“In school, the other kids used to ask me how come there was a black woman living with us. ‘And your cousin, why is he another color?’” On some occasions, Kristina remembered, the children in her neighborhood would yell “nigger” when Elinor or little Stephen walked outside.

Despondent and humiliated, Elinor couldn’t even give rude and obnoxious finger-pointing people a piece of her mind. She didn’t pick up German easily, so she wasn’t able to communicate with anyone. She was lonely and frustrated, not unlike when she first moved to Camp Florence. Kristina remembered that Elinor was alone all the time. “She had no friends. Nobody to talk to. Now that I’m a grown woman I can understand and feel what she felt.”24

It wasn’t just Elinor who was miserable. Frederick was suffering too. The truth was that he was not succeeding in his father’s company. From the moment he arrived, he couldn’t adjust to the work—developing fireproof products. He was not the least bit interested in manufacturing and engineering. It was too technical and the experience was not bringing him any closer to his father.

Kristina, even as a child, found it disturbing that Frederick didn’t defend Elinor when Margarete was mistreating her. It had to have been even more disappointing for Elinor to watch Frederick retreat instead of sticking up for her. But Frederick avoided any confrontation with Margarete. He just relegated himself to his suite with his tiny family. He didn’t have any friends in Göttingen either. The home was fraught with tension, and the two families lived separate lives under one roof.

“We very rarely had family meals together,” said Kristina. “My grandmother cooked for my grandfather, herself, and me. And Elinor cooked separately for her family. We ate at different times and in different rooms: Elinor, Frika, and Stephen in their part of the house and we in the dining room.”25 Occasionally the two families would take Sunday walks together, but that didn’t happen often. And Karl, who would later be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, never joined them for their strolls but not because of his health; he had taken up with a new girlfriend and preferred to spend his weekends with her.