Marie Vassiltchikov
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Marie Illarionovna Vassiltchikov (Russian: Мария Илларионовна Васильчикова; January 11, 1917 - August 12, 1978) was a Russian princess who was involved in the July 20 Plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
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[edit] Early life
Princess Marie ("Missie") Vassiltchikov was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the waning days of the Russian Empire, on January 11, 1917. She was the fourth child of a member of the Fourth Duma, knyaz Illarion Sergeevich Vassilchikov and his wife, Lidiya Leonidovna (nee princess Vyazemsky). As members of the aristocracy, her parents fled Russia in 1919, following the Bolshevik October Revolution. Vassiltchikov lived as a refugee in Weimar Republic Germany, the French Third Republic, and Lithuania until the start of World War II.
[edit] Plot to kill Hitler
In 1940, Vassiltchikov and her sister, Princess Tatiana Vassiltchikov [1] (1915-2006), traveled to Berlin where, as stateless persons, they were able to obtain work permits. After a brief period of employment with the Broadcasting Service, Vassiltchikov transferred to the Auswärtiges Amt (AA), or German Foreign Ministry's Information Office, where she worked as the assistant to Dr. Adam von Trott zu Solz.
The A.A. was a gathering place for civilian members of the anti-Nazi resisters, von Trott among them, who, in 1944, were among the leaders of the July 20 Plot to kill Adolf Hitler. Vassiltchikov kept diaries of her life in the plotters' circle, writing in shorthand and keeping the pages hidden in her A.A. office. In addition, her diaries detail the bombing of Berlin, the daily life of what remained of Berlin's cosmopolitan pre-war nobility and intelligentsia, and her own journey from privilege to near-death at the end of the war.
Following the failed attempted to kill Hitler, many of Vassiltchikov's friends and colleagues were imprisoned; a number were killed. Vassiltchikov and a friend, Princess Elenore (Loremarie) von Schönburg, both active in the plot, went several times to Gestapo headquarters to plead for the life of Adam von Trott zu Solz (among others) and to bring food and packages. Finally, they were warned by a guard not to return.
After Adam von Trott zu Solz was executed, Vassiltchikov left Berlin and traveled to Vienna, where she worked as a nurse until the end of the war.
[edit] After the war
Vassiltchikov was found by the United States Third Army under George S. Patton outside Gmunden on May 4, 1945. She worked as an interpreter for the army, but contracted scarlet fever and was transported to a hospital unit.
After her return to health, Vassiltchikov married a captain of the United States Military Intelligence, Peter G. Harnden. They settled in Paris, where Harnden opened an architectural firm. After Harnden died in Barcelona in 1971, Vassiltchikov moved to London. She died there, of leukemia, on August 12, 1978.
At the time of her death, Vassiltchikov was survived by her four children; her brother, Prince Georges Vassiltchikov; her sister, Tatiana, whose wedding to Prince Paul Metternich (great-grandson of Klemens von Metternich, the famed diplomat of the Congress of Vienna), forms one of the diary's most vivid passages; and others.
[edit] Legacy
Vassiltchikov's diaries are the only known first-hand account of the July 20th Plot to kill Adolf Hitler. In addition, her description of the repeated bombing of Berlin is considered one of the best testimonies of that event.
The diaries are also important in that they chronicle a little-known aspect of Hitler's war crimes: the destruction of the aristocracy of Europe. Hitler and the aristocracy had an uneasy relationship during the war. After it became clear that many of the July 20 Plot participants were members of the aristocracy, Hitler used the assassination attempt as an excuse to wipe out many members of the prominent members of the ruling families of Europe.
A poignant feature of Vassiltchikov's diary is its arc from the first pages in 1940 to its conclusion in 1945. She begins by recounting a night spent dancing at a ball at the Chilean embassy and ends with her flight from Vienna, which found her stumbling, filthy and half-starved, across a bombed railroad depot at the end of the war. Her account of wartime Berlin at times takes on an air of surreality as she writes about days that combined lunches at the Adlon and nights spent in half-ruined flats and conversations that ranged from gossip about her noble and royal friends to the intended killing of Hitler.
[edit] Reviews
"A skillful weaving of history, memoir, and autobiography...full of colorful characters...When she began writing in 1940, Missie, as she was called, was...concerned mainly with beaux and parties . . . By 1945 she has no more illusions. She has foraged for food . . . She has smelled the decaying flesh of corpses buried in the bombed ruins of Berlin and Vienna and lost some of her best friends." -- Washington Post Book World
"Neither a set of reflections nor a philippic, but a record . . . The best eyewitness account we possess of the bombing of Berlin." -- Gordon A. Craig, The New York Times Book Review
"A rare opportunity to see the Second World War from an unusual perspective: the view from Berlin and Vienna, not Washington or London. [The author] has a sharp eye and a witty tongue." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A vivid insider's view of Nazi Germany." -- Vanity Fair
"One of the most remarkable documents to come out of the war, and nothing will ever quite match its calm and grace in utterly hideous circumstances." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
[edit] External links
- Marie Vassiltchikov: Berlin Diaries 1940-1945, 1988. ISBN 0-394-75777-7 Russian translation available online
- Tatiana Metternich: Five Passports in a Shifting Europe, 1976. ISBN 0-434-46525-9
- Random House Author's Page: Marie Vassiltchikov
- Amazon.com link to Tatiana Metternich
