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It is here in Bonn's Plittersdorfer mead, where the >>Carstanjen Castle<< stands in the middle of a wonderful English garden, that the blue flag of the UN first waved on June, 20 1996. And it is here that the United Nations has now taken up residence in Germany.
From her study in the south tower of the castle which was extended in the Gothic style in 1892 the new lady of the house, Dr. Brenda Gael McSweeney, Co-ordinator of the United Nations Volunteers is presented with a panorama which one cannot help but go into raptures about. One's gaze wanders from the tops of ancient trees over the Rhine |
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From the "Drachenfels" whose core is a cone made of basalt and is therefore composed of the solidified lava of a volcano was hewn the stone to build Cologne Cathedral as well as roads built 2000 years ago to join Colonia Agrippina with Rome before they were worn down by the migrations of the peoples. The Carolingians repaired the roads and in their wake the monks of Gandersheim came. King Arnulf of Kaernten who ruled the Rhineland from 887 to 899 gave the estates surrounding the "Seven Hills" which also included the Plittersdorf mead and its vineyards to them.
A part of the wine-growing estate was sold to the Cistercian Monastery of Heisterbach in 1197 a fact presumably inspiring its abbot to pen the famous "Dialogus mirabilis". When this property, also known by the name of "Auerhof", then passed entirely into the hands of the Heisterbach monks in 1318 the abbess Sophia von Gandersheim received - so say the chronicles - 50 pounds of the "thick Tourons" meaning the shillings minted in Tours in France.
However, the contemplative life of the monastery comes to an end when the French revolution begins in 1789. The hour of secularization strikes and continues to strike to this day. Napoleon annexes the church property and also the Plittersdorfer mead which in 1803 or on the 1. Vendemiaire XI of the revolutionary calendar is handed over to the so-called Senatorie of Poppelsdorf in Bonn whose first owner is Napoleon's brother Joseph. In 1816 when the Rhinelands are promised to Prussia at the Congress of Vienna it is the banker Johann Abraham Anton Schaaffhausen who becomes the owner. However, this is the very same man who turned down the "1.Consul of the French Republic", the uncrowned emperor Napoleon when he asked him to become Mayor of Cologne in 1800. When in 1804 Napoleon, by now crowned emperor, pays a visit to Cologne as one of Germany's "bonnes villes" he does not forego the opportunity to scrutinize this man at close range whereupon the following dialogue is said to have ensued: "Are there millionaires here?" - "Yes Sire, but their number has not been added to since 1797." --- "Well, what do you know - a proud German!"
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However, his pride and joy is his daughter Sibylle whose mother died while giving birth to her. This child, who was his first-born, goes down in the annals of history as the "Rhine Countess" and, as chance would have it, she celebrates her bicentenary on February, 3 1997. She owes her name to the painter of historical scenes Wilhelm Wach, friend of the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch who created the statue of Frederick the Second. Undoubtedly the name also stands for her exemplary noblesse and culture as well as for her social commitment which she demonstrates, for instance, during the cholera epidemic in Genoa in 1835. As a token of thanks King Carlo Alberto had a coin minted bearing her name.
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Heinrich Heine who was a student in Bonn at that time later made fun of Sibylle in his "Memoiren" when he alludes to her predilection for the Carneval and the Rhine dialect: "Cologne is the Tuscany of a classically bad German pronunciation and Koebes, that is Jacob, conspires with Marizzebill, that is Maria Sibylle, in a dialect sounding like and almost smelling of rotten eggs". The news had presumably travelled from Weimar to Plittersdorf namely via Sibylle's friend Ottilie von Goethe that the pert student with the green satchel had made a fool of her father-in-law Johann Wolfgang. Hence, the doors to the house of "Marizibill", the name she had given herself in the Carneval newspaper of 1823 are closed to Heine. Arthur Schopenhauer, "This world negator on account of his positive attitude to life" (Egon Friedell characterised him thus in his "History of Modern Civilization") even went as far as bringing an action against her over a gift made by Sibylle to his sister Adele. Adele Schopenhauer and her mother Joanna Schopenhauer both writers were, along with Annette von Droste-Huelshoff, regular guests in the "Auerhof" and in the "Zehnthhof" in Unkel on the other side of the Rhine which also belonged to the Mertens.
