Exciting, true genealogical sleuthing at the British Library in London to track down a great grand father. A great read for anybody interested in ancestry research in a short story.
The oil portrait in a gilded frame was dated 1944 on its back. How had my great-grandparents managed to get out a painting done in Germany in the middle of World War II? I speculated: 'Maybe it was pity purchase...they had given a commission to a painter who was down on his luck in those desperate days'.
The painting was of an old man with a white mustache, dressed formally, though a bit old-fashioned even for those times in a suit with a stiff collar and white shirt. The bright blue eyes expressed the great sadness of a man who had seen a lot in his life. He was my great-grandfather, but our family had always referred to him, as the Consul.
The painting had been in the possession of his daughter, my paternal grandmother. Once she told me: "You know, I have sold off all my fine jewelry, the jade and the rubies, and even gave away the silverware I inherited, because I needed the money. And I moved so many times... But everywhere I went, I took this portrait."
It was of her beloved Pappchen – Little Papa. According to my grandmother, the Consul's family had fifteen servants living with them in a magnificent teak house in the British colony of Rangoon, Burma. Now, after subsequent political regimes, it is renamed Yangon, Myanmar. They had lived a privileged, expatriate life until the end of World War I, when political circumstances in the form of anti-German sentiment forced the family to return to Bremen, Germany.
I had heard my grandmother's stories over and over, but I had never seen any documents. Had the Consul really been a German diplomat? Or was it just a loving daughter passing on some glorified family lore, bestowing on him a title of respect? But an album full of sepia-colored family photos my grandmother had left me was proof enough that they had been there. I was determined to find evidence of his life in the historical records of the period.
My research yielded that the British Library in London would be my best resource, and reminded me that the last time I had used the British Library was in the 1980s. At that time its venerable, awe-inspiring reading rooms were still located in the British Museum, with green-shaded lamps that shed light on high-ceilinged rooms, paneled with book-shelves. The new British Library, near Kings Cross Station, was no less impressive, with its red exterior, reminiscent of a Chinese Palace and its striking, white interiors.
After being photographed and issued a reader's card, I was sent to the Asia & Africa reading room on the third floor. A friendly librarian with a heavy Eastern European accent helped, but her computer search yielded nothing concerning my key words: 'German Consul, Rangoon, Schrader 1900- 1918'. Getting frustrated, she asked condescendingly:" If you are looking for a German consul, why are you searching the British colonial records and not the German ones in Berlin?" It seemed like she had a point.
I responded defensively: "I have contacted the German archives, but was told to refer to British colonial accounts, as they kept meticulous records of everything that went on in the glorious days of the Empire. Besides that, many records were lost when Berlin went up in flames in the Second World War." Having found nothing helpful in the computerized database, she showed me how to locate the original paper annals of the British administration of colonial Burma.
