LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. My maternal grandparents and their three daughters on holiday in the Swiss Alps in the mid-1920s. (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass.)

2. A room in my grandparents’ Berlin apartment at Blumeshof 12. (Ibid.)

3. Ernst’s certificate of his exit from Judaism in 1910. (Ibid.)

4. Ernst’s certificate of baptism, 1910. (Ibid.)

5. Ernst and his brother Theo sailing from Bremen to New York on board the Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1909. (Ibid.)

6. Marianne, Ursel, Ilse. Berlin, 1917. (Ibid.)

7. Ernst and Emmy on the North Sea island of Helgoland in 1926. (Ibid.)

8. The Liedtkes’ boat on the Wannsee. Ernst in the peaked cap, Emmy next to him and Ilse to the left of the gangplank. (Ibid.)

9. The final page of Marianne’s concert and theatre notebook, in April 1933, with performances by Wilhelm Furtwängler and the quartet of her violin teacher, Max Rostal. (Ibid.)

10. Ilse. (Ibid.)

11. Ursel. (Ibid.)

12. Marianne. (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass. Photo: Ilse Liedtke.)

13. The three sisters as teenagers. (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass.)

14. Marianne and Ursel playing violin and accordion with canine audience. (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass. Photo: Ilse Liedtke.)

15. Ursel and probably Katta Sterna in a Berlin cabaret. (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass.)

16. Ursel, Emmy, Ernst and Marianne having tea on their boat. (Ibid.)

17. Ilse and her boyfriend, Harald Böhmelt, at the Trichter dance hall on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, late 1930s. (Werner Finck, Witz als Schicksal – Schicksal als Witz. Marion von Schröder Verlag, Hamburg, 1966, p. 60.)

18. Ellen Liedtke, putative daughter of Theo Liedtke, and her fiancé, Walter Meltzer, in 1939. (Archive of Simon May. Gifted by the late Klaus Meltzer.)

19. Walter Meltzer with comrades in Nuremberg during the 1933 Nazi Party rally. (Ibid.)

20. Ursel with Maria ‘Baby’ von Alvensleben, probably Lexi von Alvensleben, and their mother, Countess Alexandra von Alvensleben, at the yacht club Klub am Rupenhorn, Berlin, 1931. (ullstein bild Dtl. / Contributor)

21. My mother, Marianne, with violin. (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass. Photo: Ilse Liedtke.)

22. Marianne playing in a wartime concert at the National Gallery in London. On the reverse of the photo she writes: ‘The concert was moved to the basement as a bomb had just fallen upstairs.’ (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass. Photo: Erich Auerbach)

23. A Czech Trio programme from 1941. The Trio was sponsored by the Czech government-in-exile in the UK and provided my mother’s first legitimate earnings as a refugee. (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass.)

24. Ursel’s letter of thanks, dated 17 July 1941, to SS officer Hans Hinkel, who was key to her achieving Aryan status. (Bundesarchiv Berlin. BArch, R9361V/56771.)

25. The resident’s cards on Ursel in Bremen City Hall, 1931–43. (Staatsarchiv Bremen. StaB 4,82/1 – 0909, Bild 231 und StaB 4,82/1 – 1185, Bild 278. Einwohnermeldekarten der Stadt Bremen für Ursula Liedtke.)

26. A letter of 17 September 1943 from Count Franziskus von Plettenberg’s military commander permitting him to marry Ursel and enclosing his medical certificates and proof of Aryan origin. (Bundesarchiv – Abteilung Militärarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau; BArch, PERS6/158762, ‘Heiratsgenehmigung für Hptm. (Tr.O.) Graf von Plettenberg (Franz)’ erteilt vom ‘Höheren Kommandeur der Flakausbildungs-und Flakersatzregimenter’, 17 September 1943.)

27. The bombed idyll of Blumeshof 12 in 1945. (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass. Photo: Ilse Liedtke.)

28. The ruins of Ilse’s studio at Budapesterstrasse 43, Berlin, in 1945. (Ibid.)

29. Ilse’s temporary studio in 1945, with her portraits of US soldiers. (Ibid.)

30. The temporary graves of Geri and Eva, Ilse’s neighbours, shot in their home by Soviet forces and buried by her, Berlin, 1945. (Ibid.)

31. My father, Walter May, in London in 1958. (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass.)

32. My mother, Marianne, my brother, Marius, and me in 1959/1960. (Marianne Liedtke-May’s Nachlass. Photo: Marianne Samson.)