The Baltic German von Vegesack was a narrator and – often cheerful – poet. In the novel trilogy "The Baltic Tragedy" he describes the conflicts between the German nobility and the Livonian people as well as the demise of this patriarchal world after the Russian October Revolution.
In "Vorfahren und Nachkommen" (Ancestors and Descendants) he describes Orellen, the estate of his mother, who was a daughter of the noble Von Campenhausen family.
From 1918 he lived as a farmer and writer in a medieval building called "Fressendes Haus" (money-eating house) in the Bavarian Forest.
In the 1920s he wrote satirical poems about the Weimar Republic and was treated with hostility by the National Socialists. From 1936 to 1938 he travelled through Latin America "Unter fremden Sternen" (Under Foreign Stars). In 1941 he volunteered as a Wehrmacht interpreter and was temporarily in his Baltic homeland "Als Dolmetscher im Osten" (As an interpreter in the east).
Illustration:
Memorial board of Siegfried von Vegesack (1888-1974), attached to the tree above his grave in Weißenstein. Photo: Vegesack Archive, Regen