The German Heiress

by Anika Scott

  “Why? Why should I?”

  “Because you’re my brother and I’ll drag you out if I have to. I won’t let you die in here.”

  Willy let out a cry and plowed into her. They fell together to the floor, Willy striking out with his fists. Jakob caught hold of his arm, but Max seemed determined to be the one to save her. He pushed Jakob aside and the two of them were soon wrestling at the wall. Clara blocked Willy any way she could, her arms up, twisting from his blows. She had grown up with brothers; she had done this before. Soon she was kicking him, clawing his scalp, taking punches and giving them too, wrestling in the dirt. His fist hit the ground and came back smeared and wet. And then he was clinging to her, his face in her chest, her arms tight around him, holding him together before he broke apart for good.

  Suddenly, men flooded the tunnel, flashlights and lanterns swirling around them. The lights settled on her face. Blinded, she tucked her nose into Willy’s hair. They stayed together on the ground while the men cried out in surprised English. Even when she felt a gentle tug at her arm, she didn’t let Willy go.

  “Don’t take him away.” She felt him quaking with panic. “Don’t lock him away—”

  “Fräulein, it’s all right.” Captain Fenshaw was kneeling beside them. “And you must be Willy.” She saw the pity and horror behind the smile Fenshaw was struggling to maintain. “Everything is all right, lad. Up you get. Come on.”

  Willy’s body relaxed, a long sigh of fatigue. He faced Fenshaw and raised his hands.

  “I surrender.” He hiccoughed, and sobs flooded out of him, his mouth wide open like a child’s. She couldn’t stand to see him so lost, and she wrapped her arms around him again, keeping him on his feet.

  Max and Jakob both stood at the wall, their hands up. It was Max who said, “Captain, may I speak? I have very important information that proves that Clara, Fräulein Falkenberg, was an enemy of the Nazi regime. I have evidence, documentation, and I’m willing to cooperate fully even if”—he took a shaky breath—“I incriminate myself.”

  His words left her indifferent. She wanted no help from him, no sacrifices. Captain Fenshaw was holding the ledger where Willy had kept his statistics about the supplies, listening to Max without glancing up from it. When he finally did, he looked not at him but at her, his face thoughtful.

  “Right, I’ll talk to you first, Herr Hecht.” He issued orders to his men to lead the rest of them to separate rooms. Clara refused to leave Willy, and a soldier escorted them both to the one full of cigarettes. Under guard, they waited in silence, Clara too exhausted to do more than touch Willy’s arm now and then. She didn’t know what to say to comfort him. She was going to prison and she regretted all she couldn’t do. Find him a room with a window, a proper bed. See that he finished school. Help him get a job or an apprenticeship. Elisa would have wanted that, and Clara had so much experience that she could share.

  Once the practical things were taken care of—food and work, a routine—he might be ready to turn inward again. Not to punish himself this time, but to understand what he’d done and why. She wanted him to be able to accept it, so he might become the kind of man who could forgive himself—and others.

  Fenshaw appeared in the doorway rubbing his forehead. “Fräulein, this way, please. I’ll talk to the boy now.”

  “Let me stay. He’s still upset. He’s—”

  “It’s all right,” he said more gently than she expected. “Come along.”

  She didn’t know how to say good-bye to Willy and so she kissed him on the top of the head as her father used to do to her when she was a girl.

  She expected Fenshaw to take her out of the mine, to whisk her away to prison, but instead he led her by the arm to a room where Jakob was eating dark bread scooped out of a can with his hand. When he saw her, he struggled to get up, spilling the boxes around him. Fenshaw left them alone, with the guard just outside the room.

  She hugged Jakob for a long time, and there were kisses, slow and regretful. It would be the last time she held him like this, and she wanted to remember everything about it. How solidly he stood on his two feet, how straight his back was as she ran her hands up his shirt. He smelled of dust and faint cigarette smoke and she even detected the lightest trace of cologne. When he held her, his nose rested a few moments on her brow, his breaths warming her eyelids and gently moving her lashes.

  In prison, years were going to pass. She felt them already stretching in front of her; how she would grow old in there; how he would marry and start a family. He should live life, just as Willy should. That was what she wished for both of them.

  “Clara, there are enough people walking around here without a shred of remorse for the things they did in the war and you’re going to prison? It’s not right.”

  “It’s what I deserve.”

  He held her tightly, another thing she’d remember when she was gone. “I’ll write to you,” he said.

  “I’m glad.”

  “I’ll send you packages. Chocolates and sausages and bread and marmalade and honey.”

  “From the mine? You think Fenshaw will let you have some of it?”

  “I’ll organize it for you. I’m done with this place.”

  “Please don’t break any laws.”

  He rested his forehead against hers, grinning. “Wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe they’d put us in the same cell.”

  Fenshaw appeared in the doorway and gestured for her to follow. A hundred things she wanted to tell Jakob flooded her mind, but their time was up. The last kiss was short. She had to leave quickly or she wouldn’t be able to leave him at all.

