Empire: World History - 228. The Man Who Lived A Thousand Lives: Prisoner of War (Ep 2)

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel transformed India’s landscapes but faced immense personal struggles. Despite rising to prominence as the Maharaja of Mysore’s trusted landscape architect, Krumbiegel suffered greatly during the first and second world wars, enduring hardship and isolation in British-run camps. Krumbiegel’s resilience shone through even in adversity. His expertise was so revered that, after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the newly independent India entrusted him with landscaping the Raj Ghat memorial in Delhi, a sacred space visited by dignitaries from around the world to this day. Listen as William and Anita delve into Krumbiegel’s legacy - a tale of brilliance, resilience, and deep-rooted love for India. Despite facing internment, political shifts, and personal loss, his vision shaped not just gardens but the very essence of India’s urban and cultural landscapes. This is the story of a man who, though German by birth, left an indelible mark on India’s heart and soil. Many thanks to Vinay Parameswarappa for introducing us to the fascinating story of Gustav Krumbeigel. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpirepoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Droompool. We're doing the second part of the, the second half of the bagel, if you like, the crom bagel. So we were talking about the Maharajas gardener. I'm so impressed by this story.

I have to say that the details come up with. Oh, how sweet. I spent quite a lot of time digging up in Maharajari archival stories and the kind of real. I'd never heard of this guy, not once, not even a whisper of him. But that's why this works really well, because it's the Gerno Knows and the historian in you. And it was just the photo. Again, it's always photos at the gateway to me.

So just to remind you, if you hadn't heard the last episode, I was on a trip with Willie to Bangalore for the Litfest. And even though many locals it are, there's nothing to see in Bangal. Just you're better off going to Saringa Putnam. I was busy sending you off to my sort to Sri Ranga Putnam. Yes, I know. You just go somewhere else, go somewhere else. And yet, a lovely man called Vinae took us on a tour. I went with my family around Bangalore and Cobbin Park, which is a fantastic park, a really beautiful park, actually, interesting park in Bangalore at all the imperial whispers that have been left behind. And in the last episode, we talked about Queen Victoria's statue. with broken finger. And this photograph, he just showed me, oh, and this was the man who sort of greened Bangalore and it was a little white-haired

German man called Gustav Herman Crumbagel. And the thing about him was that nobody else I spoke to in Bangalore knew about him at all. And so, you know, when you get this sort of thing that just lodges in your head and you have to scratch it out and scratch it out and scratch out a story. So I did. I tried.

And this is it. An amazing man who, as well, we're going to go into makes his name. We talked in the last episode of how he became the man Friday to the Maharaja of Baroda, but how Mysore is going to make his name. I saw the second richest state in India at the time, or province in India at the time, and how this is a place that transforms his life. And yet he goes from being this beloved of Maharajas to being a man who will die in penuring in sadness because he will be in turned 12. twice during the wars because he's a German and because the British are running India.

And because despite any amount of protesting from the Maharaja, they can't circumvent the fact he's an enemy alien and he'll be put into an internment camp. There's all sorts of stories about this, aren't the guy who did five years in Tibet, Heinrich Hara. He was interned in Derrudun and his wanderings around Tibet was when he escaped from the internment camp. So the Germans who were in terms, and we'll come to this. Maybe we shouldn't sort of do the Dalrymple thing and tell you all about it at the beginning. But I'm just going to say, there were thousands of Germans who had been working in India,

some for many, many years, and they were all interred during the war. And what happened in those internments will come to that in a moment because that too was not easy on Hercrumbagel. But just before we get to that, can we please, could you share with the class, that fabulous story you told me about my favorite Dalrymple, your daughter, who has got her French exchange partner who is over. and you told me the most charming thing. Go on. So this is a very nice war story turned contemporary story. My wife, Olivia Fraser, is the great-great-niece or something like that of Lord Lovett, the war hero.

