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Brian Ahern
Member
Username: brian_ahern
Post Number: 52
Registered: 12-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 4:26 am: | 
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Has anyone ever been able to dig up more info on the elusive Mrs. F? All I know is what's on this site - that she was a wealthy widow in her late forties who had immigrated from Germany with her husband while in her twenties, that she divided her time between Europe and the USA, was friends with the Greenfields, and married an Englishman named White-Hurst in late 1912.
Threads have been started on this topic a few times over the years. At one point, valiant researchers even went so far as to scour the names of World War II concentration camp prisoners on the supposition that she was Jewish and might still have been alive and in Germany at that time. Thankfully, there is no record of her having met that fate, but details on what eventually befell this lady are nil.
She interests me because she certainly seems to have got around a good deal and I'd like to know what sort of person she was and about the circumstances surrounding her second marriage.
Any insights or info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Brian Ahern
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Randy Bryan Bigham
Member
Username: rbigham
Post Number: 488
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 6:21 am: |
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Daniel Klistorner has info on this lady as, of course, does Phil Gowan and Brian Meister. Daniel shared her White Star Line claim with me, so I can tell you she had some fine clothes and jewelry with her on Titanic! |
Brian Ahern
Member
Username: brian_ahern
Post Number: 53
Registered: 12-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 10:25 pm: |
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Thanks, Randy. That's something at least. And it's not surprising that she treated herself to the finer things. I have the impression (albeit based on very little) that she was someone who got out and about and enjoyed life.
I suppose the others are saving what they know for the book, which is fair enough.
Thanks again,
Brian
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Sally Sorour
Member
Username: smsorour
Post Number: 24
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Friday, December 19, 2003 - 5:57 am: |
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http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=5811&post=106935#POST106935
Brian , when will this book come out and where can I get a copy? |
Brian Ahern
Member
Username: brian_ahern
Post Number: 55
Registered: 12-2002
| | Posted on Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 3:28 am: |
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Sorry to get your hopes up Sally. I meant that there are those on this site who have much as-yet-unrecorded info on various passengers - including, perhaps, Antoinette Flegenheim - who have a book in the works that won't be coming out for a long while.
The rest of us just have to sit tight, which ain't easy!
All the best,
Brian
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Phillip Gowan
Member
Username: philg
Post Number: 653
Registered: 4-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 4:35 am: |
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Brian and Sally,
Estimating a date of publication isn't really a cut and dry deal. We actually have plenty of never before made public information, photos, etc. and could go ahead and publish very quickly. But the dilemma is that we keep finding new (and sometimes important) information and documentation on a regular basis and that sort of keeps us continuing on in the research mode. Having retired slightly over a year ago, I spent this year traveling extensively on several continents and meeting unusual Titanic families in remote places (sometimes even traveling through mountain snowstorms and visiting countries not entirely friendly to Americans). We've shared an enormous amount of information during the last few years and much of it appears here on ET and elsewhere. While it may seem sometimes like we are purposefully holding back information that we understand a lot of people would like to see, our motive is not to hoard the information but to have some good stuff that will make the "book" (likely to be in several volumes) really worth buying when it does come out. Enigmatic people like Flegenheimer (the real name--she only shortened it to Flegenheim after her husband's death), Rosa Abbott, Imanita Shelley (wow what a story her life is!!) and others offer us opportunities to tempt Titanic buffs to be interested in our research in a "looking forward" sense while making public the biographies of people like Robert Hichens, Rosalie Bidois, Dorothy and Pauline Gibson, etc. give a clue that much more is yet to come as well.
I hope this clarifies the whole issue of the book publication a little. Ours is not an issue of finding a publisher--rather it is an issue of reaching a day when we say "OK--that's a wrap. Let's make it all public." We realize we won't ever find everything and everybody we want to find--but we are trying anyway!
Thanks for your interest and hang with us.
Phil (and on behalf of Brian) |
Martin Williams
Member
Username: martin_williams
Post Number: 448
Registered: 3-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 11:50 am: |
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Brian, I have a little nugget of information relating to the elusive Antoinette Flegenheim which might possibly provide you with a new lead in your research.
