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

‘He wasn’t just the youngest nephew of Frederick the Great, he is also the forgotten hero of the Napoleonic wars. He was an immense historical figure of his time, incredibly wealthy and a mighty warrior prince. It would be impossible to overstate how important and influential a man he was, and this is most definitely his handwriting. How on earth did you come to own such a rare gem?’

I explained the family connection and about how determined I had become to find out more about Emilie’s life despite my parents’ warnings that I would be wasting my time. They seemed to be amazed to find out about the liaison and an unofficial marriage. They didn’t seem to know anything about the Prince’s private life or about Emilie’s existence or the fact that they had a child together.

‘Well, Mrs Haas,’ he said when I had finished, ‘apart from Liechtenstein and the principality of Monaco, I can safely say that you are related to every royal family in Europe. Prince August, you see, was the great grandson of George I of England. You are also directly descended from Mary Queen of Scots and her son, James I.’

At that moment I froze. What a revelation this was, but I didn’t want to reveal any of my real feelings. Ken was standing right next to me, what was he thinking?

Then in his typical style Ken gave me a playful pinch. ‘I don’t remember it being in the marriage contract that I was marrying a princess,’ he piped up.

‘It’s Emilie I’m really interested in finding, Mr Finestone,’ I reminded him, ignoring Ken’s interruption. ‘And their daughter, Charlotte.’

‘Finding out anything about either of them will not be an easy task, Mrs Haas,’ he started gushing again, ‘not easy at all. At the end of August’s life, in the mid-nineteenth century, all evidence of his past completely disappeared in the most mysterious circumstances. And of course now we have the problem of so much of the archive being stored behind the Berlin Wall in the East. It seems incredible that a man who must have had every aspect of his life written about in so much detail should simply disappear from the records, but that is exactly what happened. The East Germans absolutely refuse to cooperate in opening up their files. Historians from all over the world have been trying to find out about him throughout the last hundred years, with no success whatsoever. It is as if there were nothing written about him at all, yet he was one of the greatest Prussians who ever lived. It’s quite possible the records have been destroyed but if there is anything still in existence no one has been able to find it.

‘You must go to West Berlin, Mrs Haas. I urge you to visit the archive in Dahlem and beg them for help. You really must try and find out what happened to your great, great grandfather and grandmother. You have an extremely rare piece of history in your possession here. For Prince August, a leading member of the royal Hohenzollern dynasty, to live for eleven years with the daughter of a Jewish tailor simply cannot be explained.’

‘It’s really just a family heirloom,’ Ken said when Mr Finestone eventually paused for breath. He was obviously not keen to see me being encouraged to go against my father’s wishes to keep our family secrets low-key and private.

‘Oh, it’s much, much more than that, Mr Haas,’ Mr Finestone assured him. ‘This book belonged to the warrior prince. He fought and defeated Napoleon and became the wealthiest man in Prussia. Your wife could have the key that unlocks the whole puzzle. A puzzle which has defeated all the most learned historians in the world.’

‘If this were my diary,’ Mr Williamson chipped in, ‘I would be attempting to analyse it completely. I would want to find out everything I could about it.’

‘You really should make this public,’ Mr Finestone said.

‘Absolutely,’ his friend agreed. ‘We would love to be part of it with you. Do please go public.’

‘My wife wishes this to be kept private,’ Ken jumped in, obviously surprised and realising for the first time just how significant the little book was. ‘She doesn’t want the whole world to know her private family business.’

‘That’s right,’ I assured them all. ‘It’s only Emilie, my great, great grandmother who I am really interested in at the moment. I want to find out how she came to be in this position and what happened to her after the Prince died.’

‘Indeed. Anti-Semitism was almost official in Berlin at that time,’ Mr Finestone said. ‘For a Prussian prince to get together with a Jewish girl …’

He petered out, unable to find sufficient words to express the level of his amazement at such a thought.

‘Do go to Berlin, Mrs Haas. I would if it were me. You have an extremely rare piece of history here. This is really exciting. You mustn’t allow it to slip through your fingers.’

