Marion Gräfin Dönhoff - Forming opinions with courage

Marion Gräfin Dönhoff was actively involved against the Nazi regime and was considered the most influential German publicist of the post-war period. The native of Hamburg set the course for "Zeit".

by Stefanie Grossmann

The life of Marion Countess Dönhoff was marked by loss, resistance and escape. She lost her home in East Prussia, beloved family members and friends. She was actively involved in the resistance against National Socialism and she broke out of the standing by invading typically male domains. At the same time, she remained deeply rooted in her class, her origins and her gender. This ambivalence began in childhood and continued throughout the life of what was once Germany's most influential journalist.

Marion Countess Dönhoff was born on December 2, 1909 as the last of seven children at the family estate Schloss Friedrichstein near Königsberg. Although she is the youngest, she does not grow up as a baby. On the contrary:her relationship with her parents is distant. She has a rather cool relationship with her mother, Ria Gräfin Dönhoff. This may also be due to the fact that this is dominated by "comme-il-faut", feudal behavior befitting their status. Her father, the diplomat and politician August Graf Dönhoff, died when Marion Dönhoff was nine years old. She only revised her first impressions of the head of the family much later. At first she tries to avoid him because he is always looking for a child to read to because of his bad eyesight. Since the older siblings often skilfully evade, little Marion has to read to her father from daily newspapers such as the "Times", the "Figaro" and the "Frankfurter".

From lonely child to self-confident girl

Marion Gräfin Dönhoff grew up close to her disabled sister Maria. She is often scolded by her older siblings, and overall she receives little recognition within the family. She feels like an outsider. Although Marion was very Prussian and disciplined even as a child and separates reason from emotion, she also has a second side:she is wild and irrepressible. "And in order to survive, the forgotten girl blossoms into an unconventional tomboy," is how the author Alice Schwarzer put it in her biography "Marion Dönhoff. A Resistant Life." Although a Countess, she much prefers to spend her time in stables and in the great outdoors, climbing trees and learning to whistle through the fingers of the coachman.

One day she is abruptly freed from this early childhood, which was marked by long, silent solitude. Her saviors are cousin Heini von Lehndorff and his sister Sissi, who live on a neighboring estate. The three children get regular lessons and otherwise spend most of their time in the Masurian countryside. Marion feels liberated and gains self-confidence. Her situation in the family also improves:her older sisters Christa and Yvonne have married, Maria is sent to the church institution Bethel, the eldest brother Heinrich goes to war. With the other two brothers Christoph and Dieter, she now has a close friendship:"In these happy years with brothers and sisters, cousins, her picture of love is formed," writes Schwarzer in her biography. She has pursued this dream of sibling love all her life.

Via the home economics school to the doctoral thesis

The tensions and contrasts in Marion Gräfin Dönhoff's early years also determine the rest of her life. Despite her mother's objections, she graduates from high school. She even makes it to a boys' high school in Potsdam, where she is the only student among 18 boys. In 1928 she passed a brilliant Abitur. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff would like to go to university right away, but her mother wants her to do a year of home economics in Switzerland before she goes to university. She sticks it out for a year, then travels to the USA with a friend and then to her brother Christoph in South Africa.

Then she begins to study economics in Frankfurt. Because of Hilter's seizure of power and the exclusion of Jewish and communist professors and fellow students, she moves to the University of Basel. There she is doing her doctorate on how the Count's possessions of Friedrichstein Castle came about, the most important castle in East Prussia in terms of cultural history. This work allows her to spiritually possess her homeland before it is lost. She also sees her father in a new light. She remembers a shrewd politician and well-travelled, interested person who was rather unconventional. In 1935 Marion Gräfin Dönhoff completed her doctorate.

Responsibility and Resistance in World War II

In the years that followed, she sensed the danger of war early on. When her brothers went into battle in 1939, she took over the management of Friedrichstein. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff is not only responsible for the family estate, but also for the two sons of her sister Christa, who died young. Their pain runs deep when both later fall at the front. With the increasing diatribes of leading National Socialists, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff manifested the will to resist. She takes on the role of an informant within her circle of like-minded friends - the civilian group surrounding the 20th July 1944 Movement. Thanks to her good connections, she is able to exchange important messages between East Prussia and Berlin.

After the failed attempt on Hitler, most of the members are executed. Thanks to her reticence and a happy coincidence, Dönhoff survives. She describes her loss of friends in her 1994 book, Memories of Her Friends of July 20th - For the Sake of Honor. It ends with the sentence:"Nothing could be worse than losing all your friends and being left alone."

Escape from the Red Army in East Prussia

After losing friends, he lost his homeland in early 1945. In January 1945, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff fled west from the Russian army. On her horse Alaric she covers a distance of 1,200 kilometers to Westphalia. Bitterness about the past is alien to her, she later says wisely about the loss of family goods:"Perhaps that is the highest degree of love:to love without possessing."

Be free as a freelance journalist at "Zeit"

A memorandum about her friends who were killed on July 20 brought her to Hamburg in 1946 for the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit". She breaks into a typically male domain and works there all her life without a contract because she wants to be "free" - her starting salary is 600 marks. She benefits from her language skills, stays abroad and her connections. Her distance to the editors is characteristic - and vice versa. Although she offers to call her Marion to her associates, she always remains "the Countess". She takes over the political department, which for her doesn't just mean writing about it, but actually getting involved.

Dönhoff became a sharp critic of Adenauer and consistently advocated a compromise-ready Ostpolitik. Despite the loss of her homeland, reconciliation with Poland is important to her. Die Zeit contributed to Willy Brandt becoming chancellor in 1969. Not only politically, but also personally, the SPD politician Marion Countess Dönhoff is closest. In 1971, Dönhoff received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for her commitment to reconciliation with Eastern Europe.

Marion Gräfin Dönhoff becomes editor of "Zeit"

In 1955 she became head of politics. The "Zeit" is constantly growing in scope and circulation and attracts worldwide attention. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff always maintains contact with younger people. She also relies on youth - male - for the "Zeit" by bringing in Theo Sommer and Haug von Kuenheim. Both embody their ideal image of a man:tall, slim, blond and blue-eyed. Theo Sommer became a close confidant over the next 40 years. She continued to rise in the "Zeit" hierarchy and became editor-in-chief on July 1, 1968. The Countess feels comfortable in her male world - her relationship to women mostly remains distant. When asked by employees of the magazine "Emma" what would have happened if she had been twenty in 1970, Dönhoff replies:"Then I would have been at APO." She couldn't imagine fighting for the rights of a group of women.

In 1972 she resigned as editor-in-chief and shortly thereafter became the publisher of the weekly newspaper. She is withdrawing more and more from day-to-day business, but still sits at her desk on the sixth floor of the Hamburger Pressehaus almost every day when she is not traveling abroad.

Honorary citizen of Hamburg since 1999

After retiring from active editorial life, she has time for other activities:she initiates a Hamburg housing project for ex-convicts and establishes a foundation that finances study and research stays for intellectuals from Eastern Europe. In 1999, her adopted hometown of Hamburg appointed the Countess - the second woman after Ida Ehrlich - to be an honorary citizen.

Marion Gräfin Dönhoff died on March 11, 2002 at the age of 92 at Crottorf Castle in Rhineland-Palatinate, where her nephew lived.