And the point of this story is that my daughter's French exchange has come to stay in Delhi. And she is the fourth generation of this family that have been the French exchange for Olivia's family. And it starts the story when Lord Lovett, having famously come ashore at D-Day with his clan Piper. And he doesn't, he doesn't have a gun. He has his umbrella and the clan Piper. And there's been subsequently documentaries about all this. And a German machine gunner actually had both of them in his sights and said, I can't possibly shoot a man with an umbrella and a man playing a bagpies. Yes. Yes. And as latest, I think so in 1980s, there was some anniversary of D-Day when the machine gunner was found and produced to tell the story. Anyway, about two weeks later,

There's famously, D-Day turns into this nightmare of the hedgerows of Normandy and all the panzers turn up. Hitler's tank divisions that have been waiting for the British to invade elsewhere, suddenly two weeks later get to the point of the invasion. And there's a terrible moment of crisis when the advancing forces who've made it inland into Normandy at D-Day are met with the full force of the Third Reich and all the panzer divisions. And there's massive casualties. and among them is Lord Lovett, who having not surely walked ashore with his piper and umbrella, is now bleeding to death under a French hedgerow. And he is sitting there, thinking that his end has come and that his division, I think, has moved on and he's just bleeding out, when a French priest appears on a bicycle, a curé, and finds him here, realizes he's alive and realizes that he's savable.

And so presumably he doesn't put him on the back of the bike, but certainly comes and rescues him and heals him and puts him into his own bed, apparently. At great risk to himself, one should say. And then personally rows him in a rowing boat across the channel. Oh my goodness, this is such a good story. It's a good story, isn't it? And of course, Lord David lives on to become a politician. And from that point, the Fraser's and this family, the Dunawar, have always exchanged.

And four generations of unsophisticated Fraser men from the Highlands of Scotland from Invernesia. have fallen in love with incredibly beautiful de Norhoa French women descended from the brother of the curate. And Lorenza is the fourth generation. And she just arrived today to come to the Jaipoli Festival with I'm And there is no apology I make. I know we're meant to be talking about Kronbeg. I do not apologise for making you share that story

because when you tell me, my jaw has hit the ground, it is absolutely the storyline for a film. Anyway, back to Kronbeagle. Back to our friend, Kronbeagle. So he comes to Mysore. And I mean, I've sort of said it's the second richest province. But can you give us a little bit of an idea of how the Maharajas lived at that time? And just how, when we're talking wealth, we are talking dripping with wealth, bling, gold.

And Sandalwood, smelling nice too. So a fifth of India, some cognations even make it a quarter of India, is never ruled by the British. It's ruled by the independent Maharajas and princes and the Zams and Nawabs who've made deals with the British. Independent-ish, I was going to say, because you have a resident. I mean, actually, I would challenge and say in name only. You know, they keep their names entitled, but it is the resident who does push things around. They have a British resident to make sure they don't sort of, you know, perform anti-British actions and controls their, if you like, their foreign policy, their external relations of the state.

But often internally, they do quite wacky things that are completely of their own. And there are some states such as Travancore in what's now Kerala, which are incredibly well-governed, and have much greater literacy than parts of Britain at this point, thanks to the very advanced education system that the Maharaja Travancor brings in. There are others who are sort of so famously dripping in wealth. They don't know what to do. Most famously, Hyderabad. Hyderabad is the richest state in India,

and the Nizam of Hyderabad is the richest man in the world. And there are stories that he has sort of 25 men just to grind his walnuts and 55 to dust in chandeliers and all these sort of things. But one of the best and best administered is the state of Mysore, which is rich on the sale of Sandalwood, which it has not quite a monopoly, but certainly by far the largest output because the forests of the Mysore region particularly suit the Sandalwood tree. By the way, even today, I mean, I've just come back from Mysore. You can't move for sandalwood gifts and scent and Ood coming from Sandalwood. It is a place that still smells of its past and its past wealth.

It is the Wadjia dynasty who are the Maharajas at the moment. And I think I might have mentioned last time that Chama Rajendra Wajia, who is the 10th Maraja of Mysore, is very, very close to the Gaiqad of Baroda. And they basically talk over the hedge. And he says, your lawns are looking good. He's said, well, it's my German. I've got this German. Do you want to borrow? And so, you know, he's lent out crumbagel to different various assorted Maharajas.

But what Crumbagel does? So he goes over and he starts working for the Maharaja of Mysore. and he immediately starts doing these actually really forward-thinking transformative things. So, I mean, what he says is that, you know, this is fabulous land to grow and he's very excited, but it's also fabulous land for fruiting trees. So he starts this system of importing exotic plants, especially trees from places like Australia. So he starts, you know, experimenting fruiting trees from Europe, the ones that he knows, the ones that he's seen at Q, but also from Australian, he realizes that actually the Oz

ones, they do much better in the climate. There's two, I think, which for my memory of, I once did a botanical tour of Bangalore in the days before the 1990s when it was the city of gardens. And Kazarina and Eucalyptus, I remember, are the two Australian trees that are do best in myself. I had an entire list of flowering, but it's fruiting ones that I want to talk about now. Because what he does is he realizes that they work really well. So he starts importing millions of saplings from Australia. And what he does, which is really forward thinking, is he sends notices out to the Mysore Farmers.

