THE COUNTESS VON HOHENLOHE: A PARABLE

(July 4, 2018)

            As a young assistant professor, I enjoyed a grant one summer to accomplish research in some of the finest libraries and archives in Italy.  Among these institutions were Rome’s Vatican Library, where I examined Petrarch’s original holograph manuscript of the Rime sparse, and Florence’s Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (Laurentian Library), where the director gave me a personal tour of Medici treasures in the vaults and arranged for me to meet with the director of the city’s Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Italy’s largest library) and its Archivio di Stato.  What proved most memorable about my research trip, however, took place after my Italian sojourn had ended when I was invited to travel to Bern, Switzerland, to meet with the owners of the rare book firm of Volkoff & von Hohenlohe.  The story of my encounter with Countess Adelheid von Hohenlohe follows.  I share it not only as the story of an immigrant who made a successful new life in the United States but also as a parable for our times.  Each element of the following narrative carries a second, metaphorical or allegorical meaning, and I invite my readers to ponder possible meanings for their lives.

After I arrived in Bern and checked into my hotel, I called the telephone number that had been given me for Volkoff & von Hohenlohe.  I was told that the Countess von Hohenlohe’s business and life partner, an immigrant of Russian descent named Ivan Volkoff, would drive to the hotel at the appointed time and wait for me outside.  I inquired, “How will I know who he is?” The answer was simple:  “He will be driving a Cadillac.”  While the presence of expensive cars in Switzerland was not unusual then or now, an American-made Cadillac was practically unheard of.  Sure enough, at the hour agreed upon, a Cadillac pulled up in front of my lodging.  The driver identified himself as Ivan Volkoff, and he was to be my chauffeur.  He explained that the Countess lived on the outskirts of the city in a tall apartment building.  When we arrived, I saw that the edifice was surrounded by a high fence and that entry to the underground parking garage was possible only upon insertion of a special card in a designated slot beside the massive iron gate.  After we gained entry and parked the car, we entered an elevator.  Ivan explained that the Countess lived on the top floor and that access to her penthouse apartment was possible only if one had a special key that allowed the elevator to reach the floor in question.  He then inserted the required key and pressed the button for the penthouse.  The elevator rose quickly, and soon I found myself in the home of a member of the German aristocracy.

Even though I had visited most of the major art museums in Europe and the United States, I was not prepared for what I next experienced.  The parquet floors were covered with magnificent woven carpets.  The first salon, filled with antique furniture, featured a French Empire-styled settee and coffee table covered with Meissen figurines arranged as if they were dancing.  Dutch still-life paintings hung on the walls to either side of an eighteenth-century Dutch inlaid cabinet.  The second salon included an Italian Renaissance chest and complementary furnishings.  The third room I entered was the dining room, with the table set with exquisite china and silver in preparation for our lunch.  It was in that room that I was formally introduced to the Countess, who insisted that I call her Adelheid.

As we sat down to eat, I couldn’t help but notice that the massive silver candelabra in the middle of the table carried the von Hohenlohe coat of arms.  I struggled to know what to say in such a sumptuous and unfamiliar setting.  I felt as though I were eating in a museum and was hesitant to speak for fear of making a faux pas.  Finally I said, “I assume these beautiful furnishings come from the von Hohenlohe family estate.”  The Countess smiled politely, but her reply stunned me and, in many ways, changed the course of my life (leading me to become not only an academic but also a serious collector of antique prints and books).

“No,” she replied, “everything you see, with the exception of the family silver, came from California; I have brought it back to its home, to its original continent.”  I was intrigued, and after lunch the Countess took me on a tour of the penthouse and shared with me her story and the story of her family.

Adelheid grew up in a castle situated on a 20,000-acre estate in southeastern Germany, in the region known as Hohenlohe.  As a child she had enjoyed the services of a personal maid, who chose her clothes and helped to bathe and dress her.  Her father, Prince von Hohenlohe, was a general in World War I in the Kaiser’s army.  When a fragment from an exploding artillery shell struck him in the head, he was blinded.  Adelheid, who was born in 1913, the year before the Great War started, grew up with a father who was blind.  As they visited the castles and estates of her princely relatives, she served as a guide to her father.  Taking his hand, leading him through rooms, and functioning as his eyes, she learned to describe precisely and in great detail the tapestries, furniture, silver, china, and objets d’art she saw.  In return her father would tell her the history of the various works and how to identify and interpret everything from mythological scenes to trade marks on fine porcelain.  What she did for her father, she did out of love and a sense of filial duty.  She never expected to have any need or practical use for the information he provided in return; she believed herself destined to inherit a life of wealth and privilege.

Everything changed with the rise of Nazi Germany and the outbreak of World War II.  After a half-dozen tumultuous years, Germany lost the war and the country was divided into two parts.  The von Hohenlohe castle was situated in the countryside in what became known as East Germany, and their large family town house was located in East Berlin.  Her family had access to neither, and they lost ownership to the Communist regime.  Adelheid’s father was deceased, and she was left only with her widowed mother and the family silver.  With her castle and town home no longer available to her, she immigrated to the United States with the same wave of German immigrants that included the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (1912-1977). She landed in California with her aged and ill mother and few material possessions other than the aforementioned family silver.

