6th May 1937

6th May 1937

Leutstetten to 27 Queen Square, Bath

Dear Madeleine!

You are a perfect sweet to have sent us the Coronation programme. We are all very excited about it, as everyone is, to be sure. It would be most beautiful to see it. Perhaps we shall at some cinema. But we are sure to listen in. We did so at the funeral of King George V. And at the wedding of Marina. Many thanks also for your nice long letter. Am I not hateful not to have written for so long? But I was very busy sewing. Maybe I shall become clever in sewing. Until now I am not. The most exciting was to sew a tennis dress for Baby with a cape and all sorts of complications. It is not finished yet, but it will be very nice. Next I shall make a white organdie frock, a perfect sweet. I am quite in love with it, although I did not even start it. I was at a wedding of a friend, and it was great fun. I danced a lot. In ten days I shall assist at another. I wish everybody to marry because weddings are such immense fun. But not to be married myself. I was at Lindau for a week with Muck and Deidi. I tried to go by car, did you ever? It is very exciting and rather difficult. We have cars of our own but Pappi would never let us go by our self. He is afraid we could crash. So at Lindau we went in the car of a cousin. The most difficult is going backwards. Here we can’t play tennis, in Sarvar we have a court. But this weekend we are going to see the German champions von Cramm and Henkel playing the Austrians Count Bawarovski and Metaxa. It is about the Davis Cup. It will be awfully exciting. I love to watch tennis, bit I don’t like to play it myself. I saw some very good films “San Francisco” with Clarke Gable and Jeanette Macdonald. And “Romana” a coloured film, very nice but sentimental. And “Janeschikc” or “Love, Liberty and Treason”, a Polish film, talking German, very exciting with beautiful pictures. About a Polish highway-man and having adventures as much as the Scarlet Pimpernel. But the end is sad, he is hanged. We did not make up our minds about the holidays. I wish we would go to Belgium again. But that depends on grandma. Why don’t you go for your holidays to the Plattensee in Hungary. It is a very big lake and very warm water, always sun and good weather. It is quite near to Sarvar. I wish we would go there again very soon. But maybe we remain here till August. In Sarvar we can ride and do everything. And we have an immense garden and heaps of flowers and fruits. Here we have a dozen of apple trees which are empty before the apples are ripe. Yesterday we saw the opera Golderdammering by Wagner. It lasted 5 1⁄2 hours that is much too long. I am dreadfully untidy. The sisters send much love to all of you. I am very fond of you.

Loll

Right: Gottfried von Cramm. A German amateur tennis champion who won the French Open twice. He was ranked number 2 in the world in both 1934 and 1936, and number 1 in the world in 1937. He died in a car crash, Egypt 1976. He did, however, survive his fellow players of that day; Henkel played his last tournament at Bad Pyrmont in the summer of 1942, he had already received his draft notice. In the Battle of Stalingrad, Henkel was shot into the upper leg. He died of this injury on 13th January 1943. Bawarovski joined the German Wehrmacht. On December 21st 1942, when the Luftwaffe evacuated his troops from Stalingrad he ceded his place on the last flight to a heavily injured soldier and decided to stay in the trenches with his subordinates. He was hit by the Soviets and died in agony without receiving any medical help. Metaxa was drafted into the German Wehrmacht and was killed in action by American artillery fire at the town of Arnoldsweiler near Düren on 12th December 1944.