Well, looking for ‘Keith’s Connections’ are there any more personal links to Peter Singer’s history of the Oppenheim Family and the collapse of morality in the Third Reich?
The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is ‘Yes’. The lattice of life connects Nantwich, Cheshire in the 1930s to Theresienstadt through Vienna and Wiesbaden.
In 1933, Keith’s future mother, 18 year old Mabel Kenyon Clarke, travelled to Germany to take up a position as a guest pupil at the House Rhineland, 34 Parkstrasse, Wiesbaden – a Finishing School for girls. It is a reasonable supposition that the placement resulted from the work of a foundation that sought to mend fences between the British and the Germans in the aftermath of World War I.
The brochure for House Rhineland begins by stating that ‘House Rhineland is a nice delightful house standing just in front of the very healthy Kurpark of Wiesbaden known all over the world on account of its beauty – a lovely source takes its murmuring way through bright paths. The rooms are bright, airy and homelike and the internal arrangements are thoroughly modern including central heating, electric light etc.’
It goes on to claim that it ‘receives young girls of good families and gives individual teaching on modern lines and calculated to develop individual gifts and to inculcate habits of self-reliance and duty. At the same time emphasis is laid upon the importance of good manners’.
Continuing (with the English gradually becoming more ragged), ‘The Kurhaus Concerts as well as the wellknown Opera have always been an attraction for Wiesbaden, Excursions to the famous Goethe-town of Francfort, to Darmstadt and Heidelberg, the dream of young students, as well as to the Castles and mountains of the Rhine are made’.
Finally it notes soberly that ‘As individual attention is given to each girl and as there will be only a limited number of girls there will be no allowance to leave the house without a chaperon’.
The fees were 35 Guineas per term, with extra charges of 4 shillings per course for special lessons. ‘Entrance fee 2 Guineas for use of plate and knives. Use of piano – half a Guinea per term etc.’
Meg had mixed feelings about the experience. She became warm friends with some of the girls (including having something of a crush it seems on ‘Erica’). They were young and fun-loving. When she first arrived, she was desperately homesick and she spoke no German. Seeing her hanging around the gate in the morning waiting for a letter from England, they advised her to inquire of the postman ‘Haben sie ein kuss fur mich’.
She also had a playful romance with a well-connected young German named Dieter – apparently he was a nephew of Goering. The story was that he used to yodel to her as he left their assignations. Extraordinarily, they kept in touch and he wrote after World War II telling her that fortunately he had fought on the Eastern Front (which meant for him that he did not have to face English enemies directly).
But there were also shadows. Meg attended a Nazi Rally that was addressed by Hitler. She came away shocked and fearful at the ranting of the speakers and the obsequious roaring of the crowd. She also recounted how the Head Mistress had recounted to her some comments from the townsfolk about the girls following a walk through the town. It was obvious it was said that one of the girls was not a pure German.
I will leave the reader to sketch in the relevance of the school’s emphasis on modernity, duty and good manners to the developments that took place in the Reich between the Wiesbaden of 1933 and Theresienstadt in 1943.
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