You remember last time I told you he'd sort of transformed the farmers' lives by telling them how to line those tanks so that they weren't dependent on the monsoon? I mean, really quite scientific breakthrough kind of stuff. He then sends notices to the Mysore Farmers saying, look, come to the Lalberg, which is where he's based. And we talked about the Larvag in the last episode. And he sells them for just one rupee a tree, which is not much back then, even, because. Because what he wants is a proliferation of trees throughout the province. And not only does he sell them the saplings, but detailed instructions, which are translated for them, both verbally and written, how to grow them and how to take care of them.

And that is how he creates sort of the system of orchards throughout Karnataka. And fruit becomes a, you know, a thing that farmers again can have an income. You know, they put fish in their tanks and they have fisheries. Now they've got trees. What he also does as a horticulturalist, he always goes further. This is what I love about Old Cromagall, is that he starts collating. He's got a real scientist's mind, and bear in mind that this is the little boy from Lohman, who worked in Hyde Park hedgerows to try and get on the ladder.

But he collects papers and writes papers on the pests that attack all the plants that he's introducing with these amazing drawings of the pests so that the farmers on site can recognize them and know how to deal with them. Now, this was meant to be a really detailed archive. which unfortunately over time has been lost. And so a lot of that knowledge has been lost as well. Funn enough, Mysore has a tradition of very clever botanical planting. And Tipu Sultan, who was a kind of usurper who took over the Mysore state from the Vodias, supposedly as their sort of military generals.

Tipu introduced sericulture, the planting of mulberry trees. And Mysore to this day is the centre of the Indian silk industry. This is why this series is so great, because through the green, and the colour of the gardens that you walk through, you can find imperial history. And I think that's wonderful. I think it's a really interesting thing. So another thing that he is instrumental in, Maesaw has this amazing festival of De Serra, even now. So DeSera celebrates, you burn huge, enormous effigies of Ravan, the Demon King, who Lord Rama in the Ramean defeats. And, you know, there's fireworks, there's feasting, there's the burning of this great effigy. It's, you know,

here in England think of Guy Fawkes times a thousand because these effigies are enormous. I remember going to my first Desera Festival when I was just a kid, maybe five or six years old, not in Mysore, but in UP, in Karnpur. And I was terrified, absolutely terrified, the scale of this, the scale of the people, the burnings, it was really overwhelming. My kids rather loved it. I remember taking them to Old Delhi. When we first moved to Delhi, there's a famous Desera ceremony near the Red Fort.

and these enormous ravens that are sort of 50 feet high get lit and kids loved it. So what is fascinating again, and Crumbagel again, being so much more than just a horticulturalist, is also a man who knows how to get messages out. So he realizes that he's going to have basically a captive province. Everyone's going to come to the Mysore Palace and come nearby to the Desera celebrations. So he brings a display of the latest tools and machines for agriculture to show to all the farmers who are there as part of the DeSera celebration so that they can see, learn where to get, and therefore explore all of this knowledge that he's brought from Europe, along with tools that he can help import. And he starts in 1912, after doing this very successful thing in 2010 and 1911 with the Desera festivals,

he starts in 1912, the Mysore Horticultural Society, to train gardeners from all across the state, all under his eye in the Larlberg of how to do things properly, you know, with plants they may not recognize. And he puts into effect a thing called serial blossoming in Bangalore. So this is a way of, you know, you plant different trees along a boulevard or different plants in a bed. So you will create something he called perpetual spring. So all of these different trees will flower at different times. Petals will always flutter down on the Bangalore Boulevard because of these trees that flower at different times in the year. And that is how, you know, people start calling Bangalore the Garden City from this time.

