Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck

Guido Georg Friedrich Erdmann Heinrich Adalbert Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck, from 1901 Fürst Henckel von Donnersmarck (b. Breslau, 10 August 1830 - d. Berlin, 19 December 1916) was a German nobleman, industrial magnate, and one of the richest men of his time. Unaware of Henckel's personal quirks, which included a pathological devotion to his deceased first wife, US Ambassador James W. Gerard found him affable and politically reasonable at a time when many German conservatives were extreme nationalists.

Career

Born in Breslau, Silesia, he was the son of Karl Lazarus Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck (1772-1864) and his wife Julie, née von Bohlen (1800-1866). When his older brother Karl Lazarus Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck died in 1848, his father transferred his numerous mining properties and ironworks in Silesia to Guido.

Henckel also had a sister, Pauline, who married Fürst Carolath. Friedrich von Holstein claimed that the father of her son was either a waiter or a coachman; "One must choose between the two," Holstein wrote. [Cited in Werner Richter, "Bismarck", p. 259n. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964.]

Henckel lived in Paris in the 1860s with his mistress (later wife), Pauline Thérèse Lachmann, Marquise de Païva. He engaged in stock market speculations, and Otto von Bismarck sometimes found his shady contacts politically useful. [Richter, p. 258.] Henckel purchased for his mistress the Château de Pontchartrain in Seine-et-Oise. [Pierre Levellois and Gaston d'Angelis (ed. dirs.), "Les châteaux de l'Ile de France", pp. 170-172. Paris: Hachette, 1965. English translation of French edition of 1963.]

Like many other Prussian business and political figures, Henckel was a reserve officer, and during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 he was military governor of Lorraine. In December 1870 he expelled all Jewish traders and their families from Metz, resisting pleas for clemency in the face of the severest winter in nearly 60 years. During the negotiations for the French war indemnity in 1871 he advised Bismarck that France could easily pay it [James W. Gerard, "My Four Years in Germany", p. 33. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1917.] - and indeed, the indemnity payments were completed ahead of schedule in 1873.

After Henckel's return to Germany with his wife in 1877, Bismarck occasionally entrusted him with discreet political or financial transactions. In 1884, for instance, Henckel arranged a loan for Bismarck's old friend, Prince Orlov, at that time the Russian ambassador in Berlin. [Richter, p. 259.]

Henckel maintained a well-stocked game preserve on his estate at Neudeck in Silesia. When Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Neudeck for a shoot in January 1890, he was able to kill 550 pheasants in a single day. [Giles MacDonogh, "The Kaiser. The Life of Wilhelm II", p. 158. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2000. ISBN 0-312-30557-5]

As an investor in the publishing company, in 1894 Henckel was unwillingly drawn into the dispute between the editor of Kladderadatsch and "Geheimrat" Friedrich von Holstein of the Foreign Office. In a series of anonymous articles the journal had held up to ridicule Holstein, Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter and Philipp zu Eulenburg. Kiderlen challenged the editor of "Kladderadatsch" to a duel and wounded him, but Holstein was not satisfied. He issued a similar challenge to Henckel, who maintained his innocence and declined to fight. Wilhelm II wisely refused to force Henckel to fight Holstein, for, years later, two junior officials of the Foreign Office asserted that they had been the authors of the "Kladderadatsch" articles. [Virginia Cowles, "The Kaiser", p. 121. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.]

Wilhelm II granted Henckel the title of "Fürst" in 1901. The same year he declined appointment as Prussian Minister of Finance upon the death of Johannes Miquel. [Christopher M. Clark, "Kaiser Wilhelm II", p. 98. Harlow, UK: Longman, 2000. ISBN 0-582-24559-1] .

In the years preceding World War I Henckel was estimated to be the second-wealthiest German subject, his fortune exceeded only by that of Bertha Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.

