All of Kurt’s letters and war diaries were gone. Her professional archive of 6,000 photos, the negatives from their wedding, a mere two months earlier, had all been destroyed – as had her books and pictures, the mementoes from her travels, her collector’s edition of Faust, her record collection, ‘the beautiful lamp, oh everything, everything which I loved’. Worst of all was the loss of her violin, her ‘dear friend’. For months afterwards, in between her recurring nightmare of being caught in the open during air raids and watching buildings go up in flames, Liselotte dreamed of her violin.
