Posted on 12/06/2003 12:21:44 PM PST by Rodney King
Nobility in Our Time
By Taki
An Austrian nobleman and an American aristocrat died on the same day recently, and I feel this is not the end of a chapter but the end of a book. My father-in-law, his Serene Highness Prince Peter Schoenburg-Hartenstein was 88. He was a naturalized American citizen, having left Austria in 1937, just before the Anschluss. He was born in the Rome embassy of the Austro-Hungarian empire, where his father was ambassador to the Holy See. His mother, Princess Sophia Oettingen-Wallerstein, traced her noble lineage to before Charlemagne, as did the Schoenburgs. In the Congress of Vienna, the Schoenburgs were recognized as ranking equally with the ruling families of Europe, with corresponding privileges. In a memoir published only for the family, Peter Schoenburg wrote of how the world he knew as a child, a world of footmen in silk breeches, of bowing and scraping and forelock tugging, came to a sudden end with the collapse of the Austrian Empire in 1918. Old Prince Schoenburg, who refused to serve anyone but the emperor, moved to his lands in Bohemia, to a 13th-century fortress called Cervena Llota or Red House. The New York Times has described the castle as the most beautiful and romantic in Europe.
Young Peter served as a cavalry officer between the wars and enjoyed himself in the cosmopolitan Viennese atmosphere of operettas, waltzes, and the gemutlich things of life. There was nothing quite like interwar Vienna. There was Italian elegance, Spanish obsession with death, alpine naïveté, and the intellectual refinement of emancipated Jews. And a certain melancholy. It was Vienna’s golden autumn. During World War II, Peter’s two older brothers were sent to the Russian front, where eight of their cousins perished, his siblings ending up prisoners of the Soviets after Stalingrad. (I find this extremely ironic. The Schoenburgs, like so many of their ilk, loathed the Nazis, yet served and died. The neocons love the regime, but do not serve, and send others to die.) One of Peter’s sisters, Loremarie, went to the pope to ask permission to assassinate Hitler. The pontiff refused formally to sanction it, but he made a point of not disapproving of it. The Schoenburgs had smelled out the Nazis long before anyone else. As H.L. Mencken wrote, every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. Peter Schoenburg was among the first to be ashamed, as was the rest of his family, many of them involved with the July 20th plot against Hitler.
In far away South America, Peter became active in the Amazon frontier as an explorer. He eventually moved to America when he married the patrician Lee Russell Jones, his widow. After the war, while European socialists robbed the aristocracy of their stately homes, lands, and castles, Peter quietly raised his American family of three children and worked to help the Harlem unemployed. Although relentlessly pursued by ambitious hostesses, he shunned the limelight, secure in his own identity, therefore psychologically free to treat everyone he came across as his equal. This is an American trait but also the sign of true nobility. Snobbery, after all, is nothing but bad manners trying to pass itself off as good taste. Though government and society nowadays has fallen into the hands of unspeakable philistines, vulgarians, and grotesque publicity hounds, Peter remained calm and serene as we discussed politics nonstop. I never once heard him utter an uncivil word. His son Peter went to Yale and has dedicated his life to defending the poor and defenseless in New Mexico. This is what noblesse oblige is all about.
Last week we buried his ashes in his upstate New York land. There was no hymn singing, no religious spectacle, just many tears from his six grandchildren. There was a simple procession of mourners, led by my wife, her brother and sister, their children, and his widow. As we Greeks say, may the earth that covers him be soft.
C.Z. Guest was as American as they come, as aristocratic as one can be and as original as is possible. She was on the cover of Time in 1962 because of her rare beauty and style, described as a Grace-Kelly-type by the vulgar press. C.Z. was no Grace. There was nothing glitzy about her. Hers was an unique beauty, which lasted until her 82nd year. She was called stylish, and she was. Style, however, cannot be decoded, nor can it be bestowed. True style is not calculated but intimately connected with sincerity. I was always madly in love with her, and the day she died we spoke over the telephone and joked about so-called society ladies who lunch. C.Z. was a syndicated gardening columnist, an expert horsewoman, a good tennis player, and a tireless worker for charitable causes. Like all true aristos, she was as much at ease speaking to dukes as to dustmen. She was on the best-dressed list since her early 20s, yet was known to wear 40-year-old dresses and manage to look better than nouveaux riches women wearing the latest creations. Like Peter, she was blessed with arete, the Greek word for goodness, which carries with it strong overtones of moral and political wisdom. May she, too, rest in peace.
http://www.nypress.com/15/26/news&columns/.cfm
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