Exploring the depth of marion dönhoff’s psyche: A Cultural Psychogram

The present article is a psychogram about Marion Gräfin Dönhoff. I am deciphering the life of the countess on the basis of Boesch’s symbolic action theory. By the psychogram I am exploring the action field (needs and goals) of Dönhoff that I argue can only be understood while drawing on her relation to her socio-cultural environment. Born in a noble family in Königsberg – in a castle – she is a child of a highly politicized family with a moral ethos. Very early on she comes in contact with the general history or the history of her family both intertwined one with the other, goes to Frankfurt for her studies in the 1930ies, completes her dissertation in Basel (1936), leads castle Friedrichstein economically in the 1940ies, joins the inner-German resistance, flees from castle Friedrichstein in 1944 and becomes a journalist in the post-war decade in Germany. I argue that Dönhoff was exposed to specific cultural life-patterns catalyzing the ground-theme of her life, the political, practical and social involvement with the people’s lives which helps them to preserve meaning. By the notion of interrelated action fields – directed towards a common ground-theme – I am also proposing an extension of Boeschian Cultural Psychology.