They were finally joined by kindred souls in the persons of Anne Jameson from England and Wilhelm Wach's sister Henriette Paalzow thus closing this circle of spiritual kinship.The period of Metternich now also draws to a close. When Adele Schopenhauer dies in 1849 and Sibylle loses her inheritance to her stepbrothers and sisters there is nobody here to keep her anymore and she leaves for Rome where she died on October, 22 1857. It is here that she also lies buried; her grave is located in the so-called Cemetery of the Germans.
Germany now prepares for unity under Prussia and the Suermondt family from Aachen takes over the estate only to sell it later to the businessman Andreas Solf. In 1882 it passes into the hands of Adolf von Carstanjen whose name the estate has borne ever since and which, step by step, loses its function as an agricultural concern.
view Carstanjen Castle in 1935
Under Carstanjen the house is used in the end for purely representative purposes: in keeping with the architectural style which the House of Hohenzollern preferred, the estate is transformed into the aforementioned Gothic castle by the architects Hartel and Neckelmann and then as from 1895 by the architect Josef Kleefisch. Robert, Carstanjen's son can, with his wife, still maintain this splendid building but after his death his widow is forced to hand the property over to the bureaucracy in 1941. The "Third Reich" turns the property into a military academy where preparations are made for "Endsieg" or the "Stunde Null".
Under the supreme command of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who eight years later was to become the thirty-fourth president of the United States of America, the allied forces confiscated the estate after taking over Bonn. The reconstruction of Germany was organised from here - both intellectually and materially. While the senior commissioners reside in the Petersberg opposite in what was also formerly the property of the "Rhine Countess" in the hotel set up by the Muehlens family and in which they invested the money which they earned from the sale of Eau de Cologne 4711, John McCloy moves into the >>Carstanjen Castle<<. From here he implements the Marshall Plan and sets up the American embassy in the neighbouring Deichmanns mead in Mehlem along with the United States Information Service which coordinated the re-education programme in the America Houses. The fact that the West German "jeunesse dorée" in the so-called '68 movement could think of nothing better to do than to project the unpleasant side of themselves on to the "Ugly American", must finally be acknowledged here after all this time. Or can it be that Thomas Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, today's United Nations, requires no further consideration?
But let us not talk about events before we get to them. Once the Marshall Plan was completed the German Treasury Department took up residence on November, 20 1957 in the building now being vacated by the Americans. Ten years later an extension was built increasing the size of the building considerably. Professor Sepp Ruf, who drew the plans for the German Chancellor's bungalow, had the remaining stables and barns pulled down at the end of 1967 and beginning of 1968 along with the greenhouse where Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen had grown rare plants which most likely also included the Indian Bean Tree planted out in the park by her friend Annette von Droste-Huelshoff where it took root and still blossoms annually. This meant that there was space for an administrative building in three parts including a canteen which could house the entire Ministry staff which until then had been scattered all over Bonn.
Another decade passed and Vernon Walters moved into the American embassy. This was the man who along with Eisenhower in 1944, "fought his way up from the Bay of Salerno to Berlin," the journalist wrote in an article to welcome him in "Die Welt" at that time.
And what did Walters do? In the end all he did was to ask the officials in Bonn what they thought about reunification. And in order to make sure he was not misunderstood he climbed into the railway car reserved especially for him at Mehlem railway station in order to travel to the heads of state, the "Ministerpraesidenten", of, at that time, only twelve Federal German states to ask them this very question.
| Yet all the ministers he asked, smiled uncomprehendingly - with the exception of Dr. Helmut Kohl MdB, the German Chancellor. He understood. And this is why, on July, 1 Dr. Brenda Gael McSweeney can leave Geneva and take her seat on the same chair in her study in >>Carstanjen Castle<< upon which the unforgotten John McCloy sat as he waited to help the many people who turned to him for assistance. |
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