20th July 2004
On the occasion of the launching of A Breathless Hush…
The MCC Anthology of Cricket Verse.
Dedicated to the Memory of Pastor Dr.Harald Poelchau (1903-1972),
a leading member of the German Resistance to the Nazi Régime,
who toured England in August 1930 with the United Berliners Cricket Club,
and was a guest of the President of the MCC in the Lord’s Pavilion.
The Long Room, Lord’s: we chosen poets gather,
Potential Ancient Mariners, enjoying
These precious hours of glory; blithely blather
About our works before their taste starts cloying.
But then Today’s Date triggers off the thought
Of what you, Pastor, suffered, what you wrought.
I sense you now beside me, young, impressed
By Cricket History offerings on show.
Tea with the President: an honoured guest
That August day so many years ago,
Together with your eager Berlin team,
Before your country fell for that Regime.
My ‘inward eye’ takes in another scene,
Back sixty years – that 20th of July
At Rastenburg, scene of what might have been:
With Stauffenberg, not Hitler, doomed to die.
That day the hopes of many turned to dust;
Grim prelude to the Tyrant’s vengeance-lust.
Pastor, I see you move from cell to cell,
‘An angel-presence’, countering despair
For those condemned to leave that human hell.
Your brothers’ keeper, for you helped them bear
Their final tortures on their final day –
Those martyred Patriots in Plötzensee.
The present pulls me back, I hear a laugh.
The pictures fade of such great sacrifice.
Authors approach, “we’d like your autograph”.
Emboldened now I buttonhole Tim Rice
Who kindly signs my copy. Poets’ Corner
Grows merry in this Hallowed Hall of Warner.
(Sir Pelham Warner, 1873-1962, a great MCC figure, captain of England on many occasions)
Stanza 1. The Long Room at Lord’s, 93 feet long, serves as picture gallery and reception room, plus of course an exclusive enclosure for members of the MCC. The launch for A BREATHLESS HUSH was held here. On 20th July 1944 Count von Stauffenberg attempted to eliminate Hitler by placing a bomb in a briefcase under a table at the HQ in Rastenburg, East Prussia. Instant and ferocious revenge was taken on participators, suspected sympathizers and their families.
Stanza 4.. Poelchau, described by several survivors as ‘an angelic figure’, in his role of prison chaplain to Tegel and Plötzensee prisons, visited the condemned, and was sometimes allowed to accompany them to the scaffold. He was particularly closely involved with the Kreisau Circle of Count Helmuth James von Moltke, whom he described as being ‘like a brother to me’.. He smuggled out letters from the condemned, eg. von Moltke and Bonhoeffer, to their families. He also was also deeply involved in an organization in Berlin for rescuing and hiding Jews, constantly running the risk of betrayal with subsequent torture and execution. In 1971 he was awarded the Righteous among the Nations Medal by the government of Israel.
Stanza 5. The authors, full of wine, though hardly insolence, went around collecting autographs. Among my ‘scalps’ was Sir Tim Rice, librettist of musicals and former President of the MCC.
Various factors at work here. I had recently become interested in the heroic resistance activity of Pastor Harald Poelchau through an article by James Coldham, in The Cricketer, September 1981, reporting on the United Berliners tour in 1930. Like us ‘poets’ in 2004 the Berlin cricketers were entertained by the President of the MCC in the Lord’s Pavilion. In a few days time in Germany I was due to attend a party near Munich in which several families, particularly that of my hostess (née Baroness von Redwitz whose uncle Count Rudolf was tortured and hanged at Plötzensee) who were engaged in the anti-Nazi Resistance, would be present. The vibes were out. I ironed out the construction in Meersburg by Lake Constance and put the finishing touches to the work in Dublin. I also purchased a recent biography of Poelchau by Klaus Harpprecht, Ein Leben im Widerstand [A Life in the Resistance], which understandably ignores his cricket career! [These verses plus accompanying article later appeared in CRICKET LORE, London.] Unfortunately this article abounds with typos, spoiling the verses in particular.
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