The Beginning - Dry and Sweet
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Hans Herwarth von Bittenfeld
By Hans Herwarth von Bittenfeld
The occasion of handing my letter of accreditation to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, on 26 May 1955, was deeply moving for me personally. It was ten years to the day that as an officer of the defeated German army I had returned to my home and if anyone had said to me then that within a decade I would be the first German Ambassador to be received by the Queen, I would have considered him a madman. So I felt as though a miracle had occurred. My shattered country was received back into the family of nations, though we had yet to regain the trust lost in the years between 1933 and 1945 and that would primarily be my task in London.
When I had handed my letter to Her Majesty and expressed the greetings and good wishes of the German President, the Queen began a more relaxed conversation. At first only Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, the Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, was present at the audience. The Queen had evidently been informed about me and my own history, that I had been brought up in the country and had served in the cavalry. Love for horses was something we had in common. Her Majesty asked me whether I knew her brother-in-law, Prince George of Hanover. I did and said that we had both been cavalry officers in the War. "But, I am afraid, Ma'm, begging your pardon, on the wrong side." That caused smiles all round. I soon found out that the Queen's interest in horses was not all exclusive as was often said. She has a wide interest in politics at home and abroad; indeed, at a later occasion, when we talked about the German system of higher education, she astonished me with her detailed knowledge and I had to ask an expert to answer some of her questions.
On that first official occasion I got back to our Embassy, accompanied by the splendidly attired Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones, in the black Landau drawn by two white horses. I invited the coachmen and the two footmen who had stood at the back of the coach to come in and join everyone in a glass of champagne while the horses received their reward for the day in the form of sugar lumps. This, of course, was nothing unusual for anyone used to dealing with horses. But it seems that I happened to be the first to end his ambassadorial debut in this manner - "dry and sweet" - for men and horses alike. And judging from the press photographers' reactions it was also something of an unintended public relations success.
