holstein-Beck, ‘Regardless of that – seeing as the matter is now, contrary to all expectations, and yes, contrary even to Carl’s, who did not consider it possible that he would still be capable of imbuing anyone with so intense an emotion of this nature – seeing as the matter is now beyond recall, I would like to believe that the Lord, in His great and undeserved mercy, has bestowed upon him domestic happiness even in his old age, and that the marriage is made in heaven, and for such reason will also not remain childless. A hope to which I so dearly submit when human actions do not contravene reason and are undertaken with good and honest intention.’
In 1824, Carl Ludwig was transferred to Danzig as Commander of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, retiring from military service nine years thereafter with the rank of lieutenant general. He was awarded the title of Landhofmeister (State Steward) and was later honored with the Orden vom Schwarzen Adler (Order of the Black Eagle). His marriage produced five energetic children; it was the only generation of my family that was not decimated by war and, often enough, nearly eradicated…"
[marginal note p. 32: ibid. p. 208f.]
Just how delighted the extended family was over this late-life marriage, and the unexpected children who guaranteed the continuation of the Lehndorff line, is attested by the patriarch's unmarried brother who took up the pen, composed little poems, and nailed them to the oaks in the avenues of the park:
Glück auf, Glück auf, du lang ersehnter Knabe,
Im Lande, wo die Freude wohnt und Leid.
Gelobt sei Gott für diese hohe Gabe,
Zerstreut ist nun der Zukunft Dunkelheit...”
Good luck! Good luck, you longed-for boy
In this land where gladness dwells and sorrow.
Praise be to God for this gift of joy
That now dispels a dark tomorrow.
What Hans Lehndorff reports next was even more remarkable for the destiny of Europe: "Above all, Carl Ludwig Lehndorff set himself a monument through the active influence he exerted at the Convention of Tauroggen in the final days of 1812. In a matter of only hours, he rode the 100 kilometers from Gumbinnen to Tauroggen on deeply snow-covered roads to bring General Yorck von Wartenburg the news that the country’s estate owners had agreed to Napoleon's solution. Three years later, it almost came to a highly curious encounter with Napoleon. He (Carl Ludwig) speaks of it in a letter to his mother. ‘Just imagine, dearest Mother, a peculiar assignation I would have had by a hair. There was and is a requirement that Napoleon must be guarded on the Island of St. Helena by individuals commissioned through each of the powers allied against him. The Army conducted a lengthy search to find a person who, by virtue of his military rank, language, intellect, etc., would be suitable for this occupation. The proposition was made to me as well, and truly, had I been a few years younger, and had it not entailed the obligation to commit oneself to a sojourn of at least two years, I do not know whether I, for the sake of the peculiarity of the matter and of making a more detailed acquaintance with this still extraordinary bird, would not have offered my services. As it stands, however, I considered it excessive to cross off two of life's sparely allotted years, not including the year that would be lost traveling there and back.’ But his allotted time was not as scant as he thought, for he only died 39 years later at the age of 84, richly blessed after many years of rebuilding his homeland and the Steinort estate."
[marginal note p. 33: ibid. p. 212.]
With this thwarted guard of Napoleon, however, the involvement of the Counts von Lehndorff with major European politics comes to an end for the time being. The next owner of Steinort, Carl Meinhard (1826—1883), trained as a diplomat and was an Imperial Knight of the Order of St. John, as were his forebears. Moreover, he was a member of the Prussian House of Lords and also participated in the Congress of Paris in 1856. Nevertheless, for the most part he limited his activity to business endeavors in his home province, including, among others, the high-risk venture of founding the East Prussian Southern Railway which was later connected to the Russian railroad system. He and his beautiful wife, Anna, who was a born Countess Hahn-Basedow and his cousin as well, place us in the midst of the generation that has become the subject of many family anecdotes. As on all East Prussian estates, they were recounted with delight and at length, and constantly repeated. In particular, a great-aunt of Heinrich von Lehndorff’s, Anna, must have been an expressive personality. Not least, she saw to it that a gap-free family history was compiled, ensured that the diaries of the important Prussian Chamberlain were published, founded homes for orphans and the poor, and initiated an extensive range of activities for their care. "The story of her death is also unusual. A piece of bone became lodged in her lung as she was eating. One was powerless against such a mishap in those days. When death approached, after long days of agonized suffering which she endured heroically with unwavering faith in her Redeemer, she summoned her entire domestic staff one last time and took leave of each person individually. Then she closed her eyes and awaited the end. She did not wish to be disturbed again, but she overheard the younger of the two physicians in attendance ask the elder whether he should prepare another injection for the patient. At that, we are told, she opened her beautiful eyes one more time, looked graciously at the young doctor and said, ‘You dimwit.’ And those were her last words."
