In God's Hands:
A Noblewoman's Sruggle for Survival in War and Revolution

Author:
Publisher: Warren Publishing at Cornelius, NC
ISBN 978-1-886-057-37-1

Ellen von Samson-Himmelstjerna von zur Muehlen was born at Hummelshof, her family's estate in north Lavonia, then one of the Baltic provinces of Tsarist Russia and part of today's Estonia. Her family belonged to the Baltic German nobility -- "the Baltic Barons" -- many of whom were descendants of the Teutonic Knights and Livonian Knights who in medieval times brought Christianity to the region. Through the centuries the Baltic German landed aristocracy was the dominant force in the religious, cultural and economic development of the Baltic provinces, particularly in Estonia and Latvia. In the process they accumulated considerable wealth and vast landholdings which they were able to retain largely intact until the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917.

Against this backdrop, the author describes how a large, working estate was managed and the grand but formal lifestyle that was typical of that time and place. But intertwined in her description of elegant country house festivities, she also writes of her childhood at Hummelshof in an atmosphere of strict, Prussian discipline maintained by her nannies and tutors, and overseen by her mother's cold, imperial attitude toward the children. Suffering thus from a feeling of rejection and loneliness, the author develops a love of nature and a deep spirituality -- "her voices" -- which sustain her on many occasions during later years of war and deprivation.

The remainder of her memoir is a saga of extraordinary times-World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and World War II -- during which she repeatedly finds her and her family's survival in jeopardy, and indeed culminating in the murder of her then former husband and much of his family by the Soviets. Finally, it is in their flight from the Soviets that she leads her elderly parents and young daughter through the burning ruins of Berlin in the last days of Nazi Germany.