Anne Frank's Family Read online

  Of course back when she had met Erich, she had pictured her life rather differently. When she told him “I do,” the world looked very different. The terrible war that they would later call World War I had seemed, with all its constraints and anxieties, to be behind them for good; the family had lost money, like almost everyone in Germany, but a sense of optimism was in the air and the future seemed bright. People believed in a new beginning; people wanted to enjoy life. For Leni, the war years seemed like nothing more than an interruption to the hopes and dreams that had suddenly returned. A carefree future seemed to lie before her, and she, the spoiled only daughter, believed that she had a self-evident right to it; she was young and pretty, in love with a very handsome man who admired her, who was outwardly as well as inwardly what they call a gentleman, and who met with her family’s approval, which was important to her. Especially that of Otto, her beloved, then still unmarried brother. It was not only for sentimental reasons that Leni did not want to go against the will of her family, of course, there were financial reasons as well—as the daughter of a bourgeois house she had never been trained for a career and had remained, in a sense, “the child” while her brothers had grown up into men.

  It was especially important to her that Otto agreed with her choice. Otto was her favorite brother, and was always the one, even as a child, whom she could come to with everything. He had never looked down on her, made fun of her, or teased her, as Robert sometimes had. Otto had the gift of taking people seriously: he liked people, as he had written once in a letter to her from the battlefield, and as Leni already knew. For her, Otto was not only the admired older brother but also the very model of an upstanding human being, someone she no doubt measured everyone else against. After the death of her father, the role that this brother played for both her and Alice had only grown more important.

  Leni Elias, circa 1919 (photo credit 6.2)

  That is why it mattered so much to Leni that Otto liked Erich. Even if he may have welcomed this new love only because he saw it as proof that Leni’s unhappy affair with Ernst, which he was so worried about, was over for good. In any case, Erich, unlike Ernst, was not engaged to someone else, and was Jewish, not from a well-known family but his father was not poor, he owned a grain and feed factory in Zweibrücken. He was neither a starveling nor a religious fanatic, as Otto had once put it in the presence of others—within the family he called such people “religious nuts.” He would not have liked to have one as a relative. Then, when Erich’s father came to Frankfurt to meet the Franks, he had even won Alice over to his side, despite her initial resistance. “A pleasant man,” she said, and Leni’s happiness was complete.

  The family was no doubt relieved that Leni was getting married at last. She was twenty-seven years old and not inexperienced, and given how things were back then, it was high time for her to marry if she did not want to end up as an old maid. The fact that Leni of all people, beautiful and admired by all, was still single could not have been entirely the fault of the war, or the financial situation after Germany’s defeat, which must have cut rather deeply into her dowry. In any case, the relief must have been great about the planned wedding, presumably in Leni herself as well.

  Erich Elias, circa 1920 (photo credit 6.3)

  But there is no question that she was also in love with her Erich. “There is something so beautiful about this life,” she wrote to him right at the beginning. “I don’t want to come back down to earth, because the everyday world with its worrisome cares understands only too well how to drag us down from the heavens & give rise to a sensation that I don’t want to wish on my dear ones. I need you, I long for you.”

  The letters she wrote to Erich, in which she spoke of their future life together, were passionate, for example this letter from Munich on October 20, 1920:

  A train trip like this, 10 hours long, is designed to send your thoughts on a journey too & I don’t need to tell you where mine wandered off to, do I. A thousand dear things that we’ve never talked about yet came to mind & when I think about how someday we will be able to share all our joys with each other, my mood grows so happy & sunny. I don’t want to think anything about sadness, even though I’m sure it will come up too in our lives together, but when two people are together they can help each other & everything is easier to bear. You are an idealist & I, who have unlearned my idealism a bit, I am starting to view life and people from a better angle again & I firmly believe in great, great happiness. The two of us still don’t know each other nearly well enough, of course, but what we do know promises a harmonious life, and we can’t be wrong about that. Actually there’s no point in constructing big theories, in practice it always turns out differently, but I look forward to the future & am not afraid to put my life in your hands. The main thing is to love each other & this principle gets you further than anything else, don’t you think, Erich?

