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Mein Lebensweg vom Königsschloss zum Bauernhof
Prinz Ernst Heinrich von Sachsen (1896-1971), der dritte Sohn des letzten saechsischen Koenigs, schrieb Ende der sechziger Jahre seine Autobiographie. Da lebte er bereits seit zwanzig Jahren in Irland, wo er sich mit seiner zweiten Frau als Landwirt eine neue Existenz aufgebaut hatte.
303 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
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March 21, 2018I came across this book by chance nosing about in a Dresden bookshop close to the Bruehlsche Terrace and infected by the belief that it was good practise to buy books connected with the places I was visiting, it seemed appropriate to pick up the autobiography of the third son of the last King of Saxony.
His mother had run off with an opera singer , the royal father tried to provide a normalish childhood for his offspring by taking them for walks round the city and buying them a sausage from a stall, naturally if the Dutch would develop a 'bicycle monarchy', then logically the Saxons would have a 'sausage monarchy'. Still this was not to be enough to save them from the first world war. In which the author serves as a junior officer, his elder brother as a Chaplin -the family had been Catholic ever since Augustus the Strong decided he wanted to be King of Poland. Poland too, it seems is worth a mass. Naturally despite low relatively low military rank and being Catholics they meet with the Kaiser and have suitably aristocratic conversations. The end of the war finds our royal author way out east where he strikes a bargain with his unit whereby they put social revolution to one side until they can all get back home, which they do only to find that the monarchy is overthrown. Ernst Heinrich spends much of his time in the new Germany in Bavaria battling poachers, whose dialect he renders phoenitically. Despite ( or because of ) being your typical hunt 'em and flog 'em aristocrat and natural habitué of extreme far- far right circles he does not approve of that Hitler fella on account of his only having been a corporal in the war and his low class accent. At the end of the next war he plays host to Käthe Kollwitz, who dies at his hunting lodge of Moritzburg (he has a taste for art, even if he would not have agreed with her fundamental politics).
After the war he buys himself a nice little farm in Ireland where he enjoys driving about on a tractor - hence the title of the book.
His mother had run off with an opera singer , the royal father tried to provide a normalish childhood for his offspring by taking them for walks round the city and buying them a sausage from a stall, naturally if the Dutch would develop a 'bicycle monarchy', then logically the Saxons would have a 'sausage monarchy'. Still this was not to be enough to save them from the first world war. In which the author serves as a junior officer, his elder brother as a Chaplin -the family had been Catholic ever since Augustus the Strong decided he wanted to be King of Poland. Poland too, it seems is worth a mass. Naturally despite low relatively low military rank and being Catholics they meet with the Kaiser and have suitably aristocratic conversations. The end of the war finds our royal author way out east where he strikes a bargain with his unit whereby they put social revolution to one side until they can all get back home, which they do only to find that the monarchy is overthrown. Ernst Heinrich spends much of his time in the new Germany in Bavaria battling poachers, whose dialect he renders phoenitically. Despite ( or because of ) being your typical hunt 'em and flog 'em aristocrat and natural habitué of extreme far- far right circles he does not approve of that Hitler fella on account of his only having been a corporal in the war and his low class accent. At the end of the next war he plays host to Käthe Kollwitz, who dies at his hunting lodge of Moritzburg (he has a taste for art, even if he would not have agreed with her fundamental politics).
After the war he buys himself a nice little farm in Ireland where he enjoys driving about on a tractor - hence the title of the book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review