I WASN’T ABLE TO FIND THE words to attract Ken’s attention. I was internalizing the moment as I imagined the grief-stricken Emilie picking up a quill pen and writing the letter that now lay in front of me. The tip of her quill must have been thick because the ink on the page still retained its dark richness after so many years. The letter was addressed personally to the king of Prussia. My fingers were actually trembling as I lifted it reverently from the file. The writing was stylish and delicate and reminded me so much of Granny Anna’s writing, the grammar perfect. Emilie was pleading with her monarch for mercy.
I humbly ask His Majesty to please allow me to be known as “Frau von Ostrowska” [Mrs.] as I have been known throughout my years with Prince August of Prussia. The granting of this most humble request is of the highest importance to the whole of my future; I acknowledge my youthful guilt, and the great suffering I caused myself during my life with the Prince, because of my love, since inclination and youthful inexperience had decided on the fate of a 15 year-old motherless child. My own instinct is that I should not need to defend myself as I never strayed from the path of virtue; the sole consolation I can find now is in honoring the memory of the man for whom I have sacrificed everything because I have loved him with youthful ecstasy. I fervently hope that through the granting of this request the world will judge me with indulgence.
I understood as I read the letter that if Emilie was not allowed to keep the title of “Frau,” and if she was not allowed to be known as August’s widow, her fall in social status would have been both devastating and dramatic. Emilie’s passion, her whole being, stood naked before my eyes. I knew her, I understood her. I realized how she felt, the loss and the dangers she was facing. I had become Emilie, and I could see myself writing that same letter, waiting anxiously to receive a response. I understood that it was love and not money that drove her heart.
I was finally able to speak to my husband across the oblong desk.
“Ken, I’ve found a vital document. Emilie is pleading with the king. She knows that without his agreement she and Charlotte are in real danger. It’s a desperate letter. She obviously feels terrified and exposed and totally at the king’s mercy. If she cannot continue to be known as the wife of Prince August, her change in status will have a serious effect on Emilie’s life and then on Charlotte’s, I’m sure of it.”
Ken said nothing, simply holding out his hand for the letter and reading it in silence.
As he read, I went back to the file to look for a reply from the king, with my heart in my mouth. Would the king hold out at least some sort of lifeline to her, showing her some kindness in her hour of need? There didn’t seem to be anything. I dug deeper—and then I found what I was looking for.
The document seemed innocuous enough. With very little written on it, it nearly escaped my attention. It was the reply, although not from the king, which must have been what Emilie had hoped for. The short note was a devastating rebuff from Prince Wittgenstein, a reply of enormous significance to the future of the desolate young woman who had written honestly and passionately about how she had “loved August with youthful ecstasy.” The note was written and signed in Wittgenstein’s own hand and was stark in its underlying warning. I could hardly believe the cruelty of its tone. Prince Wittgenstein had written just a few dismissive words in reply to her eloquent plea for mercy.*
Your request remains unconsidered by his Gracious Majesty.
This dismissal of her vital request would have demolished Emilie. It would have signified the imminent collapse of her entire world. The short note confirmed that she was no longer the respectable widow of the prince and would be left with the responsibility to bring up their child alone. Instead, the last vestiges of any connection she might have had with August were severed and destroyed in an instant. After eleven years of living as the wife of a royal prince, she was suddenly cast completely adrift by everyone. I dived back into the papers to try to find out what happened next. What did she do? Where did she go? Who did she turn to for help? And where was Charlotte, her child?
I couldn’t find anything. There was a gaping black hole in the middle of the archive. We had been searching through those files all week, and now our time in East Germany was up. Emilie’s letter to the king was an incredible climax, but it had left us hanging over a cliff of uncertainty. We had managed to find Emilie and get to know how she had met Prince August, and we learned about their life together. But something of enormous significance must have happened after August’s death to result in my poor grandmother’s disappearing during the Holocaust. We had arrived in Merseburg believing that Emilie, and consequently Charlotte, had been Jewish. If anything, the things we had discovered had deepened the mystery surrounding my family rather than shedding any light onto it.
I could hardly bear the thought of walking away before I had managed to read every single document in the files. How I longed to prolong our stay.
