Wiepersdorf Castle – still refuge or lonely exile?

Sometimes the fairy tales become strangely true. Here in Wiepersdorf, for example, which is still irritatingly silent in Teltow Fläming today, an hour and a half of the car hours from Berlin, where Achim and Bettina von Arnim settled in 1814.

A castle? At that time more of a medium size manor and not in the best condition. “Lowering” is also wrong, Achim von Arnim had fled from Berlin because he was too poor for a impoverished noble and was not exactly appreciated as an author. So the simple country life as a self -catering! Achim von Arnim likes to operate on his estate, between cattle breeding and field work, but Bettina – the sister of Clemens Brentano – life here is an abomination. What boredom! Nothing but forests, fields and some farmers with whom she has nothing to talk about.

So she stays in Berlin most of the time and he stays out here. A long -distance marriage in letters. On September 19, 1820, Achim von Arnim wrote to Bettina: “Nowhere now I think of you as often as here, when we lived quite nice days, which you unfortunately forgot.” She writes him of an interesting evening with Schnel, Schinkel, Rauch, Tieck and Varnhagen in Berlin, more interesting than child baptism in the village, to which Achim was invited. The crack between the big city and the country goes through it through it – 200 years ago!

If Bettina is out here, she writes long lament. They all sound like this, whom she sends her sister Gundula from Savigny New Year 1823. Writing passes her here, where all day, all year round, “all love does not have long life, which is why you want to lift a leg or arm”. The case is clear to their contemporaries, they only need to read what both write. Heine judges in his “romantic school” flush about Achim von Arnim: “He was not a poet of life, but of death.” And Théophile Gautier etched, who only know the mysteries of the grave like a graves of death, “and when the moon opens up over the horizon at night, sitting on a tomb, with the cold -flowering of a poor ghost happen”.

After Achim died in 1831, Bettina begins to live. She not only publishes Achim’s writings, but edited “Goethe’s correspondence with a child” in 1835 and wrote the Günderrode in 1839. And apparently she is no longer afraid of Wiepersdorf. Her discomfort may not have been in the place alone. Wiepersdorf So silent refuge or lonely exile? There is not much in between, until today.

For almost three months I am here as a scholarship holder, with only short interruptions through trips to Berlin with a call bus that you have to order in advance (and hopes that it is available), then with the regional train from Jüterbog, which is almost as often as it drives, not to talk about on time. 14 scholarship holders from all over the world and from all art divisions work here this year (of over 800 applicants). I represent the East German history with a biography of Erik Neutsch, together with a doctoral student who works about the philosopher Wolfgang Heise.

Schloss Wiepersdorf has been a home for writers since 1947. The home character has not completely stored. But one day the little sensation in daily monotony: white tablecloths and beer at eleven in the morning! There is no other way in this monastic place, but now for the craftsmen, bratwurst stall operators and beekeepers who build their stands in the castle park at the annual spring festival at the end of May. Annette Rupp (she headed the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles for a long time) invited her for a preliminary discussion. The scholarship holders irritated by the slump of “working population” sneak over the salon door like shadows, behind which it suddenly booms loudly like in a village pub.

Am I too sensitive here, almost softly soft in the express pace? That is a permanent topic here is the food. Three meals daily without having to shop and cook beforehand (and washed off afterwards) inevitably make it a toxic castle existence. Tomorrow evening, says the chef (formerly Adlon Berlin), going to me as calming, as if he wanted to suffocate a revolt in the bud, there is meat again. I am the only meat eater here with all the vegetarians.

The other permanent topic is the wolves. They live next door in the forest. People don’t attack, but high fences have been built around the chicken and sheep stalls. The fairy tales come true? In 1816 Wilhelm Grimm came to Wiepersdorf. It is said that he heard from Little Red Riding Hood for the first time here and the wolf, which then became one of the most famous fairy tales in his collection. The “Little Red Riding Hood Park” is therefore an attraction (the only one) here in Wiepersdorf. You go deeper into the forest for half an hour and then stand in front of the suspected remains of the grandmother’s house (including explanatory display board). Then the eerie message at the dinner table: right next to this picturesque village attraction is the freshly gnawed skeleton of a deer!

Wiepersdorf exists on the edge of the urban world, but not outside of her. Anna Seghers also had to find out. Often as a guest here, in 1957 she had a nervous breakdown in the castle. Officially, it was said that she was revised. However, if you take a look at the year, you know what was happening: the trial against her old confidante, the chief lecturer of the development publisher Walter Janka, which was accused of counter-revolutionary activities. In a show process, he was sentenced to a prison penalty. Seghers was present at the trial, but was silent what her Janka never forgives. She never came to Wiepersdorf again.

Maxie Wander meets a heart attack in 1973 on a winter forest walk around Wiepersdorf. She plunges into the snow unconscious and survived as if by a miracle: »I slowly moved without knowing where and whether I was still alive or already dead. Maybe everything was a dream after all? “

Oh yes, there is also a donkey in the village, also an attraction. It is said that donkeys would drive away the wolves due to their shaking IA calls. Some of the scholarship holders who fight with melancholic states come regularly to him to comfort him – and – and – with the gift of fresh grasses. But when she caught Ralf, the donkey owner, who is a gardener and in -house technician in the Castle, she would trust such a wild thunder cry as you would actually only be Zeus, whose sculpture is in the castle park.

Wiepersdorf Castle, Bettina von-Arnim-Straße 13, 14913 Nieder Fläming; Next public event: “Game and Games”, lecture by Dr. Barbara Steingießer, July 17, 6.30 p.m. www.schloss-wiepersdorf.de