**A Hidden Suitcase Unlocks a Family’s Lost Past**
In 2009, Antony Easton was confronted with the difficult task of sorting through his late father’s belongings. Amid the emotional and practical demands of probate, he found a small brown leather suitcase tucked beneath a bed in his father’s old flat in Lymington, Hampshire. The contents would unravel a family history both extraordinary and tragic, stretching from pre-war Berlin’s affluence to the devastation of the Holocaust, and casting new light on Antony’s own identity.
**The Revelation of a Secret Life**
Antony’s father, Peter Easton, had always presented himself as quintessentially English. Anglican by faith and reserved in demeanor, Peter rarely spoke of his origins. Antony recalls his father’s reticence about his childhood and the slight German accent he couldn’t quite shake. There were occasional hints that something lay beneath the surface—an unspoken darkness, a sense that his father was “not really like other people.” But nothing could have prepared him for what he discovered in the suitcase.
Inside were carefully preserved German banknotes, photo albums, and bundles of notes chronicling different chapters of Peter’s life. The real shock came with a birth certificate: Peter Roderick Easton, Englishman, was in fact Peter Hans Rudolf Eisner, born and raised in Berlin as a member of one of the city’s wealthiest Jewish families.
Photographs from the suitcase revealed a world far removed from Antony’s own modest upbringing in London. He saw images of a privileged, even opulent, life: chauffeur-driven Mercedes cars, grand mansions staffed by servants, and staircases adorned with carved angels. There were also more sinister reminders of history, such as a photograph of 12-year-old Peter Eisner smiling with friends, a Nazi flag fluttering ominously in the background.
To Antony, the suitcase’s contents felt like “a hand reaching out from the past.” They opened the door to a history that had been carefully hidden—one involving immense wealth, artistic legacy, and unimaginable loss.
**Uncovering the Eisner Fortune**
Determined to learn more, Antony enlisted a German-speaking friend to help him investigate references to “Hahn’sche Werke” scattered throughout his father’s papers. Their search led them to a striking painting by Hans Baluschek, titled *Eisenwalzwerk* (Iron Rolling Mill), which depicted the interior of a massive steelworks—one owned by the Eisner family business. Documents revealed that Antony’s great-grandfather, Heinrich Eisner, had transformed Hahn’sche Werke into one of Central Europe’s most advanced and sprawling industrial enterprises.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Heinrich Eisner was one of Germany’s richest men—a multi-billionaire by today’s standards. His company manufactured tubular steel in factories across Germany, Poland, and Russia. The family’s real estate holdings were equally impressive, including a six-storey mansion in central Berlin with marble floors and a cream-white façade. Photographs from the era show Heinrich, dignified in his black suit, and his wife Olga, adorned with a crystal tiara, embodying the grandeur of their status.
When Heinrich died in 1918, his son Rudolf inherited both the company and the family fortune. World War I had been catastrophic for Germany, but Hahn’sche Werke thrived, supplying steel to the military. The family managed to endure the postwar chaos—until the storm clouds of Nazism gathered.
**The Nazi Era: Persecution and Plunder**
As Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rose to power, Germany’s Jews became scapegoats for the nation’s woes. The Eisners hoped their company’s value to the Nazi regime might protect them, but anti-Jewish laws and violence rapidly escalated. In March 1938, under extreme pressure, the family was forced to sell Hahn’sche Werke to Mannesmann, an industrial conglomerate aligned with the Nazis, at a fraction of its true value.
The transaction was part of a broader pattern of “Aryanization”—the state-sanctioned theft of Jewish businesses and assets. David de Jong, author of *Nazi Billionaires*, notes that quantifying the full scale of Jewish wealth stolen under the Third Reich is nearly impossible. The legacy of this theft is immense: in 2000, Mannesmann was acquired by Vodafone in a record-breaking deal worth over £100 billion, with a portion of those