never saw a passport in my name, and given what was to follow Iâm as sure as can be that I was never issued one. Some form of documentation must have been procured, however, as I was able to make the long journey â alone, again â to a small village in Hertfordshire, 30 miles north of London.
The family I was to live with were evidently wealthy. The father was a banker who travelled into London every day. His wife was much younger than him and spent most of her time with the familyâs horses. Of their four children, two were away at Gordonstoun â the famous boarding school where Prince Charles was a pupil. The third child, an eight-year-old boy, joined them not long after I arrived, leaving me with only the coupleâs five-year-old daughter to look after. I spent six months in their grand house and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The couple treated me very well; I had a lovely bedroom with a private bathroom, and they made me feel like part of their family.
Looking back, I doubt I recognised then the irony of finding in the land of my countryâs former enemy the emotional warmth I had longed for at home. I was only seventeen and not as aware of history as I have since become. I returned to Hamburg with happy memories.
Completely unknown to me, while I had been away the problem of my identity had once again surfaced. The start date for my physiotherapy course was approaching and the university needed my birth certificate toregister me as a student. I assume that Gisela was somehow involved in dealing with this. (It would be many years before I discovered the flurry of correspondence between various local government offices about me â and in those letters the first hints about my origins.) But whatever she told the officials was not, I think, wholly truthful.
My new birth certificate â dated 1959, the first time my existence was formally registered â was in the name of Erika Matko. It was issued by Standesamt 1 in Berlin, the Federal government registry which had been specifically created to issue papers for people who had come (or had been forcibly brought) into Germany mainly from the east and who had no other documentation. And yet, oddly, it recorded my birthplace as St Sauerbrunn in Austria. It was a record that would, many years later, hamper the search for my true identity.
At the time, regardless of my birth certificate, I continued to insist that I was Ingrid von Oelhafen. That was the name I answered to and the one by which my friends at university came to know me.
To the university authorities, however, I was someone else: they had registered me in the name of Erika Matko, and when I graduated three years later, aged twenty-one, that was the name on my degree certificate. When I asked the university to change this to Ingrid von Oelhafen, my request was refused: without any official paperwork to prove that I was Ingrid, the administration insisted that I was Erika.
It was 1962 and I was now an adult, about to enter the world of work (and to pay my taxes and social security contributions) for the first time. My first job was in an institute in the Black Forest. I was quite used to being away from home by now: I had not really lived with Gisela and her family in Blumenstrasse for any length of time since I left school. And I found myself thoroughly enjoying my new life away from her and without the complications that had dogged my existence back in Hamburg. It was not to last.
In the last year of my training, shortly before my twenty-first birthday, Gisela had a serious accident. She had fallen down the stairs andlapsed into a coma, which lasted six months. Even when she eventually woke, she was so severely ill that she remained in hospital for another year. My grandmother and Aunt Eka had taken charge of her affairs while she was in hospital but when it was time for her to be discharged, I was needed. With much regret, I left my job in the Black Forest and returned
The family I was to live with were evidently wealthy. The father was a banker who travelled into London every day. His wife was much younger than him and spent most of her time with the familyâs horses. Of their four children, two were away at Gordonstoun â the famous boarding school where Prince Charles was a pupil. The third child, an eight-year-old boy, joined them not long after I arrived, leaving me with only the coupleâs five-year-old daughter to look after. I spent six months in their grand house and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The couple treated me very well; I had a lovely bedroom with a private bathroom, and they made me feel like part of their family.
Looking back, I doubt I recognised then the irony of finding in the land of my countryâs former enemy the emotional warmth I had longed for at home. I was only seventeen and not as aware of history as I have since become. I returned to Hamburg with happy memories.
Completely unknown to me, while I had been away the problem of my identity had once again surfaced. The start date for my physiotherapy course was approaching and the university needed my birth certificate toregister me as a student. I assume that Gisela was somehow involved in dealing with this. (It would be many years before I discovered the flurry of correspondence between various local government offices about me â and in those letters the first hints about my origins.) But whatever she told the officials was not, I think, wholly truthful.
My new birth certificate â dated 1959, the first time my existence was formally registered â was in the name of Erika Matko. It was issued by Standesamt 1 in Berlin, the Federal government registry which had been specifically created to issue papers for people who had come (or had been forcibly brought) into Germany mainly from the east and who had no other documentation. And yet, oddly, it recorded my birthplace as St Sauerbrunn in Austria. It was a record that would, many years later, hamper the search for my true identity.
At the time, regardless of my birth certificate, I continued to insist that I was Ingrid von Oelhafen. That was the name I answered to and the one by which my friends at university came to know me.
To the university authorities, however, I was someone else: they had registered me in the name of Erika Matko, and when I graduated three years later, aged twenty-one, that was the name on my degree certificate. When I asked the university to change this to Ingrid von Oelhafen, my request was refused: without any official paperwork to prove that I was Ingrid, the administration insisted that I was Erika.
It was 1962 and I was now an adult, about to enter the world of work (and to pay my taxes and social security contributions) for the first time. My first job was in an institute in the Black Forest. I was quite used to being away from home by now: I had not really lived with Gisela and her family in Blumenstrasse for any length of time since I left school. And I found myself thoroughly enjoying my new life away from her and without the complications that had dogged my existence back in Hamburg. It was not to last.
In the last year of my training, shortly before my twenty-first birthday, Gisela had a serious accident. She had fallen down the stairs andlapsed into a coma, which lasted six months. Even when she eventually woke, she was so severely ill that she remained in hospital for another year. My grandmother and Aunt Eka had taken charge of her affairs while she was in hospital but when it was time for her to be discharged, I was needed. With much regret, I left my job in the Black Forest and returned
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