Karl and Margarete’s home in Göttingen was a definite upgrade in sophistication and size from Elinor and Frederick’s Boston accommodations. “The house was very beautiful,” said Kristina. “It was newly built according to the plans and wishes of my grandmother, quite modern for the fifties.” What Margarete designed was a two-story white stucco home that included a small goldfish pond and a large garden that she spent countless hours tending. The home’s interior, grand and airy with sizable windows, had a formal yet comfortable aesthetic. The living areas included large velvet sofas in green and gold, and dark hardwood floors covered with soft carpets. Large crystal chandeliers adorned the main entertaining areas. There was a two-room suite in the back of the house where Frederick, Elinor, and Stephen would live.

The dedicated space allowed for privacy for both families, which one would assume was a thoughtful arrangement, but from the moment Frederick and Elinor arrived, they realized that the separate quarters were more isolating than considerate.

Karl and Margarete had never been in any intimate setting with black people before, and they truly weren’t ready for the adjustment. They had not digested what it would mean to have not one but two non-Aryans living with them. The only exposure Germans had had to African Americans in recent years was during the occupation of Germany when black soldiers from the United States and the British Army’s Caribbean regiments were stationed there. Before World War II, there had been a minuscule population of Africans who had moved to Germany to teach African languages during the country’s colonial period in the early twentieth century. There were also black scholars and entertainers from all over the world who had spent time there. Some had intimate relationships with German women, as did some of the French-African occupying soldiers in Germany after World War I. This small population of blacks, as well as the mixed-race children from these unions, although rarely acknowledged, ended up being victims of Hitler’s barbarism in addition to Jews and other groups deemed inferior. Some fled before Nazism spread across the country, but others weren’t as lucky and were sent to concentration camps and sterilized.14

Despite the fact that black GIs had a presence in Germany during the years-long occupation after World War II, it was unheard of for a German soldier to return from the war with an African American wife and mixed-race child. Interracial coupling was still very much a taboo. It was more common for a black man to take up with a white woman, and there were frequent reports and complaints to the U.S. military about love affairs between black GIs and local German women in some of the larger cities that had American military bases, such as Stuttgart and Frankfurt.