Diana from Reventlow-Criminil

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Diana Henriette Adelaïde Charlotte Countess of Reventlow-Criminil (born May 29, 1863 in Preetz , Duchy of Holstein , Danish state ; † August 5, 1953 on the Hallig Südfall ) was a Holstein noblewoman who called the North Frisians of the Uthlande the "Hallig Countess" is remembered.

Life

Diana Countess Reventlow- Criminil was born as the daughter of Carl Adelbert Felix Graf von Reventlow-Criminil (1821-1908), landowner on Emkendorf , and his Scottish wife Isabella Harriet Jane Wemyss (1837-1908). Adolf Cécil Graf von Reventlow-Criminil (1861–1927 in Karlsbad ) was her older brother.

Diana grew up in Emkendorf and then lived the social life of a young member of the wealthy European nobility of the time at the court of Copenhagen, but also in Italy. She was an extravagant and unapproachable beauty and remained single despite all the proposals and advances befitting her rank. Her heart was for her own family and their animals. The relationship between her father and her brother was broken and the father tried to prevent the transfer from Emkendorf to his son with his will . After her father's death, she reached an agreement with her brother so that he could take over Emkendorf.

Hallig Südfall in the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea

Her brother's second marriage in 1907 with Alice Lilian Countess Hoyos (* 1877 in Fiume , † 1923 in Erlangen ), a granddaughter of Robert Whitehead , Diana moved to withdraw from Emkendorf and so it acquired in 1910 the holm Südfall that only a mound has , which was built on with an older house and agricultural outbuildings, and first spent the summers here with her animals and a small court, in later years until her death she lived all year round on Südfall. In addition, she owned a small marsh yard, the Püttenwarft, on the larger neighboring island of Nordstrand , which had been connected to the mainland by a dam since 1906/07.

After the early death of the brother's second wife, she took over the upbringing of his three children from this marriage, including Cecilia, later Countess von Sternberg (1908-1983) on Častolovice in Bohemia, and as the youngest Count Victor von Reventlow-Criminil , while the father went traveling in Europe. Cecilia Countess Sternberg therefore describes them in detail in her autobiography. After the death of her brother in 1929, the family's headquarters, Gut Emkendorf, had to be sold due to excessive indebtedness. The buyer was Curt Heinrich, the publisher of the Kieler Nachrichten .

The Püttenwarft on north beach

At the age of 74, she survived the severe storm surge of October 18, 1936 on Südfall, standing up to her stomach in the water with her horses in the stable, coaxing them to calm them down. She thought nothing of the National Socialists and, according to tradition, denigrated them as "brown baggage "; In 1945 she is also said to have taken in and hid a British pilot who was shot down over the mudflats for several weeks. Numerous anecdotes about them still live on the North Frisian Islands today.

The Hallig Südfall is an important starting point for Rungholt research. During the time of the Hallig Countess, the North Frisian local historian Andreas Busch (1883–1972), who discovered a medieval lock at Rungholt near Südfall in 1921 , and Diana's nephew Victor von Reventlow-Criminil in the mudflat for traces of settlement in the mudflats used to research from here submerged city and other places of the former island beach .

Diana von Reventlow-Criminil died a few months after her 90th birthday, which was celebrated on Südfall. The body was driven in four horses through the Wadden Sea to the mainland. She was buried in the family grave chapel attached to the parish church for Emkendorf, the St. Catharine Church in Westensee . In 1954, their heirs sold Südfall to the state of Schleswig-Holstein; The Hallig has been looked after as a nature reserve by the Jordsand Association since 1957 and is now part of the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park .

literature

  • Willi Hansen: Die Halliggräfin von Südfall , 4th edition, Schobüll 1989 ISBN 978-3-938098-35-6
  • Cecilia Sternberg: There was a castle in Bohemia. Years of travel for a European woman . German by Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1979, ISBN 3-455-07485-5
  • Eckardt Opitz : Diana Countess Reventlow-Criminil in: Who are our treasure and wealth. 60 portraits from Schleswig-Holstein . Christians, Hamburg 1990, pp. 240-244 ISBN 3-7672-1115-7 .

Web links

Commons : Diana from Reventlow-Criminil  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry at www.reventlow.dk
  2. ↑ Entry at reventlow.dk
  3. ↑ entry at reventlow.dk; her autobiography: There was a castle in Bohemia. Years of travel for a European woman . German by Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1979, ISBN 3-455-07485-5
  4. ↑ On Curt Heinrich: 150 Years of Kiel News from November 22, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Reventlow-Criminil, Diana of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reventlow-Criminil, Diana Henriette Adelaïde Charlotte Countess of (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Holstein nobles
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Preetz
DATE OF DEATH 5th August 1953
Place of death on the Hallig Südfall