Reinhard Kaiser Königskinder, eine wahre Liebe Schöffling & Co., 1996. 127 pp. This is the tale of Rudolf Kaufmann, a young German palaeontologist of Christian upbringing but Jewish descent, and Ingeborg Magnusson, the Swedish love of his life, whom circumstances also separated. It is a true story. The pair met in Bologna in 1935, fell passionately in love, but were never able to spend more than a few days in each other's company. So they wrote each other letters expressing their love, hopes and fears. Rudolf's survive. Ingeborg's replies have been lost. After their Italian meeting Rudolf returned to Germany, working as a teacher in a Jewish boarding school in Coburg (the only job he could obtain given Germany's racial laws), and made plans to go to Stockholm to meet Ingeborg again in the summer of 1936. He never arrived. He had contracted VD after one unwary encounter, visited a doctor to be treated for the disease and was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for the offence of having sexual intercourse with an Aryan. Ingeborg forgave him and both looked forward to his release in October 1936, when the rest of his family, many by now abroad, were arranging for him to follow them. But it was too late. War had broken out. Rudolf managed to get as far as Lithuania but Ingeborg, inspite of his pleas, felt unable to join him there. She had fallen in love with another man. It was the end of the affair. Rudolf eventually married a German refugee who had also reached Lithuania, but was executed as a Jew when the Germans invaded the country. Ingeborg never married. This beautiful story is told both through the letters themselves and through Reinhard Kaiser's narration. Himself a novelist, he came across the letters, still in their envelopes, by chance at a stamp auction, started to read them and found them so fascinating that he went on bidding for them well beyond his intended ceiling. He then tracked down the surviving members of both families and through listening to them has completed a love story that will appeal both in itself and for the light it throws on its time.