There was a character when I was younger and as a young journalist going to Bangalore called T.P. Issa, who was the great botanist of his period in Bangalore. And he wrote a book called Bangal of Garden City. And he was very sad because I wouldn't interview him in the early 90s just when Bangal was turning into a tech center. So it's now one of the richest cities in India, but it's lost this extraordinary legacy. And I remember Isar saying that he'd produced this book 10 years earlier in, I think 1980, Bangal the Garden Seek. He said half the trees in the book had now been sown down in 10 years to create new tower blocks and new tech centres. And these may have been some of the trees that crumbagel plants, either by his own hand or by importing and sending them out. So, I mean, you know, that's sad.

That feels awful when trees are cut down. And when they're crumbagel trees, I don't know, certain great appointants for me anyway. Now we're all on team crumbagel. Crumbagel, yes, let's put his name on the map, guys. Anyway, so he started as well, again, forward-thinking man that he was, and this again would have pleased the Maharaja of Mysore so much. He said, look, I come from a land of flower shows. Why don't we have the greatest flower show India has ever seen? And he creates this amazing flower show in the Larbad, which I believe still goes on today, I'm told, and it's one of the three biggest flower shows in the world at the moment. That's what I'm told, yeah. The transformative power of Crumbagel, though, is when he came to Bangal, there were four public gardens, and by the time he leaves, or, you know, sort of hops off the immortal

coil, as it were, there are more than a hundred. Isn't that great? What a legacy. What a legacy to leave. Anyway, just when he's at the height of his powers, though, we're getting to 1918 now. War breaks out in Europe, and the entire British Empire gets pulled in. And despite the efforts of the Maharaja, the British insist Crumbagel, along with all people of German origin need to be rounded up and put into an internment camp. And this man is distraught,

and he begs the Maharaja, you know I'm loyal. You know I love India. I'm, I'm an Indian now. I'm not a German. I've left Germany, you know, when I was just 14, 15 years old. Why? Why? Why is this happening to me? And a big anglophile. And an anglophile. And so why? And he begs the Maharaja to intervene and the Maharaja talks to the resident and tries to say, look, can we do something for him? He's not, he's not an enemy alien. But the British aren't having it. It is one rule anyone of German origin is to be rounded up. And you can understand why they're doing it as well, because, you know, sleeper agents, special agents, spies, they're having to contend with all of this all over their empire because the Germans also in an effort to destabilise Britain will try

and destabilise the empire. That's what they will do as well. So the Maharaja is absolutely, powerless. And Crombeagle, by this time, as a young family as well, he's got kids. He's got his wife, you know, his English rose, Clara, who he's brought to India with him. He's made his life there. And he says, what am I going to do? All of his assets are seized. All of his savings are seized. Everything is seized. The only thing that isn't seized, which he is going to have to liquidate really quickly, are some of his stocks and shares that he's managed to put money in. So he's taken away to an internment camp with 8,000 others, I learn, in Ahmednagar. So that's interesting because that, fun enough, is where young Sam, my son is today.

Really? Give him a call and tell him to try and find out where this internment camp is, because I'd love to know what the building was. I don't have any further details other than from his letter it was Amidnagga. So I'd tell you what I suspect it was because Amidnagga has this famous fort, which is built by the Marathas, and then re-fortified by the British after they defeated the baratars. And it's famous for its enormous rock-cut moat, which means that it's very difficult to escape from. It's like a cul-dits or an Alcatraz. And that's where they put Neru in the Second World War.

Oh, my God. In Ahmed Naga. And he wrote the discovery of India in Amidnaga. Oh, my goodness, right. So I would imagine he was put in the fort. Well, I mean, it's a convincing argument. And I, unless anyone listening here knows better, I'll go with that. But while he is in the internment camp, something terrible happens, something terrible happens to him.

The other Germans, and some of who are very sympathetic to the German fatherland, they stand by Germany and they hate Britain. And they've come to do business in India for whatever reason. But they're one day apparently talking very disparagingly about the natives and about the Maharaja, and Khrumpegall stands up for him and gets badly beaten up. And he writes a letter to the Maharaja saying, I've been beaten for standing up. not for you. You know how loyal I'm. Help me. Get me out of here. He writes in this letter, if they deport me to Germany, what will I do? I only know about tropical horticulture. I will never work again. He's so desperate. The Maharaj again goes to the British, saying, look, please, please let him out. And there are two other Germans who the Maharaj is very fond of at this time.