“You’ve found your great-great-grandmother now,” Ken reminded me when I said how much I still wanted to know. “That was what you came here to do.”
I weighed up what we had done. Armed with all these documents and the proof that we had discovered, perhaps there was a real chance that we could uncover more evidence from other archives in the West. It did feel that it was time to go, and I nodded my agreement, suppressing any urge to stay longer. We were due to drive back to the West that evening, and the archive would be closing in a couple of hours. I had to find a way of getting longer access to the material so I could study it properly. All through the week of our searching I had been marking documents that I wanted to read in more depth, away from the pressures of the reading room, where I felt we were being watched every moment of every day. I really wanted to copy as much of the material as possible and take it back to the West with me. In part, I wanted to be able to produce it as proof for all the people who had helped me with my research at the beginning, who had faced all the same frustrations that I had faced. But the material also had immense personal value to me and my family. It was evidence that had taken a lifetime to uncover.
“How many documents have I marked?” I asked Herr Waldmann when he came in to inquire if there was anything more he could do for us.
“Two hundred and seventy-five,” he replied without a flicker of emotion crossing his face. He had obviously been keeping a running daily total. “Is there anything else we can do for you, Mrs. Haas?”
“Herr Waldmann,” I put on the sweetest smile I could manage, “you have been so helpful. I really do appreciate all the assistance that you have given to me. This means so much to me. We need to take copies of these marked documents away with us. Can you arrange this?”
“Oh no, Mrs. Haas,” he said without any hesitation. “That won’t be possible.”
His certainty felt like a slap on the face. I was devastated to think that I wasn’t going to be able to take the evidence that I needed to study.
“We may be able to arrange a microfiche to be posted to you,” he went on, obviously able to see my disappointment and immediately reigniting my hopes. “Let me find out.”
I had been pretty sure that he wouldn’t be able to answer this himself, and I was right. He scurried away to find Frau Steglitz. I knew I was pushing my luck, because it was a miracle we had been allowed access to as much material as we had, but I didn’t think we had anything to lose and I really needed to get those copies back to England. This forthright approach to asking for what we wanted had worked for us before, and maybe it would work again. I went back to reading while I waited for him to return.
When the director appeared beside us in the reading room she was wearing the same stern face with which she had greeted us when we had first arrived uninvited. It looked very much as if I were trying her patience by making yet more demands, when the minister had, in her eyes, already been more than generous in his concessions. Unsure how to deal with such a request, she had reverted to the same aggressive persona she had used when we first arrived unannounced on her doorstep.
“You want copies?” she asked, eyebrows arched with incredulity at my nerve in asking for so much. “Impossible.”
My heart sank. Although I had surpassed all my own expectations by being allowed to delve this far into the archives, I didn’t want to have to leave my search now when I was so close to finding out what had happened to Emilie and Charlotte after August’s death. There was still a huge and mysterious gap in my family’s history. If the documents all went back into the archives now, who knew how long it would be before I would be allowed access again, if ever?
“But Frau Steglitz, my whole life is in those files,” I pleaded. “It’s my history and my grandmother’s history, and my children’s. I could never hope to cover it all in a few days. There is so much more I haven’t discovered.”
“We may be able to put it onto a microfiche for you,” she said, seeming to relent surprisingly quickly and reviving my optimism yet again, just as Herr Waldmann had done only minutes earlier. “We’ll send it to you in England. There will of course be a charge.”
I tried not to show how excited I was by this offer. I had already learned that it didn’t pay to seem too thankful for anything she might do for me for fear of embarrassing her. I didn’t care how much it cost. Having got this far, I was willing to pay virtually anything they asked.
“Thank you,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “That’s kind of you.”
She gave a curt nod, accepting my thanks, and left the room while we tidied up the loose ends with Herr Waldmann. Once he had gone, I picked up another file that was on the desk and began to read it, eager to use every moment we still had to its maximum advantage, and soon became absorbed once more.
“Herr Haas,” a voice said from the doorway, “could you spare us a moment?”
Assuming they were going to ask him for details of where to send the microfiche or how we intended to pay, I didn’t even bother to look up, and just kept reading as Ken went out to speak with whoever had called him, hungry to cover as much material as I possibly could before it was time to leave.
*See replicas of both letters at the end of this book.