The 'Swinging Sixties'

By Count Hans-Werner Finck von Finckenstein
First Counsellor 1968-1972

London was our first post abroad and it was as with one's first love - both set the standard to all later ones in life. In my case with far-reaching consequences. I was only a bird of passage in our Foreign Service, having signed on for, at most, four years in order eventually to return to journalism and "liberty". But my work at the Belgrave Square Embassy persuaded me to stay. It cost me quite a few cases of champagne and whisky which I had wagered light-heartedly and in rash confidence in my strength of character. London was to blame.

In the late sixties, with Britain just about to prepare for the change-over to decimal currency, the "Continent" was politically still a long way off. In our Embassy we advocated Britain's entry into the European Community without which we could not imagine a common European future. I believe that history has proved us right, but it also has kept alive the stormy debate of the pros and cons.

I was responsible for the Embassy's press and public relations work. The "press", that is to say, whosoever's turn it was from our team, had to be on duty in Belgrave Square in the early hours of the morning to prepare the press summary for our "morning prayers" as the meeting of all the senior Embassy staff with the Ambassador was called. But my main activity was concentrated on Fleet Street, meeting commentators, editors, diplomatic and foreign correspondents, political writers, TV tycoons and publishers. I never had more interesting and satisfying work than in those London years. Many friends of those days have remained friends for life.

I found the British press always fair and objective and never came across anyone who betrayed a confidence or misused confidential information. And this applied to the "tabloids" as much as to the quality papers. The "image of Germany" then presented was, with a few notorious exceptions, satisfactory. There were occasional difficulties, however, when vital British interests were at stake or the Pound Sterling reeled which unfortunately happened quite often. Pressure was put on us to re-value the D-Mark - upwards. There was thunder and lightening in the British papers in a kind of national unanimity almost unthinkable in the German press. The image was then, temporarily, more distorted than fair.

We had an Embassy messenger whose job it was to take the files from the mail register department in the basement to all the Embassy departments on three floors. This was done by means of an ancient dinner-lift. Strangely files always disappeared, important ones and less important ones - there seemed to be no system to these losses. All searches were in vain. It was quite uncanny. But one day the lift stopped functioning, an engineer was called who climbed into the lift-shaft where he found the missing files, some having already turned yellow with age. The messenger, a Bavarian, had thrown them with eclat into the lift and some of them had fallen out on the other side. So much for German organisation.

Another lapse proved more serious. My wife and I were invited by friends to dinner in the Travellers Club. She arrived a little early and, wandering round the premises, she strayed into the library where ladies are not permitted. She made herself at home when the Secretary came up to her, with many apologies, in order to compliment her out. At least he was able to sweeten the bitter pill by telling her that the last foreign lady guilty of a similar offence had also been a German Countess, von Hardenberg, in 1815. We were then close allies against Napoleon. So my wife's faux pas seemed almost like a victory against a last bastion of male domination.