Volume 37, Number 19 · December 6, 1990
Witness
By Gordon A. Craig
Before the Storm: Memories of My Youth in Old Prussia
by Marion Countess Dönhoff, translated by Jean Steinberg, foreword by George F. Kennan
Knopf, 181 pp., $22.95
Weit ist der Weg nach Osten: Berichte und Betrachtungen aus funf Jahrzehnten
by Marion Gräfin Dönhoff
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 350 pp., DM38
Foe into Friend: The Makers of the New Germany from Konrad Adenauer to Helmut Schmidt
by Marion Dönhoff, translated by Gabriele Annan
St. Martin's, 214 pp., $20.00
Preussen—Mass und Masslosigkeit
by Marion Gräfin Dönhoff
Corso bei Siedler, 77 pp., DM20
I first met Countess Dönhoff in the Hotel Gehrhus in Berlin in July 1958 at a gathering of surviving members of the July 20, 1944, conspiracy against Hitler and the wives and children of those who did not survive. I cannot now recall how the name Martin Luther found its way into our conversation, but I remember her saying that she had always admired the great reformer because he had once said, 'If I knew that the world were to end tomorrow, I should plant an apple tree today.' She added that I might hand that on to my students, whenever they became discouraged by the dangers of the cold war.
Review, 4816 words
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