The girl that could not be named Esther. Winfried Seibert

my man!

      He had died in 1962 in Dassel, near Hanover. In 1941 he had remarried. Whether his first wife — Esther‘s mother, if he was the right one — had died early or if the marriage ended in divorce could not be determined from the short biographical data. If however he had divorced between 1938 and 1941, this could also explain his withdrawal from the ministry.

      If he was Esther‘s father, and if Esther, under whatever name, was still alive, then there must be evidence in the estate papers. A call to the district court in Einbeck revealed that there were records of the estate, but they were in storage. By telling the person in charge that there were some copyright issues to clear up in connection with the pastor’s literary efforts, I was able to obtain — somewhat irregularly — a copy of the certificate of inheritance. Luckily, two days later I could discard it since other inquiries had shown that Pastor Lehbrink could not have been the mysterious Pastor L.

      A telephone call to the church office in Dassel took me to a helpful woman who, as luck would have it, not only had known Pastor Lehbrink but had even been confirmed at the same time as his daughter. Even though this confirmand had been named Gisela, this did not mean anything since our Esther was originally not allowed to be called so. But the birthdate! After looking in the church records, the friendly woman said that Gisela had been born on May 18, 1939. Again nothing. With that birthdate, she could not have had an older sister born August 11, 1938.

      Now what? There were two Pastors L. in Gelsenkirchen, and according to the list of Protestant pastors in Westphalia from the age of the Reformation down to 1945 only these two were of the right age, and neither one was the right one. The one to whom a lot of the evidence pointed was Lehbrink, but he wasn‘t the one. As it turned out, I almost had the fox guarding the henhouse. On May 8, 1992, the State Church Archive of the Protestant Church in Westphalia wrote me:

      Unfortunately, on the basis of the available documents, we were unable to confirm your assumption of the possible paternity of the Pastor and Superintendent Theobald Lehbrink of a daughter named Esther, born August 11, 1938. Since Pastor Lehbrink numbered among the German Christians [Nazi-oriented breakaway church group], it is quite unlikely that he would have chosen such a name.

      That was stated quite modestly. Lehbrink, as it later was shown, was an almost fanatical National Socialist with a rigid belief in the Fuehrer, or at least that was the way he expressed it in his Christmas 1935 tract on God and authority, as we shall later see. It is impossible that such a pastor, who stood so close to the Nazi-faithful German Christians, would have caused such a row over the name Esther in 1938. Why Lehbrink left his ministry in 1939 could not be explained. That wasn’t important now. What mattered was that Pastor L. was still unknown.

      I didn’t know what to do next. Perhaps I had gotten carried away. Court decisions are not published with the purpose of identifying the parties to the dispute. But I only wanted to find the little girl Esther, born on August 11, 1938, in G., apparently Gelsenkirchen. I will never forget the decisive long-distance telephone call that ended my search.

      On May 7, 1992, I reached a very friendly woman at the registry office in Gelsenkirchen, who was really surprised at what I had to ask her about. In 1938, I said, some 5,500 births were registered in Gelsenkirchen. That would come out to an average of about 15 children a day. Statistically, there must have been some seven little girls registered on August 11, 1938. Could there have been one or more whose family name began with “L“?

      Luckily, the woman had become curious. It didn’t take more than two minutes for her to confirm that on August 11, 1938, the birth of a girl with the surname L. had been registered. That MUST have been Esther. But she couldn’t say – on account of the data protection law. I then explained why I was looking for this girl. Yes, she said, I was at the right place, and then she read next to the given name Elizabeth a subsequent registration of the name Esther in 1946. Unfortunately, she could not tell me the family name. She was really very sorry, but I had to understand.

      We quickly established that the family name was neither Leckebusch nor Lehbrink. That used up the only two pastors L. in Gelsenkirchen. I was so to speak standing in front of the open birth registry book with the entry I was seeking, and I had forgotten my glasses. Esther was so close, but I couldn’t get any farther. I could only conclude that this Pastor L. had not been a pastor in Gelsenkirchen, and that the child had been born more or less by accident in Gelsenkirchen. We had had that problem in Gubin.

      The woman understood my despair. When she heard my deep sigh and my utterance that a name starting with L must continue with a vowel and that there were only five of these, she suggested that I start at the end of the alphabet. In addition, she raved about the women’s hospital in Gelsenkirchen, which was always popular with mothers from Wattenscheid, a small town that is now part of the city of Bochum. – That was the answer!

      Pastor L. came from Wattenscheid, and Esther had come into the world at the hospital in Gelsenkirchen. The presumed typo of “W” in place of “G” was not an error; both letters were correct. Suddenly, everything fell into place. After a lightning visit to the church office and a look at the centuries-long list of Westphalian pastors, it was clear that the name of Pastor L. was Friedrich Luncke.

      He had been born on July 10, 1908, the son of a miner in Heeren. After a short interlude as an assistant pastor in Spenge, he was inducted as minister in Wattenscheid-Leithe on April 4, 1937, where he remained until July 31, 1973. He died on September 16, 1976. His first wife, the mother of the Esther I was seeking, had died in 1966.

      A call back to the registry office in Gelsenkirchen erased all doubts. The name was correct. Now I had only to find out what had happened to the little girl who had received the name Esther after the war and where the 53-year-old woman was now to be found.

      At this point I am going to break off my reciting of the report for my daughter. The end of the story belongs at the end.

      He was foster father to Hadassah

      — that is, Esther — his uncle’s daughter, for she had neither father nor mother. The maiden was shapely and beautiful; and when her father and mother died, Mordecai adopted her as his own daughter.

      The Book of Esther, Chapter 2, verse 7

      Marc Chagall, 1960

      Chapter 2

      It happened in 1938, in a critical year for German history, a fateful year for lots of people.⁴› Reference In its Esther decree of October 28, 1983, the Prussian Supreme Court for Civil Matters wrote of a great and meaningful year, great and meaningful for Germany. The Watchword of the Week, a colorful Nazi Party wall poster, celebrated 1938 as a God-blessed year of struggle, which even after a thousand years Germans will speak of with pride and reverence. ⁵› Reference Great times, great words.

      In October 1938 the Prussian Supreme Court for Civil Matters issued the last word in the Esther case, or at least for all those involved it was the last word: A non-Jewish German girl, daughter of a pastor, whose parents wanted to name her Esther, could not be named after the biblical Queen Esther because the Supreme Court considered the name to be typically Jewish. Such a name was out of the question for a German child.

      The Supreme Court did not have an easy time explaining the grounds behind its decision. The very extensive legal reasoning allows us a view into the mental world of the three judges, on whom the God-blessed year of struggle had left its mark.

      Such decisions are easy to criticize. From today’s point of view, everything appears clear and readily understandable; Good and Evil can be cleanly separated. People are often smarter in hindsight. Still, a person may ask himself despairingly, how did they come to such decisions, how could they have arrived at such gross and spiteful legal grounds? How did it happen that the presumably quite sharp minds of the judges were so befuddled? In the attempt to understand the decision and those responsible for it, you have to get closer to the spirit of the times, no matter how much you believe that the spirit was evil, embodying the demonic character of those years.