Can you share more info about Petra (Sara's mom)? She seems like a really interesting character and a truly badass lady, i'm intrigued
Of course! I actually wrote an entire timeline of her life a few months ago to make sure all the dates and events matched up accurately. I’ll give you some basic info on her first, and then add it as a read more, tho, since it’s pretty long and I don’t think a lot of people are interested enough to scroll all the way through lol
So I actually named her Petra for a reason; the name comes from the Greek πέτρος (petros), which means “stone”. I thought this fit her character perfectly, as she is very much the rock of her family: always steady, dependable and stoic.
Incredibly loyal to her blood ties, even to a fault.
When they were young women, the Freiborne sisters were much praised for their beauty, and were frequently recognized for the feline features that manifested in both their physical appearance and personalities.
They were often called die Wildkatze of the Rhine valley: fickle, tiger-eyed Kathrin, as clever and charming as she was merciless – Petra, the calm and calculating lioness who bore the infinite weight of her pride without complaint, and would never hesitate to kill for love.
Petra is a Virgo, which is an earth sign; both of these aptly describe her as an individual, seeing as she’s such an analytical, perfectionistic and reserved individual.
Though she loves fiercely, it is a slow-burning, subtle love that is easy to overlook. Despite everything, it coexists easily with resentment and long-held grudges.
Petra’s been aware of her husband’s affairs since the moment they began, but is unwilling to divorce: for reasons of pride, her staunch Catholic morals, a desperate desire to keep her family together, and her own conflicted feelings for him.
(rough) Timeline of the Freibornes + the Anackers
» Petra is born in 1901 in Boppard: the middle child, after elder brother Leon (1897). Kitty comes along three years later.
» Mother, Kathrin, dies shortly after giving birth to stillborn twins in 1906.
» The Freibornes are an upper-middle-class family that has been living in Boppard for generations: father, Kurt, runs the restaurant, Le Bristol, that has long been a part of the Bellevue Hotel.
» Kurt wants his children to remain in Boppard to help with the restaurant: to learn how to book-keep, cook, wait tables and manage alongside him.
» Very stern, serious, grave man, but still loves his children and tries very hard to show it` the best he can. Especially close with Petra, as they possess similar personalities and outlooks on life.
» Does his best to raise them after the death of his wife, though suffers from long periods of depression. Leon, Petra and Kitty are primarily raised by governess, Isolde Anacker.
» Isolde Anacker (previously Itidal Azikiwe) migrated from the African Great Lakes, at the age of seventeen, to Cologne with her husband, Hasa (later Hans) in 1890. Hans decided to move to Europe in order to be trained as a mission teacher and acquire a higher education.
» Kurt meets Hans at Cologne University in 1891 and eventually befriends the young African and his wife, and encourages Hans to drop the mission work and come back with him to Boppard to work at the Bellevue (book-keeping, mostly).
» Hans graduates university in 1893, followed by Kurt the next year. Hans searches for a job that will accept him for some time, but most of the good ones reject him (despite the fact that he was able to gain German citizenship the year before and is excellent with numbers).
» Works as a mission teacher until 1895, at which point he is still unsatisfied and takes up Kurt’s offer: moves to Boppard with Isolde and becomes the bookkeeper for Le Bristol.
» Kurt courts and marries Berlin native Kathrin Bösch in 1896 (Kathrin is 19 – Kurt is 25), and hires Isolde to be her attendee. She is later appointed governess upon the birth of Leon in 1897.
» Isolde gives birth to son, Markus, in 1899.
» Isolde goes on to have two more children: Adelle (1904 ; is hired as a maid by a wealthy Munich family in 1925, where she still lives by the time the story proper starts) and Emaline (1906 ; a bit of a homebody, planned on staying at the Bellevue indefinitely; has an on-going affair with the son of the hotel manager and becomes pregnant in 1928: gives birth to Resi in 1929)
» Despite surrounding racial prejudice, the Freiborne and Anacker children are basically raised as a single family unit, especially after Kathrin’s death in 1906, and Hans’ death of tuberculosis in 1911.
» Petra, Leon and Markus are all very tight throughout childhood due to their close proximity in age. Even when Petra goes to finishing school in Cologne with best friend Evita Jastrow, they all remain in touch.
» Petra and Markus eventually develop romantic feelings for one another, but these never come to fruition, due to the growing xenophobic leanings of their home country.
» Markus and Leon enlist in the German army once they are of age (L waits for M so they can join together in 1916), but Leon is killed in the line of duty about a year later at the age of 19 (Markus is 17 and Petra is 15).
