From the Chancellors Report of the Grand Priory and British Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, 1999
Obituaries
Professor Fra’ Alfred Marnau
Fra' Alfred Marnau joined the Order of Malta in 1986; he made his first simple vows as a Knight of Justice on the 21st May 1992 and his Solemn (perpetual) vows on 16th November 1995. He was an extraordinary man whose apparently contradictory characteristics included charity and ferocity, humility and an awareness of his own gifts and worth, limitless love, generosity and extreme intransigence. Thus was included in our ranks an unpredictable but highly entertaining and much loved character.
He was born in Pressburg-Poszony, the ancient Hungarian coronation cits perhaps better known to most of us as Bratislava. Pressburg is a city of three languages and at least as many nationalities on the border of East and West. Although German was Alfred’s mother tongue and his chosen poetic language there was no mistaking his Hungarian soul. in 1938 he met Senta Polanyi, a young cellist, at a musical evening and he married her threey ears later when they were both in exile. Senta was of Jewish extraction and it was fortunate that she escaped to England later in 1938; her parents and all her family perished in Auschwitz.
In the summer of 1939 Alfred, then aged 21, decided to follow her to England escaping by air in the chaos of the refugee crisis by producing a Prague bus ticket at the airport, which nobody could read! He was already a poet and broadcaster whose first volume of verse, published when he was 18, had been banned by the authorities because of his precise description of the coming war. Shortly after his arrival in England he was interned on a false, politically motivated, charge as an “untrustworthy alien”. He was released a year later. He liked to recall that not only was he given an official pardon and apology but was released on a Sunday—and Whit Sunday at that—a thing unheard of.
He began to make his living as a poet publishing “The Wounds of the Apostles” in 1944 and “Death of the Cathedral” in 1946. The established him as one of the leading poets of the ’40s. He later published two novels “The Guest” and “Free Among the Dead” in 1948 and 1952.
He was only a poet but also worked with great success in the travel business moving from small beginnings to owning and running ‘Pilgrim Holidays’ with Senta from 1967 until her death in 1985. After her death he returned to his literary work, publishing his first book of English poems in 1984 and completing a trilogy of novels in 1987. At his death he was working on two others, one in English and one in Viennese dialect. In addition he became a close friend of Oskar Kokoschka and contributed Tate Gallery catalogue of the Kokoschka exhibition in 1986. In 1993 he was made an Honorary Professor of Vienna University and shortly afterwards was made awarded the medal “Pro Culturam Hungarica”. Shortly he died he received the “Goldenes Verdienstzeichen” of the city of Vienn.
For many years he was, to all intents and purposes, a lapsed Catholic but returned to the Faith when he saw the threat to the old Mass posed by the modernizing influences unleashed by the Second Vatican Council. In 1973 after joining the committee of the Latin Mass Society he was, to his own consternation, elected Chairman. As a result of this appointment he started to fight with great determination for the restoration of the Tridentine Mass and was instrumental in achieving the granting of an Indult for England and Wales permitting its celebration.[1] It was natural therefore that he should be attracted to the Order of Malta in due course.
Alfred gave great service to the British Association and to the Grand Priory being for several years the Sacristan of our Conventual Church at St. John and St. Elizabeth. Many members of the Order will remember his contribution to our religious affairs. Sometimes it was his gentle piety at Mass, at other times his furious interventions at meetings when it was alleged that Mass might have to be said by the priest facing the people! He once became so angry at a large gathering in Malta considering the place of women in the Order that he was moved to address the assembled company of about 300 people in an incoherent mixture of German, Hungarian and English all rolled up together. Travelling with Alfred was also an unpredictable experience especially when he was confronted by overbearing officials or regulations which he considered unimportant. His kindness and generosity were legendary although those unwise enough to accept a lift from him were frequently scared out of their wits by the furious driving of his elderly Mercedes.
In his last years he handed over was also the Receiver of the Grand Priory and only handed over his duties when his health began to fail. A reactionary Tory and a revolutionary radical rolled into one, he was incapable of half measures felt and expressed with equal vehemence his love of beauty and his hatred of all that is stupid, inhuman or bureaucratic. His many friends in the Oder of Malta extend their deepest sympathy to his daughter Sister Maximilian. He will be greatly missed.
Reproduced with permission.
[1] Editor’s note: he had done that, in fact, two years earlier, in 1971.