Inga Haag, who lived for many years on Upper Wimpole Street died in hospital on Thursday, 10th December 2009. She was also one of the earliest members of the Marylebone Association; member number 9 according to our records. Inga contributed to the greening of our area by instigating the initiative to plant pear trees in Wimpole Street. This was a precursor of the current W1W tree-planting initiative.
Earlier in her life, Inga Haag was involved in more dramatic campaigns; none more so than that leading up to July 20, 1944.
Having previously worked for the German military intelligence service, under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, she had been drawn into a group that opposed much of what Hitler was doing and began plotting to kill him. That evening she had invited two Gestapo officers to dinner as part of maintaining her cover. Then, during the meal, a phone call brought the news that the Führer had survived the explosion of a bomb left by an army officer, Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg.
Haag escaped suspicion while many, including her cousin, were executed as part of Hitler's revenge on the plotters. She was one of the few linked to the plot who survived, and her death ends one of the last personal links with an event which is one of the great "what ifs" of history.
She was born Ingeborg Helene Abshagen in 1918, and regarded herself as Prussian rather than German. Her father Otto, a lawyer and banker, was unequivocally anti-Nazi and, after Hitler had come to power in 1933, Inga was sent to England for a substantial part of her education in London (including at the LSE under Professor Harold Laski).
After the German victory over France in 1940 Haag went to work for the German secret service in occupied Paris, where she was able to provide passports for Jews threatened with persecution, helping to save many lives. She was in contact with many German officials opposed to Hitler, including Werner Haag, whom she married in 1942.
After the war Haag worked as a journalist and for a time for Nato, lived in France and then, after her husband died, settled in Britain. Inga Haag described the attempted assassination as "a symbol of the best of our convictions against evil".
Curiously this isn't Marylebone's only claim to attempted assassination of a head of Government. Followers of the radical political writer Thomas Spence, who called themselves the Society of Spencean Philanthropists, met in small groups all over London. One meeting place was the Horse and Groom in Marylebone. The government employed a spy, John Castle, to join the Spenceans and report on their activities, and in October 1816 Castle reported that the Spenceans were planning to overthrow the British government.
One of the Spenceans, Arthur Thistlewood, believed a successful violent revolution was possible. Following the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester the Spencean hostility towards the government became even more radical, supporting Thistlewood. At one meeting a spy reported that Thistlewood said: "High Treason was committed against the people at Manchester. I resolved that the lives of the instigators of massacre should atone for the souls of murdered innocents."
On 23rd February 1820, several members of the British government were going to have dinner at Lord Harrowby's house at 39 Grosvenor Square. Thistlewood proposed that a group of Spenceans should gain entry to the house and kill all the government ministers, and parade the heads of Lord Castlereagh and Lord Sidmouth in the East End to incite an armed uprising.
The conspirators rented a small, two-story building in Cato Street (this building, 1A Cato Street, is now listed Grade II and is the only surviving coach house in the mews) as a base for the operation because it was only a short distance from Grosvenor Square. A government spy had picked up on this, and police officers from Bow Street were sent to arrest the Cato Street Conspirators at the Horse and Groom.
On 28th April 1820, Arthur Thistlewood and five co-conspirators were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. Five others were also found guilty but their original sentence of execution was subsequently commuted to transportation for life.
Cato Street disappeared from the maps of Marylebone for more than 100 years, and it was renamed Horace Street (replacing the essayist with a classical poet). It was not until 1937 that the original title restored.