  She did not want to think about sadness, she wrote; she had a firm belief in great happiness. When Erich went to Zweibrücken to tell his parents about their intention to marry, a letter from Leni was already waiting for him there. She wanted him to have a few words from her right away, she wrote. “You left me alone today, to smooth my road to your parents & you can be sure that my thoughts are constantly with you. I feel like I need to come to you, to be with you, so that your dear ones can also see that my highest goal is to make you happy, you who deserve it more than anyone else. As for me, I have the definite feeling that I have found my happiness—you and I are in harmony, trust each other & love each other. What more can anyone want?”

  Especially moving is a letter that she wrote to him six weeks before the wedding, which was to take place in February 1921:

  You’re still here, it’s true, & I can see you, talk to you & maybe kiss you too a few more times, but my thoughts have already hurried ahead to greet you when you arrive in Berlin. Erich, my dear heart, I have so much to say to you and don’t know where to start. Life rages on all around me, I make my face look the way it has to look, following all the necessary rules, I’m friendly to the people I know and grumpy to the ones I don’t like & I put on an act for everyone else. I occasionally put on a piece of theater for myself, which might not be anything to scoff at in my condition but I’m afraid I just can’t—I have to admit it, to you at least—I do not give a damn about anything in the world at the moment except you, it’s almost ridiculous. I’m a little off balance & I hope I regain it soon, before you’re back—in any case you shouldn’t have to suffer because of this. I’m very rarely in a bad mood because I’m an optimist by nature, only the war broke down my optimism a little & now I’ve fully & completely won it all back again. And as soon as the sun shines again everything is sheer joy & shining light for me, because I have it in my heart & want to give you so much of it that you’ll never feel a chill in our whole life together.

  It is certainly not easy to enter into each other’s lives so deeply that it doesn’t turn into a habit but we wouldn’t want to live without each other. But I’m not afraid to try, after all if we’re both adults and both understand how to accommodate ourselves to each other a little, we’re torturing each other, we don’t need to share every joy & sorrow! The disappointments I have felt up to now in you & your character are still bearable, although I do have high expectations of people! And I want

  you to expect things of me too.

  Goodbye for today, Erich, I kiss you with all the warmth and tenderness I have.

  Leni

  Then, in February 1921, the wedding took place—a celebration exactly as Leni had hoped. She wore a dress from the most expensive atelier in Frankfurt, the guests were numerous, and the presents were too. Leni was in seventh heaven, and the early years of her marriage seemed to be everything she expected them to be. She might have taken it as a bad omen that her grandmother Cornelia died four months after the wedding—Leni loved Cornelia, and her death was a hard blow—but she was three months pregnant by then, and her joyful expectation of a child was probably gr
eat enough to push her grief into the background.

  Leni, pregnant, with her in-laws Ida and Carl Elias, summer 1921 (photo credit 6.4)

  Her happiness seemed complete when her son Stephan was born on December 20, 1921, precisely on Alice’s birthday—she would take pleasure in this birthday gift for the rest of her life—and then her son Bernhard (Buddy) on June 2, 1925. Erich had meanwhile joined the bank, like Herbert and Otto, and everything looked rosy for a while. But gradually the economic situation grew more tense, Michael Frank’s banking firm went downhill, and the family had to cut back more and more. Erich’s decision to move to Switzerland and set up Rovag AG for Pomosin seemed promising. Even if not all the hopes that Erich and Leni had about Switzerland were to be fulfilled, even if some of them turned out to be illusions, Switzerland nonetheless offered sufficient security during the years of persecution and in the end turned out to be a great good fortune for the family.

