I do believe that seeing places firsthand gives a special vigor and sensibility to a story.
So this summer, in order to understand and describe better Marie and Carl von Clausewitz’s story, I decided to travel through Germany.
Some of the places I know very well, some are new to me. I lived in Berlin for five years and thus could imagine the locations there pretty well. But this beautiful, eclectic city, full of history and overrunned with tourists in July in this particular case has challenged my fantasy. Simply put, many buildings and places from 1800-1830s that were part of the two Clausewitzes’ daily lives don’t exist anymore. With the help of paintings,prints, and lots of imagination I have to reconstruct the surrounding from 200 years ago.
Other stops on my trip are Koblenz, Burg bei Magdeburg, and Dresden. The first one is the city where Marie and Carl spent some of the happiest years of their lives. Burg bei Magdeburg is Carl’s birthplace and his and Marie’s graves are in the local cemetery. Dresden is where Marie grew up and her family had an instrumental role in city’s history.
On the optional list, mostly for time reasons, are Wrocław (former Breslau) and Mysłakowice (former Erdmannsdorf) in Poland. Carl and Marie spent 1830, the last year of his life in Breslau, and he died there too. For almost a decade, they were frequent visitors of Erdmannsdorf where Clausewitz’s closest friend and mentor August Neuharth von Gneisenau had a beautiful manor house.
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