Tabula Rasa
The Embassy staff in 1955 was few in numbers but within a year had grown to 140, both diplomats and other employees. Almost all the old Embassy files were destroyed, so it was literally "tabula rasa". In his memoirs, Hans Herwarth has told how, before the move to Belgrave Square, he had gone to auction sales at Sotheby's and Christie's where, at that time, German Biedermeier furniture could be obtained at reasonable prices. Other furniture came from the former Bonn residence of Francois Ponget, the French High Commissioner and later Ambassador, when its contents reverted to German Government ownership in 1955. One piece of furniture which Herwarth was particularly pleased to acquire was the writing desk used by Prince Lichnowsky, the last Imperial German Ambassador at 9 Carlton House Terrace. Until 4 August 1914 Lichnowsky, that enlightened diplomat, had struggled hard, frustrated by his superiors in Berlin, to preserve the peace between Germany and Great Britain, and half a century later his widow, a writer who survived him and lived in London, sold the historic piece to Hans von Herwarth whose wife was a relative and it has been used by all the German Ambassadors at the Belgrave Square Embassy since.
In 1955 the new Federal German Ambassador was allowed considerable entertainment expenses but his wife was expected to submit separate accounts, "a strenuous and time-consuming business". When the Herwarths left London after nearly seven years, they had entertained some 60,000 guests to cocktails, receptions, lunches and dinners. Moreover, the house was always full of visitors. A stay with the Ambassador in London was eagerly sought by a new generation of German postwar politicians and others in those early years before the German "economic miracle". "An Embassy is like an hotel", the Ambassador finally summed up - politely. He might have said "free hotel", since some of the guests clearly expected their host and hostess also to take them on free shopping sprees to Harrods.
A special occasion for the work of the Embassy was the first official visit of the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Heinrich von Brentano, on 1 May 1956. Since the exhibition "200 Years of German Art", the first major post war exhibition of German paintings and sculptures, had recently been opened, the Ambassador and Baroness von Herwarth arranged for a grand Soiree in the Tate Gallery and 600 guests were invited. There was something of a disaster behind the scenes which was never made public. Shortly before that event on which everything had to function as smoothly as possible, the Herwarth's Italian chef absconded - with a new love as well as a good deal of the provisions in the Embassy's larder and wine cellar. Elisabeth von Herwarth, accustomed to unforeseen setbacks, turned to St. Anthony of Padua who had always come to her rescue in the past. And this time, too, the saint of lost things and causes did not let her down. Desperate telephone calls miraculously produced a young Italian chef who had just left an ambassadorial position in The Hague and arrived in London. He was a native of the Abruzzi and seemed to have relations everywhere, conveniently placed in other kitchens of the Belgrave Square neighbourhood. On the critical day, as Frau von Herwarth has told, just about a whole Abruzzi village seemed to have assembled in her kitchen and was hard at work. When she finally and smilingly greeted her guests that evening as though nothing had happened, no one realised how much Anglo-German relations owed to St. Anthony of Padua and to her.
