Minha Infância na Prússia

by Marion Dönhoff

Marion Dönhoff nasceu e cresceu no castelo de Friedrichstein, na Prússia Oriental, em 1909. Em plena Segunda Guerra Mundial, participa de uma tentativa fracassada de assassinar Hitler - interrogada pela Gestapo, é posta em liberdade enquanto vários de seus companheiros são executados. Sob a invasão das tropas soviéticas, deixa a Prússia em janeiro de 1945, numa jornada impressionante, narrada nas páginas finais deste livro. Em 1946, une- se ao grupo que funda o semanário Die Zeit, onde trabalhará por mais de 50 anos, transformando-o num dos jornais mais influentes da Europa. Considerada a grande dama do jornalismo alemão, Marion recebeu vários prêmios - entre eles ], o prestigioso Prêmio da Paz, da Associação dos livreiros Alemães - e faleceu em março de 2002 aos 92 anos.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Germany, German Literature, Biography, Autobiography, World War II

240 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 1988

About the author

Gräfin Marion Hedda Ilse von Dönhoff (2 December 1909 – 11 March 2002) was a German journalist who participated in the resistance against Hitler's National Socialists with Gräf Helmuth James von Moltke, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg and Colonel Claus Count von Stauffenberg. After the war, she became one of the leading German journalists and intellectuals. She worked over 55 years for the Hamburg-based, weekly newspaper Die Zeit, as an editor and later publisher.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marion Gräfin Dönhoff's Kindheit in Ostpreußen (which basically comprises remembrances of her childhood in East Prussia during the early 20th century) is first and foremost very much anecdotal and episodical in nature and therefore, the book's twenty-four chapters do tend to at times appear a bit unorganised, jumping from place to place, from episode to episode (and sometimes actually even from the present to the past, as well as indeed occasionally from the present to the future, and with that I mean to the future of the author's life, as the present in Kindheit in Ostpreußen is of course Marion Gräfin Dönhoff's childhood in the early to middle 1900s). However and that having been said, since this scenario often if not even usually tends to be the case with personal memoirs, I for one have not at all minded and was in fact rather expecting it (and probably would have been rather disappointed if Kindheit in Ostpreußen had not been so episodical and featuring a multitude of different anecdotes, as I was wanting to read the author's memoirs and not a dry and factually straight autobiography, and thankfully, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff's childhood memories have more than, have totally fit the bill so to speak, have absolutely been what I was wanting and hoping to read).

Now alongside of the author's almost at times ecstatic physical descriptions of her East Prussian Heimat (and her childhood memories of events both humorous and sad, both funny and sometimes also tragic, but always culturally, historically informative and enlightening), Kindheit in Ostpreußen also stridently and strongly presents Marion Gräfin Döhnhoff's personal hatred of the Nazis, of the Third Reich, and her and some of her extended family's association and involvement with and in the 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler (which of course failed, and in Kindheit in Ostpreußen, the author also tries to come to terms with her own survivor guilt, for while she was very actively involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff was only ever questioned by the Gestapo, and unlike her cousin Heini Lehnsdorff and other co-conspirators, some of whom the author had actually and officially personally courted and persuaded to join, she never ended up arrested or faced the threat of execution). Highly recommended, but with the necessary caveat that since Kinheit in Ostpreußen is penned entirely in German, a decent level of language fluency is most definitely suggested (and furthermore, like many childhood memoirs by East Prussian noblemen and women, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff also has many chapters of Kindheit in Ostpreußen devoted to horses and if unlike myself, a potential reader is not all that personally interested in horses and especially in the historical significance of horses in and for East Prussia, Kindheit in Ostpreußen might indeed have the tendency to become a bit monotonous at times).

[Anke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admire Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, was lucky to once hear her speak live for her 90th birthday, and I secretly envy her for her childhood (well, maybe before the time she had to flee from Eastern Prussia after WWII).
This book describes her childhood as a member of one of the oldest noble families in Prussia, the life on a country estate way before cars, radio or television. A world that she (and everyone) lost. And yet she didn't turn into a hostile woman mourning what was taken from her.

[Margarete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sehr interessante Einblicke ist eine Zeit, soziale Schicht und Region, über die ich vorher kaum etwas wusste.
Die Autorin erzählt ohne Verklärung von ihrem Aufwachsen in Friedrichstein, heute Kamenka, nahe dem ehemaligen Königsberg, heute Kaliningrad. Kurzweilig, teils humorvoll schildert sie Begebenheiten aus ihrer Kindheit und schafft Bezüge, die über ihre individuellen Erlebnisse hinausreichen.
Nebenbei lernt man auch noch einige alte Wörter, toll! Ein lesenswertes Zeitdokument.

