Elisabeth von Offenberg Sweeney

Elisabeth von Offenberg Sweeney who passed away on March 13, 2015 was in her 101st year. She was born in Stoken, Kurland, a Baltic province of the then Russian Empire. She was the eldest of six children of Baron Emmerich von Offenberg and his wife Hilda Bruttan. The family originated  in the Swiss-Austrian border Bodensee district and became mercenary soldiers in the armies of the Tsars centuries earlier and were granted an estate in what later became Latvia.

Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 the family were made feel increasingly unwelcome, until one night when Elisabeth was aged six, they were given hours to leave or be shot. They fled to Germany, penniless and with just the clothes they wore. They were stateless and were issued with ‘Wilson Passports’, living for a time in a refugee camp. The family was split up and some of the children sent to different families.

Elisabeth spent much of her childhood in a home for refugee children run by a kind pastor in Lubek where she received a good primary education. Later she trained as a dietician in Zurich, but returned to work as a governess with a Jewish family in Nuremberg until precluded under Nazi employment laws. The family escaped to Switzerland but then Elisabeth lost contact and feared their fate as victims of the Holocaust.

Through family connections, Elisabeth was offered a position as governess to the young children of Dr Edouard Hempel, a diplomat who was appointed German Legate to Ireland in 1937. In Dublin Elisabeth was an integral part of the Hempel family and introduced as their friend, Baroness von Offenberg, taking part in embassy events and entertainments. Here she met Eamon De Valera and members of his Cabinet and also republican notables including Dan Breen, Maud Gonne and Francis Stuart.

In 1938 the Hempels first holidayed in Achill staying at the Amethyst Hotel run by Thea Blackham, later Mrs Robert Boyd. There  Elisabeth met a varied circle of writers and artists including Graham Greene and his lover Catherine Walston, Ernie O’Malley and Helen Hooker, Barbara Rothschild and Fr Donal O’Sullivan, (first chairman of the Arts Council).

With the defeat of  Hitler and the Third Reich in 1945, Dr.Hempel offered Elisabeth the choice of repatriation to Germany, however as her father had died and her mother was living in Russian controlled East Germany and her brothers Sigismund and Emmerich had been killed in the war, her roots were severed with Germany.

So Elisabeth chose Achill and came to work for Thea Boyd at the Amethyst Hotel. She fell in love with an Achill man Niall Sweeney, proprietor of an established garage business and they were married in 1948 . They settled in Glendarry where they raised three children, Klaus, Catherine and Peter. Here Elisabeth indulged her favourite pastime of gardening, transforming a hilly bogland into an oasis of trees , shrubs and raised flower beds. She had an uncanny instinct for knowing where to place plants where the salt wind would not burn them. She became an expert on  plants which would survive weather beaten Achill maintaining that if a plant had a silver sided leaf , then it would thrive. Until six months before she passed on, Elisabeth, though a frail centenarian, could be found with her secateurs keeping order in her garden.

Having nursed Niall for eight years following a disabling stroke, Elisabeth lived on independantly in her immaculately kept home. She was a delight to call on, her conversation was sharp and informed on diverse subjects, history, current affairs, nature and Formula One racing for which she had a passion. She was equally at home with children, adolescents and adults and was a good listener and imparter of good advice. To the end her mind remained remarkably clear, with a perceptive and intelligent grasp of people and events.

 It might be said that Elisabeth lived as complete and fulfilled a life as one could hope for, surviving a revolution and two world wars, eventually finding her haven and happiness in Achill, worlds apart from her distant origins in tsarist Russia.  

May she rest in peace.