Meg at Haus Rheinland, Wiesbaden 1933

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.

'Gone to Earth' - much-loved and possibly emulated by Meg

Gone to Earth (1950) is a film by the British-based director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Jennifer Jones, David Farrar and Cyril Cusack and features Esmond Knight. The film was significantly changed for the American market by David O. Selznick and retitled The Wild Heart.

Gone to Earth is based on the 1917 novel of the same nameby author Mary Webb. The novel was all but ignored when it first appeared, but became widely known in the 1930s, as the neo-romantic revival gathered pace, even inspiring an even more famous and wickedly funny parody, Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm.

Hazel Woodus (Jennifer Jones) is a child of nature in the Shropshire countryside in 1897. She loves and understands all the wild animals more than the people around her. Whenever she has problems she turns to the book of spells and charms left to her by her gypsy mother.

Local squire, Jack Reddin (David Farrar) sees Hazel and wants her. But she has already promised herself to the Baptist Minister, Edward Marston (Cyril Cusack). A struggle for her body and soul ensues.

Filming on Gone to Earth, which was shot in Technicolour, began on 1 August 1949, Studio filming took place at Shepperton Studios in Shepperton, Surrey, while most of the film was shot on location at many sites around Much Wenlock in Shropshire, England.

Many local people were recruited as extras; for instance, the choir from the local Methodist church appears in the film. When director Michael Powell heard them sing, he thought they weren't ragged enough to portray a choir of "country folk", only to be told "But we are country folk, Mr. Powell."

The film was a co-production with American producer David O. Selznick. Selznick flooded the production with memos, most of which were studiously ignored. Powell summed up the relationship this way, "We decided to go ahead with David O. (Selznick) the way hedgehogs make love: verrry carefully!"

Although he had been involved throughout the filming, executive producer David O. Selznick disliked the finished film and took The Archers, Powell and Pressburger's production company, to court to get it changed. Selznick's changes were mostly additions to the film: a prologue; scenes explaining things, often literally, by putting labels or inscriptions on them; and more close-ups of Jennifer Jones.

The most infamous of the alterations are the scenes at the end when Jones is supposedly carrying a tame fox - in the additional scenes, she is carrying what is obviously a stuffed toy fox. Selznick also deleted a few scenes that he felt weren't dramatic enough, some of which were major plot points, so the story doesn't make as much sense as it does in the original film.

The original version of Gone to Earth was fully restored by the British Film Institute's National Archive in 1985. A New Statesman review claimed the restored film to be "One of the great British regional films" and, according to Powell's cinematographer, Christopher Challis, "one of the most beautiful films ever to be shot of the English countryside".