Hetta Countess Treuberg

Henriette Irmgard Margot "Hetta" Countess Fischler von Treuberg , born von Kaufmann-Asser , (born November 10, 1886 in Berlin , † 1941 in Madrid , Spain ) was a German pacifist and political salonnière in the first third of the 20th century.

Life

Childhood and youth

Hetta von Kaufmann-Asser was the daughter of the Calvinist architect Ludwig von Kaufmann-Asser (1851-1910) and his Jewish wife Baroness Lina Bianka (according to other sources: Luisa Bianca) Landau. Shortly after she was born in Berlin, her parents first moved to Weimar and later to Florence . She had two brothers. Her uncle on her father's side, who said she had shaped her a lot, was the politician and Nobel Peace Prize laureate from 1911, Tobias Asser .

In both Weimar and Florence, her parents' house quickly became a meeting point for the city's intellectual and artistic circles. In Weimar z. B. the composer Richard Strauss among the guests. In Florence, where the family lived in the former Boccaccio villa, there frequented not only Italian aristocrats but also many well-known German artists, e.g. B. the painter Arnold Böcklin and the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand . A lasting enthusiasm for Italy and painting was aroused here in the young Hetta. At the age of seventeen she was introduced to the court of King Umberto I in Rome .

In 1904 she met the Bavarian treasurer Ernst Ludwig Graf Fischler von Treuberg (1874–1950) in Florence , whom she married on June 28th in Baden-Baden and with whom she moved to his estate in Holzen near Augsburg in Bavaria. Already at this time she was socially committed and organized, for example, together with Princess Fugger, a charity bazaar for the benefit of the victims of a flood in Augsburg.

There she also repeatedly met various personalities, primarily from the court society of the Wittelsbachers, politics and culture, and enjoyed herself at (and over) court balls and other social events. Through this early acquired knowledge and relationships, she later had excellent contacts and access to the highest circles of European diplomacy and the Berlin and Munich governments.

The couple had three children: Count Franz Friedrich Treuberg , Amalia ("Amelie"), Maria Crescentia Isabella Gudrun Margarete (1908–1918) and Bianca Henrietta Maria (1913–1984). The latter was the mother of Rupert Ludwig Ferdinand zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg (1933-2014), a German-British banker and long-time financial manager of the Rolling Stones .

Start of political engagement

Since she had developed completely different ideas about life, she and her husband divorced by mutual agreement on May 19, 1914, after the birth of their third child in Augsburg. Countess Treuberg first went back to Florence. When the First World War began and Italy was about to enter the war, their political commitment increased. She traveled frequently to Rome and discussed the situation with diplomats there.

At their request, she went to Berlin with her three children and her mother in April 1915 , in the vain hope of convincing Matthias Erzberger and Bernhard von Bülow and thus helping to prevent the Italian entry into the war.

Her pacifist engagement began in the summer of 1916. Together with the Danish Countess Polly Ahlefeldt-Laurvigen (1849-1919), who was active in the Red Cross, she campaigned for the return of German and other prisoners of war in Denmark .

Political Salon

After her return, Countess Hetta Treuberg in Berlin immediately ran a political salon in the Hotel Bristol , which she said was “the center of society” and where she “could have a completely different mediating, mediating and enlightening effect”, as she writes in her memoir . Her salon was by far the most important, and for a long time the only political salon in what was then Berlin.

Many personalities from the most diverse contemporary political directions from all over Europe (and beyond) visited this salon: many diplomats from the Foreign Office as well as the former Prussian Prime Minister and Reich Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow , the Reichstag members Eduard Bernstein ( SPD , reform-oriented revisionist) and Oskar Cohn (Nordhausen , SPD), furthermore Karl Kautsky (SPD, Marxist-oriented), the envoy Friedrich Rosen , Karl von Wedel , the publicist Theodor Wolff , Walther Schücking a . v. a.

Later, she was also accused of salon visits by Karl Helfferich ( DNVP ) and Matthias Erzberger ( center ) as well as political influencing of the young Prince Konrad Luitpold Franz von Bayern during his salon visits, which she denied.

