"BIRTHDAY BOOK"
What I have called the "Birthday Book" (see illustrations below) has dimensions about 5 cm x 7 cm by 2 cm thick, is leather-covered with corner ornaments and clasp possibly of silver, and contains about 150 white pages. About every four or five pages there is on the left-hand page a short piece of poetry written in minute German copperplate script, and on the facing right-hand page a delicate watercolour illustrating the next month. On the pages following are hand-written entries recording births, marriages, and deaths. The entries are of two basic sorts: those that are presumably the original entries made that were made when the book was being prepared (about twenty all told, in fine Roman, not German, copperplate script), and all the other entries in a variety of hands.
That the book belonged originally to great-grandmother Emma Hoffmann,
and on her death was taken over by her daughter (and our grandmother) Else
Voigt, is clear from the entry in the April section, which reads
"Am 30ten April 1910 starb meine geliebte Mutter Emma Hoffmann geb. v.
Braunschweig; 'Die Liebe hört nimmer auf'; dieses kl. Buch hatte ihr
viel Freude gemacht" [My beloved mother Emma Hoffmann née
v. Braunschweig died on 30th April 1910; 'Love never
ceases'; this little book had given her much pleasure.]
Emma Hoffmann having died on 30th April 1910, most 1910 and
all post-1910 entries are Else's work, while entries dated
between 1890 (the latest date in the original copperplate commemorating the
death of Fritz Hoffmann in the May section) are presumably
in Emma Hoffmann's handwriting (for example, describing the
birth of "Meiner Urenkel [great-grandson] Hans Seiflow am 28ten
Dez.1904" in the January [sic] section).
As to the authorship of the "Birthday Book", Else's
comment might suggest that she herself was the author, but in that case why
are none of the post-1910 entries in copperplate, and at 33 years old in 1890
and the mother of three children, was she not a little old for this sort of
thing? And one also wonders why at the age of 60 her mother required, and
used, a new birthday book. The origin of the "Birthday Book" remains
unexplained.
Another curious feature of the book, also without obvious explanation, is
that the entries are all Voigt-based, or of friends or relatives
of Voigts; the only Seiflow entry is the
single one for Max and Emma and their family
in the September section (the month of their wedding), but not entered until
after my birth in 1918. Max's birthday is not recorded,
nor is that of his mother.
The "Birthday Book"
(approximately full size)
Entry for Emma Voigt
Start of the January Pages