And Now I am all Alone

Zusatztext

Shortly before Christmas 1940, Klara Mehlich Seuffert sits in her house in Cologne, deeply saddened. Her two sons Röbi and Walter have to go to war. 
 Her husband, the successful painter Robert Seuffert, is living apart from her. And her daughter Lotte lives in England, where she married and gave birth to Klara's granddaughter Clare in October 1940. As direct contact with Lotte has become almost impossible, Klara begins to write a very long letter. With almost 150 entries, it becomes a war diary about nights of bombing and hardship, fear for the children and longing for them, Klara's abhorrence of the Nazis and her prayers for a reunion with her loved ones. Clare only finds her grandmother's diary many years after the war.

Autorenportrait

Introduction by Clare Westmacott My grandmother Klara Mehlich Seuffert wrote this diary from December 1940 to November 1944 while living in and around Cologne. She wrote it for my mother Lotte who was married to an Englishman Jack (my father) and living in England. It is an account of Klara's life during the war years, and my grandmother hoped that if she were unable to give it to my mother herself, that they might somehow reach my mother one day. They both survived the war and eventually the diary was given to me.   My grandmother came from a colourful background. She was born in 1889, the daughter of a farmer's daughter who ¿ as family lore has it ¿ ran off with a bare-back rider when the circus came to town. As a child my grandmother travelled extensively to cities all over Europe including Saint Petersburg and London. They were a large family and she lost several brothers in the First World War. She was a lot younger than her husband Robert Seuffert. He was an artist and Professor of Art in Cologne and she had been one of his models. He was born in 1874 in Cologne the son of a sculptor who came from the Saarland to work on finishing the cathedral. My grandfather's first lessons were from his father and between 1897 and 1908 he was the student of Eduard von Gebhardt at the Düsseldorf Academy and master student of Johann Peter Theodor Janssen. As a young man he travelled to study in Berlin, Munich, to the world exhibition in Paris (1900), to Belgium, Holland and Italy. The Italian trip was the result of winning a prize to study there for a year. His province was the painting of historical, religious and monumental works and his work was displayed in several cities in Germany including Berlin. One of his early murals painted in 1902 was a ceiling painting "Prometheus brings the heavenly fire, the truth of art and the light of perception to humanity" for the opera house in Cologne. He was responsible for large murals in many churches and secular buildings, one example being a mural in the treasury hall of the Nassauer Landesbank in Wiesbaden painted in 1915. He was a highly regarded portrait painter and belonged to a circle of artists known as "Der Stil". He was appointed as a teacher to the Cologne arts and crafts college in either 1912 or 1914 and became Professor at that institution in 1923. He retired in 1936. Many of his paintings were destroyed in World War II including the ceiling painting from the opera house but some exist in museums in Cologne and some religious works went to the USA and some are in private hands. My grandparents had three children, my mother Liese Lotte born in 1912, Walter who was four years younger and Robert (called Röbi) who was born in 1920. They were comfortably off, although somewhat Bohemian and lived in an elegant house in the Wiethasestraße in the district of Braunsfeld in Cologne. They moved in fairly elevated circles and were members of the best social clubs before the war. Among their circle was Konrad Adenauer who was Lord Mayor of Cologne and who was dismissed from the post by the Nazis in 1933. After the war he became the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Weitere Details