 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Marion Dönhoff" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(January 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Marion Dönhoff | |
|---|---|
 Dönhoff in 1971 | |
| Born | 2 December 1909  |
| Died | 11 March 2002 (aged 92) Castle Crottorf |
| Occupation | Journalist, resistance fighter,editor-in-chief |
| Employer | |
| Awards |
|
| Titles | countess |
Marion Hedda Ilse Gräfin von Dönhoff (2 December 1909 – 11 March 2002) was a Germanjournalist andpublisher who participated in the resistance againstNazism, along withHelmuth James Graf von Moltke,Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, andClaus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. After the war, she became one of Germany's leading journalists and intellectuals, working for over 55 years as an editor and later publisher of theHamburg-based weekly newspaperDie Zeit.
Dönhoff was born inEast Prussia in 1909 into an old aristocraticHouse of Dönhoff atFriedrichstein Palace[1] (now in theGuryevsky District of the Russianoblast of Kaliningrad). She was the youngest daughter of CountAugust von Dönhoff (1845-1920), a diplomat and member of thePrussian House of Lords and theGerman Parliament, and his wife, Maria von Lepel (1869-1940), daughter of Wilhelm Friedrich Karl von Lepel (1829-1888) and Countess Helene vonSchlippenbach (1835-1917). As a diplomat, her father was located inWashington for some time, and became a close friend of SenatorCarl Schurz.[2] Dönhoff discusses in her memoirs her father's involvement in one of the last episodes of theIndian wars, theWhite River War.[3]
Marion studied economics atFrankfurt, whereNational Socialist sympathizers were said to have called her the "red countess" for her defiance once they gained power in 1933. She left Germany soon after, moving toBasel, Switzerland, where she earned her doctorate. But she later returned to her family home atQuittainen in 1938, and joined the resistance movement, which led to questioning by theGestapo after afailed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944. Although many of her fellow resistance activists were executed, she was released reportedly because her name was not found in any of the documents seized by the Nazis.[4]
In January 1945, asSoviet troops rolled into the region, Dönhoff fled East Prussia, travelling seven weeks on horseback before reachingHamburg. She recounted her journey in a 1962 book of essays calledNames No One Mentions Anymore.[5][6] The castle in which she grew up and which was destroyed by theRed Army in January 1945, is within the borders of what is now part of Russia (Kaliningrad oblast), yet she was one of the first public figures to endorse the finality of theborder between Germany and Poland, which had been established after the Second World War.[citation needed]
In 1946, Dönhoff joined the fledgling, Hamburg-based intellectual weeklyDie Zeit as political editor. In August 1954, she temporarily left the newspaper in protest against articles byRichard Tüngel (who had published, inter alia, a text of Nazi constitutional lawyerCarl Schmitt) and went to London to work forThe Observer. Soon afterwards, however, she returned toHamburg, and was promoted to deputy editor-in-chief in 1955, then editor-in-chief in 1968, and publisher in 1972. She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1990.[7]
She was involved in helping refugees settle in West Germany from East Germany and other parts of Europe.[6]
At the time of her death on 11 March 2002, aged 92, Dönhoff was still co-publisher of the influential newspaper. She was the author of more than twenty books, including political and historical analyses of Germany as well as commentary on U.S.foreign policy. Among many international distinctions, Dönhoff was awarded honorary doctorates byColumbia University[8] andGeorgetown University.[citation needed]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
