OF SEARCHING AND FINDING (OR NOT)
For the past four or five years I have been searching for a dead woman. A private venture which next to my day job and my real passion - being your Berlin Companion - came a bit short and could only be run as a side-show. But even this staccato research always brought me a tiny step or two further.
Then I lost my day job (a very much welcome event - it was high time for a change of landscape) and I finally found myself able to do all the wonderful things I was not able to pursue before because, you know, time.
In the past two months I have been very actively searching for my mystery lady, using my genealogy skills gained in my old day job to trace her and her relatives. And yes, it is as exciting as it sounds: detective work, if I ever saw one, and a career I always wished I had had (provided I had lived in the 1930s England and most murders were by poison).
But it can also be a grueling job: looking for (often for months and not exactly certain, if where you are looking is the right place after all), hopefully finding and then reading hundreds or even thousands or old records. Endless emails and letters to archives, courts, organisations, private people, clubs and cemeteries. And never a guarantee that you will get there in the end.
And you know what? I love it. Since I moved to Berlin, there have always been two roads for me to go: writing about Berlin or genealogy. I am very lucky that in this particular case - my mystery lady - I can combine the two. It gives my wings I thought had been clipped.
My search for her was successful. In two weeks I will be standing at her grave, knowing the main line of her story. It will still take several years (potentially) to reconstruct it in full but if there is anything I have learnt over the past year - watching my father vanish into the coma void and then leave us for ever - then it’s that you should not wait to do things you feel will elevate you, and then - if you need to - take all the time in the world to do them well.
I do not know yet what I will do with her story - it is not important right now. What counts is that I took a seemingly hopeless case and without putting myself under too much pressure, but also without giving up, I managed to solve the riddle.
I also took another decision - again acting under no duress (a very luxurious, comfy position to be in - for which I am endlessly thankful): genealogy and probate research are what I love doing for a living. So I applied for a new job. I am starting in September.
I will continue to write Berlin Companion as I have for the past years. I will continue to search for my Mystery People, of whom there are still a couple, and I will continue to read, research and be curious.
And when I get off that train in Switzerland in two weeks’ time and stand at my Mystery Woman’s grave, I will thank her for having been such a pain in the neck to find. She will definitely get flowers. She’s been waiting far to long to be found.
