Wylerberg House

Resistance has many forms, one of which is helping others when it is not allowed. An example of someone who did so was Marie Schuster, the German owner of Wylerberg House and Wylerberg Lake. In the 1930s she helped Jewish artists flee Germany. Although she did not have an active role in helping them to flee, she made her property available and supported the refugees financially. She allowed them to stay in Hotel Startjeshof, next to Wylerberg Lake, until they could travel further into the Netherlands. When border guards started asking questions, Marie paid them to keep quiet. She also hid works of art banned by National Socialists in her house.

And yet these good deeds did not help her: at the end of the war, in the Netherlands many Germans were rounded up and sent to camps, for no other reason than being German. Marie, who was not only German but also a distant aunt of Hermann Göring, ended up in Camp Westerbork. Only after British diplomats were called in could the Dutch authorities be convinced that she was a ‘good German’, and her property was returned to her. Wylerberg House was badly damaged in the war, so much so that it had become uninhabitable. Marie had to move to the small porter’s house, where she died in 1949.