The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Love, war and peace for a Scots lass in the Reich
They were strange, terrifying days in Germany during the 1930s, especially for a young Scottish woman engaged to a handsome German doctor.
When war was declared in September 1939, Margaret Dowie found herself incarcerated as an enemy alien, a possible spy, a possible Jew – and her plans to wed Dr Karl Schreck were thwarted at every turn by the authorities.
Determined and spirited, Margaret decided to appeal directly to Hitler and wrote to him in December 1941.
To her – and Karl’s – complete astonishment, a letter arrived from Hitler’s headquarters dated January 22 1942 with extraordinary tidings.
Hitler had read Margaret’s letter and decided to grant the couple a licence to marry.
“Perhaps this was the most benevolent action the Führer had ever taken,” writes Caroline Bergius, author of The Silent Sentinels of Stürlack, in which she describes the adventures of her aunt Margaret Dowie and her own mother Marion in Germany before the war and beyond.
Caroline has delved into an extraordinary period in her family’s history from 1929 to the 1980s, researching Margaret and Marion’s life in Germany before the war, and it’s devastating aftermath.
So how did sisters from a Glasgow family that was not particularly given to foreign travel, become so connected with pre-war Germany?
It rested on a decision by their mother Maggie in 1928 to answer an advert in the Glasgow Herald in which the owner of a stately manor house farm in east Prussia was looking for a suitable Englishspeaking companion for her 15-year-old daughter Ursula.
Margaret, then aged 19, applied and was selected by the Cunitz family. Her vivid letters home show a high-spirited woman who becomes very fond of Frau Cunitz, her host, and by her kindness and beauty.
The First World War was discussed around Margaret, who wrote: “They consider it was a war of defence on their part & that they were forced into it by the other countries.
“In school we are taught that Germany caused the war and in school they are taught that Russia caused the war.”
Margaret returned home to study at Glasgow University where she graduated with an MA in English Literature in 1931.
She became a librarian and won various scholarships enabling her to travel to Heidelberg, Prague and Florence.
In the interim, in 1934, it was Margaret’s sister Marion’s turn to spend a summer with the Cunitz family. Caroline writes: “Had The Glasgow Herald failed to report the full details of political change of policy in the so-called Reich or had my grandmother simply struck up such a good friendship with Frau Cunitz in the interim, and had such confidence in her, that she had no fears for Marion’s safety?”
In 1933 members of the SA (Sturmabteilung or Assault Division of the Nazi Party) began terrorising Jewish shopkeepers in the area.
Fortunately Marion got through this unscathed.
The Dowie family even holidayed in Mittenwald in the Bavarian Alps two years later.
Margaret decided to say on and then fate stepped in.
A young doctor was also staying in her guest house in the Austrian Tyrol – Karl Schreck, of Kaiserlautern.
Caroline says: “He was inebriated by her joie de vivre and she by his infectious sense of humour – so much so that they vowed to meet up again in the same venue in Austria in August of the following year, 1939.”
Things rapidly became complicated.
On September 1, the British Embassy appealed to all British citizens to leave for home by the last available train, departing the next day.
Needless to say, Margaret wasn’t on it, but little did she know she would end up being incarcerated.
The couple forged on with their plans to marry, but Margaret was persona non grata – and suspected of being a spy.
Then, in desperation, she wrote to Hitler.
On August 1 1933 – Margaret’s 33rd birthday – Karl and Margaret were married.
After a brief honeymoon, Karl was summoned to join an army regiment on the Russian Eastern front.
By late 1944 Karl’s whole division was proclaimed lost, presumed dead.
Caroline writes: “Very probably he was a victim of the Belorussian Offensive.
“The German Army Group Centre consisting of 800,000 men were grossly outnumbered by 2.3 million Russian troops.
“By the end of August 1944 the Red Army announced 180,000 dead and missing; the German toll exceeded 400,000.”
Margaret’s extraordinary story continued amid the hardships of post-war Germany, but she found love again in 1946 with a young Serb, Nikola Miti.
They married on July 25 1951 in Glasgow University Memorial Chapel.
Meanwhile, Caroline’s parents, Marion and Richard Butcher, retired to Strathglass, near Beauly in the Highlands, and after Nikola’s death in 1967, Margaret also came north, building a house in Bishop Kinkell near Conon Bridge.
She died in a nursing home in Bavaria in 1995.
The Silent Sentinels of Stürlack can be ordered through any book shop or online.