[Brittny Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been reading this book for years. Not because I am a very slow reader, but because I couldn't make myself finish the book. I've read a review here that said that this book has nothing more than ramblings of a slightly distant-from-life noblewoman about horses, and I can understand why the reviewer chose to say that. If you are up to reading heavily-diluted historical accounts from people who did not go through the true agony of war, mixed in with stories of pastel childhoods and hunting trips with a second uncle thrice-removed on the best horses in all of Eastern Europe, this is the book for you, my friend.

[Feodora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hier liest man wie verzahnt, Geschichte mit Menschen sein kann. Spannend wenn jmd Verwandte hat die auch noch einen nennenswerten Platz in der Geschichte haben. Ich beneide MD um die Erinnerungen die sie hatte und die sie mit uns teilt, auch wenn es mir manchmal einen Hauch zu überheblich und eine Spur zu pathetisch ist. Aber vielleicht ist es dass was meiner generation fehlt.

[Eric Schweitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting biographical, historical account of a young Countess' life in East Prussia.

It is clear that she loved the countryside and felt spiritually connected to the land. Most striking to me is the sense of duality. How overwhelmingly pastoral (and insulated) everyday life was, yet simultaneously woven through with the politics, responsibilities and activity of landed nobility.

[Black Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most fascinating books I have read about East Prussia. Anyone with relatives born in that area would really enjoy the insight into the lives of the people who lived there and loved the land. If you just enjoyed reading history it is a must.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly German toffs on horses and Field Marshal Hindenburg over for tea. Perhaps a rose tinted view of Prussian life before the author’s epic journey across Germany in winter with the Russians just behind. Interesting nonetheless and some excellent photographs. Donhoff went on to become a posh leftie (“The Red Countess”) and editor of Die Zeit. Good follow-up read after Max Egremont’s “Forgotten Land”.

[Ricardo Viana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um relato interessante feito por uma das grandes jornalistas europeias.

[Javier Hoffmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

great book about a forgotten land. and what the life of the Countess was in there

[Birko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein beeindruckendes Buch einer beeindruckenden Frau. Ich lese jetzt gleich noch ein weiteres Buch von ihr, welches in unserer kleinen Bibliothek steht.

[Novall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Translated by Jean Steinberg.

[Emilie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein Flohmarktfund. Ein feines kleines Buch, das eine Welt und eine Kultur beschreibt die nicht mehr existiert. Natürlich ist es die Sichtweise der privilegierten Oberschicht. Aber das Buch ist authentisch und unsentimental.

[Filip · Rating 2 out of 5]

If it were called 'Kindheit in Westfalen', this probably wouldn't be worth reading, as it consists of sometimes random reminiscences by an aging countess who is keen to make sure that she is totally modern, yet regularly gives away some of her prejudices and ingrained beliefs by a privileged class. But since the reader knows East Prussia is no more, every memory is tinged with nostalgia and an impending sense of doom (the book ends before the invasion by the Russians and the flight to the West).

[Justin Newland]

I loved this book. I had to search to get hold of an English translation of it, and even then it was second hand. I guess it's out of print, such a shame, because it is a gem. It's an autobiography, and I read it because I am researching East Prussia and what life was like for the people living on the land during the 18th century. Ok, Marion von Donhoff wasn't born until the early 1900's but you get a sense from her love of the land, of the people on the land, and the ceremonies and respects between the people and between the people and the land, that these things had endured and accumulated over many years and decades and centuries, and while the clothes might have changed, the sentiments definitely had not. There are photos too of barns and lakes and Castle Frederickstein, which I also wanted to research, and it's full of little anecdotes about her life, her relations with her governess, school teacher, her sisters and brothers, her mother and father, and the many peasants and servants that she engaged with. Towards the end, she inevitably tells the story of the downfall of East Prussia, of its rape by invading Russian soldiers, and that is quite tragic, yet somehow Marion doesn't hold any grudge at all, ending her narrative with the sublime (almost religious) sentiment along the lines that, 'the highest form of love is not possessive.' I loved this book, and because it's short and quirky, and eccentric, will probably read it again and again, because of the zeitgeist it evokes. Even in the early 1940's, Marion goes on a horse riding trip with her cousin, another woman, across East Prussia. The war is waging farther east in Russia and in France, but the two women travel around the country on horseback for several weeks on their own, stopping and asking farmers to put them up, to give them food, and so on, and not once did they ever express any fear of molestation, abuse, or anything untoward. I can't imagine two women going alone on a horseback journey across any country in Europe today and not suffering some sort of abuse. And some people say we live in a safer world than even 65 years ago. I don't get that, and I think this poignant horse-riding story tells it all. Marion von Donhoff - a real woman and a real lady. Not many like her about today.