Emilie Therese Kitta-Kittel

http://www.ra.ee/fotis/index.php?type=2&id=611025 /Ernst Moritz von Ungern-Sternberg (27.07.1860 (Kolu) - 1944, parun, Essu, Kolu ja Tammispea mõisa omanik, Eesti rüütelkonna vaeslastekohtu liige, aurahukohtunik, fotol keskel); Arwed Wilhelm Konstantin von Ungern-Sternberg (Snd 29.07.1855 Kolu mõisas, Sloka Balti Tselluloosivabriku käitise juhataja); Emmy von Ungern-Sternberg (snd 18.04.1863, neiuna Dupré, abielus esmalt Georg Nikolaus von Kitta-Kitteliga, siis Arwed von Ungern-Sternbergiga)./

From: Dupré Book volume III, by Brian Dupré and Peter Dupré.

II. Emilie Therese Dupré . Born April 30 1863.

‘Emilie Therese Dupré, geboren Donnerstag den 30 April 2 Uhr nachts, 1863, getauft am 14 Mai desselben Jahres; ehel. Tochter des Wilhelm Dupré und der Ernestine Weisbecker von Salmünster. Patin war: die ledige Emilie Weisbecker von Salmünster.’ [S.R.]
She was called ‘Emmy’-, which she writes ‘Eṁy’.

She married first in Soden, February 1891 [B.] Dr. med. Georg von Kitta-Kittel (b.22.8.1857 at Kreutzberg); they lived in Dubbeln, near Riga, in Latvia, and had four children. Two died when under five years old. Their son Eduard [Edy) b. 5.3.1894 at Dubbeln, became a doctor in Schlock bei Riga; he married January 1923 Ilse Braungart of Berlin, and had issue Georg Arwed, 1923, Eduard Hellmut, 1925, and Anneliese, 1930. Edy died at Schlock 7.9.1938.
His sister Annella (b 10.9.1902) married (1) Rudolf Döring -- marriage dissolved; (2) Luigi Malipiero-Rosenburg, painter in Berlin, half-brother of the Italian musician Malipiero. Their daughter Franceska Angelica Malipiero was born 10.11.1927, and this second marriage was dissolved c. 1935. Annella also had a son Yörg Kitta-Kittel 26.8.1940.
Dr. Georg Kitta-Kittel’s sister had married in Riga 20.12.1884 Arwed, Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg (b.29.7.1855 at Heinrichshof); his family belonged to the old established German Baltic nobility, known popularly as the ‘Baltic Barons’. They had a son Rodo [b.31.10.1885]. Arwed’s wife died 5.3.1909.

Georg Kitta-Kittel died 30.4.1907 and Eṁy married his brother-in-law Arwed von Ungern-Sternberg at Schlock, May 27 1910. They had no children, and lived in the Kaiserwald, outside Riga, where Arwed was a Governor of the Polytechnikum. He owned a factory in Schlock.

During the 1914 1918 war the Russian Government sent the Germanophil Barons to Siberia, the Baltic States being then part of Russia. To avoid this, Arwed and Eṁy spent the war years in Germany and Sweden, but after the collapse of Russia they were able to return to their home in the Stettines iela [=Strasse] in the Kaiserwald. There was a German army of occupation in Latvia.

In 1918, after the Armistice, the German troops were withdrawn, and on January 3 1919 the English fleet in the Dvina sailed away, leaving Riga without protection against the Bolshevists. Arwed had described their subsequent adventures in a small book ‘Unsere Erlebnisse in der Zeit der Bolshewiken-Herrschaft im Riga vom 3. Januar bis zum 22. Mai 1919’ [Riga, 1929, printed by Ernst Plates]. Arwed’s sister Anna had already arrived in the Kaiserwald as a refugee from Esthonia.

When the Bolshevists approached Riga, Arwed, Eṁy, Annella and the cook took refuge in a small room which Arwed had hired in Riga, hoping that here they would escape notice. Eṁy returned to the Kaiserwald for a few days to try to restrain the looting of the Bolshevist military who were in occupation of their home -- it was considered that a woman would be in less danger; she stayed with neighbours, but was allowed the use of a room in her house. She was spied on by a Commissar, who found her concealing valuables, and was violently abusive; she returned to Riga, and after a week they heard that the Bolshevists had left for the front, so Eṁy and Anna went to live in the Kaiserwald, while Arwed. and. Annella remained in the room in Riga.