A man called Exner and another one called Koenigsberg, one's an architect and one's an interior designer. and they're all interred. And he says, look, they've all been working with me for years. Just please let them out. Crombeagle in particular is getting really bad treatment in there. And the British say, no, they are going to stay interred for the duration of the war, but they come to this compromise where they're allowed to continue working on their designs for either gardens or buildings while they're in the camps.

So they're spared any kind of hard labour. And it is the absolute best he can do. This was the deal that the British came to with Neru in Amidaga, that he could continue writing his memoirs. and he wrote the Discovery of India and was given a full library to work from. There's something in this, the history of Aminaga and all of its guests. I think there's something in this, isn't there? That is so great.

I think there were many other major Congress politicians with Neri. Gandhi wasn't there. Gandhi was put somewhere else. Gandhi was put in Aga Khan's house in the middle of Bombay. The house is still there in the middle of Malabar Hill. And Gandhi has ever sort of spectacularly luxurious place to be poor in. that famous quote by Sir Rodney Nidu, that it costs us a fortune to keep Gandhi in poverty. Yes, that's right. But look, the Maharaja has to also give a concession for this concession

to be made. He has to agree that whatever these three German men do when they get out, when the war is over, the British are, of course, going to remain. And whatever work they have done, there must not be their name on those edifices, those buildings, those streets of lampost, they must be erased. And so when they do come out, And, you know, they're in a state of poverty. Crumbagel writes that he has to liquidate all his shares because he has to keep his family fed. And his family don't know any other home other than India. His children don't know any other home other than India.

So, you know, they come out. And you've got evidence of this, Kernigsberg, for example, who is the designer architect. He builds a place called Balba then. It's in Bangalore. But nowhere in the foundation, normally in the foundation stone, you have the name of the architect. And it is not there. And Crumbagel's designs, it's sort of like a deletion of things. the man completely. And he's penniless. So what he has to do, again, is lean on the favour of a man

who holds him in high esteem. Luckily, he is the Maharaja, because he's got nowhere to live. He can't afford to pay for anything. So the Maharaja gives him a place called Granite Castle, which is fabulously laid. Sounds like it's an Aberdeen rather than myself. Even though that is his house, whenever, I think this is also very interesting because you can see when the man's heart beats. Cron Beagle, whenever he is asked for his address, just gives it as Lalbarg, his finest work, you know, the Lalbar gardens that he inherited, the ones that Tipu had planted graciously on, and then they pass into his hands when he starts working for the Maharaj of Mysore. That is his home. That's what he believes is his home. And in between the walls, he

works on this masterpiece of his. It's a blank canvas. You know, all the other projects that he's worked on. Other landscapes have worked on them before because they are royal parks or their gardens that have been owned by the royal family, for generations. But in Brindhoven, he's given a completely blank canvas, and he creates, and this is, you know, after suffering quite a lot during the war, these sweeping terraces, straight avenues, it's all divided in quadrants, which is actually the Islamic sensibility. The Charburg system, yeah. And he uses everything that he's ever learned.

You know, he writes the story of his horticultural life in this garden. And so from this sort of awful disaster, he creates this beautiful garden. This would make such a good movie this story. I love the idea of it. Just hear the soaring violins at this point. Yeah. And the fountain suddenly, you know, sort of being turned on for the first time where, you know, a man who has known enormous unhappiness is finally doing something again.

He can throw himself into this and become happy for a while at least. And this is a place that generates wealth. I think I said it was still, even today, two million tourists a year go to the Brindhoven Gardens. And he also starts talking a little bit politically at this point. But it's not politics of an imperial kind. He's not talking. He doesn't never criticises the British. In fact, you know, if you remember, he's known for moving the Queen Victoria statue into Covembern Park.

But what he does do is he starts saying, look, can you just stop thinking about Bangalore, in particular, as a place of industry and, you know, what now has become a tech center, but can you just start thinking that horticulture is going to bring you wealth? Look after your land, and it's a really green message. I'll read you an extract from one of his letters. The works of the horticultural department does not begin and end with sweeping lawns, roads and planting a few flower beds, but developing its economic, scientific and educational work. The botanical gardens should be maintained, not only for the purpose of advancing the study of native and other plants, but turning the varied resources of the vegetable kingdom to useful and commercial ends.