[marginal note p. 34: Count Hans Lehndorff, ibid., p. 214.]
[1] A private tutor/companion to a young aristocrat.
[2] Gymnasium: a German secondary school with an academic orientation.
FAMILY STORIES I – ILLUSTRIOUS ANCESTORS
((pp. 25 to 34 in the original edition))
Young Count Heinrich was a Lehndorff. Even if it apparently didn't mean a great deal to him during his childhood and school days, a person with that kind of heritage grows up with history, and with many family stories as well.
The Lehndorffs number among the grand and notable families of East Prussia, along with names such as Dohna, Dönhoff, Eulenburg, Groebens, and Kanitz. Today, none of these families still live where they originated, nor have they retained their former prominence. This is the point where the difficulties begin when one is searching for the distant roots of an individual destiny that cannot be understood apart from its origins. Every childhood has a background story, and many a background story shapes an individual’s later life more than he or she perceives.
Many of the grand aristocratic families arrived in East Prussia at the beginning of the 16th century along with the Order of Teutonic Knights. The roots of the Lehndorffs reach even further into the past. They are descended from West Prussian/Baltic Prussian stock and therefore inhabited these Eastern tracts of land from time immemorial. The family seat, which would later become Steinort, is mentioned for the first time only in 1420. But the family's origins are to be found in West Prussia’s Kulmerland in the House of Stango. Long before the arrival of the Teutonic Knights, they settled in a place named Mgowo. During the rule of the knights, this village was called "Legendorf." The Lehndorffs’ ancestors must have played a leadership role in their tribal territory, either through open election by the local yeomen or through fortunate victories in family feuds. It was only when the century of foreign colonization began that they had to submit to the Order of Knights or were forced to reach an accommodation. What had previously belonged to them was now declared a fiefdom (Ger. Lehen). As a result, they were called "von Legendorf" and later "von Lehendorf" or "von Lehndorff."
Politics, the military, land ownership, and above all, horses determined the fate of all Lehndorff family lines. One of the best known members of the family from this period of cooperation with the Teutonic Order State was Paul Legendorf, Bishop of Ermland. The first owners of the estate received the title of "Lord Seneschal of Prussian Eilau or, respectively, Oletzkow.” The expanded estate was probably granted to Fabian von Lehndorff, even though East Prussian historical literature generally reports that it was not until the beginning of the 16th century that the Order of Teutonic Knights issued the deed of tenure for the "great wilderness by the lake" (the later Steinort) jointly to Fabian, Caspar, and Sebastian von Lehndorff. In 1590, Meinhard was born, one of their grandchildren who would later plant the avenue of oaks which is the most famous point of interest on the Steinort grounds. It is a site of natural beauty and has a magical aura to this day. Meinhard was a lieutenant colonel and the district administrator of Rastenburg. It is his son who marks the Lehndorffs’ entry into the arena of high-level politics and grand adventure far from their origins in Kulmerland, but also far from the marshy wilderness surrounding Steinort, where horse-drawn coaches regularly became deeply mired in the mud during the long severe winter months, even as the first oaks had begun to grow.
[marginal note p. 26:
Information obtained in 2009 from Count Stanislaus Dönhoff, Schönstein.]
Hans von Lehndorff wrote a captivating little family story about this first of his political forebears.
"Meinhard's son, who bore the curious name of Ahasverus (Ahasversus Gerhard 1637–1688), was born in 1637; he was only two years old when his father died. His mother, née zu Eulenburg, appointed her brother to be his legal guardian. Ahasverus spent his childhood at Steinort and was then sent to various schools where he received a broad-based education.
