Wendelgard von Staden

Wendelgard “Wendi” von Staden (née von Neurath) is a German author and former German diplomat. In 1979, she published a memoir Darkness Over the Valley: Growing Up in Nazi Germany where she shares memories from her youth during the Nazi era about a concentration camp on her family’s estate and how her mother tried to help the people imprisoned there.

Biography

Von Staden was born in 1925[1] to Baroness Irmgard and Baron Ernst von Neurath.[2] Her uncle was Konstantin von Neurath, who was Hitler's first foreign minister.[3] She grew up in Kleinglattbach,[4] and attended school in Vaihingen an der Enz, the grammar school in Ludwigsburg. She received her high school diploma in Berlin in 1943 and completed an agricultural apprenticeship on a farm near Heilbronn.[1]

She earned a degree in economics from the University of Tübingen.[2] In 1948, she studied in Paris at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques as part of the first German-French student exchange after World War II.[5] In 1950, she was an exchange student at UCLA, studying political science.[2] During this time she and friends from UCLA spent two months traveling the United States.[6]

Von Staden pursued a diplomatic career, working in the German foreign service for ten years.[4] She served as the first secretary of the West German Embassy in Washington, DC.[2] In 1961, she married German diplomat Berndt von Staden,[4] and she was forced by regulations to give up her own career.[2][7] She met her husband in Washington at an embassy dinner party. In 1963, he was posted to Washington, and they moved to Bonn in 1968,[6] returning to Washington from 1973 to 1979 where her husband served as the West German ambassador to the United States.[2] They have three children.[7]

She is the subject of the 2024 documentary film It Happened On Our Ground, which won the award for best Israeli documentary at the Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival.[8]

Memoir

Darkness Over the Valley: Growing Up in Nazi Germany[9] is the autobiographical account of Wendelgard von Staden's youth originally published in German in 1979.[10][11] In it, she describes the events at her parents' estate in Kleinglattbach, a district of Vaihingen an der Enz.[10] The Wiesengrund concentration camp was built on her father's land, which had been confiscated by the SS. Because the family was allowed to continue using a road that ran through the restricted area for business reasons, family members had a view of what was happening on the concentration camp grounds, where an underground aircraft factory was being built in cooperation with Messerschmitt AG. Von Staden's mother, Irmgard von Neurath, along with her daughter, who had been living with her parents again since mid-1944, tried to help the prisoners, secretly providing them additional food on the Neurath estate.[3][10] They managed to establish contact with a small group of prisoners, but the mother's plan, in consultation with the camp commander Wilhelm Lautenschlager, to free the prisoners who were still alive as the Allies approached, failed. All those still able to march were transferred to Dachau shortly before the arrival of the French army.

Irmgard von Neurath was arrested after the war. Initially, the mother was held in the district prison, then transferred to a camp on the Asperg (near Stuttgart), where her daughter tried in vain to reach her – in order to speak with one of the former doctors from the Wiesengrund camp, who had written a letter to the military government. Wendelgard was advised to deliver this letter personally to the American headquarters in Frankfurt. She did so, accompanied by her Polish friend "Kuba," one of the former workers on her family's farm. There they were referred to Heidelberg, to the Civilian Internment Camp, the Allied camps for potential war criminals from 1945 onwards, where he was also able to provide further statements. However, they heard nothing further about whether the letter or the statements had been given any consideration until "one day she wandered into the courtyard wearing her old khaki jacket and carrying the same blanket under her arm. She had gained weight and looked cheerful. The Americans had released her from the camp without interrogation, without trial. Nobody had bothered with her at all."[9]: 159 

Later, the mother testified as a witness in Rastatt before the French military tribunal in the trial concerning the guards of the Wiesengrund concentration camp. The defendants were Commandant Lautenschlager, camp doctor Dischmann, and SS members Hecker, Pill, Sommer, and Möller[9]: 161  – who, even outside the concentration camp, in front of young Wendelgard, did not hesitate to display particularly unpredictable cruelty towards the forced laborers working in the courtyard.[9]: 91 

“...and the presiding judge said: ‘As a German, you helped to save civilization and acted with honor and compassion. For this, the court thanks you today.’”[9]: 161 

Wendelgard von Staden wrote the book in Cape Cod, while her husband was the German ambassador to the United States.[3] She had not initially intended to publish it, saying she wrote it for her children.[11] It went through seven editions in Germany between 1979 and 1981 and was published in English translation in 1981.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b Mengel, Monika (January 1, 2016). "Erlebte Geschichten mit Wendelgard von Staden" [Stories from Wendelgard von Staden's Life)]. WDR (in German). Retrieved January 26, 2026.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Harley, Richard M. (December 30, 1982). "A tale of kindness amidst the horror in Nazi Germany". The Christian Science Monitor. ProQuest 1037996981.
  3. ^ a b c "Erinnerungen an einen Meilenstein der Gedenkkultur" [Memories of a milestone in memorial culture]. Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung (in German). March 6, 2018. Retrieved January 28, 2026.
  4. ^ a b c "Berndt von Staden: Diplomat aus Leidenschaft". www.vkz.de (in German). Vaihinger Kreiszeitung. October 1, 2014. Archived from the original on January 4, 2017.
  5. ^ Pond, Elizabeth (January 22, 1988). "France and West Germany: 25 years of cooperation". The Christian Science Monitor. ProQuest 1034452439.
  6. ^ a b La Hay, Wauhillau (July 7, 1974). "Von Stadens To See 'Real Indians'". The Knoxville News-Sentinel – via newspapers.com.
  7. ^ a b Gamarekian, Barbara (May 7, 1978). "Ambassadorial Wives: Some Are More Than Simply Helpmates: Beyond Small Talk 'A Different Mentality'". The New York Times. ProQuest 123718092.
  8. ^ "Docaviv Winners 2024 | Israeli Competition: The Dov Yudkovsky Award for Best Israeli Documentary Film". www.docaviv.co.il. Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival. Retrieved January 28, 2026.
  9. ^ a b c d e Staden, Wendelgard Von (1981). Darkness Over the Valley: Growing Up in Nazi Germany. translated by Mollie Comerford Peters. Ticknor and Fields. ISBN 0-89919-009-X.
  10. ^ a b c d Robertson, Nan (August 10, 1981). "Growing up in Nazi Germany: A Backward Look". The New York Times. ProQuest 424175494.
  11. ^ a b Adler, Susan Seidner (January 1982). "Darkness Over the Valley, by Wendelgard von Staden". Commentary. Retrieved January 26, 2026.
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