User talk:Loci123
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Loci123, I have once again reverted your changes to the Salvatini article. The content in the article is supported by the sources cited. If you have evidence that disputes the content,please present the evidence at Talk:Mafalda Salvatini. We can then work towards re-writing the content to be as accurate and neutral as possible. I would prefer not to use personal e-mail correspondence as their may be other wikipedians interested in this discussion. I look forward to your comments on the Salvatini talk page. Best.4meter4 (talk) 16:22, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Dear 4meter4,
let me first introduce myself: my name is Alexander Gérard, I am the son of Charles E. (Horst) Gérard and therefore the grandson of Mafalda Salvatini.
I would like to make the following remarks regarding the Wikipedia-entry on Mafalda Salvatini.
The copy of my grandmother’s birth certificate in my hands tells me that Mafalda Salvatini was born Matilde Maria Luigia Salatini on October 19th 1886 (not: 1888). It was customary for artists in those days to manipulate their birthdates in order to appear younger than they actually were.
She was later known under her stage name Salvatini.
What I also know from documents in my hands (if not from herself and her sons telling me) is that she married my grandfather Dr. Dr. Walter Gérard, a German scientist of huguenot descent, in Berlin in 1908. Their first son Rolf (Carl Cesare Walter) Gérard was born on August 9th 1909 in the family premises at Heydenstrasse 21 in Berlin-Dahlem, a villa which had been built by Walter’s father/Mafalda’s father-in-law, Carl Gérard, a very sucessful and wealthy architect.
According to the birth certificate in my hands, my father was also born in the Heydenstrasse 21 on August 24th 1912 to the name of Horst Carl Eduard Walter Gérard, which was changed to Charles E. Gérard, when he emigrated to the USA in 1938. The birth certificate identifies the „Fabrikbesitzer (factory owner) Doktor Jurist Walter Josef Eduard Gérard“ as the father and „Matilda Maria Luigia Gérard, geborene (born) Salatini, seiner Ehefrau (his wife)“ as the mother.
It is undisputed that Mafalda and Adolph Friedrich VI knew each other. However, from correspondence I hold in hands, it seems that they became acqainted with one another a long time after my father’s birth and that their relationship, as expressed in the correspondence, was an amicable yet formal one. Mafalda sang on various occasions for the Grand Duke and his guests. And my father and my uncle had vivid and positive memories of meeting him. But I have, however, to date never seen or heard of any real evidence that Mafalda was his mistress. And it is highly unlikely that both her father-in-law, Carl Gérard, in whose house she lived at the time, and her husband Walter Gérard would have accepted such circumstances. And does one -looking at it from the other side- really expect a twenty year-old young woman of catholic upbringing to move from Paris to Berlin to marry one man, move into the house of his parents and immediately start a liaison with another man and conceive a child with him and keep all of this secret?
After the Grand Duke’s suicide shortly before the end of World War I, however, the government of Mecklenburg-Strelitz spread the rumor, that the Grand Duke had promised to marry Mafalda Salvatini and since -because of their diferrent social status- he could not and she was told to have refused to free him from his vow, as a man of honour he had shot himself.
Again, there is no evidence of such a promise. But the story served a purpose: it is known that Adolph Friedrich was homosexual and homosexual practices were liable to prosecution in Germany in those days. For a person of that public importance, a love affair gone astray seemed more appropriate as a trigger for a suicide than a conflict with the law. (Other rumors, such as spying for the enemies, were also aired).
This view is supported by the fact, that the Grand Duke had been blackmailed because of his homosexual inclinations. He had frequently visited a „salon for high-ranking personalities“ in Berlin run by Marguerite Höllrigl (later known as Gräfin Margit Bubna-Litic), and in 1910, i.e. before ascending to power in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, is said to have promised to pay her five million Reichsmark in return for her secrecy, after being installed as Grand Duke.
Shortly after the Grand Duke’s accession to the throne in 1914, an agreementt was reached with Margit Bubna-Litic through intermediaries, and she actually received a payment of Reichsmark 760.000 in return for her „expenses“ and the promise to hand over compromising documents, in which case she was promised another payment of three million Reichsmark. In those days, these were huge sums of money.
Margit Bubna-Litic, however, never handed over the compromising documents and accordingly, has not received the promised further payment. The reason for withholding these documents could have been her public claim that the Grand Duke had vowed to marry her.
Following the Grand Duke’s death, the end of World War I and the following unrest in Germany, Margit Bubna-Litic sued the heirs of Adolphus Frederick VI requesting the payment of the three million Reichsmark. It was one of the big scandal court cases of the Weimar Republic, and with the sentence of the court in Leipzig 1928 Margit Bubna-Litic was told that she had rightfully received the initial payment to cover her „expenses“ but that she was not entitled to any further payments. These are facts and they are all in the public domain.
I know of no evidence that either Rolf Gérard or Horst Gérard where the sons of my grandmother Mafalda Salvatini and Adolphus Frederick VI. To my knowledge, the rumor that they were his sons first turned up in the Website „Monarchies of Europe“ under „Mecklenburg-Strelitz Royal Family“ (see http://www.btinternet.com/~allan_raymond/Mecklenburg_Strelitz_Royal_Family.htm), but again no evidence is given. Both Rolf Gérard and Charles Gérard -confronted with these rumors- dismissed such possibility. There was not a shade of a doubt on their minds, that Walter Gérard was their father.
Often a letter of Adolphus Frederick VI’s nephew Ernst August Prinz zur Lippe to the historian Bei der Wieden is cited as proof: „Die Tatsache, dass der Großherzog Leibeserben hatte, habe ich –natürlich nicht aus der engeren Familie- erfahren“ (I have learnt -naturally not from within the immediate family circle- the fact that the Grand Duke had offsprings). But he added, and this bit is not necessarily cited: „Aber leider habe ich keine Einzelheiten über Namen, persönliche Daten und Anzahl“ (But unfortunately I have no details regarding names, personal data und numbers).
In the German version of Wikipedia on Adolphus Frederick VI (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Friedrich_VI._(Mecklenburg)), there is no mention of Horst and Rolf Gérard being sons of Adolphus Frederick VI, and this for good reason: there is absolutely no evidence for such an assumption.
I would therefore be grateful if you could delete such allegations from the Wikipedia-entry regarding Mafalda Salvatini.
In 1933 Mafalda Salvatini married Jurgis Šaulis, who was one of the signataries of the Lithuanian Declaration of Independence 1918 (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurgis_Šaulys). He was Lithuanian Ambassador to Germany, Switzerland and Poland and actually present in Warzaw, when World War II broke out. He fled via Finland to Switzerland, where Mafalda Salvatini owned a house in Lugano, where he lived with her until his death in 1948.
I hope these clarifications are of use. With best regards Alexander Gérard