Today, when we read his letters to his mother and to friends, and the diary entries he wrote as a young man, it seems almost inconceivable that a person could acquire such sweeping knowledge under the conditions prevailing in his times. At 19, he and his same-aged cousin, Georg Friedrich zu Eulenberg, accompanied by a “Hofmeister,”[1] were sent on a so-called "cavalier's tour," which in his case lasted for seven years (1656—1663) and took him to Denmark, Holland, England, France, Italy, and Spain. Since he was extremely communicative, his letters provide an exceptionally vivid picture of the circumstances at the focal points of European life during his day. His written records also impressively depict the traveling conditions of the era and the drudgery they entailed. He describes making landfall in England by night, and how they were forced to wander long and aimlessly before they could find shelter from the rain; how they were robbed before they were able to continue their journey, but then, several days later, were the guests of Oliver Cromwell and were allowed to be present when he and his family took their midday meal; and how Cromwell's cupbearer led them to the wine cellar afterwards. In Paris, where Ahasverus remained for three years, he experienced Louis XIV at close range, frequented the houses of many prominent personalities, and met innumerable young people from all over the world who, like he, were striving to expand their horizons. He was an appreciated guest in the house of King Gustav Adolf’s daughter, Queen Christine of Sweden, who had emigrated to Paris and whom he later encountered again in Rome. One time, when he asked his mother to increase the financial support she regularly supplied, she informed him that she was not in a position to do so because enemy troops and other marauders had leveled a number of farms attached to the Steinort estate, burning the castle itself almost completely to the ground. She was, however, in a position to send a coach with two horses to Paris for his use. From Italy, he later visited the Knights of Malta on their island, where he established friendships with many knights of the order and was taken along on naval raids against Turks and pirates. The knights accorded him the honor of being the first to jump across to a pirate ship, where he realized that the entire crew was ill with the plague or had already succumbed to it. Lastly, he sent reports from Venice and his journey across the Pyrenees to Spain, returning from there to Prussia via Paris. A greatly experienced man of 26, he placed himself at the disposal of his sovereign, the great Electoral Prince of Brandenburg, for important political tasks. Yet since he was apparently a difficult and demanding person, no agreement could be reached on the nature of his posting within the government. Instead, he accepted a military assignment from King Casimir of Poland which busied him in Warsaw for six years. Here, he mustered a German infantry regiment and was the sometime commander of all German troops serving in Poland. During these years, he enjoyed the special trust of King Casimir as well as his successor, Michael. As a matter of fact, the latter once asked him to travel to Vienna and take a look at Kaiser Leopold's sister whom he intended to marry. Ahasverus found a way to sidestep the precarious assignment, however. It is also unlikely that he would have been able to prevent this unhappy marriage. After his stint in Warsaw, he served the great Electoral Prince and the state of Holland for six years in the era’s desperate wars. The reports in his letters focus more on soldiers dying from hunger and disease than on his losses in battle. This was followed by another several years of military service to Denmark, whereupon he returned to Steinort as a four-star general at age 42."
[marginal note p. 29, top:
Count Hans Lehndorff, Menschen, Pferde, weites Land
(People, Horses, Open Country), p. 204–206.]
The much-traveled count barely had enough time to look after the restoration of his own landholdings – the whole village and the castle itself had been almost totally destroyed in a Tartar attack in 1656 – when he was appointed Lord Burgrave of the Prussian Electoral Prince in 1683 and charged with administering nearly the entire gamut of his distant sovereign’s affairs. A number of historical sources indicate that he remained independent-minded in this new position as well. "The permanent state of war had paralyzed business and trade in Prussia, sapped the country's strength, decimated the ranks, rendered property insecure, and opened the door for all manner of crime. The tax burden was horrible; the billeting of soldiers had risen to an almost unbearable level with some households lodging four people. Naturally, attacks by foreign troops did not fail to materialize. On top of this, heavy taxes were levied on food."
[marginal note p. 29, center:
Count Hans Lehndorff, ibid. p. 206.]
In his letters and in the reports he submitted, Ahasverus repeatedly confronted the Electoral Prince with the deplorable state of affairs, appealing in plainspoken terms to his sense of honor as a sovereign. Basing his opinion on his own bitter experience, he maintained that great monarchs and lords could not afford to treat their subjects in such fashion if they wanted to defend their country in the long term.
"On the day after his installation as Lord Burgrave, he took his third wife, marrying a young Countess Dönhoff. His first two wives had both died after childbirth, as was often the case in the ‘good old days’; most of the children did not survive much longer. In 1686, Kaiser Leopold elevated Ahasverus to the rank of Count. Two years later, Ahasverus died suddenly and unexpectedly. When news of his death reached the great Electoral Prince, he is reported to have burst out, ‘I’ve lost my best statesman!’ He himself also died in 1688."
