Writing

Natural Splendour of the Arrow Lake

/ Peter Klopp / 20 Comments

Dear blogging friends, I am presently camping with my wife and have limited access to the Internet. I try to give you likes, but there is no time for writing comments. I am so sorry.

Wednesday’s Photos

More Discoveries from the Canoe

It is my hope that I will not tire or worse not bore my blogging friends with yet another photo shoot taken from our canoe. However, traveling this time north in the direction of Fauquier along the eastern shoreline of the Arrow Lake my wife and I encountered a merganser mama and her almost grown-up brood. With the imposing rock formation as backdrop I felt compelled to capture the lovely scene of wildlife unfolding before our very eyes. On our way back to the campground a pair of whitetail deer was frolicking at a deserted beach. Enjoy.

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Baroness Anna von Waldenfels (née Klopp) – Part XV

/ Peter Klopp / 16 Comments

More Promotions for Georg von Waldenfels

As noted earlier, Georg von Waldenfels had experienced a number of promotions in his officer’s career, quite unheard of and irregular in the German army, where advancements were based on military training and especially on merit on the battle field. The SS was, however, no regular army. On 1 July 1942, he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer, somewhat equivalent to the upper rank of lieutenant  and in April 1943 to SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain).  Although von Waldenfels occupied the same ranks in another branch of the SS, he acquired them all over again in a more prestigious  division. Now under the protective umbrella of influential Sepp Dietrich he now became so-to-speak a ‘regular’ in the hierarchy of the Common SS. It is not surprising that after the war the Allies were facing an incomprehensible phenomenon within the hierarchal structure of the SS.They were unable to cope with all the confusing differences within the ranking system and ignoring them erroneously treated all cases the same. In May 1943, barely four weeks later, Georg was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer (major).

In the spring 1944 there were definite signs that the idyllic life in the eastern province of Posen (Poznan) would come to an end.The commander Sepp Dietrich engaged on the western front arranged Georg’s transfer from the so-called ‘Common SS’ (Allgemeine SS) to the prestigious “Leibstandarte SS”. As support officer at the various battle locations after D-Day in France and Belgium he was never employed in a military function, but was responsible for providing food, drink and entertainment for his boss and his entourage. Georg must have experienced – obviously mostly far removed from the actual fighting – at least three of the four major battles, which took place after 6 June 1944.

The casino chef Georg von Waldenfels survived the dramatic weeks shortly before the Allied troops marched their troops into Paris away from the front lines in any of the numerous secure headquarters of the SS, which were mostly requisitioned hotels, residences and castles in and around Paris. Before the battle between Falaise and Caen, which ended in defeat and signalled the retreat of the SS units in August 1944, Georg, unsuitable for military duties, managed to be ordered back to Germany. By 1945 he acquired, no doubt with the help of some influential political ‘friends’, the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer.

Natural Splendour of the Arrow Lake

/ Peter Klopp / 32 Comments

Wednesday’s Photos

Nature’s Inspiring Wooden Sculptures

On a recent canoe ride going south from Taite Creek towards Octopus Creek, my wife and I spotted some amazing structures along the shoreline of the Southern Arrow Lake. These gigantic sculptures designed by Nature in pleasing forms and shapes of purest abstraction are a marvel to look at and enticed me to capture them  with my Canon Powershot camera. Here are a few examples from our theme based trip. Enjoy.

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Baroness Anna von Waldenfels (née Klopp) – Part XIV

/ Peter Klopp / 4 Comments

Georg’s Pipe Dream Collapses

Rücker-Emden, the DAG director, sensed that with this person would come an unhealthy development for the SS, which was otherwise not generally known for finicky handling of problems of this kind. Fraud and deceit lay almost graspable in the air. He put an immediate stop to the von Waldenfels lust for wealth and property and abruptly ended the commissioned working relationship as of October 1, 1938.

From this point on began a four-year court battle, which dragged on till 1942 between the Viennese lawyer of the DAG, representing the property of the dispossessed Löw family, and Georg’s attorney. The von Waldenfels files contained more 200 pages and occupied among others the chancellery of the Party and the highest court in Munich. Georg insisted with selfish stubbornness that he had received approval from the DAG, personally insulted its director Rücker-Emden and tried to make an inspection committee more agreeable to his plans by serving them alcohol quite early in the morning.

Even his mother, Baroness Anna von Waldenfels got involved in the subsequent flood of letters being written to the highest authorities of Nazi Germany, which included the boss of the Reich’s main security office Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner and the head of the SS Heinrich Himmler. However, the tone of responses from the various SS offices was getting increasingly sharper and included more and more requests to put an end to Georg’s farcical behaviour.

In the middle of 1942 von Waldenfels received the final warning shot from Karl Wolff, a member of Himmler’s personal staff, “It is intolerable that in a time while Germany is at war and thousands of SS men are fighting on the front lines that year in and year out the SS has to deal with trivial stuff like that.” The dream of a ‘castle in Bohemia’ had finally melted away.

Georg von Waldengels had been playing a high-staked poker game and had planned to climb on the shoulders of the SS up to a new type of grand estate and castle owner. The settlers’ policy by contrast was primarily aiming into the opposite direction: the transfer of rights regarding vast tracts of agricultural land to dispossessed farmers from the east. On account of this key discrepancy the enterprise Angern was doomed to fail.

Natural Splendour of the Arrow Lake

/ Peter Klopp / 16 Comments

Wednesday’s Photos

Flaming Beauty of a Campfire

The sun has set behind the mountains across the lake. Jupiter is the first object in the darkening southern sky. A magical stillness like a silky blanket is spreading over the Arrow Lake valley. This is the moment when my wife and I like to gather around the campfire near the beach and marvel at the sight of the flames shooting skyward with their fiery tongues. Later, when the fire has consumed most of the twigs and branches, we marvel at the multicoloured spectacle of the flickering dance performed by the burning logs.The photos can only give a glimpse  of the flaming beauty, which words can hardly describe. Enjoy.

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Baroness Anna von Waldenfels (née Klopp) – Part XIII

/ Peter Klopp / 23 Comments

Georg’s Pipe Dream

Pulling the right strings at the right authorities, Georg von Waldenfels managed to acquire from the DAG the trusteeship over the ‘abandoned’ estate property at Angern on the River March between Lower Austria and Slovenia. As a trustee he worked there for two months from August 3 to October 1, 1938.

His ultimate goal was by hook or by crook to take possession of the property of the Jewish family Löw, who had owned and worked this large parcel of land of prime agricultural land for many generations. The DAG (Deutsche Ansiedlungsgesellschaft), the so-called German Settlement Agency, had set into motion punitive court proceedings against the Löw family to the tune of 13 million Reichsmark (RM). Eight million RM were covered by the sale of all movable equipment. Remained the five million RM, which the DAG desired to collect. To fully comprehend the value of the entire estate, one can easily peg the sale’s price on today’s real estate market at around 100 million dollars. The commissioned administrator von Waldenfels bragged among friends that he could easily come up with the five million RM. Through marriage he had connected with father-in-law Jan F. Jannink, “one of the wealthiest mega-industrialists of Holland, who would throw the five million RM on the table with a smile.”

Von Waldenfels had also set his eyes on the palace-like mansion of the Löw family located at the 19th District of Vienna. This stately and historically important residence also belonged to the total ‘aryanized’ property of the SS. The low ranking SS officer of Lagowitz, swept up by his incredible pipe dreams, now beyond all reasonable dimensions appeared to drift away into the fantasy world of his own desires.