Käthe Edler

Käthe Edler, nee Lehrs, was born on 21 November 1896. She was the middle of three siblings. Older brother Leopold Edgar, who later took on the name Ernst, was born in 1894 and her younger brother Rudolph was born in 1901.

The Lehrs family converted to the German Lutheran religion when the children were very small. It was already clear that it was not prudent to hold on to their Jews nationality.  

Katharina’s father died in 1918, partly because of wounds he had sustained in World War 1.

Käthe enjoyed quite a comfortable middle-class life until the Nuremberg race laws were created in 1935 and the general difficulties that faced Jews during the 1930s in Germany. 

Unusually for a woman, she went to university and even more unusually she studied science. She actually received lectures form Albert Einstein and Max Planck was Dean of the University of Berlin at the time. He still lectured in physics. Unfortunately she was not able to complete her degree. She fell in love with one of the young lecturers, Hans Edler, who was only two years older than her.  This type of relationship between a lecturer and a student would not be tolerated then so she left the course. She and Hans married on 19 May 1923 at the Berlin Wilmersdorf registry office. Their only daughter Klara Renate Edler was born on 5 July 1925.

The marriage was reasonably happy to start with. Käthe carried on showing a pioneering streak. She was the first woman in Munich to obtain her driving license. She astounded her husband by driving to meet him from the airport in the dark. She astounded the taxi-drivers at the airport even more by opening the bonnet and cleaning the sparking plugs. “Well,” she said, “the engine was misfiring and I knew the sparkling-plugs must have been vey unsparkling.”

Her husband had a cousin who worked for the government. He warned the couple that life was about to become dangerous for Käthe and Renate. Whilst she was at the county hall in Nuremberg obtaining some papers that later made her emigration to England easier, she was asked to wait in a small room. Another door was opened and she had a full view of Adolf Hitler, just a few feet from her. Later, she remembered that she had a small pistol in her handbag and it would have been easy to shoot him.

She came to England in March 1939. Her brothers Ernst and Rudolf were already in England and had found her daughter Renate a foster home with a certain Smith family. The same family offered Käthe a job as housekeeper.

On 27 January 1942 Hans Edler petitioned for divorce. It was all done in the name of the German folk and it was probably an enforced divorce. On the petition she is named Katharina Sarah Lehrs. Her second name was really Theresa. All Jews were assigned the name Sarah or Israel if their names were not particularly Jewish.

Käthe and Hans were never reconciled and Hans remarried.

Käthe took on British nationality of 21 September 1948. She lived in London until she died in 1977. She made many English and Jewish friends and in her spare time gave English lessons to other refugees. She understood only too well the difficulties faced by people suddenly thrown into a new culture in a country where they didn’t speak the language. She worked at Saatchi and Saatchi until two weeks before she died. For several years she shared her home with her friend, Eva Kaiser, also a German Jewess. 

All about the Schellberg Cycle

It all began because back in 1979 my mother-in-law, Renate James (née Edler),   suddenly received a fat package in the post. It contained photocopies of letters written in German, mainly in the old script that is difficult to read. The names on the letters sounded familiar. Gradually she realised that they were from the girls with whom she attended primary / middle school in the late 1930s.  

The school had to close because it didn’t teach Nazi ideology. She was in for a shock, however, after the school closed. She found out that she was Jewish by race. She really had no idea. Absolutely none – until just a few short weeks before she came to England on the Kindertransport. Her story is contained in The House on Schellberg Street. Several publishers found it hard to believe that she had no idea. And so it was rejected several times. Happily, I’ve found a publisher who does believe it.

The letters were written in exercise books and posted on to the next girl on the list. There were three volumes and they lasted from just before World War II started until just after it ended. One of the girls found the middle volume in the attic. She made it her business to get all of the women together for a reunion.  

The letters are difficult to read, boring in places, but fascinating in others as they give an insight into what it was like for ordinary young German women in the 1940s. I’ve also read several copies of  Das Deutsche Mädchen, the magazine produced for the BDM, the girls’ equivalent of the Hitler Youth and accounts written by other German women from that time.        

Meeting Clara Lehrs

She figures in Renate’s story and soon became a real interest. She would never concede that she was Jewish. She and her husband had converted to the German Evangelical Church when the children were small. According to the Nuremberg race law, however, she was Jewish through and through. Ironically she did not escape the Holocaust because she insisted on protecting another vulnerable group- some disabled children. They survived and their class carried on meeting in her house for many years after the war.

I have written her biography. It is largely fictionalised. I’ve used fiction, in fact, as a tool for trying to find out what happened. We really have only a very little information about her. I’ve explored why she didn’t save herself when she could. I hope I’ve come up with a reasonable answer.              

Now I need a publisher. Well, we’ll see. Something I’ll mention in my next post may help.

University projects

I first started writing The House on Schellberg Street as part of my MA in Writing for Children (Winchester 1998-2000). I was advised against continuing. “It might get too grizzly.”  Nevertheless, I took it up again when I started my post at the University of Salford as a lecturer in English and Creative Writing.

I was awarded a sabbatical from September 2011 to January 2012 where I continued to work and research. Whilst working on that it became clear that Clara’s biography must come next.

As I worked on Clara, it became apparent that there were three other books to be written. They are listed below.

Five books from one sabbatical. Not bad.  

The full cycle

All of the books are readable by anyone 13+ and all are to some extent crossover young adult / adult.

The House on Schellberg Street

This is Renate’s story of her conflict about being English, German and Jewish at the same time. It also tells the story of those she left behind – her school friends, her best friend and her grandmother. Naturally, also, here we have the story of what happens in the house on Schellberg Street.   

 

Clara’s Story

This is fictionalised biography using fiction techniques. It is mainly the story of the third part of Clara’s life, aged 48 and above, though there are several scenes of when she is younger.

 

Girl in a Smart Uniform  

This is a completely fictional account but seeks to give some explanation about how the school was threatened yet managed to survive. It’s also exploring Nazi attitudes. Why was the young protagonist inclined to be cruel to start with? Why did she rate the smart uniform so much? Is it linked to the problems cause by the hyperinflation in the 1920s? The terrible 1930s depression? Indoctrination? An unhappy home life?       

 I’ve finished the first draft but it needs a lot of work. It’s possibly the most difficult thing I’ve ever written. I have to take care that I don’t give my protagonist too many excuses for what she does. Also, she needs to remain likeable.

The Woman Who Almost Shot Hitler

Oh yes. She features in The House on Schellberg Street. She has also raised the eyebrows of a publisher or two.  Again, yes, it really happened. Käthe Lehrs / Edler was another remarkable woman.    

 

The Round Robin

This revisits the girls who wrote the letters. Some of the letters, fictionalised, are in The House on Schellberg Street. This explores four of the characters in more detail and grapples further with what it must have been like for ordinary German women.    

Then there is a non-fiction project to follow.  But more about that in my next post.