And he's making the Maharaja, look, I know you're developing this place, but please develop this place with an eye to the fact that you can do it in a green way. I mean, as we put it today, you can make money from being green. And he writes in an article, an article which is published. I believe I'm right in saying that 90% of the people who read this article would go away with the impression that our immediate need is the development of industries, as against the development of agriculture. I most emphatically say the opposite is the case

and that a highly developed, prosperous agriculture is essential as the only sound basis upon which a successful industrial development can be built. I'm not sure that the higher income from industries is a criteria of prosperity and happiness of the people in any country, or is the goal to strive for? To my mind, by no means of mixed blessing, but we do not hear laments on all sides of industrial enslavement of the people of crowding together in unsanitary tenements, of insufficient earnings to meet the higher

cost of living, buying bare necessities of life, of the tragedies of child labour and factories, may providence protect our beautiful state from such conditions. Again, these are arguments that are being held today that you shouldn't just measure in growth, the wealth of a place, a wealth of a nation, but the happiness of its people as well. It's also very much in tune with how economic historians would regard the failures of the British in India. I was having a conversation with the economic historian Tietankar Roy last year. And he thinks that the biggest failure of the British in India was the failure of irrigation south of really the Ganges.

That there was almost unlike the Punjab, where there was very substantial irrigation work. They transformed it with their canal systems and their irrigation systems are extraordinary, yeah. But nothing of the sort happened in the Deccan, which is why when famines broke out in India, many of them were in Karnataka and Tamil Nad and the middle of India. And it's one of the things that India does very well initially after independence and hugely increases the agricultural productivity of India within a decade.

It's not a difficult thing to do. So Krambega was right. His part of India particularly did need was better irrigation and better agriculture. Here he is sort of toiling away trying to win hearts and minds as well as transform. the land. And, you know, he's back in favour. And the Maharaja, you know, maybe feeling some kind of guilt for, you know, not being able to stop what happens to him during the First World War. It takes care of his gardener, takes care of his Man Friday. So, you know, he's there. He's working, he's happy as he can be. You know, the Maharjah is taking care of him. He's trying to put

the past behind him. But World War II is on the horizon. Welcome back. So, 1945, will prove to be even worse for Herr Crumbagle, because yet again he's an enemy alien in India. And he is rounded up and he describes being captured, beaten and thrown into an internment camp. And according to his granddaughter, by the way, his granddaughter lives just down the road in Surrey, just here. You've got to write this book. A local TV company did a short documentary about, you know, the German gardener. So they got somebody to do some research into him because they wanted to put him back on a pedestal because they're quite rightly proud of him now. the man who made a huge difference.

And so I think they sent researchers around who put a little advert in the local newspaper saying, do you know Gustav Hermann Krumbegel? We've heard somebody might be in this area or region, or if you know anyone who knows him. And this woman sort of says, well, that's my great-grandfather. But what she does say in this little piece is that the British wanted to deport my great-grandmother as well. And she would have been treated as a spy had she returned to Germany. Like it would have been an absolute curse of death because she's in. English, remember, but they want to deport her. And she says the British never forgave her for marrying a German.

So there was actually considered, and on the cards, to deport his wife, Clara, to Germany and him to Germany as well, where they would have been treated as spies and interned and put in prison there. And she legitimately, because she's, you know, British and the enemy. But this two passes. And this time ran the Maharaja to show, you know, how sorry he is and how much he cares. And, you know, Crumbagel is treated better in this second internment as a precedent was set in the first. But the Maharaja has a painting commissioned of Crumbagel. And he has a life-like statue crafted. And there's this beautiful story.

Someone tells who knows the palace, the Mysore Palace, very, very well. But he says that every morning, as the Maharaja left his bedchamber, he would see two images on the wall as he exited his bedchamber. One was of the mother goddess, the other of his German gardener. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that lovely? The man who had sort of brought him such joy. And can we see the statue today? Is it still in the Mysore Palace? I didn't get to go inside, but somebody who can tell me who knows the insides of the palace, I have seen pictures of the statue. And the statue is just the most darling thing. It's a man in Tweed

with a rolled-up plan in his hand. And it was made, and it's very lifelike. It's like a sort of a little umpalumpur version of already, I suspect not very tall crumbagel anyway. But I suspect it was meant to be displayed in a public square. But that never happened because, you know, he was a German. He's there. He's now getting old. He's getting old as Kronmeagle. And he works for the Tartas. He helps them design the Jubilee Gardens in Jem Shethpur. He's still being passed around as a great asset.