  Buddy and Stephan Elias, 1925 (photo credit 6.5)

  The long months of living alone with the two children in Frankfurt were difficult for Leni, as evidenced by the many letters she wrote to Erich telling him about her everyday life and the children. Stephan called himself Bübü, and so did everyone else while he was young, and then there was Buddi (spelled with an i at first, only later with a y). Leni often felt overwhelmed by daily life alone with two children, although of course she had a nanny, Dadi, whom Buddy loved very much and whom he describes even today in the most glowing terms. On June 1, 1929, Leni wrote to Erich:

  My darling, Yesterday you made me very happy with your long detailed letter, thank you very much for it. I had a busy day & I’ll tell you about it. Since the maids were cleaning like crazy & no stone was left standing on another, I decided to go out to eat with Dadi & the children. It was quite a party. In the morning I went first to the city to see Helen, Irma May, & Dadi had Buddi’s hair cut. Then she took him straight to the lodge and I drove home to meet Bübü, who was coming home from school. I packed our bathing suits & then Bübü & I were off to the lodge, where we ate a delicious & cheap lunch, were very content, & thought of you. After lunch Dadi drove home & I took the boys to the pool, where it was wonderful. Our little otters were a great joy, I missed you very much, the boys were so excited and very cute. At 6:30 we were back home, Bübü had to do his homework, and I went to the Stegers later. They welcomed me and were as nice as ever.

  The letter ends: “That’s it for today. I have to go get some money from the office.”

  It is striking how little Leni apparently noticed the political situation, the developments in Germany, the gradual change in mood and growing anti-Semitism—or at least she didn’t write about it. Not a word about the increasing number of unemployed, about the Brownshirts who were growing ever louder. In late April 1929, the Reichsbanner members Heinrich Koch and Heinrich Schmidt, twenty-one and seventeen years old, were murdered by the Nazis: the first deaths from the Nazi campaign of street terror. Leni did not write about that either; she did not even mention that Otto and Edith had moved to Marbachweg. Was this a sign of her single-minded concentration on her own family, or simply a class-specific, self-involved way of seeing the world? Did she really, as she had written, “not give a damn about anything in the world” other than Erich and her children?

  The very next day, on Buddy’s fourth birthday, June 2, 1929, she wrote the following letter to Basel:

  Darling,

  I would have hurried to you at top speed this morning, if I could have, first because you seemed to be seriously homesick & second because I had an indescribable longing to be with you especially on Buddi’s birthday that we had to celebrate without you. I bawled my eyes out, but then I noticed that it wasn’t doing any good & instead prepared a happy day for my little one. He was very sweet & excited & got a wonderful pile of birthday presents with 2 charming suits & a stunning model streetcar from “Mama Dadi,” a fire engine, a soccer ball, socks, stockings, a jacket, games, a little hat, underwear, it was really a mountain, he’s spoiled on all sides. His party was a great success and the children were sweet & very well behaved. The afternoon flew by. Mother phoned from Paris, very happy, I told her she should visit you, but I don’t think she will. She was very glad to get your nice note. She won’t be back before Thursday or Wednesday night & I leave Saturday at 9:42 a.m.—(3:52 p.m. at Basel Station) if nothing goes wrong. I’ve made magnificent preparations since we’ll have Sat. & Sun. to enjoy together & I can look forward to that all week. Oh, darling, I think about you so much & I’m so sad every day I can’t be with you.

  I know how much you miss the children, but there we have to be reasonable, it will be that much better later. Edith was in the hospital yesterday, false alarm and she’s better today, but I hope for her sake that the little bundle arrives soon2 … I was very glad to get your nice note from yesterday and the card to Buddi too, I read it to him. You write so deeply about how we feel about the children … Anna and Dadi are having another fight, Anna is a real ninny. Bübü keeps wanting to go to Basel & asks about you all the time. Can’t you visit on business?… Should I bring your trunk? I have no idea where I can stow my own things. Can you ask? I want to stay longer with you. Just write if I should bring anything.

