From Refugees to Royalty Sample

10 from refugees to royalty
differ from their less privileged co‐religionists? What was life in London like for
German Jews in the Edwardian era? Ludwig Messel was reputedly the richest man
on the London Stock Exchange, but this did not help him when Germans living
in Britain were engulfed in a wave of xenophobic violence in the opening years of
the First World War.
The story of the Messel family is a remarkable one, not just for the journey
which brought them to England but for the extraordinary contribution they made
across so many creative disciplines. Each generation has produced pioneers in
their chosen fields, whether architecture or industry, theatre or cinema, fashion
or photography, design, horticulture or the decorative arts. The personal
collections the Messels built up for their private pleasure now grace the nation’s
galleries, while the houses in which they lived are open for public education and
enjoyment. Several of the specialist plants grown in gardens around Britain were
first cultivated at Nymans, and the most famous among them bear the names of
individual members of the Messel family as a testament to their success.
Alongside this rich record, there is a more sombre side to the family history.
The male members of the family, in particular, suffered from serious bouts of
mental illness over at least three generations, at a time when there was limited
treatment available to mitigate the impact of the attacks. In its mildest form, this
melancholia – as it was then known – manifested itself in appalling outbursts
of ill temper. At its most damaging it led to severe depression and at least one
suicide. Relations within the family could also be strained to breaking point
when personal interests were given precedence over shared needs. Even the royal
marriage, the Messel family’s breakthrough into the highest stratum of British
society, collapsed under the weight of self‐indulgence.
Whenever I am at Nymans I pay a special visit to the statuette in the Forecourt
Garden dedicated to the memory of my grandmother Phoebe Messel and her
brother Rudolph. Both died before I was born, but I was brought up on the stories
of their deep devotion to one another and the magical world they created for my
mother and her siblings when they were growing up. I was told the basic outlines
of the family history, but no one was able to explain to me why the Messels
first came to England or what their lives had been like in Germany before they
migrated. I read the brief backgrounds in books on the more famous members of
the Messel family, but even the best were hazy on the details. The true story was
clearly waiting to be uncovered.
My search for answers took me to the German market town of Dieburg,
forty minutes’ train ride south of Frankfurt. I knew that the earliest Jewish
inhabitants of the village of Messel were buried in Dieburg’s Jewish cemetery
and that my ancestors were among them. The section of the cemetery nearest
the entrance contains the last graves of the 1920s and 1930s: severe rows of dark