We should explain what Jamshedpur is. Jamshapur is this town built by the Parsi Industrial Dynasty, the Tartas, who now own both British Steel and Jaguar Land Rover. And when the Tartas were trying to found a steel town, they found that many of the biggest Arnaud deposits were in Jakkand, Bihar, in the northeast of India. And so they build this model city in this sort of jungle area where there is just this steel deposits, not much else. And it's a model town, rather like Bangalore once was.

And Jamshedpur has the Jubilee Gardens, which are crumbagels part of this plan. So he inadvertently is part of the fabric of Indian history, the Indian story as well, because he's working with the Tatars is probably the first time he's working for a not Maharaja, not a royal family. And India too is about to go through a period where it wants to forget its Maharajas, because independence will happen after the end of the war. Just in a nutshell, what happened to the princely states after independence, William, just remind us. This strange anomaly whereby, between a fifth and a quarter of the Indian,

landmass is not actually being ruled directly, but is being hived off to the old feudal families who survive from the disintegration of the Mughal Empire, whether they're marathas or mogul governors who've bedded down or ancient Rajput warrior clans in Rajasthan or Bihar. Sada Patel, who is a great icon of the current Hindu nationalist government, the BJP, and whose massive statue has been raised in Gujarat. He's the man who, in a very short period of time, gets all these different Maharajas through a mixture of charm and threats and appeals to patriotism, gets all the Maharajas to surrender their princely dominions and to join the Indian Union on the promise that they're going to have a privy purse and all their

privileges, but just not be realist. And that, of course, ends in 1971 with Indira Gandhi, who cuts the purse springs. But also, you know, there's the whole race to get the Maharaja of Kashmir to sign, sign, sign. That's a whole different story. Maybe we should do that, actually, another time because it's, you know, the new Republic is such a, such an interesting story. But the Republic is very, very keen to forget and put aside its Maharajal, so put them in storage, get them to sign, but just put them in storage. But what they do, interestingly, is they do reward people who do good work. So the new Republic, the Indian Republic, appoints Crumbagel, director of agriculture in Mysore. So suddenly, you know, and he's an old man,

he's not a young man. And he actually, you know, there's a man who's born in. in 1865, and we're talking sort of of 1947. So, you know, he's not a young man anymore. And what he does is he sort of takes this role. He's also chief architect to the Mysore State for a while. Then something extraordinary happens after independence.

An old man is shot in Delhi, and India crumbles as he does too. And I'm talking about the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. So this is like just such a seismic shock to the psyche of the new India. And also, you know, since

since shockwaves through Pakistan as well. And Gandhi had spent a lot of time in what is now, Pakistan. In fact, wasn't there the great Ferroari about where he would spend the night when independence was actually cemented? It is almost to the day 75 years since his assassination. He was assassinated on the 30th of January in 1948. And we're recording this on the 27th. Well, how's that funny that we're talking about this and thinking about this now? But who does India turn to at this time to talk about the way in which he's going to be commemorated?

And there are these gardens, the Rajkart, in Delhi. And can you describe, because you live in Delhi, you'll do this much better than me? Before this point, there are no gardens. This is the area between the Red Fort in North Delhi and the Yamuna. And I think it's about this time that a main road is built to run alongside the Red Fort and beside the Red Fort. and beside the Yamuna. Previously, it had been just the river. And I think it's exactly at this time when the road is built and the land is extended into what had been the banks of the Yamana, that Rajgat is built on the river bank. Just like the Red Fort is the place where the great

speeches on Republic Day and are made by the Prime Minister. So Rajgat is the equivalent cremation ground. It's next to the ancient Delhi cremation grounds of Nigambodgat, which go back, as is said, times. And it's where the Vedas are said to have washed up on the banks of the Abbas. So it's a very sacred spot. And this is where the young Indian state decides to lay its father, Mahatma Gandhi, to rest. Yes. Bapu, literally known as Bapu, the father by most Indians. And it is Crombegall, who is in his 80s, who's asked to come and landscape the gardens of the Rajgarne. And it's still a place where every visiting dignitary is taken first, when my friend Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister of Australia arrived.

He was taken literally straight from the airport to Rajat. Yeah, to pay your respects. And it's where there are memorials for, you know, Rajiv Gandhi's Memorial is there. Vajapai's memorial is there. You know, there are a few. Gandhi's is the famous and the central one. It's the one that started it. But that's Crumbagel's hand.

