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Secrets of a suitcase in images

A number of photos have a link to additional material, such as YouTubes. Photo copyright: Salzburg Landesarchiv, National Archives The Hague, Burg Burghausen, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Nicola Perscheid, Sebastiaan ter Burg & Wikimedia Commons

Margarethe at her Easter best

Comtesse Margarethe Henckel von Donnersmarck in 1899. She is 28 and lives near Königshütte, Upper Silesia in Palace Siemianowicz. She is Catholic, and belongs to the Habsburg aristocracy.

Laurahütte bij Königshütte

The Von Donnersmarck family has a Catholic and a Protestant branch. Both own a number of coal mines and blast furnaces in Silesia.

Krowiarki

After a childhood in Siemianowicz Palace, Krowiarki Palace became Margarethe's home until she married.

Wanda en Hugo II, parents of  Margarethe

Margarethe's parents each inherited an enormous fortune. It enabled her father to renovate, decorate and build two huge palaces.

Zondags' menu in Silezië

Margarethe loves drawing and the good, rich food that is served in Silesia. This menu she made herself.

Een van de vele briefjes en kaarten aan haar moeder, ingebonden in vier delen 'Herinneringen'

The young countess rarely travels. If she does, she sends daily letters and postcards to her mother.

Hongaars Abbazia

At 29, she traveled to Abbazia (now Croatian Opatija), in the company of her sister. They stay with their grandmother in her villa Rosalia. Hungarian Abbazia is a luxury resort at the time. Many aristocratic visitors used to hibernate there.

Villa Rosalia in Abbazia

This is villa Rosalia in Abbazia (it belongs to a hotel now, but it was the property of grandmother Henckel von Donnersmarck). There she meets Sándor Szapáry de Muraszombath, Szé- chysziget et Szapar, an Hungarian count and commander of the hussars at the Habsburg court in Vienna.

Pressburg (Pozsony)

The bachelor Sándor Szapáry (who at the time of his marriage is 42), lives in Vienna, but his mother and sister live in the ancestral Hungarian home in Pressburg (now Bratislava).

Late happiness (she 29, he 42)/Laat geluk (zij 29, hij 42)

Margarethe Henckel von Donnersmarck & Sándor Szapáry - at their engagement. They will marry three months later in Silesia.

Hans Wilczek

Count Hans Wilczek, an arctic explorer and patron of arts - an Austrian celebrity - was a hunting friend of Sándor, He played a role in the meeting of Margit and Sandor.

Marriage ceremony of Margarethe and Sándor

After the marriage ceremony the family posed in front of Palace Krowiarki in Silesia. They drank Puligny Montrachet wines and had pineapple for desert...

Finstergrün

Immediately after their marriage, Margit and Sandor travel to Ramingstein in the Lungau, Austria. Sandor bought the ruin of the former castle Finstergrün. They decided to build a 'medieval' castle next to a still erect tower. They use many local craftsmen. Lungau was famous for its hunting grounds and big game in the 19th century.

Margit Szapáry, rond 1910

Unfortunately Sándor dies in 1904 due to toothache and sepsis. Margit is alone now, and has two small children: Béla and Jolanta. Her castle is not finished. She decided to stay in Lungau, and starts to collect medieval works of art to decorate her castle.

Brynek in 1904

In the beginning of the 20th century, Margits father opened a third palace in Silesia, Brynek. It still exists as the first forestry school in Poland.

zitkamer in Finstergrün

Margit draws and paints designs for the castle. In this way she guides the architect how her castle should be finished. It is the opposite of the castles her father built in Silesia, Krowiarki and Brynek.

Lungau boven Ramingstein

The widow Szapáry uses her fortune to help the poor and the weak: the farmers and woodcutters and their families in Ramingstein

Volksschule Ramingstein

Margit had an elementary school built for the children of Ramingstein. It still exists to this day

De broers Henckel von Donnersmarck

The enormous fortunes of the catholic branch of the family, the brothers Hugo II, Lazarus and Artur (pictured left) Henckel von Donnersmarck diminish rapidly, especially after WWI. Lazarus is an ancestor of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the filmmaker (Das Leben der Anderen/The lives of others).

Fürst Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck

Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck belonged to the Protestant branch of the family. He became one of the richest men in Germany, and was befriended with Kaiser Wilhelm II. He had a turbulent love life.

Hotel Païva

Hotel Païva on the Champs Elysées in Paris, belonged to the mistress and later wife of Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck. He financed not only this house, but also Chateau de Pontchartrain in France and Neues Neudeck in Silesia.

Blanche

Blanche de la Païva was Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck's first wife. She was one of the most famous courtisanes of Paris.

Edward 14e Earl van Derby, Tory-voorzitter

Blanche became known as La Païva between 1848 and 1860. The 14th Earl of Derby was one of her admirers. He was the first to give her large sums of money, which enabled her independence.

Olielamp, 14e eeuw

In the years before World War I, Margit Szapáry collected 14th- and 15th-century artefacts, such as this rare fantasy elephant.

Bruidskist 15e eeuw

In the first years of the 20th century bridal chests, tables, chairs and cabinets are filling more and more rooms at Finstergrün.

