Cumberland Lodge Honouring Hena in the Right Setting

Cumberland Lodge Honouring Hena in the Right Setting ALASTAIR NIVEN UMBERLAND L ODGE WAS A PECULIARLY APT PLACE in which to hold a conference in celebration of the life of Hena Maes–Jelinek. One of the C things which Hena’s friends knew about her, but of which she herself almost never talked, was that, as a Jewish child, she had been hidden in the Second World War by nuns. Her memories of that time, when she so nearly met the fate of many of her relatives who were sent to concentration camps, were so vivid that it was only with the greatest reluctance that she crossed the border from Belgium to Germany, even though some of her closest friends and post- colonial colleagues were there. When she visited Cumberland Lodge, not long after I had become Principal, she responded with particular interest to my ac- count of the circumstances of the Lodge’s birth or, rather, its re-birth. The Lodge was built in 1652 by one of Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers. Cromwell, not having paid his army for several years, put King Charles I on trial at West- minster and oversaw his execution on 30 January 1649. His motive was partly to realize income on the King’s estates, which now passed into parliamentary hands. One piece of land in Windsor Great Park was sold for the sum of £4,000 to the man who built the Lodge, which thus began its history as a seat of repub- licanism. This did not long survive the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. King Charles II and all his successors visited the Lodge fairly often and entrusted its care either to a member of the Royal Family or to someone in a very high posi- tion, such as Queen Anne’s confidante, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, a woman said at the time to be more powerful than the Queen herself. The Lodge’s illustrious lineage went on like this for three hundred years. It was here that the notorious Duke of Cumberland resided, victor over ‘Bonnie’ Prince Charles Edward at the battle of Culloden in 1746. The Lodge had pre- viously been known as the Great Lodge or Windsor Lodge, but because of its association with Cumberland it became known by its present name not long 20 ALASTAIR NIVEN ´ after his death in 1765. In the nineteenth century, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were often present, and one of their daughters, Helena, lived at the Lodge for most of her long married life. It was here that, in 1936, the constitutional crisis arising from the new King Edward VIII’s determination to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson was resolved in discussions led by the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin. As a consequence, the King became the only mon- arch in British history voluntarily to abdicate. All this changed in 1947 as a direct consequence of the War. It is here that the synchronicity with Hena’s life becomes apparent. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth had been impressed by a book published in 1941 called Darkness Over Germany. Its author, Amy Buller, took part in higher-education missions to Ger- many in the late 1930s. There was a genuine desire in Britain to find out what was happening in Hitler’s resurrecting nation. Buller could understand the attraction that many students and young people had to the Nazi regime, because after twenty years of unemployment and stagnation Germany was not only on the move again but it held out hope of a new dawn. Amy Buller was a devout Christian, and she was therefore appalled at the regime’s reliance on brutality and inflated iconography. She was sure that the new Germany had been lured by false gods. However, this was not yet universally recognized and the evidence of mass murder by means of the Holocaust was not yet available. Her book was one of the first eye-witness accounts of how ordinary young Ger- mans were thinking at the time. If, she argued, as civilized a country as Germany could be swayed in such a loathsome direction, might not the same happen in Britain, first cousin to Germany in culture, language, and royalty? The King invited Amy Buller to Buckingham Palace to discuss her dream of establishing a centre where young people could gather to talk about their aspira- tions. Why were they studying, to what end would they put their degrees, what kind of society did they hope would emerge when victory had been achieved and peace established? The result was the setting-up of a charitable foundation. Opening its doors in 1947, the Lodge has ever since played host to gatherings of students from all over the world. It runs its own programme of discussions on ethical, social, moral, and philosophical issues. It is dedicated above all to a peaceful future in which everyone should have the opportunity to achieve his or her potential. Hena Maes–Jelinek dedicated her life to the teaching of young people and to research in the ‘new’ literatures which variants of the English language were producing all over the world. She was, in other words, on the side of youth and an advocate of innovation. Cumberland Lodge’s mission chimed exactly with her own ethical and social priorities. She felt at home at the Lodge, even though.

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