[marginal note p. 29, second from the bottom:
Das Herold-Jahrbuch, volume 12, New Series, Special Edition,
p. 63, cites the year 1687.]
[marginal note p. 29, bottom:
Count Hans Lehndorff, ibid. p. 207.]
The next Lehndorff to play a political role was Ahasverus’s grandchild, Ernst Ahasverus Heinrich. He was lame in one leg because of an early foot injury and therefore could not become a soldier. Brilliantly educated, he held the position of legation counselor by the early age of 19, and at 21 became chamberlain to Queen Elisabeth Christine, the ever-shunned wife of Frederick the Great. He remained in her service at the Prussian court for nearly 30 years and wrote numerous diaries in French which are stored in the Lehndorff Archive in Leipzig to this day. He became friends with the three brothers of Frederick the Great, and Prince Heinrich's nearly 800 letters show that their friendship remained intact even after Ahasverus’s late retirement from court office. His diary accounts were translated from French into German and were celebrated in the early 20th century for the witty period atmosphere they conveyed.
Born in 1770, Ernst Ahasverus’s son, Carl Ludwig, was the next Lehndorff to become entangled in European politics. He was the common great-grandfather of Heinrich and Hans von Lehndorff, and the latter composed a brilliant little profile of him as well: "Carl Ludwig, my great-grandfather, had therefore already reached the age of 16 when Frederick the Great died. Initially, he was raised at Steinort. He attended the Joachimsthaler Gymnasium[2] in Berlin at age 15, and then entered the École Militaire. Much like his great-grandfather Ahasverus, whom he must have resembled in terms of character, temperament, talent, and verve, he was predestined for a military career. After serving for some time in Potsdam, he participated in the 1793 and 1794 campaigns against the armies of the French Revolution, from which he returned unscathed. In the year 1800, he was transferred to the cavalry, in keeping with his keen desire, and for a number of years commanded a company of the Rouquette Dragoon Regiment in southern East Prussia. He participated in the ill-fated war against Napoleon as a major in this regiment, was wounded in 1807, and captured by the French. What emerges from his letters is the unimaginable degree of freedom that prisoners of war enjoyed during that era, based on their word of honor. Initially, he lived without restrictions of any kind in Nancy, renting a private apartment with his own means. However, he had himself transferred to Paris. From there, he could better negotiate his release, which subsequently came about as part of an exchange. He felt a compelling need to return to East Prussia, his war-torn homeland. Retiring from the military for the time being, he devoted himself intensively to rebuilding the country and especially Steinort, his much loved estate, where enemy forces had lodged with particular abandon. When Napoleon's defeated armies flooded back from Russia, he marshalled a cavalry regiment that was financed with monies from local Prussian landowners and distinguished itself in the 1813/14 Wars of Liberation. He called it the "East Prussian National Cavalry Regiment"; it would later form the basis of the Guard Hussars. After the war, he continued to serve in France as a colonel and brigade commander in the occupation forces. In 1819, after the occupation was lifted, he was transferred to Cologne as Commander of the 15th Cavalry Brigade. It was here, at almost 53 years of age, that he took his family by surprise and decided to do something which he himself had always rejected. In 1823, he became engaged to the still very young Countess Pauline Schlippenbach. How little he had thought of ever marrying becomes clear when we consider his longstanding plan to bequeath Steinort to the son of his especially loved sister, who was now married to a Dönhoff. But this changed the situation completely. His mother, with whom he had shared an intimate bond from childhood and who enjoyed his confidence in all personal matters, wrote to her friend and relative, the Duchess of Holstein-Beck, ‘Regardless of that – seeing as the matter is now, contrary to all expectations, and yes, contrary even to Carl’s, who did not consider it possible that he would still be capable of imbuing anyone with so intense an emotion of this nature – seeing as the matter is now beyond recall, I would like to believe that the Lord, in His great and undeserved mercy, has bestowed upon him domestic happiness even in his old age, and that the marriage is made in heaven, and for such reason will also not remain childless. A hope to which I so dearly submit when human actions do not contravene reason and are undertaken with good and honest intention.’
