Steinort – a European place of remembrance

“The historical landscapes, the old and the new, superimposed and reflected in each other, are now invested with a double richness. The old transitional landscapes, where conflicts were complicated and often deadly, are now becoming visible. Almost everywhere we get to see not just one story, but, if we are attentive enough, at least two. Everything exists twice and three times: the , , , Masuria, , , the . The historical layers that are coming to light now make these places Europe’s most culturally rich treasuries.”2

The interview project initiated and carried out by Ulla Lachauer and Agata Kern around makes precisely this "mixedness" visible, by uncovering the intertwining and interlocking of the various stories. On the one hand, there is the memory of Count Heinrich von Lehndorff and his family, which is not infrequently a wistfully melancholy and romanticizing one. With Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff, who participated in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, and was executed in Ploetzensee on September 4, 1944, Steinort has inscribed itself not only in the topography of loss, but also in the map of German resistance history. The story of the resistance fighter, however, also camouflages the shadowy side of a German noble family, as Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg elaborates in his article. This exists alongside the all too easily idealized, almost rapturous view of the history of a large East Prussian estate with its castle and parks, which under the previous owner Count Carl Meinhard (Carol) von Lehndorff had in fact been quite run down prior to 1936 and was restored by Heinrich von Lehndorff.3

The following articles look at the history and present day of the village of Sztynort, starting with the world of the Lehndorffs, the noble Steinort family. Some benefit from a detached historical perspective, others are rich in nostalgia. Biographies spanning three generations are told personally and lovingly – by the people themselves or others. The interviews with the Lehndorff sisters, with Hanna Schygulla and Hans-Eckhardt Wenzel, for example, stand as important testimonies to the acts of remembering, experiencing and looking back on vanished worlds, and have in turn become important testimonies and sources of post-war remembrance culture.
 
Secondly, there are memories of the later, post-war history of the Steinort estate, which, for example, focus on the kindergarten in Steinort Castle and, above all, on the arrival and integration of the Polish population after 1945. When Maria Zarębska speaks of Lehndorff, who was also present in narratives of the postwar years, the focus is not on the resistance fighter, but on the hegemonic role of the noble family and its head at the time: "He was a count, they said, very rich, and he owned many people."
 
The third chapter of Steinort history is probably that of the reconstruction work that has taken place since the turn of the millennium. It is the story of enthusiasts like Bettina Bouresh, Wolfram Jäger, Hannah Wadle or Marek Makowski and Piotr Wagner. Certainly, a romantic view also plays a role here, but what prevails is the sense of a shared desire to develop Steinort into a meeting place of Germans and Poles, where the diverse stories of the place are held.
 
The interview project has uncovered these diverse layers of Steinort's history. Hopefully it will contribute to making Steinort a living place of exchange and encounter, where people can engage with European history and stories in all their complexity. Last but not least, it is to be hoped that Steinort will indeed become a European place of remembrance with high identity relevance for various European societies.4 

English translation: William Connor