Hajo Holborn: A Memoir

Extract

I MET Hajo Holborn for the first time in the fall of 1923 in the archives of the German Foreign Office. Holborn then was finishing his dissertation and editing the Radowitz papers. This first encounter was followed by many brief and hurried talks amid the files of the German Foreign Office: Holborn showed me an exciting note by Bismarck which he had just discovered, or we talked about German politics. I remember vividly a gloomy morning after the election of Hindenburg as President, which gave a severe shock to those who had set their hopes on the development of a democratic Germany. On walks in Heidelberg where Holborn became a Privatdozent in 1926 I could observe how the southern softness of this corner of Germany enchanted this quiet and deliberate North German and I felt happily confirmed in my pride in my native Baden. Perhaps because of the striking difference my next clear recollections of meetings with Holborn are again those of walks, this time in Hyde Park in London on summer afternoons of 1934. The Londoners' joyful surrender to the rare pleasures of sunny weather stood in sharp contrast to the disquieting news from the Continent on which conversation inevitably turned and which confirmed—more convincingly than anyone could have wished—the correctness and necessity of the decision to leave Germany. But I remember that I admired Holborn's ability to shake off the worry about the events in Germany and to study attentively the English life which surrounded him.