Paper Trail

Summary:

A stamp auction in Frankfurt leads an author to a war-time love story

Website:

http://www.nextbook.org

Additional Credits and Funding:

Funded by Nextbook, Inc.

Timely on:

April 15: Holocaust Remembrance Day

Tones:

Intimate, Sad, Thoughtful

Language:

English

Description:

"My dear little Ingeborg, you won't have forgotten me and your visit to Bologna in spite of the beauties of Venice." So begins the collection of letters that Reinhard Kaiser bid on at a Frankfurt stamp auction in 1991. The story they told would consume him for nearly a decade.

Written by Rudolf Kaufmann, a German geologist, and addressed to Ingeborg Magnusson, a young Swedish woman, the letters tell of a love thwarted by history. Rudolf was Jewish. Ingeborg was not. Alternately playful, mundane, romantic, and grave, the letters cover a four-year span, ending abruptly in 1939. Who were these people and what happened to them? Kaiser, a writer and translator, wanted to find out.

His curiosity led him to German villages, university archives, and ultimately to a Stockholm apartment building. In his 1996 book, Paper Kisses, newly translated into English, Kaiser reconstructs their romance, through the letters, photographs, and other documents. Here, he shares details of the story with Nexbook's Julie Subrin.

While the piece could run anytime, it might work especially well on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 15, 2007, or later that week (Holocaust Awareness Week).

Excerpts from the letters are read by Pejk Malinovski.

Nextbook.org is an online Jewish culture magazine, with a weekly podcast.

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