On October 16 this year, my Facebook feed started to fill up with #MeToo – friends acknowledging that they had at some time been sexually harassed or assaulted. A simple hashtag and suddenly the whole world was talking about how men mistreat women. It made me think of Augusta and her time period. I can’t imagine that she and her friends, who all belonged to […]
Augusta had a deep interest in music and she had a good voice. She even had a waltz dedicated to her: “La Belle du Nord – Valse pour le Piano. Offerte à Mademoiselle Augusta Söderholm par Gustav Eklund.” Augusta took singing lessons from one of Stockholm’s famous opera singers, Mr. Isidor Dannström. He was already famous in the 1840’s along with Jenny Lind. So […]
Augustas café på Unter den Linden är funnet!
Lite ljus över Augustas besök i Berlin 1847
Dresden, 9 July 1847 “Early in the morning on the 5 July, we left Berlin behind us and arrived in the evening to the so highly praised Dresden, where we are staying at Hôtel de Saxe, the city’s most splendid hotel. Our stay here at Hôtel de Saxe is very nice and I would say elegant, if I had not just arrived from Berlin, with […]
In exactly a month, on the 28th of September, Kerstin and I will be boarding an early morning train at Stockholm Central station to trace Augusta’s journey though Germany. Obviously, there will be no steam engines and no hustle and bustle on the platform; no carriers of large trunks and no women in elegant Victorian attire – except for us! We will be there, dressed […]
After having spent a week in Lübeck, Augusta and her mother leave for Berlin. The weather is rather miserable but they enjoy passing the “enchanting” little town of Ratzeburg. After Ratzeburg, the landscape is flat and infertile, but the scenery is not important to Augusta – she is excited about getting to Schwarzenbek where the railroad starts. There were no railroads in Sweden in 1847 […]
At this time last year, Kerstin and I hatched the idea of making the same trip through Germany that our great-great-grandmother Augusta had made in 1847, and which she described in her diary. We thought it would be an interesting vacation trip. Then we realized that we needed to find out more about Augusta and her life in Sweden in the mid-1800s. We also wanted […]
Augustas bibliotek – vi samlar på 1800-talslitteratur
Of course, today we usually don’t get letters – we get emails and text messages. But this could have been a letter – and it was so significant. Kerstin and I received an email from a 5th degree cousin who had stumbled upon our blog. That is, our respective grandparents’ grandparents’ fathers were brothers – Augusta’s father (Johan Peter Söderholm) and Carl Adam Söderholm. Our […]