» Petra graduates from secondary school and enrolls in the now-fully coeducational Bonn University in 1918, along with Evita.
» Petra has high hopes to succeed in the School of Medicine: start as a nurse and work her way up to doctor, which was almost unheard of for women at the time. Despite her love for her father and the Anackers, she has no desire to return to the Bellevue and Le Bristol, and hopes to someday live in Hamburg or Berlin. Is indifferent to the idea of marriage and children.
» Markus returns from the war in 1918 ends up in Bonn, as well: goes to night classes at the same university, since normal enrollment isn’t an option, due to his race. Has difficulty pursuing any proper career for the same reason, so whenever he isn’t doing odd jobs for a local law firm or attending class, he takes part in an underground boxing ring, at which he excels due to his great height and bulk.
» Meanwhile, Nikolai Felecos (soon to be Germanized to Fleischer) arrives at Germany with his older cousin in 1917: an immigrant from Santorini, Greece. He is 19 at the time.
» He and his cousin eventually come to work as waiters for a nice restaurant in Bonn, across the street from the law firm at which Markus works. Niko and Markus quickly become friends, and through him, Niko meets Petra.
» Niko courts Petra for some time, and is initially rebuffed. She finds him too short, overly-energetic and obnoxious for her taste, and is still hung-up on Markus.
» However, Niko’s charm, fun-loving nature and good sense of humour grows on Petra, and she agrees to ‘go steady’ with him, though still doesn’t see marriage as a part of her immediate future: is too focused on her studies to even consider it.
» Things start going awry, however, Petra’s second year at university (1920): Petra finds out she’s pregnant at the age of 19. She telephones Kitty back home in Boppard, desperate for some advice.
» Kitty tells her elder sister to try and find someone who could abort the baby, and offers to travel up to Bonn to help (seeing as abortion was very much illegal at the time). However, Kitty bows out at the last minute due to continual conflicts with their father, and impulsively runs away to Paris in the late April of 1920 (never even gets her gymnasium diploma).
» Because of this and good ol’ Catholic guilt, Petra keeps the baby. She then has no other choice but to drop out of most of her classes and marry Niko, as failing to do so would guarantee the impossibly hard life of a single, unwed mother, who were thought of as promiscuous and unclean social deviants.
» Still, Petra is adamant about staying in Bonn, so as to remain with her group of close friends and keep up her studies independently. She still holds out hope to at least attend one or two classes a week and graduate (albeit much later), and maybe work as a nurse part time someday.
» Petra’s daughter, Nora, is born December 24th, 1920.
» The young couple are able to rent out a small home near the university: Niko is promoted to manager at the restaurant, and works long hours to add to the monthly allowances sent to them by Petra’s father.
» Despite the damage done to her dreams by this unwanted complication, Petra very much loves her daughter and does a fairly good job juggling the responsibilities of motherhood and education. Hopes to be able to make enough money with Niko to buy a better home and make a life for herself here.
» When not attending evening classes or taking care of Nora, she leaves her daughter with eager Evita, who, unlike Petra, very much desires to have a husband and a big family of her own. Plans on marrying a fellow Jew and moving back to Cologne to be close to her parents.
» Though precarious and not as simple as it had been before, life is manageable and seems to be looking up for Petra and Niko.
» Petra worries for Kitty, whom she rarely sees, if ever. Their correspondence is limited to letters, postcards and occasional phone calls from Paris, where Kitty has fallen in with a crowd of radical socialists.
» Kitty’s late teens and early twenties are a whirlwind of political lobbies, illegal speakeasies, late nights on the town, jumping from one job to the next and being super, super gay with every pretty girl she can find.
» Petra is fairly aware that Kitty is a lesbian, but never really acknowledges it: keeps it out of her mind and remains in denial, secretly hoping that her wild little sister would soon get over it and settle down with a respectable man, so as to stop causing her family such grief.
» Everything changes, however, when Petra receives a telegram from Boppard in 1923: her father has been diagnosed with stomach cancer (long overlooked due to his history of stress-induced ulcers) and wants her to come home for a while.
» Petra moves back in with her father for what she assumes to be a temporary length of time, though when she realizes how badly he is fairing, she fears she may have no other choice but to return to Boppard.
» Petra writes to Kitty, who is now exploring Switzerland with her compatriots, and begs for her to come home and help her take care of their father so that Petra can live part time in Boppard but return to Bonn every few days to complete her studies.
» Kitty takes weeks to respond, and basically gives her sister a half-baked excuse as to why she can’t come home.
» Because of this, Petra is forced to completely uproot her life in Bonn and permanently return to Boppard with Niko and their daughter in 1924, and thus gives up on higher education completely. Niko works his way up to concierge at the Bellevue, and has worked there since.
