Today is the 20th anniversary of the demise of Dr. Eric de Saventhem (28.04.2005).
Obituary: Eric Maria Vermehren de Saventhem
23 December 1919 – 28 April 2005
Born in 1919 to a patrician Lübeck family, Eric Maria Vermehren was the youngest of three children. When the Nazis came to power all the family were considered politically unreliable and Eric’s repeated refusal to join the Hitler Youth organisation marked him as ‘unfit to represent German youth’ at Oxford, having won a coveted Rhodes scholarship. His passport was revoked, thus making it impossible for him to travel to England.
Eric Vermehren converted to Catholicism shortly after his sister Isa (who had been expelled from her school in 1933 for refusing to salute the Nazi flag). He subsequently married Countess Elisabeth Gräfin von Plettenberg-Lenhausen, a member of one of Germany’s traditional Catholic families, which had clandestinely distributed the banned anti-Nazi encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge of Pope Pius XI in 1937. Elisabeth’s parents were imprisoned by the Gestapo and she confronted them successfully and obtained their release after three weeks. She herself was variously accused of subversive activities and cross-examined on many occasions by the Gestapo.
As the Vermehrens became increasingly involved in the various German resistance circles it became clear that their lives were at risk in Germany. Eric, who had been excluded from military service on account of a childhood injury, managed to get assigned to the Istanbul branch of Admiral Canaris’ Abwehr counter-espionage organisation, which had become a refuge for many anti-Nazi Germans. Canaris at that time, late in 1943, was making peace overtures to the Americans in Turkey, where Franz von Papen, a cousin of Elisabeth Vermehren, was German ambassador and had been asked to meet the American Archbishop (and future Cardinal) Francis Spellman. The cousinhood of good German families then, as now, dominant in the Foreign Service, ensured Eric’s transition from civilian life to the cloak-and-dagger world of the Abwehr.
When posted to the Abwehr office in Istanbul, Vermehren was prevented by the Gestapo from bringing his wife, and she remained ‘hostage’ in Germany. Then, returning to Berlin on leave, Eric agreed with his wife that they defect together to the British and that, to do so, she should accompany him back to Istanbul. For this purpose, Elisabeth managed to procure an official assignment from the Foreign Service with regard to Archbishop Spellman’s visit to Turkey. On the train from Berlin to the Turkish capital their plan received a temporary setback when Gestapo agents detained Frau Vermehren at the Bulgarian frontier crossing, leaving Eric to continue alone to Istanbul. Luckily, the Sofia embassy Abwehr and the ambassador, who was a close family friend, managed to spirit Elisabeth away under the Gestapo’s nose in the diplomatic courier plane that touched down to pick up the diplomatic bag at Sofia en route from Berlin to Istanbul. While in Istanbul, the de Saventhems went to see the Apostolic Delegate to Turkey, Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII), to ask advice on what they intended to do and whether it was justified. His reaction was two-fold: the first being of the diplomat who did not quite understand why such a question was being put to him, ‘and then he seemed to put on his priestly garb and stole and said that they must follow their conscience’.
In Istanbul, meanwhile, Eric Vermehren had made contact in early January 1944 with Nicholas Elliott, the SIS’s counter-espionage man in the British embassy. He had gone to an address in the Pera district for tea; a secret sliding door revealed the bespectacled Elliott, who cheerfully extended his hand saying ‘Eric Vermehren? Why, I believe you were coming up to Oxford.’ Though the Vermehrens took no documents or ciphers with them, British propaganda understandably broke the undertaking to keep the defection secret, knowing that it would set the vipers’ nest of Hitler’s competing intelligence agencies at each other’s throats just weeks before D-Day.
The German diplomat, Allardt, who was at the Istanbul embassy with the de Saventhems describes in his memoirs how Elisabeth de Saventhem, at embassy receptions, scandalised people by saying openly and loudly that Hitler was a criminal and scoundrel who should be done away with. On hearing news of the defection, Hitler was incensed and summoned Canaris for a final interview, accusing him of allowing the Abwehr to ‘fall to bits’. Canaris quietly replied that it was ‘not surprising’, given that Germany was losing the war. Hitler sacked him on the spot and the Abwehr was put under Heinrich Himmler’s jurisdiction, causing hundreds of its officers to resign and take up positions elsewhere, even on the Eastern front, rather than serve the SS. The disintegration of the Abwehr took place just as the plans for D-Day were being finalised, an unexpected but useful coup for the Allies.
