All Change – My relationship with titles

After much deliberation and finally after talking it though with some members who came to the SCBWI Manchester critique group yesterday I’ve decided to change the titles of my Holocaust projects, associated blogs and Facebook pages. Potatoes in Spring now becomes The House on Schellberg Street and The House on Schellberg Street turns into Clara’s Story.

One of my beta readers anyway has already told me that they preferred The House on Schellberg Street as the title for the first story.  It did worry me a little that only one strand of the story actually takes place at the house but in fact only one third of Clara’s story does anyway. Possibly the first story does overall have more to do with the house:

Renate thought she was going to live there when she was being sent to England.

The strand of the story that happens there is really important and leaves the way open for a third book set in this era.

It poses a question at the end.

For a short while anyway, The House on Schellberg Street did become the title of story number one. However, I then decided it was excellent for number two. Now that Clara’s story is becoming more complex it seems less appropriate.  

I think yesterday I talked myself into this.  It wasn’t really so much that my friends persuaded me. The allowed me to persuade myself.

I rarely use the title I’ve worked with for the eventual title of a text. It’s the one thing I’d never worry about if an editor wanted to change it. I’d assume they knew better than me. I’m not good at titles and blurbs but am good at names and synopses. Each according to their strength.

I never worry about the title, though. I’m fairly confident usually that the right one will present itself. I fell reasonably satisfied with the decision I’ve made here.  

Fashion Statements

Although I’m possibly now writing for an adult readership - I still maintain that young people who have read Potatoes in Spring will enjoy The House on Schellberg Street – I’m writing this piece the same way as I write fiction for younger people. I see a picture in my head and I have to recreate that in the head of my readers.

However for some of the flashbacks, going back to the late 1800s and early 1900s I’ve had to create the pictures. I’ve had to know what people wore, how they furnished their homes and what the cities were like.

It’s been great fun finding out, especially when it came to dresses.

The earliest scene is in 1883, when Clara would have been almost twelve. She wouldn’t have her hair pinned up yet. Sunday best – or Saturday, for at that time Clara was still Jewish - may have included wearing a bustle. The skirt on the dress would have been knee-length and for ordinary days she would have worn a pinafore over a plain frock or blouse and petticoat.   

By the time Clara is twenty and meets her husband to be in 1891, dresses were still long and full. It is possible that the evening dress she wore for an unorthodox Hanukah celebration may have looked a little like one of these.                                        

By 1900 she is a young mother and la belle époque is just beginning in Berlin and Paris. There was romance and glamour. Electricity was being used more and more. She takes her six-year-old son riding the trams.

Her dress would have still been long, right to the ground, though less full than in the late 1800s. She would have worn a coat and a large hat. Leo would have probably worn a knickerbocker suit similar to the one shown here. The family was reasonably well-to-do and Clara takes him out shortly after he has come back from school.       

We meet Clara’s young family again in 1905. Little has changed in fashion in the last five years but perhaps we can now see nine-year-old Käthe in a full dress coming just below the knee. She would wear this with lace-up ankle boot.

In 1910, Leo is a young man and goes cycling a round Berlin. He would have worn a knickerbocker suit not so very different from what he’d worn as a little boy. There are lots of examples here.

Käthe joins the university and may have worn one of the newer, plainer, just above the ankle dresses in 1917.

In 1918 the whole family goes into mourning as Ernst Lehrs dies on 8 October, aged just 56. Although the family is now Christian, they still observe the Jewish habit of tearing their clothes for the funeral. The strict Victorian rules about mourning were being broken. Though Clara wearing a yellow blouse and having yellow feathers in her black hat are a little controversial there is no expectation that the family will wear black for months on end.

Käthe becomes engaged to be married in 1922. I had the most fun finding a dress for her to wear the evening Hans proposes. Eventually I decided on this. In the early twenties we have the jagged hemline that shows quite a bit of leg though more through the dress than below it. The low waist flatters her figure and the floaty chiffon sleeves show off her elegant arms. I’ve decided that this gentle gold is one of her best colours.       

Introduction

This blog follows on from the Potatoes in Spring one. The House on Schellberg Street tells the story of Clara Lehrs from when her husband dies in 1918 until she herself is murdered in Treblinka. There will be some crossover with Potatoes in Spring. There are also a few flashbacks to her childhood and the early years of her marriage.

There will probably be a number of spoilers in this blog. These are not necessarily ones that I give directly because here I’m mainly talking about my creative process and discussing some of the research. However, some of the links will give some material away. We all probably guessed the main outcome anyway when we read Potatoes in Spring.   

This is the first full length piece of fiction I’ve written for adults but I think it will still be readable by young people aged twelve and over – especially those who have read Potatoes in Spring.  Arguably both books are actually biography, but there is so much we can’t find out for sure and have to guess and both are written in the style of a novel.  

I stumbled upon this story when I wanted to find out something about Haus Lehrs. I knew that was the home of Renate Edler’s grandmother in Stuttgart. I knew that Renate spent a lot of time there as a child. Even when I spent some time in Stuttgart as part of my BA in French and German, Haus Lehrs was known amongst the locals.

I rented a room from two elderly sisters in Degerloch. I explained my husband’s connection with Stuttgart.(He is Clara’s great grandson and nearest living relative.)  

“Oh yes,” one of them said.  “Haus Lehrs is still there, on Schellberg Street.”  

That was in 1973. I never dreamt that one day that statement would practically be the title of a book I’d write.  

When I started Renate’s story, I Googled  “Haus Lehrs” and was taken to  the Stolperstein web site. The essence of Clara’s story is there. Renate used to tell us of a school that was hidden but came out into the open. It must have been the one that was run in 20 Schellberg Street, surely.

As I worked further on Renate’s story, I began to realise what an incredible woman Clara Lehrs was. She deserved to have her story told too.

At the moment there are only a few traces of her. Hopefully I will find a few more. I’m starting out on a journey and I’d like to invite you along.