OB 13. H SE DOBIM S TEM GOSPODOM. A JE KDO TAKO PRIJAZEN IN PREVEDE TOLE V SLOVENSKI JEZIK? RAD BI OBJAVIL NJEGOVO PISMO V SLO, IMAM GOOGLE PREVOD, A TO NI RAVNO ZA OBJAVLJAT. PREBERITE. KAJ PA, ČE JE VSE TO RES? Dear Teja Please forgive my writing in English. My wife and I have just seen your film on Turnis via Facebook. My mother, Gabrielle Ligertwood (known as Elly, nee von Hunkar, whose mother Mai Lippitt was married to Aladar von Hunkar) grew up in the castle and moved to the Villa when her uncle, Ralph, exercised his right to take over the castle in 1937 (see attached biography, a shorter version of which was published in The Independent as her obituary). The two sides of the family did not have great contact with each other. We have many photographs of Elly’s childhood and of Turnis. Elly died in 2009, but she took my sister and I on several of her many visits and each of her four grandchildren to Turnis when they reached 15 years, so they too might understand their heritage. We now visit most years. As you will know and as the film refers to, terrible things happened to the family in 1945, much of which is documented – Elly did a lot of work with local journalists and a policeman to research and publish what happened at Sterntal. Ralph Lippitt, who with his wife supported the Nazis, was shot in Ptuj after the war; his wife escaped. Aladar Lippitt, Elly’s father, who had supported the partisans in the early years, together with his family were sent to Sterntal as ‘bourgeoisie’ and were some months later put on the last ‘train’ of prisoners sent to Austria. The rest of the Sterntal inmates were taken to the woods and murdered. This is now all documented fact. All the furniture, paintings, jewellery and other artefacts at Turnis were stolen (some things are in the Herbestein castle in Ptuj marked as ‘gifts to the state’!). A few small items were rescued by local people who worked for the family and, in later years given back to Elly. As a family, we have not pursued ownership of Turnis – the castle is the property of Ralph’s successors, though the Villa belonged to Mai Lippitt). The repairs after the big fire saw an architecturally inappropriate roof added to the building and, as in your film, the whole is in a dreadful state. There is also said to be an unexploded bomb in the lake! What Elly and, after her death, we have pursued through the European courts is an acknowledgement from the Slovenian state that it wrongly stripped the whole family of their nationality in 1945 and therefore their property rights. It’s not a question now of money or property but just an acknowledgement of wrong done. As you may know, all documentation on this last point was destroyed in 1990. We would love to meet you and some of the people in your film when we visit Ptuj later this year, if we may. Yours sincerely Hugh Ligertwood
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 08:47:15 +0000
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