The Secrets of the Notebook: A royal love affair and a woman’s quest to uncover her incredible family secret

The Secrets of the Notebook: A royal love affair and a woman’s quest to uncover her incredible family secret
Eve Haas

The incredible true story revealed by a family notebook, telling of four daughters across two centuries of turbulent history, of a passionate and ill-fated royal love affair, ending in a tragic and cruel death.'The beautiful owner of this book is dearer to me than my life.August, your protector.'Eve Haas was irresistibly drawn to the family 'notebook', which had been passed down the generations. Her father had shown her the inscription inside when she was young, with warnings of dire happenings if the secret behind the diary was pursued.Years later, Eve decided to follow the trail of the notebook, it would take her to the old kingdom of Prussia, to a forbidden royal marriage that was wiped from all official records, and a royal princess given away to ensure her protection.Forty years earlier in 1942, Eve's grandmother, Anna, had died on her way to Auschwitz after being seized by the SS. They believed she was just an old Jewish woman. The secret of her royal heritage lay in that notebook, but it couldn't save her.

The SECRETS of the NOTEBOOK

EVE HAAS

A royal love affair and a woman’s quest to uncover her incredible family secret

I dedicate this book to the memory ofEmilie, Charlotte and Anna

WITH SPECIAL THANKS to Andrew Crofts and Timothy Haas for their contribution in the writing of this book.

I owe so much to my dearest parents, Hans and Grete, and to my Uncle Freddy and Alice his wife.

My beloved husband Ken was my rock, my three sons, Anthony, Timothy and David my inspiration. Without them my journey could never have taken place.

PROLOGUE (#u93275aaf-a0cd-56d0-98d8-380583834cba)

The FIRST GLIMPSE

I SAW THE notebook for the first time in London in 1940 and was instantly enchanted by the mystery of the story surrounding it. It was wartime and we were in our flat in Hampstead where we had been living ever since we had escaped from Europe in 1934. All through the previous night we had suffered a terrifying air raid, which at dawn had left the three of us feeling shaken.

My father had brought the book to the breakfast table, never having mentioned its existence to me before. It was still in its envelope, tied with a green ribbon. He must have decided that now I had passed my sixteenth birthday it was time for me to be given some knowledge about the family secret. Perhaps he had waited before explaining the little book’s history to me until he thought I was old enough to be trusted not to tell anyone else. Or maybe the closeness of the bombs the previous night had reminded him of his own mortality and he didn’t want to risk the secret dying with him. I never knew what caused him to choose that morning to fetch it from wherever he had been hiding it since we’d arrived in London, and to take it from its envelope in front of me.

‘What’s that?’ I asked as he sat down with us.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ he said, trying to underplay its importance as my mother poured the coffee. ‘Just a diary.’

‘I didn’t know you kept a diary.’ I was surprised. In my youthful ignorance I had thought I knew everything about my beloved father.

‘Well,’ he looked uncomfortable for a second, as though he had been caught out not telling the whole truth. Was he having second thoughts about telling me, now that he was sitting beneath my mother’s firm and slightly disapproving gaze? ‘I don’t keep a diary,’ he said with a smile.

‘It’s just an old family memento,’ Mother said brusquely, clearly coming to his rescue in some way. I don’t know if he had consulted her about telling me that day, or whether he had reached the decision alone, but they exchanged a look that I couldn’t understand and then seemed to come to a decision simultaneously to go ahead with the revelation. My father passed the book to me.

‘Be careful, Eve,’ he said, as if I were a small clumsy child who might drop and break it. ‘It’s very old.’

It was heavy for something so small and as I cradled it in my hands I saw there was a grand family crest of some sort embossed on the silver gilt cover. It felt solid and substantial as I gently ran my thumb over it. I opened the first page and read out loud the elegantly written inscription inside. It was in German.

‘The beautiful owner of this book is dearer to me than mylife – August your protector.’

I looked up enquiringly but neither of them said anything, both concentrating on their breakfast.

‘Who is this August?’ I asked.

They exchanged another nervous glance and then my father seemed to decide to take the plunge.

‘He was royal,’ he said. ‘A Prussian prince. He was your great, great grandfather, Eve.’

‘Anna’s grandfather was a royal prince?’ I said after considering the thought for a few moments. I tried to imagine my sweet, arthritis-ridden old grandmother being that closely related to royalty and failed. Princess Anna – it seemed too fantastical to be true.

‘He married Emilie Gottschalk, the daughter of a Jewish tailor, and …’ my father seemed to be hesitating; was he wishing he had never started the conversation, eager to squash my enthusiastic curiosity? Was it all too embarrassing to talk about?