In 1824, Carl Ludwig was transferred to Danzig as Commander of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, retiring from military service nine years thereafter with the rank of lieutenant general. He was awarded the title of Landhofmeister (State Steward) and was later honored with the Orden vom Schwarzen Adler (Order of the Black Eagle). His marriage produced five energetic children; it was the only generation of my family that was not decimated by war and, often enough, nearly eradicated…"
[marginal note p. 32: ibid. p. 208f.]
Just how delighted the extended family was over this late-life marriage, and the unexpected children who guaranteed the continuation of the Lehndorff line, is attested by the patriarch's unmarried brother who took up the pen, composed little poems, and nailed them to the oaks in the avenues of the park:
Glück auf, Glück auf, du lang ersehnter Knabe,
Im Lande, wo die Freude wohnt und Leid.
Gelobt sei Gott für diese hohe Gabe,
Zerstreut ist nun der Zukunft Dunkelheit...”
Good luck! Good luck, you longed-for boy
In this land where gladness dwells and sorrow.
Praise be to God for this gift of joy
That now dispels a dark tomorrow.
What Hans Lehndorff reports next was even more remarkable for the destiny of Europe: "Above all, Carl Ludwig Lehndorff set himself a monument through the active influence he exerted at the Convention of Tauroggen in the final days of 1812. In a matter of only hours, he rode the 100 kilometers from Gumbinnen to Tauroggen on deeply snow-covered roads to bring General Yorck von Wartenburg the news that the country’s estate owners had agreed to Napoleon's solution. Three years later, it almost came to a highly curious encounter with Napoleon. He (Carl Ludwig) speaks of it in a letter to his mother. ‘Just imagine, dearest Mother, a peculiar assignation I would have had by a hair. There was and is a requirement that Napoleon must be guarded on the Island of St. Helena by individuals commissioned through each of the powers allied against him. The Army conducted a lengthy search to find a person who, by virtue of his military rank, language, intellect, etc., would be suitable for this occupation. The proposition was made to me as well, and truly, had I been a few years younger, and had it not entailed the obligation to commit oneself to a sojourn of at least two years, I do not know whether I, for the sake of the peculiarity of the matter and of making a more detailed acquaintance with this still extraordinary bird, would not have offered my services. As it stands, however, I considered it excessive to cross off two of life's sparely allotted years, not including the year that would be lost traveling there and back.’ But his allotted time was not as scant as he thought, for he only died 39 years later at the age of 84, richly blessed after many years of rebuilding his homeland and the Steinort estate."
[marginal note p. 33: ibid. p. 212.]
With this thwarted guard of Napoleon, however, the involvement of the Counts von Lehndorff with major European politics comes to an end for the time being. The next owner of Steinort, Carl Meinhard (1826—1883), trained as a diplomat and was an Imperial Knight of the Order of St. John, as were his forebears. Moreover, he was a member of the Prussian House of Lords and also participated in the Congress of Paris in 1856. Nevertheless, for the most part he limited his activity to business endeavors in his home province, including, among others, the high-risk venture of founding the East Prussian Southern Railway which was later connected to the Russian railroad system. He and his beautiful wife, Anna, who was a born Countess Hahn-Basedow and his cousin as well, place us in the midst of the generation that has become the subject of many family anecdotes. As on all East Prussian estates, they were recounted with delight and at length, and constantly repeated. In particular, a great-aunt of Heinrich von Lehndorff’s, Anna, must have been an expressive personality. Not least, she saw to it that a gap-free family history was compiled, ensured that the diaries of the important Prussian Chamberlain were published, founded homes for orphans and the poor, and initiated an extensive range of activities for their care. "The story of her death is also unusual. A piece of bone became lodged in her lung as she was eating. One was powerless against such a mishap in those days. When death approached, after long days of agonized suffering which she endured heroically with unwavering faith in her Redeemer, she summoned her entire domestic staff one last time and took leave of each person individually. Then she closed her eyes and awaited the end. She did not wish to be disturbed again, but she overheard the younger of the two physicians in attendance ask the elder whether he should prepare another injection for the patient. At that, we are told, she opened her beautiful eyes one more time, looked graciously at the young doctor and said, ‘You dimwit.’ And those were her last words."
[marginal note p. 34: Count Hans Lehndorff, ibid., p. 214.]
[1] A private tutor/companion to a young aristocrat.
[2] Gymnasium: a German secondary school with an academic orientation.