March 2008 Posted in Inside Europe

After years spent in exile, many of eastern Europe’s aristocrats are returning to their one-time family estates – bringing regeneration in their wake. Words by Andrew Eames. Photos by Swiatek Wojtkowiak

Jeanne-Marie Wenckheim-Teleki, of the small village of Doboz in eastern Hungary, is a hurricane of a countess. Handsome, forceful and humorous, she is not in the least bit intimidated at being back in what she calls ‘the most communist village in Hungary’, where the Red Star still lords it over the village square. Her family’s former manor house may now be the local school, and she admits she may be unpopular among what she calls the ‘paprika mafia’, who control the region’s most important crop, but she sees herself on a mission to bring employment, hope and faith back to Doboz.

You do not have to look far to see why the countess is not easily intimidated. Her life story is straight out of Hollywood, with scenes that cut swiftly from being an aristocrat toddler in Hungary, to orphan child in Austria, to waitress in Algeria, to refugee in Scotland before settling on English country wife of some distinction, thanks to her marriage to Charles Dickens’ great-great-great grandson. She eventually returned to Hungary after an interval of over 50 years, picking up where her family left off.

The countess is one of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of aristocrats in eastern Europe who lost everything – but who were lucky enough to keep their lives – in World War II and its communist aftermath. And now she is one of the hundreds, if not thousands, who have returned.

Whether they got some of their property back or not, the majority are dedicating themselves to somehow making a difference, be it through philanthropy or some kind of rural enterprise. And, as they move back, they are bringing with them a taste for fine living, something that also went into exile under communist rule.

Most of the returning aristocrats’ life stories are as compellingly exotic as the countess’s. Their families fled Hungary, catapulted out by the Red Army’s advance like a pinball game’s ball bearing, where they bounced from nation to nation, profession to profession, scratching a living. László Károlyi is one such. The septuagenarian count is the great-nephew of a Hungarian prime minister (Mihály Károlyi, who held the post unsuccessfully in 1918 and was described by British author Harold Nicholson as having ‘many qualities, but unfortunately [not those] for which a man is taken seriously by serious people’).

Besides, a famous ancestor did not earn László any privileges in the construction sites of Argentina, where he toiled as a labourer, or in Peru, where he worked as a coffee planter. He finally ended up in London, setting up his own medical instruments business, before returning to the family palace at Fót, just outside Budapest, five years ago. He is the only Hungarian aristocrat to be back in the family property.

That sounds grander than it is. The main building has been a state children’s home since Hungary’s tragic 1956 revolution.

The Károlyis live in a small apartment surrounded by memorabilia of palace life as it used to be lived. From these straitened circumstances, the count and countess have set out to organise a series of concerts, lectures, operas and dances and host busloads of old ladies when requested to do so by the municipality, an experience László finds frustrating.

‘So often I overhear them saying to each other, “you see, they got everything back”, whereas in fact nothing could be further from the truth.’ With the much-diminished children’s home now accommodated elsewhere in the grounds, the count has access to the rest of the palace and is negotiating for some kind of leasehold agreement, but complete restoration is, he says, ‘out of the question’.

In fact there has been little or no automatic restoration for any returnees. In the former East Germany, where around a hundred ‘gumboot barons’ (so-called because of their willingness to do dirty work) have returned, many have bought their own properties back from local authorities, albeit often for a fairly minimal fee. The von Maltzahns, for example, have restored Schloss Ulrichshusen manor in the Lake District of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern into a grand hotel. They have also started a music festival, which along with the hotel attracts 50,000 visitors a year to a rural region that badly needs new sources of revenue and employment.

Many of the returnees are trying their hand at tourism. Count Jozsef Hunyady, whose father’s trajectory included Austria, Egypt, England (including a stint as a stable boy at Newmarket racecourse), France and Italy, is now back with some of his family holdings in Hungary’s Lake Balaton region. He got some land back through a voucher system the government operated for the benefit of those who could prove lineage and ownership, but he was unable to secure the family mansion, which is now a ramshackle sanatorium for the mentally ill.

Count Jozsef has, however, managed to build himself a modest new manor house that he and his wife operate as an upmarket bed and breakfast tied in with a business running horse-riding holidays. He has also picked up his family’s tradition of winemaking, and today he and his winemaking partner produce 10,000 bottles of Pinot Noir a year, generating up to 35 much-needed rural jobs.

In Romania, where the state looks more favour-ably on claims to family property, returnees are also embracing tourism. The likes of Count Tibor Kalnoky near Brasov, the Mikes family at Zabola and the Kripps at Dragasani, all have got substantial holdings of their land and buildings back, but all are still in legal wrangles for more.

Count Kalnoky, now in his mid-forties, was one of the first to return to his ancestral home in Transylvania, 13 years ago. Having grown up in Germany, he had to re-learn Hungarian and Romanian, the languages he now uses on a daily basis. After beginning the legal process of seeking restitution, suing the state for eight long years, he finally won in 1999. ‘It was just a year before Romania passed a law which would have given everything back anyway,’ he adds.

