Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Bruno K's avatar

Once again Andrew Hammel quotes passages out of her guilty play. A great proof that she could have had the abilty to become a great actress. Unfortunately she says in 1990 that she was much more concerned that Soering won't kill her parents. Well the logical consequence out of such concern would to participate and help him to make sure it will be real - isn't it. The detailed incrimination of Soering by her is absolute fabulous. Unfortunately she had missed that all out during her "confession" on June tge 8th and 9th of 1985 and had a great span of one a half year to think about it, what she might say to produce incrimination to bring herself to the more shiny and "remorseful" side of the isle

Expand full comment
Francis Wheatley's avatar

'The time table of Bismark?' Herr Bensleben, her German professor, told me that writing about an historical figure such as Bismark would not have been a topic he assigned to his first year German students. This message is not about Jens helping her with class work.

I think that unstable Elizabeth has confused Bismark with the war plan of Alfred, graf Von Schlieffen, the most famous time-table in German history. Elizabeth is sitting in her room contemplating her university and schedule and the whole question of what if she loses her deadly emotional power over Jens Soering when the semester comes to an end and they go their separate ways is distressing her. Everything could change. The window of opportunity could close fast. She is both looking ahead and keeping the heat on. I think murder became a topic by late November. Even at this time Soering is writing a screen-play about a successful murder. (Whatever happened to that screen play?)

'Ob from wenn, wenn from wann? ' My translation would be: 'Whether from [or] if, if from [or] when?'

"Beware the flame thrower." I think this is a reference to her tendency to speak sometimes to someone in those years when it suited her, and even later, when she was in prison, say, to a visitor, even when that visitor was a good deal older, in very authoritative, demanding tones. I think she got it from her mother, who was charming and complex, but could also be "an aggressive little woman," as a family friend of hers told me in Nova Scotia. Adding immediately: "She did if for him." Meaning Derek, her embattled CEO husband. I suspect that the order from her mother would invariably end with: DO YOU UNDERSTAND? And there was one moment when Elizabeth mysteriously but genuinely mourned someone in her past life who remains unidentified, who always "would pick up the pieces".

The mention of Cupid suggests that this message might have been written around the time of Valentine's day, 1985, but I am uncertain about this. The remark about "an effective Germanic experience" is a sign of her mental illness, her BPD. She was 'splitting', as the psychiatrists say. You were all good or all bad. Good German or bad German. That phrase appears in her travel journal. She means that an "effective Germanic experience" is murder. And she knows that Jens Soering understands that.

She is the driving force in a conspiracy to commit unprovoked murder and he is a willing participant in the plan.

Expand full comment
2 more comments...

No posts