BarhamHistory.com
Claudia Calmon
Many people have extraordinary lives, others, including perhaps myself, more mundane. From the little that I know, Claudia’s comes into the former category.
She was born on 14th October 1922 in Berlin to Jewish parents. Her father was Curt Calmon, a doctor of law and a director of the Darmstaedter bank. Her mother was Marguerita Winternitz, who came from Prague, daughter of Sigmund Winternitz, Chairman of the Prague Stock Exchange. Curt’s parents came from Kyritz, in Brandenberg, and would appear to have been moderately well-off. An album compiled for Curt, presumably on his wedding, details his progress to that point, and his later life is detailed elsewhere.
Claudia sadly died in 1987 at the age of 64. She had just started to write an account of her early life, but this only reached as far as her life in Berlin. Nevertheless, she also wrote another extraordinary story about an encounter with Adolf Hitler, which, at first, I thought may be fictional, but has since been confirmed by someone who knew her well.
She came to England in the mid 1930s and went to a boarding school (Kingswood) in the west country. During the war she joined the RAF and served at Wrotham, using her German language skills to monitor Luftwaffe conversations.
In 1943 she married (John) Trevor Wagstaffe and they had two children, Celia (my wife) and Peter. they divorced in 1956 and she subsequently married the artist Peter Lucas.