When a Revolutionary War Committee was set up in Riga the persecution of the well-to-do classes began in good earnest. The Baltic Barons attracted this particularly, as they had always been unpopular and envied by the local Lettish inhabitants. When looting began the bed-linen of the Baltic Barons was particularly in demand, being an unknown luxury to the looters.

Arwed was safe for a time, because a friend of his who had been a lecturer at the Polytechnicum, and was now a teacher at the People’s School into which the Polytechnicum had been converted, obtained a pass for him which protected him from the violent treatment. When this expired. it became dangerous for him to go out. Bolshevist soldiers visited the house in the Kaiserwald and forced Eṁy to tell them Arwed’s address in Riga. At first nothing happened, but one day when he returned from a visit to the Kaiserwald he found Bolshevists waiting in his room, and they demanded to know what he had brought from the Kaiserwald. Fortunately there was nothing but some washing that Eṁy had sent, but Arwed came under suspicion when a Commissar discovered a store of vegetables in the cupboard of their room, although an order had been made that all vegetables should be taken to the Collective Store. Arwed explained that some friends of Eṁy’s had stored the vegetables there without his knowledge, but he was forced to sign a paper confessing that he had disobeyed the order.

Meanwhile the treatment of the Germans in the Kaiserwald was getting worse and worse; they were considered to constitute a German colony. On the night of April 6 sixty of them were arrested. When the Bolshevists arrived at Arwed’s house Eṁy and Anna were called into the dining-room, where they found the Commissars sitting round the table. They began to question Eṁy; who stood supporting herself by holding on to the table, as she felt her strength leaving her, until she fell to the floor. As she became unconscious, she heard a Commissar say ‘She is done for, [die ist erledigt]. The Bolshevists arrested Anna and took her to the police-station, leaving Eṁy lying there in the empty house. When Anna was questioned by the police she said that she was the cook, and so was allowed to return home, where she found Eṁy crouching in a corner, and put her to bed. ‘So had the irony of fate decided’ wrote Arwed ‘that the only people left behind alive were Baronesses.’

Arwed discovered that a former worker in his factory at Schlock was now a Commissar, and had declared his intention of capturing him. Eṁy came from Kaiserwald and said that she and Anna could not live there any longer. They all found refuge in the house of some friends in Riga, to which they went one by one, without telli.ng the cook, whom they did not trust. When a proclamation was made that all Baltic Barons must report to the authorities, they made up their minds to try to escape from Riga.

It was arranged that Arwed and Anna should go first, and Eṁy and Annella follow after a week. The friends with whom they were living found them a guide -- a peasant who collected farm produce from the surrounding country. Arwed and Anna got safely out of Riga under his guidance on May 17, and made for Bauske, on the Latvian-Lithuanian frontier. After travelling for several days, and having had a number of narrow escapes, they arrived in the neighbourhood of Bauske and found that a battle was raging there. The guide went to look for food, but did not return; Arwed and Anna found the way toward Bauske, but had to keep on hiding while troops passed, until Arwed noticed that some soldiers who were riding by were German. He stopped them, and they told him that Riga had been recaptured from the Bolshevists. They reached Bauske after travelling 180 kilometres in 7 days, and from there were able to get back by train to Riga, where they found Eṁy and Annella safe. The town had been recaptured before it was time for them to leave.

They lived peacefully in the Stettines iela for 20 years.

In October 1939 the Government of the Third Reich withdrew the German minorities from the Baltic countries to avoid friction with Russia; Arwed and Eṁy had again to leave Riga, and were sent to Wlozlack, near Posen, as part of the scheme for the Germanisation of Poland. Arwed died in 1941, and Eṁy died on February 24, 1946, the last of Jean-Pierre’s grandchildren to survive. A Requiem was said for her in St Mary le Park, Battersea on May 27, 1946.