Eleonore von Haeften, Lehndorff née Countess, could citizens convey to children, egalitarian, educated, after only a few hours on a boat, near a pool or on the edge of a opening, that the nobility was less a privilege than an obligation. The nobility of the “Nona”, as they called all, was not carved only in their graceful appearance, but much deeper into your essence, your Aura.
her distinctive, unmistakable face, the shining eyes, the loud, deep, and powerful Laugh, the raucous voice of that never-ending stream of ironies and sarcasm, usually without any bitterness, elegant distance from everything and everyone, to some extent, of course, alive and entertaining. To all of you, except your life people Wummi Wagner – and the own family.
Nona was not even seven years old, as the shame of the lawyers of the third Reich executed her father, a resistance fighter count Heinrich von Lehndorff-Steinort,. For Nona, and their three sisters – the youngest should not know your father never broke only one world, but all of them combined. Grew up at Schloss Steinort, the greatest Good of East Prussia, since the 1420 family-owned, had to Nona leaving, in a sense, over night the home of their Childhood.
The father had been a day after the failed assassination attempt by count von Stauffenberg, the Gestapo, to keep his pregnant wife from torture or the Like. Nona came up with their sisters in a home before Henry’s cousin, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff you with the since-imprisoned mother brought together.
His beloved, brave, in all the initiated woman, and the children of Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort, with bound hands, a day before the execution, a last letter written, even after 70 years of goosebumps and moist eyes producing, incredible love letter, even all the way up in the Syntax into it with all the Emotion of those Prussian strict discipline and sobriety was, he felt committed to. So he called an SS-camp as “not nice between the station”. This had to be enough.
The father was a picaroon, a Hedonist and Bon vivant, the decided to the sight of a barbarous murder of a child by an SS-man, the resistance to connect. The SS had a monster hit the child so long against a tree until it was dead.
After this experience, Nona’s father changed his life. In a sustainable manner. First of all, entirely in Secret, only his wife, the love of God, a born Countess of Kalnein, trusting. Quickly the officer is a member of the leadership circle of the resistance, Stauffenberg was. With the bizarre Note, that Hitler lived foreign Minister, Ribbentrop always to lehndorff’s in the castle, and as late geadelter pretty submissive, trying to be from the old aristocracy accepted. The small Nona knew Ribbentrop as the inhabitants of your castle. After the age of 20. In July 1944, he played only a little about the gang, for her father’s murderer. The need to understand a child only once.
socially glamorous life
Nona lived a life in the shadow of this tragedy. Her first husband, Jan von Haeften, was taught the son of the executed resistance fighter Hans Bernd von Haeften. She married him in 1957. Even then, Nona has lived a glamorous life and repeated – kitchen psychologically to be here – that exciting, luxurious, and probably a privileged life, that was your father after the fall in the Serious and the encounter with the barbarism is no longer the privilege of.
From this marriage two sons. Nona told how she drove to the delivery of a blow at the wheel of your Porsche in the clinic. Everyone who knew Nona, could imagine this very well. She was a heroic figure, even in the smallest Details. Emancipated, proud and yet in the shadow of her family history is always a dandy stick of irony required. Nona loved the surface because of to a lot had to do including pain and dark memories.
The resistance in Germany was a resistance without a people. It was mostly the resistance of a privileged Elite. The nobility took over the responsibility for his father’s country, the decency in the Wake of the national socialist frenzy, Would had lost, morality, and civilization. May be translated Nona also this from the common German.
your life people, Wummi Wagner, got to know them in the beginning of the 1970s, and this connection had on so many levels somewhat delicate plant Say. Historically trivial and, of course, not by chance: Wolf Siegfried Wagner, the great-grandson of Richard Wagner, son of Wieland, was adored by Adolf Hitler and admired. Uncle Wolf was the name of the brown one “leader” in Bayreuth, and it was certainly no coincidence that Wummi Wagner, 1943, and was baptized in the name of Wolf, Siegfried.
Since the end of the 80s, Nona and Wummi from Germany were gone – and to Mallorca, where the Wieland-Wagner-son developed after years as a Director and stage designer, to a successful architect, the Modern and Mallorcan Tradition and style Association. Meanwhile, Nona von Haeften as an interior designer and boutique owner sought to the Mundane of the Balearic island. Their Finca in the South-East of the island was a centre of two families that merged by this great love, even as a historical gesture against the cracks of the 20th century. Century.
The four-Wagner-great-grandchildren Iris, Wummi, Daphne and Nike have teamed up with the four-Lehndorff-daughters, Nona, Katherine, Gabriele and Vera, as the Veruschka the world famous: As a photo model and actress she became the first German Supermodel. “From your face the Unattainable,” has Diana Vreeland, the legendary “Vogue”-Boss said that once, and it was similar with Nona. Vera has described in her memoirs, the trauma of the families of the resistance, as she was called, even in the supposedly entnazifi ed West Germany, the daughter of a murderer.
The sisters remained inseparable. Now you need to without your oldest living organ living out their domination to some extent. She was the boss, so as Wummi-in-chief was. Together, they created a patchwork family that had become as thick as thieves and -keeps. Wummi and Nona Association moreover, expect, deep black, radical Humor.
In each of the Pointe had to in case of doubt, against the lowlands of the 20th century. Century rebellion. Both dedicated for the history of your family. Nona the restoration of Schloss Steinort, Wummi furthermore, for the case of Bayreuth, and Wagner. If a little hemmed in by the part of the Wagner clan who now has the Say: the children of the more artisanal, Wolfgang Wagner.
Nona von Haeften was a great hostess, also as a severe illness, she began to draw. But proud and erect as it was, went and saw refused to give them the disease, the Triumph, to sugarcoating it with bent head. She beamed, she was soft, and when the next satellite got married to the core-double-family, flew them, even if you are discouraged by the Doctors. Nona challenged everything and everyone, the fate anyway.
Radically emancipated
Like her sister Vera, the courage of the father, and of your indomitable mother, was her own. Nona was not radically emancipated, even so emancipated that she was ashamed, also, in fashion magazines and Tabloids see to the Right. Nona had a big, generous heart. You helped until the end, everyone who was close to her. No matter how it last with your forces ordered. It was only possible, because your life person was inviolable. In the end it was nearly a half-century. Wummi Wagner used Nona von Haeften to the end. Nona died on 19. September in Hamburg.
On Monday, Nona von Haeften, born Gräfin Lehndorff is buried in Bayreuth. Here too a circle closes.
Antje Vollmer has published the biography of the parents of Nona von Haeften, under the title “double life” in btb. The afterword, written by Hanna Schygulla.