She also frequented the Hotel Adlon . She later moved the salon to the Hotel Esplanade for security reasons . For a while, former Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, who had fallen out of favor with the Kaiser after his resignation, even lived with her for a short time with his wife.

Her influence extended so far that she, who had excellent language skills (including Italian, French, English, Polish, Russian and Danish), was able to work temporarily (and with unofficial tolerance) for the Foreign Office in place of her brother Heinrich, the Was the press officer of the war press office, but had less language skills. She evaluated a large part of the international press and wrote (presumably "colored" accordingly) memoranda to the administration.

Her political role model was above all Maximilian Harden . Together with Harden, the Countess campaigned for Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg to end the submarine war immediately . Their political objective was "a federal state with a representative head". She was quite proud of the German cultural nation as a fatherland, but precisely because of this patriotic love for Germany she strictly rejected Prussian militarism . To a certain extent, however, it also supported other political directions, insofar as these promoted pacifism as well as the socialist movement. She rejected Bolshevism and rather sympathized with the land reforms of Stolypin .

Hetta Gräfin Treuberg already published articles in various press organs during the First World War, including for Die Zukunft (publisher: Maximilian Harden). The magazine has been repeatedly banned. She attributed the first ban to the fact that Harden, on her initiative, had met with the leaders of the left-wing USPD , Hugo Haase and Eduard Bernstein , in her salon (she mentions several times in her autobiography that she was observed and blackened by informers ). Treuberg arranged the meeting in order - without success - to win Harden as the successor to the imprisoned Karl Liebknecht . Like Harden and Countess Treuberg, the USPD, a pacifist split from the SPD founded in April 1917, advocated a “ peace of understanding ”.

Through her contacts with journalists in her political salon, she received several reports on her activities at home and abroad. Her massive political commitment, which earned her the nickname “the red countess”, and the public attention became increasingly dangerous for the countess. A house search initially ended without any consequences.

From August 24 to October 2, 1918, however, she was temporarily arrested in Woldenberg , a small town in the Mark Brandenburg region; their political salon was closed by the police on September 12, 1918, partly because of tolerating expressions of doubt about the victory of the Central Powers, participating in preparations for the revolution and espionage for foreign powers.

Their arrest and subsequent expulsion only increased their level of awareness. In some foreign newspapers she was then hailed as the "second Madame de Staël ".

She briefly traveled to Munich because of a fatal illness of her daughter, who was being cared for there, where she witnessed the proclamation of the Munich Soviet Republic and met Kurt Eisner . After the revolution she initially returned to Berlin, where she said she was rehabilitated and even compensated.

Activities after the First World War

Since the losers appeared like victorious rulers even after the First World War , they reactivated their political salon, still the only one in Berlin. Again politicians and diplomats - from the old and new governments as well as from abroad - were present for talks alongside writers, journalists and representatives of the Red Cross almost every day.

On May 13, 1919, at the beginning of the Weimar Republic , she was expelled entirely from Berlin and Prussia at Matthias Erzberger's personal instigation , whereupon she temporarily moved to Bamberg, Munich and Heidelberg.

As a result, she intensified her journalistic activities again. She published her memoirs as early as 1921 . On November 28, 1923, she wrote to the President of the Reichstag, Paul Löbe , urging him very self-confidently: “If you force your Chancellor to tackle the finances, you will demand politics from the Foreign Office. Maybe recovery is possible, but only if we are a moral Size raise acquires the trust and respect of other States. " . Around 1920 she began to write “because I want to be heard” for the weekly Die Weltbühne , the forum for the radical democratic bourgeois left. She became one of the "prolific writers", a total of more than 20 politically committed contributions can be found here, e. B. on September 30, 1920 an open letter to Walter Simons , the then foreign minister. Her articles focus on critical statements on foreign and financial policy.

The last article for the Weltbühne , about Giovanni Giolitti , the left-liberal multiple prime minister of Italy and Mussolini opponent who died a few days earlier , is dated July 24, 1928.