‘We know very little, and it is only word of mouth,’ he carried on with conviction, then seemed to want to change the subject as quickly as possible, as if I had now been told all I needed to know and there was no point in going any further. ‘Except that this little pocket-book is all there is …’

‘Why is this all there is?’ I stroked the little book again. I wasn’t going to leave it at that. What sixteen-year-old girl would be willing to dismiss the idea that she might be descended from a prince without coming up with a thousand new questions. ‘What about Anna’s mother? What was her name?’

‘Charlotte,’ my father said, avoiding my eyes and those of my mother as he continued to eat his breakfast. ‘She was Prince August’s daughter.’

‘Well,’ I said, feeling slightly frustrated by how evasive they were both being. ‘There must be records of her life—’

‘Eve,’ my father put up his hand to stop me in my tracks. ‘My mother gave me—’

He stopped speaking for a moment, as if mustering enough strength to keep his emotions under control in front of me and I immediately felt guilty for having forced him to talk about my grandmother, Anna, like that. Anna was sending us letters intermittently via the Red Cross, which was in itself very worrying, although she professed to be alright, I knew he was partly hoping that if she did get arrested then she wouldn’t linger and would leave this earth before her suffering became too great, while the other half struggled with the idea that he might never see her again, would never be able to say goodbye and might never know the truth of what had happened to her in her final days. My own deep-rooted fears for her safety were distressing for me too, as the truth of the desperate situation for all Jews who remained in German-occupied Prague had begun to dawn on all of us.

We weren’t alone in our worries; many Jewish families living in England had had to leave relatives behind for one reason or another when they fled from the murderous hatred that Hitler was spreading throughout mainland Europe. In fact my family was more fortunate than many because my parents were already well travelled, with many friends in other countries. But Anna had been too old and too slowed by her arthritis to be able to come with my Uncle Freddy, my father’s brother, and his family when they escaped for the last time from Prague to join us in England in 1938. Both Uncle Freddy and my father had had to put the welfare of their wives and children before that of their elderly mother, especially as she was insistent that she wanted to stay. They had done the right thing, but that didn’t mean my father wasn’t racked with a painful guilt as a result, tortured by not knowing what had happened or what could be happening in Prague at the very moment that we were sitting round the breakfast table in England. I went back to studying the precious little book in silence for a few moments.

‘This little book is all we have,’ my father said after a few minutes. ‘It has been handed down through the generations. It is the only proof we have that Emilie and the Prince had a life together and that that is where we came from. When I am no more, this book will be yours to keep and to pass on to the next generation. But you mustn’t do anything about it. Remember Eve, there is nothing more to find out. Nothing else has been written, nothing else exists, so don’t go looking for it. All we know is what we have learned by word of mouth. Apart from a little portrait of Charlotte’s mother, Emilie, which your Uncle Freddy has, this book is all that exists from that time. I wanted you to know that you have blue blood flowing in your veins, that is all. Just be content with that.’

In all my innocence I couldn’t immediately accept what he was saying, but I knew enough not to press him any more and I was privileged to think that I had been chosen to be the keeper of such a precious and mysterious heirloom, to be the one to pass the secrets on to the next generation of our family. I adored my father above anything else, but he was sensitive, and a man whose word I respected. If he didn’t want me to go looking for any more information about our family’s past then I would not question his wishes any further. My father passed the pocket-book to my mother, who promptly put it back into the old yellowing envelope it had come from and slipped the green ribbon over it. Then she left the room. We met again a few minutes later in the kitchen where I was washing up the breakfast things.

Caressing my hair, Mother quietly whispered in my ear, ‘The King wouldn’t allow it, but August went against his wishes and married Emilie anyway.’

The events of my childhood in Berlin had taught me just how dangerous it could be to be related to the wrong people or to anger those who held the power of life and death in their hands. To be considered to have the wrong blood flowing in your veins could mean instant arrest and who knew what fate after that. No Jewish family living in Europe during those times wanted to draw attention to themselves in any way at all. The secret to survival was to be as discreet and inoffensive as possible. Going around claiming to be directly descended from one of the wealthiest and most powerful royal families in all history, as I later found out they were, was likely to annoy more people than it would enchant or intrigue, but I still ached to find out more about what sounded like a real-life fairy tale.

