Kestenberg Archive

R. was born in 1934 in Berlin, Germany. She had three siblings. She began school in 1940. Her mother learned dancing in Sweden and became a gymnastic/sports instructor. Later she trained sport teachers. Her father, Adolf Reichwein (later a member of the resistance, the “Kreisauer Kreis”) was a lecturer of History and Political Economy at the “Paedagogische Hochschule in Halle” (which was also called “Red Academy”). He was dismissed in April 1933 - on the day of his wedding. This was the beginning of a social decline for the young bourgeois couple, but especially for R.'s mother. R.'s father declined an offer to become a professor in Ankara. The Ministry of Culture in Berlin offered him to become the director of a school at the countryside in Tiefensee (Mark Brandenburg). In 1939 he went with his family back to Berlin and started working at the “Volkskundemuseum”. The family spent a lot of time, especially in the war years, on the island Hiddensee, where the grandparents lived. They did not know anything about the political activities of their father and generally politics have not been a topic in the family. In August 1943 the flat of the family in Berlin was bombed and the mother went with the children to Kreisau. R. recalls that this was the beginning of a wandering that only ended whe she got married in 1961. R. speaks a lot about her problematic relationship with her mother. ; On July 4, 1944 R.'s father was arrested. R. tells the circumstances of his detention. She was in these months at the house of her grandparents in Göttingen. Her father was put to death on October 20, 1944 in Plötzensee. R. did not know anythings about the reasons for his death during the war years. She was told that he died because of rheumatism. She left Göttingen to Kreisau before Christmas in 1944. In 1944 too, she became a member of the “Bund Deutscher Mädel” in Kreisau - due to the wish of her mother and in order not to stand out. R. recalls images of the battles and the fallback of soldiers at the eastern frontline. In the beginning of 1945 R.'s mother and Freia Moltke left Kreisau with their children and went to the Riesengebirge, which was safer. After the end of the war they went back to Kreisau. R. describes the problematic situations at Kreisau with Russian soldiers and Polish refugees arriving from the former east of Poland. In autumn 1945 R.'s mother left Kreisau with her children to Berlin-Wannsee. R. recalls the fears and dangers the journey. They continued fleeing to the West of Germany, to Brunswiek. From there R. was sent back to stay with her grandparents in Göttingen. Her mother went back to Berlin and started to work as a physiotherapist at the Charité (hospital in Berlin). In 1946 she went with her children to Lund in Sweden to continue her education there. R. had a close relationship with a young Ukranian girl that stayed with the family and took care of the children from 1942 until the end of the war. ; R. passed her school leaving exam at the Odenwaldschule in 1954 - after having been at thirteen different schools. She went back to Berlin to study. There she had a nervous breakdown. In these years he realized the meaning of her father. She speaks about the difficulties and different approaches within her family to deal with the history, execution and legacy of her father. R. learnt from a book that her father had been married twice. She tells the story of this first wife of her father and their relationship. R. herself married the son of the director of the “Kunsthalle” (museum of art) in Karlsruhe i 1961. Their first child was born in 1964. She was divorced in 1986. She speaks about the problems of the relationshsip and tells about the family of her husband.