With an almost symphonic grace, Charlotte O'Connell, born Charlotte von der Schulenburg, daughter of Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg, died as the 60th anniversary of the July plot against Hitler drew near, writes Kevin Myers.
Her father was eminent within the plot, and its failure meant abominable death for all those within the circle of conspirators, including him. But of course, in the lunatic despotism of Nazi Germany, murder moved in concentric rings from the first stone, and her family were lucky not to have been caught in a later wave and despatched to the guillotine at Dachau or Sachsenhausen.
Charlotte's father had initially been an enthusiastic Nazi. He was deputy president of the criminal police (not the Gestapo) for Berlin. He was a true paradox: an aristocratic count with duelling scars, a socialist, an officer in the Germany army, and a loving father. His socialism initially drew him to national socialism, and then caused him to reject it. From 1940 on, he was ceaselessly engaged in conspiracies against Hitler's life, and all came to nothing - until the final conspiracy, his final blow for the freedom, and his own terrible end.
The knowledge of her father's sacrifice in the noblest cause filled Charlotte's life. After his death, she was raised in Germany, but there was a confraternity among the survivors of the plot, and contacts remained within the peer group of plotters' children, a trans-national kindergarten of freedom. In time this became a kind of caste, a mark of nobility borne by those Germans who had been through the furnace of the Third Reich. Thus she came to marry her first husband, Nick Bielenberg, son of Peter and Christabel Bielenberg, the Anglo-German-Irish survivors of the plot.
She had three splendid children - how splendid, time, in its full measure, would one day reveal. But though she and Nick remained friends, the marriage failed. Charlotte became a spirited member of the Dublin leftie scene in the 1970s, associating with what used to be called Official Sinn Féin, which was steeped in all the Marxist mumbo-jumbo and Stalinist doggerel of the Moscow left. Why did she align herself with such a preposterous party? Like father, like daughter: had he not enthusiastically joined the Nazi Party? In later years she was very frank and entertaining about this time in her life. Anyway, even if the politics of Official Sinn Féin might have been eccentric, they killed no one, and their hearts were good, as they pursued an agenda which still, in part, has merit as they tried to save Georgian buildings and worried about poverty and unemployment.
One of that group was Tommy O'Connell, a barrister who was a good decade younger than Charlotte; like just about everyone who ever saw her, he was utterly besotted by her incredible beauty. They had a relationship. Their relationship became an affair, their affair love and their love marriage.
Tommy moved in with Charlotte and the children in Kildare, while she busied herself in the community. She started the local film club, importing films from Germany and France, which she showed in the local pub. And she worked with the MS society too.
But most of all, she was a light of warmth and love for her family, and for all who knew her in Kildare. She always had that extra something which arose from coming from a long line of "vons"; not aloof, nor supercilious, and certainly not arrogant. But she had an inner unspoken confidence, with the slightly amused air of a kindly chatelaine surrounded by well-meaning dolts.
Tommy was a poor boy from Limerick, she a high-born Prussian, with a whiff of Hohenzollern still lingering in her sable, and they were a perfect match - how perfect, they were about to show.
Two years ago she collapsed at home. Initially, high cholesterol was diagnosed. Fearing something worse, they went to Germany, and worse indeed there was. Charlotte had a brain tumour.
I don't think Tommy ever doubted the outcome: the only issue was when it would occur. They, and the three children, and a fourth young person, a family friend, Adam, embarked upon the bravest, most dogged battle with cancer that I have ever witnessed. Tommy put his career at the bar in abeyance. Jenny, Charlotte's daughter, every two months underwent the epic horror of flying from Japan to be with her. Charlotte's two sons, Kim and Andy, were in constant attendance, and Adam - the magnificent Adam - moved in, to mind her round the clock.
Fritz, her incredibly gallant father, had spent the last years of his life in a conspiracy against evil; and now Charlotte was doing the same, as she and her family plotted against the tumour within her brain. Two operations in Germany probably helped hinder the disease, but nothing could halt it, never mind cause it to reverse. And even though we can never make sense of evil, we can at least see how it enables human goodness to rise and meet it. Charlotte's illness thus became the vessel in which her children and Tommy could repose their ceaseless and abiding love. And all shared the bedside vigil when she slipped away two weeks ago.
Her final deed was posthumous: it was her death notice, acclaiming Adam as one of her own children, which if not in kin, but in deed and duty he had lovingly shown himself to be. And so in death, as the 60th anniversary of the July plot drew near, Charlotte von der Schulenburg gained a son, and finally regained a father.