My father must have chosen me to give the book to because he knew that I would be captivated by the romance of the story and believed that I would pass the story on to any children I might have, just as he was passing it on to me. He must have believed that the precious book would be in safe and loving hands with me and I still feel touched and honoured to have been chosen to carry the secret on for the next generation. Sitting at the breakfast table that day, however, I had no idea just what an extraordinary journey that little keepsake would eventually take me on, a journey back in time, across closed and dangerous borders to uncover secrets that had been carefully hidden and closely guarded for over a century.

The SECRETS of the NOTEBOOK (#u93275aaf-a0cd-56d0-98d8-380583834cba)

Contents

Title Page (#u889f2ca6-f50a-5516-95cd-13358e2af5f0)Dedication (#ue69941b8-3c48-5439-a868-272ca7914f46)Epigraph (#u33acd799-a8eb-537f-9489-a1f5ffb97b19)Prologue (#ud8d801fc-2a2a-5808-ad83-803c27778109)The Secrets Of The Notebook (#ucb6f4d40-d383-59a5-b46e-63edd6a1e31e)Chapter One: Goodbye Berlin – Hello Hampstead (#u6ec8d232-ed75-58ea-accd-97462bc7db3b)Chapter Two: Granny Anna – No News From Prague (#ub6d961c8-01d9-5b1a-9236-f16847da3754)Chapter Three: Meeting Emilie (#u2e0ee283-0892-545b-85f6-e69b563240fe)Chapter Four: The Call To Adventure (#u89e4365a-e9fe-5710-8361-5db2fb039345)Chapter Five: Return To Berlin (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six: Crossing The Border (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven: At The Castle Walls (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight: Charming The Minister (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine: The Disappearing Passports (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten: The Opening Of The Archives (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven: My Great, Great Grandfather – Prince August Of Prussia (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve: Gottschalk (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen: Finding Emilie (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen: Going To The Ball (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen: An Assassin In The Palace And The Disappearance Of Victor (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen: The Death Of The Prince (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen: A Humble Plea (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen: An Offer To Spy (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nineteen: Calling Their Bluff (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty: The Prince In England (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty One: Visiting August (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Two: An Ally In Berlin (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Three: A Poisonous Legacy (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Four: Finding Charlotte (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Five: The Final Piece Of The Puzzle (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Six: Tracking Down Isadore And Charlotte (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Seven: The Vanished Palace (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Eight: A Letter From The Grave (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue: Visiting Anna (#litres_trial_promo)Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

1 (#u93275aaf-a0cd-56d0-98d8-380583834cba)

GOODBYE BERLIN – HELLO HAMPSTEAD (#u93275aaf-a0cd-56d0-98d8-380583834cba)

MOST OF THE early years of my life were spent in the political turmoil of Berlin. I was born on my father’s birthday, 26 June 1924. My mother went into labour in a state of shock, having been informed by her sister, Fridl, that the Berlin evening paper had announced that my father had been fatally injured that day in a car accident.

In fact my father was not dead, but instead was fighting for his life in a convent in the middle of nowhere. He had been travelling on business from our home in Breslau, which was then in Germany but is now in Poland, when his car was forced off the road by a heavily laden haywain steered by a woman in a red headscarf. Startled by the unexpected sound of an engine the carthorse had reared up. My father loved driving his new Buik 24-54, so he was at the wheel despite the fact that he had his chauffeur with him. He swerved to avoid the flailing hooves and rolled off the road into a ditch, ending up on its side. The chauffeur was thrown clear but my father was trapped inside with a fractured skull and a broken arm and leg.

Clambering to his feet, the chauffeur waved down the next car to pass by, but the driver refused to take ‘a dying man’. The next vehicle to pass was a lorry loaded with bricks and the driver agreed to take my unconscious father to a nearby convent in the hope that the nuns could save him. Having no option the chauffeur accepted the offer and the nuns took him in, in the true Christian spirit. Somehow the news reached the ears of a journalist in Berlin who decided to print the piece as news without further verification.

Father stayed under the tender care of the nuns for five days before he was finally judged strong enough to be transferred to Breslau Hospital, where my mother and I were still patients after my apparently difficult and traumatic arrival.

Things would have been so different if he had died that night on the road, or later in the peace of the convent. If he had passed away that night his mother, Anna, would never have been able to give him the pocket-book, which would later come to me. It would instead have gone to my Uncle Freddy for safekeeping, with our family’s mysterious past remaining a secret.

After my dramatic entry into the world, my first few years were stable and pleasant. As a small child I lived in central Berlin with my family all around me. We lived close to my grandparents and to my Uncle Freddy and his family. Freddy and my father were very close, and looked similar too, although Freddy was heavier set and taller than his brother.