As a fashion legend, the well-known Yves Saint Laurent did not come from humble beginnings. Instead, he was immersed in etiquette and knowledge from a young age, with a culturally rich childhood that not only made him mature early but also laid the foundation for his future vision and aesthetic standards. However, despite not being born into a prestigious family, Yves Saint Laurent’s father was just a German distributor for the American milk company Lucky Clover, and his mother was a regular clothing sales manager. How was he able to safely navigate his childhood in turbulent times and receive a rather ideal education? Today, we finally have an answer.
Recently, German senior journalist and writer Alfons Kaiser released a controversial new autobiography about Karl Lagerfeld, also known as “The Kaiser”. While there are many books on Lagerfeld’s life, his impact on the fashion world, and his influence on culture, Kaiser’s new book boldly delves into the taboo topic of Lagerfeld’s family.
In 2007, Karl Lagerfeld took legal action against author Alicia Drake and her book “The Beautiful Fall” for portraying his family background as “hard-working middle class.” However, Lagerfeld ultimately lost the case, and the book became a bestseller that year.
What secrets are buried in the Lagerfeld family? Alfons Kaiser shares in his new book that in the days before Karl Lagerfeld’s death, he discovered a “denazification list” owned by the German Nazi army. In it, he found that Otto Lagerfeld joined the Nazi party five months before Karl Lagerfeld was born – in May 1933. What’s even more shocking is that his mother, Elisabeth Bahlmann, also joined the party at a later time, making the couple official party members. Interestingly, their membership coincided with Hitler’s rise to power four months after he took office.
The story goes back to the business development period of Karl Lagerfeld’s father, Otto Lagerfeld. The book reveals that Otto Lagerfeld became the general agent of Lucky Clover in Germany in 1933, and the business went very smoothly from the beginning, so smoothly that he decided to move his whole family to Hamburg, Germany the following year and bought a large house to settle there. Although there is no concrete evidence that Otto Lagerfeld’s unprecedented success was entirely due to joining the Nazi party, documents show that one of the main clients of the milk company was the Nazi army. Furthermore, the book mentions that the documents show that due to the excellent business volume, Otto Lagerfeld hired 80 “Eastern workers” from Poland, who were captured by the Nazi army and referred to as slaves, to strengthen the production line.
Where is the mother? Alfons Kaiser even revealed in the book that due to the Lagerfeld family’s good relationship with the Nazi army, they also hired Nazi slaves within the family, commanded by mother Elizabeth. Speaking of which, do you all remember when Karl Lagerfeld shared in an interview about his mother’s “strict discipline”? For example, despite Lagerfeld being nearsighted, his mother did not allow him to wear glasses; around the age of 6, his mother even demanded that he respond fluently, and the childhood reading material given to Lagerfeld was the Russian literary work “War and Peace.” Later, Elizabeth witnessed firsthand the Nazi army expelling Jews from the area, which officially woke her up from the nightmare, but out of fear of being pursued by the Nazi army, she did not formally break away from the party and its members.
With such a controversial autobiography, even if it is not currently prevalent in the outside world, it can still be expected to be highly questioned. However, interestingly, Alfons Kaiser had already crossed paths with Lagerfeld at the Fendi fashion show in 1999, and has been paying attention to Lagerfeld for the past twenty years. Perhaps because they are both Germans, Alfons Kaiser mentioned that every time he met Lagerfeld backstage, they got along quite well. In preparation for this autobiography, Alfons Kaiser spent 13 months collecting information, interviewing over 100 people including Lagerfeld’s classmates, friends, colleagues, business partners, neighbors, journalists, and most importantly, members of the Lagerfeld family.
However, Alfons Kaiser stated that even though this autobiography is officially released for sale, in reality, Alfons Kaiser hopes to bring this book with more of an intention to “share” rather than “expose”.