I came away from that meeting high on excitement at the possibilities of the adventure that I could now see lying ahead of me. To have had the inscription verified as being from the hand of the Prince himself was an enormous step forward. It meant that the story my father had told me had not been a mere fairy tale, passed hopefully down the generations. I was genuinely linked to this great historical figure. He was my own blood, and I knew that now there would be nothing that could stop me from continuing my search. It was as if Mr Finestone and his friend had given me permission to set off on my quest. I put my father’s warnings about not pursuing the truth to the back of my mind, reasoning that they had been made because he hadn’t wanted me to make a fool of myself and from the perspective of a very different time in history, telling myself that Mr Finestone and his friend had more than confirmed that I wouldn’t be doing that and that it was my duty to Anna and to posterity as well. If I didn’t embark on this it was hardly likely that anyone else could or would and then the truth might never come to the surface. This book was genuine and it could hold the key to solving a great historical mystery. Without even asking him, I could tell that Ken was not nearly as keen as I was. I suspect that inside he was cursing Mr Finestone for giving me so much encouragement. I think he could see clearly that there was a danger that this hunt was going to take over both my life and his and that it could take us to dangerous places. He had been hoping for a quiet life after decades of working hard, the last thing he wanted was to stir up trouble for himself and his family.

‘You have the diary,’ he said when I eventually forced him to tell me what was going through his mind. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

I knew better than to argue. I needed to save my ammunition for later. My spirits were riding too high for me to be willing to be discouraged now and I told myself I would work out how to bring Ken on board later. I was intending to contact every possible expert I could think of to try to discover where this missing information had been buried and to work out how it had all been hushed up so successfully. Who, I wanted to know, had instructed that Prince August and Emilie should be erased from the history books, and why?

A few days after our visit to his flat, to my sheer delight I received a letter from Mr Finestone containing a neatly drawn up family tree written in his own hand. I could see my name linked directly to the Prince and Emilie and through them to the English and Prussian royal families. It was then that the penny really dropped. He obviously wanted to confirm in my mind just how important an historical item he thought the notebook was, although by then I didn’t need any more encouragement to keep up the hunt. One of the first calls I made as soon as we got home was to the Central Archive in the Dahlem District of West Berlin, just as Mr Finestone had instructed.

‘Prince August of Prussia?’ the unemotional voice at the other end of the line said. ‘No, we have nothing.’

I was surprised that he was able to tell me that so easily, without even having to go away and check, so I could only assume he had been asked the same question before and had already searched in vain. To counteract my initial disappointment I reminded myself that Mr Finestone had warned me that all information about the Prince was mysteriously missing. This reaction was therefore only to be expected. His excitement had temporarily led me to forget that the hunt for Emilie was not going to be easy; the call to Dahlem immediately set me straight on that. I was obviously going to come up against all the same brick walls as he and the other historians before him had encountered.

‘The only place where they are likely to have anything,’ the bored voice continued, ‘is in the East, at their Merseburg archive. But the East Germans have helped nobody, and have blocked all attempts from the West to get access to their papers. We know that they have files on the Hohenzollern royal family but I cannot imagine that they will be willing to open them up for you.’

The early 1970s were an era when the Cold War was still at its height with everyone in the West living under the two great perceived threats of communism and nuclear war, just as today we are persuaded to live in fear of terrorism and global warming. The very thought of having to have anything to do with the sinister East Germans was particularly chilling for people like Ken and me who had already escaped one totalitarian regime in our lives, but still I seized at this straw. If I didn’t at least try asking the authorities in Merseburg, I would never know for sure what their response would be. With the help of the West German embassy I managed to get a telephone number for the Merseburg archive and dialled it nervously. It took a few minutes of clicking and buzzing before the line connected and the number rang. It continued to ring for what seemed like an age and I was on the verge of hanging up and trying again when an ill-tempered voice answered.

‘Put your request in writing,’ the woman snapped as, with my heart in my mouth, I started to tell her what I was after – and then the phone line went dead. It seemed I had already exhausted her patience by daring to ask for her assistance.

Only momentarily discouraged by her surly response, I sat down and wrote them a letter as the woman had suggested, requesting a meeting and asking for access to their files. Even as I punched the words out on the typewriter I knew it was a triumph of hope over experience, but I wasn’t about to let a single opportunity pass me by in my search. I posted the letter and resigned myself to having to wait some time for an answer.

Still unwilling to accept that there really was no information about Prince August anywhere in the Western world, I trawled every library I could find over the following months as I waited for a response from the East. Not even the British Library, which boasts that it has a copy of every book ever printed, was able to turn anything up. Every librarian I recruited to my cause started out fired with enthusiasm and certain they would be able to turn up some clue that would move me forward. But they all ended up coming back shaking their heads, as disappointed as I was at their inability to help unearth any more pieces of the puzzle.