Letter 4&5

Read by Delia Corrie

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I duly went to Switzerland for Christmas. At last the political situation in Germany began to impinge on my consciousness. I had seen lorry loads of ‘brown shirts’ driving round Potsdam every Sunday throwing out leaflets. But I was not sufficiently interested to pick one up and try to understand it. The Grafin asked me once what we thought of Hitler in England. “We think him rather silly.” “No” she replied decidedly. “He is not silly!”.

29.12.’31 as from Potsdam

…….Goodness knows when I shall return to the “land of yellow fogs”. Periodically, I suffer from cold feet, especially when kindly folk advise me to keep enough money by me always to buy a ticket home. This is almost too exciting when the most I every have is 25 marks! I suppose looking at the situation cold-bloodedly, it is one of the most interesting and critical periods in German history. Look here, Russell will you do something really kind-hearted? I have lately been landing in rather deep water over the War. It’s a subject I’ve avoided, you know, and so I don’t know a thing about it – and when Germans set to and catechize me I can answer nothing. Can you, as a soldier and historian, give me a plain and concise reply to this sort of proposition? My German friend informed me that the French Nation became so aggressive that Germany was forced to declare war. Whereupon England pricked up her ears and remarked, “Now is our chance to crush Germany. She was getting a deal too uppish”. The violation of the Belgian Neutrality provided her with a suitable pretext and she sailed into the fray with shouts of triumph. This is a typical point of view, I find. Somebody also – an English female, pro German – told me that the Germans were forced to march through Belgium in defence of their lives. “What exactly were the Belgian atrocities” I asked. “Well, it is comes to that,” replied she, “our men did some terrible things”. Which, as an answer to my question, was unsatisfactory. So I would like to know as far as possible the whys and the wherefores of the Great War. It this is a nuisance to you, let it be – but if you did have time, I’d be more than grateful…..

Poor Russell! You don’t seem to care for writing letters at all. Well, it was more than noble of you to send me one for Christmas and I’ll let you off any more, said she kindly. Instead I will come to tea with you in July if I haven’t been massacred by Nazis and Communists on my way home from a Furtwangler Concert.

Yours Mariana

17.1.31, Potsdam

………I am overcome with gratitude –! In fact, in the language of the ecstatic schoolgirl – you are a saint! All my difficulties are now solved, and it remains but to translate the treatise into German and memorize the facts. A thousand thanks are pitiably inadequate but I offer you them tot le meme (as they may or may not say in France) ….Oh money! Money! Money! It’s almost the sole topic of conversation in this unhappy country and dear me! I was brought to think it wasn’t quite respectable to be poor but was still worse to confess to the possession of money. Kind of dates one, doesn’t it?

Interval for Refreshment

Russell, I’m dead! Or at any rate dying. At four o’clock arrived the party – and they talked politics, Hitler, Hindenburg, Hugenberg, and then Brunng, Hindenburg, Hitler. (Did you know the Germans think little of Bruning and less of Streseman?) till my brain whirled and my eyes grew fixed and glassy – then we ate till the party went out. By this time it was seven and therefore suppertime and we drank chocolate with whipped cream till I nearly expired and after that we played poker patience round and round till now. Needless to say I came out bottom nearly. What a life! No, what a death, I should say. “Here lies L.M.H. who died 17.1.32 of a surfeit of whipped cream and politics.” The damnable part was my brain had stopped functioning by the time it began to get interesting

Interval for bed, because I have to practise long notes for an hour before breakfast.