Affiche voor de verkoop van oorlogsobligaties/Poster for war bond sales

Margit Szapáry bought lots of war bonds to finance the Austrian army during WWI. Her fortune is shrinking.

Oorlogsslachtoffer/War casualty

The Lungau soldiers who returned in 1918 were supported by Margit. She bought farms for them to start a new life.

Margit met pensiongasten

When Margit Szapáry gets into financial difficulties, she turns Finstergrün, which resembled a gothic museum, into a guest house. Many single English ladies who loved the 'gothic' atmosphere of Finstergrün Castle are visiting. One of them is Isabel du Cane from Fittleworth, Sussex in England.

Bijeenkomst van Vaterländische Front/Rally of Vaterländische Front

Margit Szapáry is a devout catholic and monarchist aristocrat. She sympathises with the 'Standenstaat' in the 1930s.

The Spectator 18.5.1934

Margit Szapár is strongly opposed to nazi-Germany. She writes an article in the English Spectator warning against Germany's aggression.

Murray biografie

Rosemary Murray was a niece of Isabel du Cane, and visited her in Finstsergrün. She appreciated the castle's anti-Nazi atmosphere.

Schuschnigg bezoekt de Lungau

Prime minister Schuschnigg visits Lungau in 1937. He spent the night in Finstergrün. Immediately after the Anschluss in 1938, he is sent to Oranienburg by Hitler.

Jolanta Szapáry

Margit's daughter, Jolanta, became a children's nurse. She studied in London, England, did not marry and continued to live with her mother until her death. She collected postcards.

Hermann Göring

The young Hermann Göring spent every holiday with his godfather in his godfather's castle Mauterndorf Castle in the Lungau region from the age of five.

Hemelbed Finstergrün

Göring admired what he considered Finstergrün's 'Germanic' furnishings, and wanted to 'buy' a four-poster bed from Margarethe in 1938.

Referendum Anschluss Oostenrijk-Duitslan

Margarethe leaves her castle a month before the Anschluss and travels to Budapest and Merano. In this way she prevents a necessary vote in the plebiscite on the Anschluss.

Telegram Goering

Hermann Göring, 'son of the Lungau', makes a triumphal entry there, and wires that he intends to visit Margit. She is traveling, is the answer of her daughter Jolanta.

Carinhall

At the end of the 30's Göring is furnishing his new hunting lodge, Carinhall, near Berlin.The style is Germanic. He is looking for the right objects.

Veilinghuis Weinmüller München

Margit has a mortgage. Göring pressures the bank to let her pay it off. She decides to approach auction house Weinmuller in Munich.

Catalogus Weinmüller 1941

Margit Szapáry now auctions almost the entire contents of Finstergrün, cutting Göring off. She dies in spring 1943. The Lungau runs out to bury 'their' Gräfin.

Finstergrün nu

Margit's children, Béla and Jolanta, inherit the castle. They sell it to the Christian Youth Work of Austria in 1972.

Béla Szapáry

Béla Szapáry, Margits only son, grew up in Hungary. He studied agriculture, lived in Canada, and after returning to Budapest, he worked there as an insurance broker until 1944.

Ursula von Richthofen

Béla Szapáry married Baroness Ursula von Richthofen in 1942. She is the widow of the Dutch ambassador to Berlin, Beijing and Budapest, the Dutch Baron de Vos van Steenwijk. Her mother, Wally von Richthofen, owned a luxurious villa in Potsdam, where she hosted many parties in the 30's. It was bugged by the Gestapo

Huwelijk prins Karl von Hessen en gravin Yvonne Szapáry

Ursula and Béla's only daughter, Yvonne, marries on 18.4.1966 in The Hague with Karl von Hessen. Half of royal Europe is present in the modest villa. Prince Philip, nephew of the groom, is on the far left, her parents on the right.

Karl prins Von Hessen-Kassel

Karl von Hessen's father Christoph was a national socialist and an associate of Göring. He led the FA and was a pilot. He perished during a flight in 1943. Karl's mother Sophia was Prince Philip's sister.

Friedrichshof, Kronberg

Upon their marriage Yvonne and Karl von Hessen are asked to manage his ancestral Friedrichshof castle. It became a luxury golf hotel (immediately after WWII it was also the headquarters for the Americans. A few officers stole the Hessen family jewels, that were hidden there).

De eetzaal in Finstergrün

Finstergrün is sold in 1972 to the Christian Youth Organization. It has become a holiday resort for the organization and a youth hostel.

Gucci-koffer in close up

As Ursula Szapáry-Von Richthofen dies in one of the farms on the grounds of Finstergrün, the family clears out the attic. This suitcase ended up at Sotheby's Amsterdam in 2004. It contained many stories.

De inhoud van de Gucci-koffer

The suitcase came with albums of picture postcards. Some of them were addressed to the countesses Jolanta and Margit Szapáry. It was the start of a journey through 150 years of European history.

Het hemelbed

The four-poster bed was bought at the 1941 auction in Munich by Dr Kreisel for Burg Burghausen in Munich. It stands there to this day.

Transcript conversation + Q&A

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