
There was always a hole in my story; a circuit that did not connect. I never knew my grandfather, who immigrated from Germany and died before I was born. I wondered what his German relatives were like, and what it would have been like to know them. I felt deeply tied to my heritage, but it was also a mystery floating out in some faraway land.
When I found letters from my great aunt in Germany to my grandfather after World War 2, the mystery only deepened. (See here for the invitation to the story.) In the box with the letters, was a smattering of pictures that were like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle: a mother and daughter, a wedding picture, a storefront, a house with bay windows, rubble after the war. Once I found a lovely German woman to translate the letters, I discovered there were breadcrumbs scattered throughout the letters—a return address in Solingen, Germany; letters from her daughter; names of other relatives; clues to their lives.

My mother was still alive at this time, and she added a few bits of information. The letters were from her Aunt Paula and her cousin Edith. She had heard from Edith sporadically over the years, and I remember her driving out to the country to meet with a German woman to translate letters in the early 70s, but those letters are gone now. She remembered Edith got married, and had a son named Ulrich, who was an excellent skier. She didn’t know much else.
I took the breadcrumbs I had and went to Ancestry.com, where I began to piece together a family tree. My mother had received a small inheritance from an unknown relative in Germany, and a law firm researching the inheritance provided more information. The family began to flesh out, and there was a Great Aunt Paula, with a daughter named Edith and a grandson named Ulrich. Paula had the same father as my grandfather. Bingo! That’s her.
I began to study the photos again, and the cryptic notes in German cursive on the back. An address jotted on the back of the picture of a house matched the return address on the letters. The younger woman in the pictures was the same person as the bride in the wedding photo. The letters told me her groom’s name was Hans, and there was a picture of a storefront where Hans worked.
One morning, on a whim, I Googled the name of the business shown in the picture and a German website popped up. The owner of the establishment? Ulrich. Could it be? My fingers dangled over the keyboard before I composed my first message in German with the help of Google Translate:
Ich versuche Ulrich __ zu kontaktieren . . . I am trying to contact Ulrich __. I believe he is a relative of mine. His mother was Edith ___ and her mother was Paula ____, sister of my grandfather Paul ___. I just want to correspond, and I think I have photos and letters from his mother that Ulrich would be interested in. I have a picture of a building with the company name where Ulrich’s father Hans worked in the 1940s.
If you can help me to contact Ulrich ___, I would be very grateful.
Thanks very much.
Amy Landis
The response was simple: I am Ulrich. And thus began our email correspondence. We exchanged general information about family members, but he was not interested in reading the letters or seeing the pictures, preferring to let the past be the past. I thought maybe we were at a dead end in our relationship, but we continued to stay in touch. We sent holiday greetings at Easter and Christmas, discussed our children and spouses, compared our country’s cultures, and when the coronavirus shut the world down, we encouraged each other from across the ocean. I shared the death of each of my parents with him, and he extended his heartfelt condolences. I learned his parents have passed away as well. Over the last four years, we have emailed back and forth regularly.
Fast forward to five weeks ago—I sent him an email to tell him I was coming to Germany and I would like to meet he and his wife for dinner. His response? “You must stay with us.” I had a great sense of peace and excitement, and immediately agreed. When I told people I was staying with a German cousin I’ve never met, more than one person thought I was crazy. I began to wonder myself.
Before our arrival, he sent his address and cell number and we began to message each other on WhatsApp. Two days ago, I drove up to his house and parked in his driveway. I slowly walked up the steps and rang the doorbell. He opened the door and held out his arms to greet me with a warm, friendly hug and there was an immediate, miraculous connection, as if we were destined to meet.
We spent the evening together, and although he still has no interest in the letters, his eyes would light up when I mentioned a detail about him or his family. Your father injured his arm in the war? Ja ja. You were a very good skier? Ja ja, I was. Your grandmother sewed clothes for your mother? Ja, she did.
The door was opened by the letters and the family history we shared, but when we walked through it we discovered a whole new world in the present where we could bond as friends. Our new bond supersedes all other ties. We handed our phones back and forth, sharing pictures of our children and telling stories about our lives. His wife Andrea was so warm and welcoming and we all sat up talking until almost midnight about the present, not the past.

The next day, he and Andrea drove us around for hours to show us the beautiful Bergische Land. The bright green, forested hills were stunning, with steep pathways and steps going back and forth between neighborhoods filled with charcoal slate homes with green shutters. I set my book in this area, because it was the only connection I had to my ancestors—they all lived within a thirty minute radius of each other according to my ancestry.com research.
There was little discussion of the past beyond their lifetimes, but this is the hometown they have always known and they showed us the places of their childhood, the church where they got married, homes where their children live now. Their lives are anchored in the beautiful green hills of Solingen.
There were a few ties to the past. Uli took me by the home he grew up in; the home where the letters were written. The bay window was there. The tree out front. It all matched the picture I had studied for so many years before making the connection.
We also went to his place of business, a commercial hardware store he inherited from his father. The name on the sign sign was the same. The legacy of a father who fought in the war, and survived to work a lifetime then hand it over to his son.
I recognized his mother's handwriting from the recipes she wrote out for them. It matched the neat, Sütterlin cursive from the letters.
All in all, it was not as I had imagined it. It was better. Very few of our relatives are left, and he has no connection to them. We have the same great grandfather, but neither of us knew him or our grandfathers. But now we know each other, in the present. We discussed our lives and had long conversations about life, politics and culture. We laughed a lot. They made us meals and we shared them. We are friends.

The connection I have always hoped for is real, and it couldn’t have happened before the age of the internet. As a little girl, I could not have imagined Googling a business name and sending an email through the ether to a faraway land, but an invisible thread wove its way from the past through my life and his to the present and sewed our hearts together forever.
Oh Amy, what a beautiful experience. I literally had tears in my eyes as I read this. What a blessing to experience this and that area is beyond beautiful. You are so brave.
This is so cool. Glad you were able to connect with Uli. It will inform your novels so deeply.
Amy, I love reading about your adventure. What a beautiful thread to find and follow!
Love it!
such a wonderful story!! I love family history and researching long, lost relatives and their stories ... especially if they involve GERMANY! :) My own blog is www.kleinbisschengerman.blogspot.com about my own journeys and stories! <3