  Fenshaw escorted her back to Willy’s camp. They were alone except for Gertrud, who shivered in her nest. Fenshaw gently touched the canary’s head, then sat on one of two stools at the crate table. Clara took the second. The Christmas tree was on the floor, and on the table were the same thick files that Fenshaw seemed to take with him everywhere. She wondered what kind of comfort he found in them.

  “Are your men all right?” she asked. “I didn’t mean to hurt them.”

  “They’re being treated, but yes, they should be fine.”

  In her pocket, she touched the photograph of Elisa that Fenshaw had given her, and the silk scrap of her wedding dress. Clara hoped she could keep them with her in prison. “Thank you for letting me say good-bye to Willy and Jakob.”

  He opened the top file to a blank sheet of paper and unscrewed his pen. “Tell me everything that happened after I left the cabin last night.”

  He noted what she said, his script small and cryptic as far as she could see from across the table. It was almost as if he wrote in some secret alphabet of his own. By the time she finished, he had filled several pages front and back. He tucked them into the file, and again, she had the sudden feeling of time running out.

  “You’re going to help Willy, aren’t you?”

  “I told you. I can’t.”

  “You saw him. He just needs time and someone to guide him.”

  He spread his hands on his files as if to keep them from flying away in a stiff wind. In the lantern light, he seemed younger and far less certain than he had even moments ago. He was more like the young man she had first met, struggling to understand the woman in front of him.

  Finally, he stood up, and she knew she had lost. She would have to leave Willy to his fate. It was in Fenshaw’s hands. She rose to face him. “Just . . . try to understand what he went through,” she said. “He’s still a boy.”

  Fenshaw reached into his coat—for handcuffs, she assumed. She expected to be taken out of the mine as the prisoner she was. So be it. She would face whatever he had in store for her: the interrogations, indictments, imprisonment. She would be honest about her father and what they both did and thought. Her father wouldn’t understand why. He would see it as a personal betrayal. But she would show him what it was to have some integrity.

  Fenshaw bent close to her as if he was about to whisper a secret into her ear. Instead, he slipped
something into her coat pocket. She drew a surprised breath as she felt the familiar edge of her old identity card.

  “Fräulein Müller,” he said in a formal tone, “in the future, you will not use your old name under any circumstances. You will not settle inside the Essen city limits. Once a month, you will report to me in the form of a letter with your current address and activities. If you violate any of these conditions, if your name comes up in a police report for any reason anywhere in this zone, our agreement is at an end. I will come for you. Understood?”

  She held the card in her palm, the photograph of another her, the hunted woman, hiding from herself.

  “In addition,” he said, “if I need assistance acquiring information about wanted war criminals, you will give it without question.”

  She thought of Herr Doctor Blum. “For instance, a camp doctor?”

  “For instance.”

  He was giving her a chance, showing her a way to try to make things right. At least a little. It was so unexpected, it winded her. She sat heavily on a crate. “Are you sure about this?”

  “I think you have it in you to do what’s right.” A brief smile. “I’d like you to prove it.”

  She didn’t know if she could. Prison would feel like justice to others and to her too. In prison, she could believe she was really paying for what she’d done. If she stayed free, she couldn’t live her life as if nothing had happened. She had to pay the debt she owed. But helping Fenshaw might be the beginning of things, a new start far different than she had ever imagined.

  “Thank you, Captain.” She touched his hand, and he waved her away in embarrassment.

  “We’ll get the boy some temporary papers, and off you go. Both of you.” He pointed at her. “And I want a report about that doctor.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  She tenderly lifted Gertrud out of her nest and carried her to the room with the cigarettes. Jakob was there now, sitting next to Willy, who was still slumped on the packets, sunk into himself. Gertrud began to chirp and wriggle in her hands, and Willy slowly awakened, reaching for his pet. A familiar feeling swept through Clara, the same rush of affection she’d had years ago when she first saw his mother.

  They waited together in silence until a guard brought the papers from Fenshaw. Then he escorted them all to the entrance to the mine, where the last long tunnel ended in the pale light of morning.

  Acknowledgments

  My deepest gratitude to my agent, Laetitia Rutherford. Her patience, honesty, editorial insight, and faith in me went above and beyond the call of duty. I imagine her on a skyscraper with her cape billowing behind her. A huge thanks to my editors, Sarah Rigby at Hutchinson and Liz Stein at William Morrow, for guiding me through the exciting and daunting process of getting a first book ready for publication. I’m also indebted to Jocasta Hamilton for steadying the ship when the publishing waters got a little choppy. Much thanks to Molly Gendell and Rose Waddilove for their help. Thanks also to the many friends and critique partners who gave new perspectives and impulses to early versions of this book. To my parents—thank you for your support over the years, and your absolute belief in my talents. To my daughters, Olivia and Amelia—thank you for being patient with me. It’s not easy to have a writer mom. Finally, to my husband, Jürgen—thanks for enduring my questions about all things German, and for being there every step of the way.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Author

  * * *

  Meet Anika Scott

  About the Book

  * * *

  About the Research

  Q&A with Anika Scott

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Meet Anika Scott

  ANIKA SCOTT was a journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chicago Tribune before moving to Germany, where she currently lives in Essen with her husband and two daughters. She has worked in radio, taught journalism seminars at an Eastern German university, and written articles for European and American publications. Originally from Michigan, she grew up in a car industry family. This is her first novel.

