“The beautiful owner of this book is dearer to me than my life – August your protector.” This one sentence was the key to a mystery involving some of the greatest and most infamous figures in European history, from Frederick the Great to Napoleon and Hitler—and solved by the author of this book.Eve Haas is the daughter of a German Jewish family that took refuge in London after Hitler came to … came to power. Following a terrifying air raid in the blitz, her father revealed the family secret, that her great-great grandmother Emilie was married to a Prussian prince. He then showed her the treasured leather-bound notebook inscribed to Emilie by the prince. Her parents were reluctant to learn more, but later in life, when Eve was married and inherited the diary, she became obsessed with proving this birthright. The Secrets of the Notebook tells how she follows the clues, from experts on European royalty in London to archives in West Germany and then, under threat of being arrested as a spy by the Communist regime, to an archive in East Germany that had never before opened its doors to the West. What she unearths is a love story set against the upheaval of the Napoleonic wars and the antiSemitism of the Prussian court, and a ruse that both protected Emilie’s daughter and probably condemned her granddaughter—Eve’s beloved grandmother, Anna—to death in the Nazi camps.
When first published in the UK, The Secrets of the Notebook was an Irish Times bestseller. A movie based on the book is in production.
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This was one of the most moving non-fiction books I have ever read. I couldn’t put the book down until I had read the last word on the last page!
I loved this book and I admire the determination of the author to solve her mysterious ancestry. Against every odd, she somehow received the lucky breaks that allowed her access to family records and documents that directly link her to Prince August of Prussia. This is one of those instances where truth is stranger than fiction, and the twists in this biography are simply WOW!
Loved this book. Not only learned about WWII but also the cold war in Germany..so amazing
Gives a clear perspective of life in East Germany under the Communist regime. True story but the main characters willingness to put her family in danger over wanting personal historical information about her family background kept me thinking about how naive and lucky she was.
I kept wanting this lady to find the facts about her family and had a hard time finding a place to stop reading. It wasn’t a true page turner, but a truly interesting read. Would I read it again? Yes.
I found this book to be mildly interesting. but I would not recommend it particularly because I did not especially enjoy it or learn from it.
This is really a genealogy detective story. The personal experience of the author puts into perspective the changes in world politics and power of the last 70 years. Her trips to East Germany before the “softening” were pretty tense, but later, with the thawing of East-West relations, the trips to East Germany were much less scary. The incredibly detailed archiving and documentation of records throughout Germany is half of the story. A personal memoir of the horror of the Nazi era should also sound an alarm about the increasing right wing violence of our own era.
She went into great detail about finding family history. Interesting mix with the East German problems after the war.
It is an interesting tale of actual events. Such stories can only exist in real life. No one would ever accept them in a work of fiction.
Well written and utterly engrossing true story of a woman’s amazing genealogical research about her ancestress who was said to be married to a Hapsburg prince. Also very interesting that she is a Jewish woman born in Germany, whose family escaped to London in the 1930s. And the research she did was amazingly performed behind the Iron Curtain in communist East Germany. Just an incredible, unusual and wonderful story.
Love this… can’t wait to find the next in the series
True story, very touching.
This book inspired me to dig further into my family history.
I thouroughly enjoyed reading this true story, even though it was written like a fantasical work of fiction. I have rarely read about East Berlin and how scary it was before the wall came down, especially for people from the West who dared to enter. Plus, the history of the family and the politics of it all is fascinating.
“Secrets of the Notebook,” in which Eve Haas documents her facinating research
into her ancestry is an amateur genealogist’s dream read. I was excited following her progress in discovering her family tree from Prussian royalty through World War II victims via challenging archival research. Knowing the thrill of finding documents and clues leading to family history details and connections, I could not put this book down as the author pieced her family tapestry together. As a bonus, the book is well written.
The Secrets of the Notebook is like nothing I have ever read before. This is the authors true account of trying to find out what happened to her grandmother, great grandmother and great great grandmother based on an inscription on a family heirloom handed down for generations. The struggle to find information from East Germany during the cold war was an eye opener for me. I knew living in a Communist country is challenging but I never really understood what could happen to a visitor just trying to obtain family information. I have spent time researching my own family tree but this was way beyond anything I have experienced. The history of Prussia was very interesting, as well. I love it when I finish reading a memoir and realize I learned something I didn’t know before I read the book. This is one of those memoirs. Very enjoyable.
Fascinating piecing together of one family’s tragic, triumphant, and true history. All the makings of a fairy tale brought to life in this historic and true family mystery. An amateur geneologist’s dream…
I loved this book. Amazing that a portion of erased history could be so bravely researched and revealed. I rarely find nonfiction books with stories that are this well-written and riveting. I could not turn the pages fast enough!
Was written like a text book
Rather slow-