Apparently the anti-Semitic pressure, which she describes in her memoir, became so strong in the following period that she emigrated from Germany . In any case, shortly after the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, she stayed in neutral Switzerland in the Geneva Hotel “International” and exchanged letters with Albert Einstein . Einstein, who by then had also left Germany for good, replied to her letter of April 23rd on May 2nd from Le Coq sur Mer in Belgium : “I fully share the views expressed in your letter: destruction of the entire upper class by the now finally mobilized poebel . (But what about the Reichswehr ??). "

After that, their track is lost.

Countess Hetta Treuberg died in Madrid in 1941 ( Francoist Spain had not entered the war).

meaning

Thanks to her work on numerous political and civil-social levels, Hetta Countess Treuberg was one of the best-known and most important German pacifists of the first third of the 20th century.

Their strategy, on the one hand to be heard and understood in direct conversation by the people who made the decisions about politics and the war, and on the other hand to build pressure through conversation networks "behind the scenes" and later also statements to the domestic and foreign press, has in the German Politics showed little effect. It may even have been counterproductive in parts (see Harden's ban on “Die Zukunft” magazine ).

The reasons for this are mainly:

• the Prussian-military-arrogant attitude of many relevant persons and institutions, who were not very receptive to their logically argumentative, European culture-conscious, social and pacifist, also self-confident and highly committed (quote: “Don't hope - man must create!” ) line of argumentation
• because she was a woman (which was still uncommon in politics)
• later also increasingly because she was a “half-Jew”

Countess Treuberg's political salon was by far the most important, and for a long time the only political salon in what was then Berlin.

Literature and Sources

• Hetta Gräfin Treuberg (author) / Marie-Joseph Bopp (ed.): Between politics and diplomacy. Memoirs of Hetta Countess Treuberg geb. v. Merchant asser ; Strasbourg: Imprimerie Strasbourgeoise, 1921
• Hetta Countess Treuberg: Erzbergers Finanzpolitik , Berlin: Verlag der Weltbühne, 1920, pp. 378-380. Reprint from: Die Weltbühne, year 16 (1920), no. 12–14, March 25, 1920
• Joachim Bergmann: The Schaubühne, the world stage: 1905–1933 ; Bibliography and index with annotations; Munich [u. a.]: Saur, Vol. 1, 1991 (Vol. 2 not yet published), ISBN 3-598-10831-1
• The Gotha. Genealogical paperback of the count's houses , 62nd year, 1909,
• Ann-Katrin Silke Horst: A neglected aspect of Berlin's press history. The journalists of the magazine 'Die Weltbühne' in the Weimar Republic ; Munich, Univ., Master's thesis, 1998 (with a list of contributions to the world stage by Hetta Gräfin Treuberg)
• Adolf Stein (a conservative journalist, pseudonym: Rumpelstiltskin ) briefly mentioned Hetta Countess Treuberg in a contemporary gloss in the “Daily Rundschau”. His glosses on the cultural and contemporary events of the twenties were reprinted in many newspapers throughout the empire and published in book form in the following year:

Adolf Stein: That anyway! ; ( Rumpelstiltskin ; Vol. 11), in Gloss 29 of March 19, 1931, pp. 225–226, [Gloss partial title "Madame l'Allemagne" (about Henny Porten , married to Wilhelm v. Kaufmann-Asser) a. "Kaufmann-Assers" (about Günther v. Kaufmann-Asser and Hetta Countess Treuberg)], Berlin: Brunnen-Verlag Willi Bischoff, 1931

Web links

• Literature by and about Hetta Countess Treuberg in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ according to self-disclosure in her memoir; it indicates the father's occupation as an engineer.
2. ↑ This was a son of Maria Crescentia von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Ferdinand Graf Fischler von Treuberg (1845-1897), relative of Dom Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil .
3. ^ Prince Rupert Loewenstein: "A Prince among Stones", Bloomsbury, London 2013, ISBN 978-1-4088-3279-0
4. ↑ Hedda Adlon: Hotel Adlon . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich (2nd edition) 1979, ISBN 3-453-00926-6 , p. 112