A few years ago, I read Friederich Reck-Malleczewan's devastasting and savage wartime diaries. In effect one of the most brilliantly written and utterly damning indictments of the Nazi regime in existence, it is not perhaps the first source one would turn to for information on the 'Titanic'. Nevertheless, in one of his entries for 1942 or '43, Reck-Malleczewan records meeting in Berlin a 'Titanic' survivor, a lady, who told him that, as the ship sank, stewards circulated on deck, proffering trays of sandwiches to passengers taking to the boats. Reck-Malleczewan uses this anecdote to illustrate the proverbial 'stiff upper lip' attitude of the British in adversity, which in his analysis assures them eventual victory in the war.
Now, most of us on this board know that this story is NOT based on fact...as far as I'm aware, no other survivor recorded the sandwich-serving stewards! Nevertheless, I find it intriguing and tantalising that Reck-Malleczewan would make any kind of reference to the 'Titanic' at all, particularly during the darkest hours of the darkest days Western Europe has ever experienced. Still more so when one considers that, in the 1940s, the disaster had not yet achieved its mythical status in pop culture.
Which leads me to suppose that Reck-Malleczewan really HAD met an authentic survivor. Since he himself was a liberal aristocrat, it is likely that he moved in upper-crust circles where he might - just MIGHT - conceivably have stumbled upon Antoinette Flegenheim. How she was living during this horrendous period, and how she managed to remain at liberty when one considers both her marriage to an English husband and her status as a Jew I do not know. But it would be fascinating to think that this is a reference - albeit from a very unlikely source - to an obscure 'Titanic' survivor in later years. |
Brian Ahern
Member
Username: brian_ahern
Post Number: 549
Registered: 12-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 5:09 pm: |
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That is fascinating, Martin. It's difficult to imagine who the lady could have been. If it was Mrs. Flegenheim, perhaps she wasn't Jewish after all? And perhaps she was only the widow or ex-wife of an Englishman by that point?
Otherwise, the only first class passenger I can think of who might have been able to travel round Germany with impunity (i.e. belonging to a neutral country) is Mrs. Lindstroem. And there is nothing in that lady's history (or what we know of it) to indicate that she had German relatives or any other reason for being there at such a time. |
Martin Williams
Member
Username: martin_williams
Post Number: 449
Registered: 3-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 5:29 pm: |
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Of course, it might not be a first class passenger at all. I'm basing that assumption purely on the fact that Reck-Malleczewan himself was of aristocratic birth and so presumably tended to associate more with people of his own class. From reading the diaries of Marie 'Missie' Vasiltchikov, I know that the status of Jews (of mixed parentage, at any rate) and alien nationals in wartime Berlin - or at least in what passed for 'Society' under the Nazi regime - was not as cut-and-dried as we might assume.
Nevertheless, I still think it likely that this woman was Antoinette Flegenheim in old age. The last posts on this thread are several years ago. It is possible that additional information has since come to light regarding this mysterious woman...perhaps she was long dead by 1943!
Reck-Malleczewan, an unrepentant liberal and aristocrat, was murdered - at Dauchau, I believe - just months before the end of the war. |
Daniel Klistorner
Member
Username: danielr
Post Number: 1453
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - 3:58 am: |
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Martin
There was an interview published in May 1912 where Mrs Flegenheim gave a fairly detailed (and in my opinion very interesting) account of the sinking. She did not mention any stewards circulating and giving out sandwiches. Then again, and perhaps this is only a minor note, in her claim she mentions going to the Purser's Office twice to request her valuables, but in the account only mentions it once.
Given the reasonable detail in her account, I found it surprising that she only mentioned going there once. Perhaps she really only went once and exaggerated this in her claim by trying to indicate she tried to get her valuables on a number of occasions and therefore shifting the blame to WSL.
Regards,
Daniel.
Daniel Klistorner
co-author TITANIC The Ship Magnificent
http://titanic-theshipmagnificent.com/
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Martin Williams
Member
Username: martin_williams
Post Number: 464
Registered: 3-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 21, 2007 - 7:20 pm: |
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Thanks for that, Daniel. My impression has always been that many survivors enhanced or embellished their stories in later years, incorporating elements which any serious 'Titanic' scholar would immediately recognise as sheer fantasy. I'm not saying that this was done to wilfully deceive - doubtless none of them could know the close scrutiny to which their testimonies would be put by people like us - but merely to make a better party piece. I would absolutely expect there to be inconsistencies between the version of events as told by Antoinette Flegenheim to the press in 1912 and that related by her (if Antoinette Flegenheim it was) to Friedrich Reck-Malleczewan in 1942 or 1943. One need only think of Edith Russell and the various discrepancies which became apparent in her accounts as the years went by.