In 1916 he founded the Fürst Donnersmarck Foundation in Berlin with the donation of about 620 acres of land and four million Goldmarks, an institution instituted to make scientific use of the experiences gained in World War I and to apply these insights in a therapeutic way, and now supporting the rehabilitation, care, and support of the physically and multiply disabled as well as research supporting that care.

Marriages

His first wife was Pauline Thérèse Lachmann (b. Moscow, 7 May1819 – d. Neudeck, 21 January 1884), a courtesan better known as La Païva. They married in Paris on 28 October 1871. Besides the château of Pontchartrain, Henckel gave her the famous yellow Donnersmarck Diamonds - one pear-shaped and weighing 82.4 carats, the other cushion-shaped and 102.5 carats. Horace de Viel-Castel wrote that she regularly wore some two million francs' worth of diamonds, pearls and other gems.

It was widely believed, but never proved, that La Païva and her husband were asked to leave France in 1877 on suspicion of espionage. [Levellois and d'Angeli, p. 172.] In any case, Henckel brought his wife to live in his castle at Neudeck in Upper Silesia. He had a second estate at Hochdorf in Lower Silesia.

After his wife's death in 1884, Henckel had her naked body immersed in alcohol in an isolated room of his castle at Neudeck. Henckel visited her corpse regularly for a strange form of contemplation that may be termed thanatophilia. [ [http://burknet.com/robsfantasy/section3.html] ]

His second wife was Katharina Slepzow (b. St. Petersburg, Russia, 16 February 1862 – d. Koslowagora, 10 February 1929). They were married at Wiesbaden on 11 May 1887. They had two children, Guido Otto (1888-1959) and Krafft Raul Paul Alfred Ludwig Guido (1890-1977)

It is said that when, several years after their marriage, Henckel's second wife unexpectedly discovered the body of her predecessor, preserved in all its glory in a glass tank of alcohol, she suffered a mental breakdown.

Later life

Henckel remained interested in political affairs even in the last years of his long life. Beginning in the winter of 1913-14 he had numerous conversations with US Ambassador James W. Gerard, to whom he described his role in the French indemnity negotiations of 1871. He expressed his long-standing support for a protective tariff on agricultural products as well as government encouragement of German manufacturing interests. Henckel proposed that Gerard should take his second son, then nearly 24, to America to see the great iron and coal districts of Pennsylvania. [Gerard, p. 33.]

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Henckel advocated levying a war indemnity even larger than that of 1871. [Gerard, pp. 33-34.] In 1915 he joined Fürst Hatzfeldt (head of the German Red Cross), Bernhard Dernburg, Hans Delbrück, Adolf von Harnack and others in signing a petition opposing the annexation of Belgium. [Gerard, p. 246.]

Seeing through the military's glib propaganda and increasingly anxious about Germany's growing war debt, [Gerard, p. 34.] Henckel von Donnersmarck died in Berlin in December 1916 at the age of 86.

Legacy

Following World War I, Neudeck passed to Polish sovereignty as Koslowagora; Hochdorf remained in German territory until 1945. Katharina Fürstin Henckel von Donnersmarck died at Koslowagora in February 1929.

A decade later, duirng the preparations for the German invasion of Poland, Guido Otto Fürst Henckel von Donnersmarck met with "Oberstleutnant" Erwin Lahousen of "Abwehr" (military intelligence) at Hochdorf on 11 June 1939 to offer the assistance of the entire forestry staff of his Polish estate. The offer was accepted. [Heinz Höhne, "Canaris. Hitler's Master Spy", p. 337. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1999. Originally published in 1979. ISBN 0-8154-1007-7] With the German defeat in 1945 and the coming of Communist rule, the family's estates were confiscated, and they went into exile in the West.

References

Notes

*German title|Graf
*German title|Fürst

Weblinks

* [http://www.fdst.de Fürst Donnersmarck-Stiftung zu Berlin - Foundation for people with disabilities founded 1916 by Fürst von Donnersmarck]