» Though tempted to return with Petra, Markus decides to stay in Bonn. Like Kitty, he begins to get swept up in various socialist and Marxist movements, though this time in response to the steady rise of the NSDAP.
» Meanwhile in Boppard, Kurt Freiborne agrees to sell the family’s waterfront house (which was very large, expensive and difficult to keep up), and together with Petra and Niko, buys the house on Hauptstrasse. His illness keeps him from working, so there was no point in being so close to the hotel and Le Bristol.
» Petra gives birth to Sara in 1929; meanwhile, Kitty is flitting back and forth between France and Germany, and eventually joins in with Markus and the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany.
» Markus begins to work as a supervisor for the SPD branch in Bonn, while Kitty writes for various newsletters and distributes pamphlets. Both are always present during rallies and campaigns.
» Kurt Freiborne succumbs to his illness in 1932: Kitty comes to the funeral, but is met with an (understandably) cold reception from Petra, who makes it clear that her sister is not welcome in her home.
» Since moving back to Boppard, Petra has become estranged from Evita: she resents her friend for being able to be happy and free, and as the environment becomes increasingly anti-Semitic, feels even more pressure to break their ties for good.
» Despite this, Petra does attend her friend’s wedding in 1926, and visits Evita and new husband, Thomas, in Cologne upon the birth of their son, Benjamin, in the summer of 1929.
» Petra’s youngest daughter, Hanna, is born in 1934.
» The following winter, Petra is working late at Le Bristol and asks Nora to take an antsy young Sara out for a walk on the waterfront one afternoon, since Isolde is busy minding baby Hanna and her grandaughter, Resi.
» 12-year-old Nora walks her younger sister over to their favourite little beach on the far end of the boardwalk. Due to the exceptionally cold climate, the banks of the Rhine have frozen over: not particularly thickly, but firm enough to walk on. Nora tells Sara to stay away, and the two play together on the snowy bank.
» However, while Nora is distracted by a bird continually screeching in a nearby bush, 5-year-old Sara is overcome by temptation and tests the ice. It is indeed thick enough to walk on, so she begins going out farther.
» Nora eventually notices this and panics, begging Sara to stop. Unfortunately, Sara is so young that she sees it all as a game and refuses.
» Impulsively, Nora decides to follow her out onto the ice, though it only proves to rile her up even more. Sara begins to giggle and jump, which, in turn, makes the ice crack. This, at least, turns the little girl’s glee to fear, and Nora is able to reach her and convince her to return to shore.
» The two make their back towards safety, but halfway along, Nora steps upon a thin section of ice, which gives way at once, plunging her into the freezing, fast-moving water below. Sara looks on as her elder sister is dragged under and swept away.
» By the time Sara fetches their parents and several of the Bellevue staff, it’s too late. A search party finds Nora’s drowned body washed up on a nearby embankment that evening.
» Petra is beyond devastated, and falls into a deep depression for some time. She cools and hardens, and succumbs to a fierce bitterness that she takes out on Sara, whom she had already felt resentment for even before Nora’s death, as the little girl had always reminded her so much of Kitty.
» The last time Evita and Petra see each other is at Nora’s funeral.
» Niko is utterly unequipped to deal with the loss of both his daughter and the emotional distance of his wife. He tries to comfort her the best he can, but has no idea how. When he is unable to get the affection from her that he needs, he eventually strays, and by 1938, he is having a regular affair with one of the Bellevue’s maids.
…Aaaand so the story picks up in 1943: by this time, Sara has grown into a high-strung teen more than willing to act out in order to garner the attention that her mother would rarely give out, otherwise. Sara’s childish antagonism, lack of self-control and penchant for dramatics only deepen Petra’s resentment, and she fears that her daughter will end up just as wild, unstable and ultimately alone as Kathrin. Though not currently cheating, Niko has long-since been relegated to guest room; to make himself feel better about his failure as a husband, he spoils his remaining daughters and refuses to discipline them.
All in all, the Fleischer family is complicated. I think of them like a stately home built upon a crumbling foundation: its facade is respectable, but the paint is beginning to fade and chip away–the manicured lawn hides poison oak and snake dens–and though the home is filled with the most beautiful furniture in the world, there are termites behind that wallpaper, and the wooden floors are frail with rot. I’m looking forward to exploring and perhaps, in some ways, repairing this broken house.
anyway, this is the first time I’ve drawn these two together in God-knows how long, so it was fun drawing them again. Sara’s parents are so important to my story, so I really ought to draw them more often.