For myself, I am inclined to believe that Reck-Malleczewan really HAD met an authentic survivor in Berlin during the war. Whether or not it was Flegenheim is open to question. At that particular period in time, only thirty years after the fact and when most people in Europe and America had other things to think about, the 'Titanic' disaster had not yet assumed its position in the forefront of popular consciousness - indeed, it had become an event, as Reck-Malleczewan himself comments, 'shrouded in obscurity'. For this reason, I am inclined to think that the probability that he had met Flegenheim (or whoever) is high.
It would, of course, help us immeasurably if we knew when the lady in question passed away. Does anybody out there have a date of death? |
Daniel Klistorner
Member
Username: danielr
Post Number: 1454
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Thursday, November 22, 2007 - 12:43 pm: |
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Martin
My areas of interest/research has shifted from passengers in recent years, and perhaps I'm showing my ignorance here, but couldn't the Titanic survivor possibly have been one of the Gibson ladies? If I remember correctly, both were in Europe at the time and had some involvement in the war.
Daniel.
Daniel Klistorner
co-author TITANIC The Ship Magnificent
http://titanic-theshipmagnificent.com/
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Martin Williams
Member
Username: martin_williams
Post Number: 480
Registered: 3-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 16, 2008 - 4:34 pm: |
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An interesting idea, Daniel, but I doubt it. As Americans, both Dorothy and Pauline Gibson would have been considered 'enemy aliens' had they had the misfortune to find themselves in wartime Berlin. Also, in spite of her earlier Fascist sympathies, Dorothy appears to have 'switched sides' by 1943 or 1944 and was herself persecuted and imprisoned by the Gestapo.
Brian's suggestion of Sigrid Lindstroem doesn't seem likely either - she was already in her mid-fifties when she sailed on the 'Titanic' and would have been elderly indeed by the time of the Second World War. She died in 1946.
None of which proves that Reck-Malleczewan DID meet Antoinette Flegenheim. But I think we can at least rule out the other candidates suggested above. |
Daniel Klistorner
Member
Username: danielr
Post Number: 1462
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Saturday, January 19, 2008 - 5:18 pm: |
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Martin
On a sidenote, I believe Mrs Flegenheim's 1912 account will soon be piblished in TIS' quarterly Voyage magazine.
Regards,
Daniel.
Daniel Klistorner
co-author TITANIC The Ship Magnificent
http://titanic-theshipmagnificent.com/
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Martin Williams
Member
Username: martin_williams
Post Number: 484
Registered: 3-2007
| | Posted on Monday, January 21, 2008 - 9:18 am: |
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I'd be very interested to read that!
Incidentally, I was pottering around on another 'Passenger Research' thread and found an excellent and illuminating contribution by Gerhard Schmidt, posted back in 2004, which reveals more about the elusive Mrs F's family background and connections. I don't seem to have much success with 'importing' links to take fellow board-members there directly but you won't need to go very far: the thread in question is entitled 'Flegenheim(er) Antoinette, nee Liche' and is filed under 'Biographical - 1st Class'. |
Daniel Klistorner
Member
Username: danielr
Post Number: 1470
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 - 4:32 am: |
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For those interested, the Flegenheim account was published in the current issue of TIS' Voyage. The journal has already been printed and sent earlier this week, so those who are members of the TIS should receive it shortly.
Those who are not members but are interested, and would like to join the TIS, can do so via this link:
http://www.titanicinternationalsociety.org/
Kind regards,
Daniel.
Daniel Klistorner
co-author TITANIC The Ship Magnificent
http://titanic-theshipmagnificent.com/
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Michael Poirier
Member
Username: mike_poirier
Post Number: 737
Registered: 12-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 - 2:00 pm: |
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Hi Daniel-
Thank you for making this account available for all to see. It was an excellent contribution from you, and I'm sure every one will enjoy reading it.
Mike
Sitting on stuff is called, 'squatty toad syndrome'.
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