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  About the Book

  About the Research

  The first inklings of this story came to me as I explored the wooded areas near my new home in Essen. A steep path leads down to the abandoned, shallow coal mines that dot the cliffs near the banks of the Ruhr River. Iron bars block the entrances, and I used to spend time peering into the darkness, wondering what was in there.

  I’m from an industrial region—the Detroit metro area—so it was natural for me to take an interest in Essen’s industrial history, which is pretty much everywhere you turn. It’s hard to ignore when every once in a while, the driveway of a house collapses because an old, forgotten mine has caved in. I had been interested in World War II since I was a teenager, so I soon focused on the city’s reputation as the “Armory of the Reich.” This was tightly linked to a systematic exploitation of male and female laborers from across Europe. Essen’s industrial might and reputation was one reason the Allies made it a top target for bombardments, reducing the city to ruins.

  But what about after the war? I didn’t know much about the immediate postwar years in Germany, and I soon immersed myself in the period. It happened organically, over years, before I ever started writing this book. I eavesdropped on seniors reminiscing in bakeries or chatted with them while their grandchildren and my daughters raced around the playground. I talked to people at parties or school events and listened to the stories of my German husband’s family. That led me to oral histories collected by historians and the media. I pored through primary sources in the city library and archives. A documentary about how the industrial families were complicit in the slave labor system gave me the key element I needed to begin a story about conscience, pride, and guilt set in the city of Essen, where I still live.

  The characters and most of the events in this book are fictional. The most tragic event is real. In a secluded, wooded area of the Grugapark, near the fenced-in habitat for deer and elk, is a memorial stone. In that spot in March 1945, a Gestapo and police squad executed thirty-five forced laborers. Another memorial in the Südwestfriedhof marks the place where the victims were put to rest after the war. To this day, nobody knows their names.

  Q&A with Anika Scott

  Q: You wrote The German Heiress while in Essen, Germany, where most of the book is set. Did living there spark the idea for this story?

  A: I’m from suburban Detroit and was raised in a car industry family. That’s why I felt immediately at home when my family moved in 2007 to Essen, another industrial city down on its luck. We settled in a southern district, wooded and hilly, the houses on a plateau overlooking the Ruhr River and Lake Baldeney. A steep path leads from my house into the trees, and farther down to another path at the foot of the cliffs that face the water. I used to wander around down there as I got to know the area, and that’s how I discovered the entrances to old, abandoned coal mines on the cliffside. They’re blocked by rusted gates, and they feel like dangerous, forbidden places. I love abandoned places, so what a great setting this would be, I thought, for a book! I started looking into Essen’s industrial history, its reputation as the Armory of the Reich, its deep coal mines in the north and shallow ones in the south, and its history of iron and steel production. At the German Mining Museum in Bochum, I went down into a reconstruction of a deep mine and discovered just how dark and disorienting it could be. There are pit towers all over Essen and the Ruhr region, and the sidewalks tend to sag where the old mines shift under the streets. Nobody really knows where all the old mines and tunnels are now, and sometimes a patch of ground just collapses. World War II bombs are also found on a pretty regular basis, and this is what clued me in to just how severely Essen was bombed in the war, and how crucial it was to the Allies to destroy it.

  Q: Once you decided to set the book in Essen, how did li
ving in the town influence your writing and research process?

  A: Being in Germany meant I had lots of chances to pick up information in an organic way— talking to older people or to my husband’s family; eavesdropping in cafés or at the park when seniors talked about their childhood; reading the papers or watching German TV documentaries. Most of the war generation is gone, of course, so I was mainly picking up info about the postwar years from people who had been children then. That was the root of Willy’s character. Being fluent in German also gave me access to a lot of material that isn’t available in English.

  Q: How did you decide to write specifically about postwar Germany? What about the era was intriguing to you?

  A: The era fascinated me. There was little information in English about the daily life of people in the years of Allied occupation compared to the war, so there was a gap in my knowledge between 1945 and the foundation of the two Germanys in 1949. Those were very hard years for the Germans, as I found out, a kind of near-lawless Wild West situation. At bottom, it was every man for himself. Anything—prostitution, stealing, illegal trades, and even violence—was done to stay alive. This moral wreckage in the war’s aftermath fascinated me too, and I knew I’d have one character (Jakob) involved in that world. Much of what I was learning, especially the oral histories, came out only in the past few decades as the children of the war and immediate postwar period got older. They had hesitated to talk about their experiences because they didn’t want to compare it to what people suffered under the Nazis.

  Q: Where did you get the inspiration for Clara’s character? Is she based on any real historical figures?