What does a German Countess do when she finds herself in a foreign land with little more than her title and none of the servants and lands to which she was accustomed?  In Adelheid’s case she chose not to despair over incalculable losses.  Rather she drew on the knowledge she had gained while serving as her father’s eyes and listening to his stories.

At this point in the narration of her life story, Adelheid led me back to the first salon I had seen in the penthouse.  She opened the glass doors of the Dutch inlaid cabinet I had previously admired, and she encouraged me to tell her what I saw.  I looked and told her that I spied several attractive cups and saucers of different patterns.  She asked if any in particular set caught my fancy as being unusual.  To my untrained eye, I could only reply, rather lamely, “They all look pretty to me!”  She then picked up one cup and saucer, showed me the mark on the underside, handed the set to me, and related:  “I found this cup and saucer at a garage sale in California and paid $26 for it.  The children or grandchildren who were selling it had no idea of it significance.”  I thought to myself, “Well, $26 is a lot to pay for a cup and saucer that don’t match any of the others.”  However, I said nothing and waited for the teaching moment.  She continued, “The mark indicates that it is of Swiss manufacture and dates from the eighteenth century.”  While I had heard of fine porcelain such as Sevres in France and Meissen in Germany, I had never heard of any that was early Swiss.  Adelheid added, “It is extremely rare and has been appraised at $10,000.”  My hands began to tremble ever so slightly, and I quickly returned the cup and saucer to her.  I wondered, “Why didn’t the original owners pass that knowledge to their children?”

Adelheid then proceeded to tell me the story of several of the pieces in the room:  a set of Meissen figurines had been misidentified as to their date in an auction catalog; she, recognizing what decade they were, had purchased them for a fraction of their worth.  The same was true of a Dutch still life painting that had contained an incorrect or imprecise description by the auctioneer.  In the dining room she showed me a large painting of a landscape.  She pointed to the lower right-hand corner, where I saw a signature and a date from the first half of the nineteenth century.  I did not, however, recognize the artist’s name.  She explained, “I found this painting in a California art gallery.  It was quite dusty and had a small tear in the canvas.  I recognized the artist’s name as an Austrian naturalist painter who is extremely collectible, especially in his native land.  The gallery owner had not done any research because he didn’t think anyone would want the painting because of the dirt  and the tear.  I paid $200 for it and had it cleaned and the repair mended.  The last offer I had for it was $40,000.”  Once again, Adelheid’s knowledge, gleaned at her blind father’s side, had paid a huge dividend. 

At that point my curiosity was piqued by an unusual all-white porcelain sculpture, about eighteen inches tall, of a hunter, a pack of dogs, and a stag.  When I asked about it, she said, “Oh, I misspoke earlier when I said everything came from California.  I found that piece in Utah in an antique store.  I immediately recognized it as an exceptional piece of early nineteenth-century Meissen.  It was undoubtedly packed in straw, placed in a barrel, and brought across the plains by a pioneer family.  It would have been their prized possession.  As it was passed down through the generations, the story of its origin was lost.  A descendant, not realizing that it was a museum piece, sold it for pennies on the dollar to an antique dealer, who likewise did not recognize what it was.”  Adelheid had paid next to nothing for an art object worthy of a museum.

While the Countess surrounded herself with art work and furniture that reminded her of her former life, she made her living by buying and selling old books.  As with the art she collected, she had the ability to recognize important rare books for sale at auctions and in antiquarian bookstores and private collections, purchase them for reasonable sums, and then increase their value through detailed descriptions of what they represented.  In essence, she made a living by drawing on her vast storehouse of knowledge and her ability to do research.  She shared what she learned in relation to the acquired books and manuscripts and offered them to libraries and collectors around the world.  When I met her, she had regained enough affluence that she was able to live on two continents, dividing her time between Europe and the United States.  Eventually she retired to Solvang, California, where she died in 2010 at the age of 97 years.

Everyone with whom I have shared the story of the Countess von Hohenlohe has taken away different messages.  Some have focused on the need to have a guide, such as Ivan Volkoff was for me, to lead or introduce a young person to influential figures or mentors.  Others have commented on the need for credentials, such as the card to open the gates or the key to get to the penthouse floor, in order to reach where we wish to go.  Some who have inherited family heirlooms have expressed their disappointment in not asking their grandparents, now deceased, about the history and value, material or otherwise, of those objects.  Parents have shared with me their renewed desire to explain to their children what is most important to them, so that their knowledge or testimony or experience is not lost or forgotten.  One message I have taken away is the realization that serving another person, such as the blind father, often comes back to bless the giver of service in unexpected ways.

I am interested in what lesson(s) the readers of this blog take away from the story of the Countess von Hohenlohe.  (Perhaps at a future date I’ll tell the story of Ivan Volkoff, whose maternal grandfather was one of the wealthiest Russian landowners prior to the 1918 revolution, and how Ivan made his way to California.)

[Photo, courtesy of Ivan Volkoff, is of Adelheid von Hohenlohe on her 85th birthday in Solvang, CA.]