  Leni visited her Erich regularly, even though the train took a lot longer then than it does today. Erich sometimes came to Frankfurt as well. Business was not going well enough in Basel yet—Erich simply didn’t have the money to bring his family to Switzerland. But the hope remained. On November 20, Leni wrote:

  My beloved,

  It’s rare to have so much happiness & pain at once & I can hardly describe what I’m feeling. Your letters give off so much love & warmth & longing that I feel terribly happy & sad at once. Of course I would have loved to be with you long ago, but I think that 1. you’d rather I spend a little time with the children and 2. I haven’t been feeling especially well in the past 2 days & I made an appointment with Dr. Gottschalk today. I have a lot of aches and pains, but since Dr. G. didn’t take them seriously, I’ve gradually stopped worrying about them too. But since the pains in my back & side are getting worse, I want to talk to him today and hear if that’s normal, I can’t believe it is. I’m dying with longing for you & if I didn’t mention our engagement anniversary the other day, it was mostly so that I wouldn’t mention a special occasion that we couldn’t celebrate together & so that our hearts would not be made heavier. But since you were sweet enough to send me my beloved red carnations and a letter with dear words & 20 francs, now I want to send heartfelt thanks & express my wish that we can soon be together in peace & not need to be apart. You write that 9 years ago was our most carefree time. We didn’t feel it then, and aside from that the true love & camaraderie that today helps us get through our wretched situation was missing … Bübü was in raptures this morning about the zeppelin, he went to the airport with Herbi, Rudi, and Lou, it was apparently very interesting, it flew over the building 2x and you could hear everything on the radio. Bübü isn’t back yet. Your letter to the children was so sweet, naturally I cried and cried, it’s like I’m made of water when it comes to anything to do with you. I can’t help it, I could cry my eyes out whenever I think of you … What do you think about the collapse of the international banks? It could turn out in our favor. I’m so proud of Basel! I hope, oh, I hope and hope you will be successful there soon, so that—I can’t finish the sentence … I’ll use your 20 francs for my new winter hat, that will be great. Buddi just gave me his Sunday kiss, he is really too sweet & has such a colorful imagination. You should have heard him going on and on about the zeppelin, you would have died laughing.

  Buddy and Stephan Elias, circa 1928–29 (photo credit 6.6)

  The world economic situation had grown more and more acute, culminating in the market crash of October 25, 1929. This time, Leni did mention the worldwide catastrophe after all, but only in passing: “What do you think about the collapse of the international banks? It could turn out in our favor.” D
id she really see the world through such rose-colored glasses? Could it truly have never occurred to her that the collapse might have difficult consequences for her own family’s bank?

  Leni’s letters are full of longing and ever more insistent in tone. She wanted to be with her husband, and life in Frankfurt was becoming unbearable for her.

  My everything,

  Je suis navrée [I am brokenhearted]. It was monstrous of me to make you more depressed, you have enough to worry about these days, but I only wanted to take the burden off you as you need, & do you a favor. I’m fretting of course because it really doesn’t make sense that we’re a family & that we can’t be together. Dictation: Dear Papa, Why aren’t you coming back, I’d like it so much if you did! (It shouldn’t have been allowed!) Wasn’t the other letter I wrote you nice? Do you still know how Maleni looks? (Beautiful!) Do you still remember how I look? Best wishes from BUDDI [the name is written in awkward block letters, clearly by Buddy himself]. He is so sweet! He just said: “But I always write great letters because I’m such a wonderful Bertje!” Yesterday he said to Mrs. Speyer: “I really want a little sister but my Maleni doesn’t want one, so I’m not getting one!” On that subject, there was a big ruckus at Speyer-Ellissen, they let go 43 people, some of them very old, & the scenes that played out there must have been terrible. You can feel that I’m sad & I can’t hide it from you, but I have hours when I’m satisfied too & when I’m with you again I’ll be happy and content with everything.—I just heard that Rudolf R. Bauer went bust, that’s a hard blow for the construction industry & Herbert is beside himself. How will it end? I think you should thank God & A.S. that you’re in Basel, even if you’re short of funds, that will change soon there, here there’s nothing to be done anymore.—It’s not so easy for me to raise the children but I’m trying my best & when we think what good little souls they are we can feel satisfied. Lucie says “As long as you have your health” & she’s right.