Monica Wichfeld

Monica Emily Wichfeld (née Massy-Beresford; 12 July 1894 – 27 February 1945) was a leading member of the Danish resistance during the German occupation of Denmark in the Second World War. Early life Wichfeld was born in London and raised in St. Hubert's in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. She was the daughter of an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family including John George Beresford Massy-Beresford and Hon. Alice Elizabeth Mulholland, and was granddaughter of John Mulholland, 1st Baron Dunleath of Ballywalter, County Down. She was involved in the Northern Irish unionist militia Ulster Volunteers during the Home Rule Crisis, and participated in the distribution of firearms associated with the 1914 SS Clyde Valley Larne gun-running operation led by Major Frederick H. Crawford. Wichfeld's favorite brother, Lieutenant John Clarina Massy-Beresford, served with the Royal Field Artillery in World War I and was killed in action in 1918 at the age of 21. After this event, Wichfeld was reported to have harboured a personal hatred of the Germans. Marriage On 15 June 1916, she married Danish aristocrat and diplomat Jørgen Adalbert Wichfeld (16 August 1885 - 30 July 1966), the Secretary of the Danish Legation to London. Wichfeld and her husband moved to his Engestofte Estate in Maribo Denmark, where she became a Danish citizen and had three children: Ivan (1919), Varinka (1922) and Viggo (1924). During this time, she became friend and lover of Kurt Heinrich Eberhard Erdmann Georg von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow who lived in neighbouring Hardenberg Manor. The relationship with Reventlow continued for nine years. Jørgen Wichfield was aware of the relationship and unconcerned with it, naming Reventlow as Varinka's godfather. When the relationship ended, Reventlow went on to marry Barbara Hutton.