If you go and you will visit and you'll go and see it, it is impressive. You know, go and see it. And it's a peaceful place. That's the Crumbagel hand at work. And maybe, just maybe, this was some way of India saying, sorry we didn't look after you better. Or it's just the new Republic being pragmatic saying this man is a genius. This man has transformed an entire province.

He's created some of the greatest parks we now have. Let's get him to do it. Crumbagel dies in Bangalore in 1956. And it is, again, the Maharaja of Mysore who takes over the arrangements for his burial. And he's buried in the Christian cemetery. And he's given a really simple gravestone under an African tulip tree, one of his favorite places. Now, what I told you before is not quite right, and I've done a bit more investigation on this.

On the first tombstone, it's pretty simple. It just says, in loving memory, Gustav Herbert Beagle, 1865 to the 8th of February, 1956. That's all it said. And over the years, that tombstone had degraded to the point where you couldn't even see what was written on it. and his African tulip tree was sinking into the ground. But it's actually only when the Germans rediscovered crumbagel, they said, could you just tell us where this man is buried? And the whole thing, you know, this sort of amazing man and this extraordinary story. And Mysore opened up its archives and said, yeah, this is here.

They started collecting all the information from Q and sort of started getting all of this together. And it's then the new Maharaja, I think recently. I don't know the year, which is frustrating. But I think it's only in the last five years. It now constantly has marigold garlands on it, and it's really well-looked after it. It's on top of the old tombstone. So let me tell you what it says on the new one, because I think it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful.

So it's got a sort of an etched on black. It looks like a obsidian. I don't know what the stone is, but it's big and lavish. And it's got a picture of that smiling white-haired, old moustache old man on it. And it says, whatever he touched, he adorned, German by birth. but his heart belonged to India. Isn't that beautiful? One sad little addendum to this story is that when he died,

the new republic that had asked him to do, you know, this great work, even on the Rajgarne, somehow his wife finds herself evicted from the grace and favour granite castle that he'd been able to live, the only home really that she'd known. The old India that she knew is dead, the Maharaja patrons that they had moved to are gone. So she returns to England. A country she doesn't know, she's 90 years old when she comes back, a country she has never forgotten. And soon after the ship docked, she has a massive stroke and dies. Is that awful? That's a very sad ending. Isn't that awful? The awful end to the crumb bagels. I know. But he is now, obviously there are people making an effort to

remember him now. That's how Vinay knew about him. That's how I was able to find out anything about him at all. You know, this stuff was all in dusty archives before. But I think, I think there's just so much more of a story to tell, because, you know, it's just these sort of cliff notes of a life are amazing. But yeah, yeah, maybe. Maybe I should do something. I think it's very nice to do. I love the story so much. So there we are. That is the story of Gustav Herman Crumbagel, the Maharajas Gardner. Now, we're getting ready. We're going to meet now, aren't we? We are meeting the after tomorrow. We're going to be recording a whole new series with Jane Olmeyer on Ireland and Empire. I'm really excited for this.

which is going to be our next big series. And we're going to go on from that to the Troubles. Yeah, I'm very, very excited for this because, again, it's a sweep of history crossing continents. And I think it's going to be sort of quite relevant. And you're going to love Jane O'Meyer. She is my wonderful friend. You don't know you keep saying. I can't wait to meet her. This very, very warm Irish historian of Empire, who is just a guinea minute. But after that, we've got a very exciting guest, my wonderful friend, Patrick Raddon Keith, still in his 40s, but has won not one but two Pulitzer surprises,

one for his work on the Sacklers and the Opiate Crisis, called Empire of Pain. But he also won another Pulitzer for his book on The Troubles and the IRA, and it is Say Nothing, which is a big new Netflix series now. Anyway, so he is going to be our wonderful guest to take us up to the present in Ireland. So join us. We've got loads of goodies for you coming up, lots of surprises. And you know what?

If you like binging our staff, and I know some of you do, and we're very great, but we love a binger. Just join our club, Empowerpoduk.com, Empowerpoduk.com. And also for our club members, apart from the wonderful newsletter, discounts on certain books that we feature. And you get first dibs on any tickets for the live shows that we do, and we're doing some. Also, we have to say, helps keep the show on the road. So do, if you enjoy what we do, please join up, join the club and become members. Anyway, till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Duremberg.