The Diary of Constance Graeffe or "Wow, I didn't see that coming."

Well, not every post can be about my fun and games or the day-to-day routine of living here, some should be about work. So, here is a little more on Constance Graeffe.

I began and finished reading her diary last week and, I must say, it was not like anything I expected and I'm all the happier because of that. Constance was of English and French descent and she married a German-Belgian, Otto. They would eventually immigrate to the United States and they died in Michigan in the early 1950s.

The historian who edited this diary – and did a fantastic job and wrote a great introduction – points out the transnational nature of The Graeffe family. (Constance would begin to write her name the German way, Gräffe, as the war went on in a way to distance herself from the Anglophillia of member of her family, especially Carrie.) This is an interesting fact considering that there really is no indigenous Belgian nationality. The king comes from a line of German princes and, well, I’ve written about the language and cultural divide of the Flemish (Dutch) and the Walloons (French) in the country. So, the question remains, “what is a Belgian?” and who were “Belgian” in World War I and, as I always like to tell my students, “what did that mean?”

The diary is a fascinating insight into what it was like to live in Brussels during the war. Constance and her family lived in Saint-Gilles, which is the same town that I live in. They spoke French and German fluently (indeed, most of the letters that Constance puts into her diary are in French). They also spoke Flemish – mainly to the servants – and English as well. Constance and her family were well off, Otto owned a sugar refinery and, let me tell you, the Belgians like their sugar.

The diary itself is written in an interesting way. It goes from August 1914 to December 1915. No one really knows why she ended it there, but she did. The entries are not typical diary entries, but letters, unsent, to a Scottish friend living in Australia. For someone who tried to be understanding of and, later, defensive of German motives and actions in Belgium and the war itself, it’s interesting that she wrote to a British subject. Again, these letters weren’t sent, but as the introduction to the diary points out and the dairy itself makes clear, Constance (or Connie) was trying very hard to justify her thoughts about the war and her family. (This interpretation isn’t mine, but the interpretation of the historian Sophie de Schaepdrijver in her introduction to the war dairy. Just trying to give credit where credit is due.)

The diary contains the usual musings on the lack of food – though Constance and her family had no worries getting food and often went to their house in the country side to get vegetables and such to supplement their rations. Also interesting is the division within her family. Carrie, the sister, allied herself and her family with the allies and was partial to the United States. Carrie housed a number of Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) delegates and send news of the CRB to Constance. Constance often dismissed these as propaganda or undue outside influence and doesn’t seem to have too high a regard for the Americans in her country. At one point she transcribes a report from a newspaper by an American CRB delegate – Robinson Smith – who describes the character of some of the Belgian women as very maiden-like with a certain earnestness to help their American humanitarians. Constance makes a comment, alluding to possible romantic interests by Mr. Smith, that she has never seen such Belgian maidens that Smith speaks off and goes on to describe Belgian girls as more selfish and concerned with hats and accessories than with the simplicity of country life.

It was also interesting to read about the timeless ungratefulness of children in the diary. Constance’s and Otto’s eldest son, Robert, was, well, a brat. He was 16 ½ at the outbreak of the war and tried to enlist in the Belgian Army like his cousins, but was turned away, so he continued his education first in Switzerland and then in Germany. He hated his boarding school education, in part because he was always lacking money. At one point he complains to his mother and father that he doesn’t understand why they send him to this expensive school when they can’t afford to give him money for good suits and other odds and ends. He even asks his parents if they are as rich as they say they are! The back and forth is amazingly honest about the role of parents and the role of children and the nature of the war in shaping that relationship. Indeed, the rest of the children are at home skimping, while Robert is away at school and able to take vacations.

Robert makes constant threats to sign up for the Belgian army via Switzerland. He agrees with a number of his cousins (many of whom sign an open letter to the family) that the Gräefs and their kin should be fighting for Belgium, no matter their national ties. There is a clear generational split. This threat infuriates his father who sends him a letter saying, in short, that if Robert were to sign up for the Belgian or allied army, ties would be severed and, indeed, Robert would be breaking the law because Otto gave his word to the German government (not sure how) that Robert would not take up arms against the German Empire.

Robert would eventually serve in the German army and, indeed, Otto and the family would take German citizenship partially, it seems, because of their affinity for Germany and for Otto’s business interests. (This later war and post-war information is known not through the diary, but through the research of Sophie de Schaepdrijver in her introduction to “We Who Are So Cosmopolitan”: The War Diary of Constance Graeffe, 1914-1915.)

The diary builds to a very defensive end and it’s interesting to see how Constance is first appalled – as his her husband – by the violation of Belgian neutrality, then to try to see both sides of the war and attack the excesses in rhetoric by both the English and the Germans, then to point out the hypocrisy of the English, and then to really feel as though there was a conspiracy by the English and allies to involve Belgium in the war and force the Germany’s hand. The complexity of her thinking is helpful for me because my whole approach to this project is to uncover the frictions of the relief effort and discuss how it was successful in spite of them. I’m not out to do a hatchet job or anything close to that, but to interrogate the received notion of this particular relief movement and to better understand what kind of impact humanitarian work makes on the people and the people on the relief work. This diary presents a narrative of opposition to the traditional narrative of “Germans bad” in a complex way. It’s certainly not “Germans good” but Constance wants to better understand what motivated and drove the Germans to do what they did in August 1914 and how best she, as a Belgian, can live with in the system. She also seeks to understand the inherent contradictions of war. At one point Constance asks why is it okay for the English to bomb seaside Belgian cities, but it’s not okay for the Germans to bomb Belgian towns….One man’s freedom fighter is an other man's terrorist….

These questions aren’t just abstract, they get personal at times. Constance’s sister Carrie accuses Constance of taking the German side because it suits Constance’s family’s interests to be on the German’s good side. Constance takes offense at this. This idea of collusion or participation in the occupation regime is an important one and has been studied a great deal in France, in particular. I wonder if the same question can be asked for those who participated in the “humanitarian regime” of the Belgian relief organizations….I think I see where my research may be heading as I delve deeper into the organization itself. This diary, though, has prompted a lot of good questions from an unexpected source.