Not only was I aware that the family of the man I was dating was Jewish. The welcome could not have been warmer. It was a hug that lasted until they died, my father-in-law five years ago, and my-mother-in-law last week.
My German-ness was never an issue for them. For me though, the darkest period of German history was always present in their living room β in the form an intimate, tender portrait that became an infatuation of mine the first time I saw it.
The painter was Hans Moller, born in Wuppertal, who left Germany in with his Jewish wife, Helen, and whom my parents-in-law befriended many years later. Each time I looked at it I felt as if I was secretly watching Leni in a shabby hotel room somewhere in Paris, sitting at the edge of the bed in her undershirt mending one of the few dresses she could take along. It was over food that I bonded with my parents-in-law.
With my father-in-law, I talked vegetable gardening , as he had been an avid gardener as long has he was physically able. With my mother-in-law, it was about cooking and languages, about the similarities between matzoball soup and German semolina dumpling soup, between challah, which I started making regularly, and German Hefezopf Yeasted Braid.
She was excited when my German cookbook was published, and she bought copies for her friends and had me sign them. One incident sticks in my mind from the time when I worked on the cookbook. I had almost finished the manuscript, which was due at the publisher in December, but one cake in particular gave me trouble: Frankfurter Kranz, a ring-shaped sponge cake with buttercream and jam filling.