The properties he recovered were in a bad state, particularly both the manor houses, which had been used as party headquarters and then community halls. He has not yet got everything: he is still suing for the return of a school the family founded, paid for and ran. Initially, the state gave it back on a Monday, but then renationalised it the following Friday. ‘They said they didn’t restore schools. But, quite frankly, that school is safer in our hands.’ ithout revenue from land – ‘to keep one square metre of manor house, you need one hectare of forest’ – Count Kalnoky is seeking income from other means, particularly tourism. He has turned some of his houses in the village of Miklósvár, near Brasov, into popular upmarket guest houses, providing welcome employment for 20 villagers.

He also advises other returning aristocrats on their own restoration projects. One of his better-known friends with property in the region is the UK’s Prince Charles, who fell in love with Transylvania and bought two village houses there. Those houses are also now available as holiday rentals via the count.

Another well-known Transylvanian family has returned to its estate in the area. Countess Katalin Mikes was wrenched from her family home, Zabola Estate, as a toddler when her mother was deported to a labour camp. She stayed in Romania until a teenager, before moving to Austria to complete her education. It was at university there that she met Basu Roy Chowdury, a Bengali aristocrat whose family had also lost property, this time in the partition of India. They fell in love and married.

Although the countess has been returning regularly to Zabola, she did not consider a permanent move until her husband’s death, and her sons Gregor and Alexander Roy Chowdury began to press for the restoration of the estate. The brothers have now turned the estate’s machine house into upmarket accommodation that conveys both colonial-era India and old school Transylvania. But the family has a significant task in finding uses for – and therefore money for the restoration of – the two huge manor houses at Zabola, particularly as much of their time is devoted to the legal process of reclaiming other parts of the Mikes’ holdings.

Guests at Zabola and Miklósvár sit down to dinner each night with bottles of wine produced by another family of aristocratic returnees. Baroness Ileana Kripp and her husband Baron Jakob took back the ownership of the Stirbey vineyards at Dragasani, Romania’s Tuscany, in 2001. Their family, too, had a tough time ever since the Ileana’s grandfather, Prince Barbu Stirbey, died in mysterious circumstances in 1946 after attending a reception at the Russian embassy in Bucharest.

Baron Jakob acknowledges he and his wife have been lucky. ‘Eighty or 90 per cent of Romania’s vineyards were ruined under communism, but here the vines were well maintained.’ The difference between then and now is that while the communists produced a poorer quality wine at Stirbey and exported most of it, the Kripps are producing a better quality and selling more than 70 per cent at home.

‘We were surprised how positive the reactions of Romanians were when we reintroduced the Stirbey brand on the internal market,’ says the Baron. ‘We didn’t know how people, after 50 years of indoctrination, would react to products bearing the name of a once stigmatised noble family. But, apparently, Stirbey was associated with history, pride, tradition and excellence.’

It helps that there is now an increasing number of people in Romania who can both afford Stirbey wine and who appreciate the finer things in life, including the returning aristocracy.

THE ROYALS

The swinging political pendulum has brought several royal families back into pole position in former communist countries.

Serbia
Crown Prince Alexander II is back in the Royal Palace in Belgrade and is informally creating various commercial links with the outside world.

Bulgaria
Prince Simeon Saxe-Coburg, from the same house as the British royal family, recently had a spell as Prime Minister.

Romania
Two members of the Hohenzollern family, Princess Margareta and Prince Paul (pictured below), are in Bucharest and both assert they are the direct lineage for any restoration.

Where to stay
Budapest

Boutique Hotel Zara
Só u. 6 Budapest Tel: (+36) 1 357 6170 www.zarahotels.com

Budapest Marriott Hotel Apaczai Csere Janos u. 4 Budapest
Tel: (+36) 1 486 5000 www.marriott.com

Corinthia Aquincum Hotel
Arpad fejedelem utja 94 Budapest Tel: (+36) 1 436 4759
www.corinthiahotels.com

Domina Inn Fiesta
Király u. 20 Budapest Tel: (+36) 1 328 3000
www.dominahotels.com

Millennium Court
Marriott Executive Apartments Pesti Barnabas u. 4 Budapest
Tel: (+36) 1 235 1800
www.marriott.com

Radisson SAS
Béke Hotel Teréz krt. 43 Budapest
Tel: (+36) 1 889 3900
www.danubiushotels.com

More information

The Ulrichshusen website has details of Baron von Maltzahn’s hotel in the MecklenburgVorpommern Lake District, the music festival and the wider family history. www.ulrichshusen.de

Count Jozsef Hunyady’s vineyards, riding holidays and Lehner Major B&B are near Hungary’s Lake Balaton. www.hunyady.hu

Details of the Mikes’ estate at Zabola, Transylvania, plus family history. www.zabola.com

Count Tibor Kalnoky’s guesthouses, plus details of Prince Charles’ property.www.transylvaniancastle.com

The Stirbey vineyards at Dragasani, Romania, run by Baron and Baroness Kripp. www.stirbey.com