Reitzenstein

Schloss Reitzenstein,
Issigau, Oberfranken

Konrad Freiherr von Reitzenstein
(1913-2003)

Beyond these immediate families is the wider circle of the Reitzensteins. Aside from a paternal Uncle Kurt, also living in Babelsberg, the greater part of the family was in southern Germany - Bavaria, Silesia, the Rhineland, with the principal seat near Hof in Franconia. It was at that modest Castle above the village of Reitzenstein that I first became acquainted with my wider relatives. Following my Father's death in1935, Mutti decided to take us to the Familientag hosted there the following year by the widowed Cousin Hertha (who had brought the Castle back into family hands in 1887).

"From our fortress we survey all that we own: Ourfertile lands, the cannon sighted on ourfoe, and the sacks of gold with which the gentle traveller secures his passage."

I grew up with two delightful late sevententh century paintings showing the castles from which my ancestors in line drew their name - and evidently their tithes; for each bore a roughly similar legend. Without shame or apology. They overlooked the River Saale, rich in fisheries and minerals, and bordered by dense forests well stocked with game. 'Fertile lands' in that sense, but poor soils for agriculture.

The rhyme also recorded, laconically, the fact that both castles were destroyed by a Margrave aiming to impose order on his baronial lieges. Or was it the anomaly that both were Prussian outposts in the Bavarian landscape? For centuries the Saale had marked the conflicts of Saxons and Franks, vying to annex or recapture better yielding soils. A stone's throw away begins the Sudetenland, the mainly German-speaking enclave which marked the beginning of the latest and most lethal of such land-hunger rounds. Then, in 1945 the Saale became the final border between Russian and American forces, the aftermath of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich and the birth of the German Democratic Republic, of only marginally lesser ill repute. Located on the wrong side, traces of both castles and their more civil reconstructions were blown up, to underline the democratic convictions of the new regime. As always, history could only stand by and watch its own repetitions.

Even on the 'western' side there followed years of hardship, borne with dignity and grim courage by Cousin Konrad at Reitzenstein, having simultaneously to come to terms with the loss of a bright and brilliant younger brother in Russia, a sister in a tragic accident; and much later, the sudden collapse of his beautiful and able wife, Dorothee. His affections became concentrated on his five children - four remarkable young ladies and a son, Ruppi - and on a glorious forest between Reitzenstein and his mother's birthplace, Augsburg.

July 2015 gave us the first opportunity since Konrad's painful passing at 93 to revisit Reitzenstein. The home farm, which years earlier one had seen having to abandon first its dairy herd, then its piggery, had suddenly sprung back into life. The soil was as poor as ever, but there was a purposeful air abroad, even if hay balers were the only machinery in evidence. Two events had changed the face and fortunes of the enterprise. Cousin Ruppi (named after his fallen uncle) had done his meticulous study of business management, and applied it to both agricultural undertakings and forestry. Even before reunification, he had also developed links with landowners on both sides of the divide; but then came the restitution laws allowing those whose lands in the GDR had been dispossessed to bid for equivalent lands now being privatised. Ruppi saw the chance to exercise these rights, of his and related families,  to  acquire  and  develop thousands of hectares of forests. Today these are flourishing enterprises, managed by a tightly run company which also operates extensive farming enterprises throughout Germany. In short, he has become a highly successful entrepreneur in a field traditionally governed by the rhythms of nature rather than the balance sheet.

Amazingly, what Ruppi has achieved parallels the classic CDC developments in forestry and agriculture - except that he had to generate the capital, perceive the opportunities and fashion the enterprises to bring all of this about. He represents a wholly new approach to the role of private enterprise, all the more so as he has deliberately sought to construct massive islands of environmental protection against the incursions of climate change and chemical despoliation. Surely a man to be saluted.

I am told that I am now the Senior of the family - if only by virtue of longevity. One irony of this is that I am probably one of the only people who can tell Ruppi about his namesake, the young and equally able and engaging Ruppi, his uncle. When Mutti decided that I should be introduced to the family, she drove us from far-away Berlin in the olive-green Hanomag, named Oberwachtmeister Schwenke in honour of the book which had been such a success, and the film rights which had paid for this elegant conveyance. So I remember well sweeping into the Reitzenstein courtyard, followed by a series of mainly static images registered on the at most 12-year old mind. But the encounter with the then Ruppi is still a lively memory for me - though the dashing young man just turned 20 would hardly have been impressed by the visiting child cousin. Of regulation height, nimble in his movements, with a natural camaraderie and charm, Ruppi could easily have become the friend I never had; but fate sadly decreed otherwise.

There are encounters which remain long in the mind, and this was to be one of them. Be it for affinity, or a totally unconscious sense of foreboding, an unidentified loss, this has certainly remained one of the principal such encounters of my early years. For me it represents a sense of loss; for today's Ruppi and his son Constantin, a void like knowing a much loved place without finding one's way to it. I am aware of that feeling myself in relation to my grandparents, all of whom had died before I was born.

Close on 20 years were to pass before my next visit to Reitzenstein, when Konrad and Dorothee resumed the practice of regular Familientage. Although most of those who bear the name are from branches that blossomed into separate lines many centuries ago, there remains a clear sense of identity and shared history. The now biennial gathering celebrates not so much the family as the ancestors, and the values they sought to enshrine. A club membership that carries distinct if ephemeral rules.

Ruppi and Katerine in the Church at Sparenberg - built in 1437 with a Reitzenstein grant, resurrected by them six centuries later