To me she was always a Countess, such an adorable little thing.

I had come up to the castle because we had promised Ute a party with girls from the village when she officially became our Countess. To me she was always a Countess, such an adorable little thing.

DEEDA BY UTE CARSON 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 102

My nanny’s name was Frieda but I was one year old and had difficulty pronouncing it. I called her Deeda.

In 1941 my widowed mother Gerda and I lived with my maternal grandparents in their castle on a hill above a small village in Silesia. My mother was having to regain their good graces after marrying a commoner, my deceased father. She insisted that she was perfectly capable of taking care of her baby and there was no need for a nanny. There were already many servants–cleaners, cooks, and gardeners. But my grandparents overruled her.

Nazi Germany required girls to do a year of community service. Frieda, who was 18, lived with her family in the village. She helped her parents with chores. They had a plot of land which they ploughed with an ox, and they kept dogs, cats, and poultry galore.

My grandparents arranged for her to be my nanny. She cried when they told her. Her eyes were always puffy and red when she arrived in the mornings. She kept several handkerchiefs in her apron pockets and blew into them all the time as if she had a permanent cold.

But we bonded quickly over the stuffed animals that filled my nursery. From day one Frieda as Deeda crouched on the floor with me and we pretended to be cats or other fuzzy toy friends.

Deeda joined us and listened when my mother sang and read me stories. One day she sang a childhood song her mother had taught her.

Deeda took me to church as soon as I could walk. As patrons of the estate my family was privileged to the front pews. Deeda claimed them as well. She told me to sit up straight and to only whisper. The hymns I heard are still embedded in my mind.

Mother wore stylish clothes and dressed me accordingly. When I started going to church Deeda’s mother and aunts made me the most beautiful embroidered dresses. I especially remember one of spring-green silk with countless stitched flowers.

One day after church Deeda took me to the fairground. I admired the carved wooden horses on the merry-go-round. Deeda placed me on a brilliant black stallion with a flowing mane. During the dizzying rounds I got sick and threw up all over my dress. Deeda rushed me to a brook nearby, stripped off my dress and washed it. She then put it back on me and it dried in the sun as we ambled home. Nobody else knew what had happened. It was our secret.

My paternal grandparents had a cottage on the Baltic Sea. Deeda came with us on summer stays.

She always wore an apron. My grandparents told an amusing story about how they had had to cajole her to take off the apron for a splash in the sea. After a brief paddle in a bathing suit she immediately put her apron back on.

Deeda kept me company at my meals but ate only with the other servants. My grandparents invited her to our table at the cottage but she sat outside on the grass, leaning against the stone wall of our well.

When my mother married our neighbor, Count Fritz von Dahlenhof, in 1944, she regained her aristocratic standing. My stepfather agreed to file adoption papers for me. From then on I was called “The Little Comtessa”.