Chapter 1

Lara Schäfer

Professor of cinema

In 1914, Europe is the dominant global force.

Fevered spirit of nationalism, imperial ambitions, thirst for revenge…
Rivalries between the great powers of the European continent seemingly guaranteed an outbreak of war.

The assassination of Franz-Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, on June 28th by a Serbian student nationalist sparked things off. In the space of a few weeks, the complex system of alliances resulted in multiple, successive declarations of war. One by one, the countries of the ‘Triple Alliance’ (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) drew up in opposition to the countries of the Triple Entente (France, Russia and the United Kingdom) and their allies (Serbia and Montenegro).

August 4th, 1914, in order to circumvent French defensive lines, German troops invaded Belgium, thus violating the neutrality of the Kingdom, which had hoped to escape the impending explosion of violence.

The forward positions around Liège were the first to be hit, its forts receiving a deluge of artillery fire. A wave of shelling hit the Outremeuse district of Liège with many civilians being killed in the town center. To the invaders’ surprise, the Belgian forces held out courageously from the so-called Fortified Position of Liège (F.P.L.). Their stubbornness touched public opinion abroad and slowed down the progress of the German army, giving the French more time to prepare. However, under the rain of enemy artillery fire, the forts fell, one after the other.

The Great War had begun.

It all started three months ago, when the French gendarmerie phoned me. They told me that they may have found my great-grandfather.   And they wanted to do DNA tests.
  First, I did not understand anything …

I did not even know that they still found the remains of the soldiers of the First World War. And then I remembered: yes, according to the family stories, my great-grandfather would have disappeared, in Verdun, in 1916. I did the tests and, indeed, it was him!

I first went to Fort Loncin because, according to his military record, it is here and all along Fortified Position of Liège, that my great-grandfather, Bernhard Keller fought at the beginning of the war in August 1914.

Then I travelled to Verdun, where his remains had been found in a wood.
There were, of course, remnants of his german army officer uniform.
But an old military trunk was also found containing, amongst other things, a novel (‘Le Grand Meaulnes’) and a love letter …

« My beloved Bernhard, I can’t stop thinking about you and the wonderful weeks we were able to spend together in Paris at the beginning of the year, then in Ethe, at my parents’.

Those days seem so far away now, almost like a dream, with the war that’s now raging.

I tremble with fear to think of you on the frontline. You’re so gentle, you’ve nothing in common with the outpourings of rage that are swallowing up our two countries…

I tremble at the thought of you getting wounded, and of never seeing you again…

Every day I pray to God that He would spare you and bring you safely home to us.

Oscar, our son, also thinks about you every day, as you can see from the drawing that he’s sent you – he did it this morning.

We miss you, my love. I can’t tell you how much we miss you.
Your Yvonne »

It’s unbelievable!
It would never have entered my head.
This woman, Yvonne Nicolas,
and my great-grandfather could have
fallen in love – a
Belgian and a German who met
in Paris before the war.

It’s certainly true to say
that among Germans who had
gone on to higher education many loved
French literature.
That must have been why he
kept this book with him.

I went to see the tomb of the author of the book, Alain Fournier. He too died here, and he too was found a long time after. In 1991!

Alain Fournier
1886 – 1914

I took the opportunity to visit the surroundings. I walked a lot. It is a beautiful region!

Many other writers and artists have died here.
Seeing their burials was like diving into this rich time, in the heart of this beautiful nature.

I returned to Belgium to see the village of Ethe mentioned in Yvonne’s letter. There was fierce fighting here in August 1914 – the so-called Battle of the Frontiers.

In Alsace, Lorraine, the Ardennes, as far as the Meuse and Sambre rivers, tens of thousands of soldiers were killed, wounded or left permanently disabled.

A great number of civilians were also murdered on the margins of the fighting, in Nomeny, Gerbéviller, Rouvres, Rossignol, Tintigny and Dinant… Yvonne’s entire family was killed in Ethe, Gomery and Latour. Only she and her son Oscar survived.

To be closer to her lover, she worked in a German military hospital.

The most important thing that I learned in the course of my research, however, was that she became a secret agent for the Dame blanche (meaning the white lady in english) intelligence network.

She was unmasked and imprisoned in 1917. She was even sentenced to death and her son, Oscar, was taken from her by the Germans

 A few months later, her sentence was commuted because she had cared for and saved many German soldiers.

Thankfully, she regained her freedom at the war’s end in 1918, but she never found her son, who had been taken away to Germany.

This is how for the first time
I found out about the mother of my grandfather,
Oscar, son of Bernhard and Yvonne.

Next chapter

Seydou SAMAKE