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