Many years after I had already met Erny Lang personally, I knew about the family piano that was supposed to have stood in the living room of Haus Bertholdstraße. Erny talked so vividly about it and his boyish laughter sounded every time that I wondered where the piano - should it have survived the war - might have been.
Through my research I knew who had enriched himself by the forced aryanization at the house. Unfortunately the son of this family did not want any contact to me, although his mother, who had already died at this time, sent me some important documents about the forced aarization by Schleusinger citizens.
One day I was sitting with some of the city's older ladies to tell them about Jewish fates when one of them told them that she knew my father, who had grown up with her in the Lang family house. Later, she would have practiced playing on the piano, which had probably always been in the house.
That was the long-awaited Ariadne's thread I now had to walk along: The lady told me that a priest must have owned the piano and so I found the one who owns the piano today. So I could tell Erny that the piano of his grandparents still exists and is played on him.
Photo: Piano by Hermann and Klara Lang