Although the departure, in February 1944, had initially been set up to look like a kidnapping by the British secret service in the hope of protecting the families back in Germany, a few days later numerous members of their families were arrested. Vermehren’s parents, elder brother Michael and sister Isa, and also Elisabeth’s youngest sister Gisela were interned in concentration camps in so-called Sippenhaft (collective family punishment) until the end of the war. Remarkably, all survived. Eric and Elisabeth were smuggled back to England via Izmir, Aleppo, Cairo, Gibraltar and Lisbon. One can only call it divine providence that all the members of both families survived their 15 month concentration camp internments unscathed.
Soon left to their own devices in England, the couple found it difficult to find jobs as ex-enemy aliens, but finally settled as assistant teachers at Worth Priory, a Benedictine preparatory school. They then lived for a while near Brompton Oratory, London, but it was five years before Eric found a decent job with a firm of Lloyds brokers. It was during their stay in England that they changed their name to Vermehren de Saventhem for genealogical reasons. To most people thereafter, they were known as Eric and Elisabeth de Saventhem.
Eric made a highly respected reputation in the field of insurance broking for major civil engineering projects, managing the firm’s Swiss subsidiary in Zurich for ten years and then being appointed Director for Europe in 1964. They moved to Paris and then on to Switzerland where they settled on the shores of Lake Geneva, both all the while continuing to be active in traditionalist circles of the Catholic Church after Vatican II. It was only in 2000, when Elisabeth’s health was failing, that the de Saventhems decided to move back to Germany to be near other members of their families.
After the Second Vatican Council, Eric became a leading voice in the young Una Voce movement and was indeed one of the founding members of the International Federation. Jacques Dhaussy of Una Voce France and a founder member of the FIUV, remembers seeing Dr and Mme de Saventhem at a meeting which was held in the parochial hall of St Jeanne de Chantal in Paris in 1965, but his distinct memories go back to spring 1966 when French, Germans, and Italians all confronted with the same liturgical disorders decided to co-ordinate their efforts to resist. The small group had hardly begun its discussions at the French seminary in Rome when Dr and Mme de Saventhem joined them. This meeting had something providential about it. The group needed a unifier, someone to be a spokesman and be a co-ordinator. Jacques Dhaussy said that the de Saventhems fell to them as if from heaven.
Surely it was divine providence which had sent the small group two exceptional people with their dedication, their abilities, their international people skills, their gifts and also their great piety. Both were gifted linguists and trained to travel. Eric de Saventhem was Una Voce’s first president and with such a remarkable life experience behind him, coupled with a brilliant intellect and a mastery of languages he fought the cause for the traditional liturgy with unflagging energy and conviction, always ably supported by Elisabeth. It is easy to understand that coming from Protestantism Dr de Saventhem did not wish to return to it after the Council and was more sensitive than other cradle Catholics to the changes to the Mass.
In 1967 the de Saventhems left London for Paris where they remained for two years. Both gladly engaged themselves in Una Voce meetings, its congresses and general meetings. For several consecutive years meetings of the Federation were extended to Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, as well as the United States and Canada. Then to facilitate contacts with the cardinals and some prelates the meetings of the federation were first held in Rome at the Hotel d’Azeglio not far from the Termini Station then at the Domus Pacis.
It was in 1982 that Dr de Saventhem abandoned his very successful career in insurance to dedicate himself exclusively to the traditionalist cause. The Federation never ceased to enlarge its boundaries—thanks to their care, their correspondence—Chile, Australia, New Zealand entered into the international movement. Through the bulletin of the Federation Dr de Saventhem continued his characteristics—of union and federation. He procured the badge of Una Voce through the French engraver Albert Decaris. He provided articles for Germany’s Una Voce Korrespondenz and Una Voce France as well as the magazine Itinéraires. He was always prudent, precise, and very clear. In an article entitled ‘Vain arguments about the Mass’ published in #163 of Itinéraires (May 1972) he said:
We affirm that in principle, and even more so in the present climate of pluralism and ‘co-responsibility’, we are not only free but compelled to challenge the liturgical reform wherever we find it tainted with modern heresies.
Like Michael Davies, who succeeded him in the Presidency, Eric de Saventhem was a convert to the Catholic faith. The Una Voce movement could have had no better champions than these two men whose deep convictions, personal courage, and devotion to the traditional liturgy of the Church became even stronger as the modern liturgy disintegrated.
Taken from ‘The Independent’ obituary of 3 May 2005 by Richard Bassett with additional information provided by family members, Jacques Dhaussy, Sally Gray and Dr Helmut Rückriegel.
There is a longer obituary here.
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