Emilie and Subhas: A True Love Story

By Krishna Bose

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s relationship with his wife, Emilie Schenkl, is one of the least-known aspects of the leader’s life. They met in Vienna in June 1934, secretly married in December 1937 in Badgastein, a spa resort in Austria’s Salzburg province, and saw each other for the last time in Berlin in February 1943, two months after the birth in Vienna of their daughter Anita. From 1934 onwards, Subhas and Emilie corresponded continuously through letters whenever they were physically separated.

Born in 1910 into a middle-class Austrian family of Vienna, Emilie Schenkl nurtured her husband’s memory and cultivated a deep attachment from afar to India all her life, until her death in 1996. She brought up their daughter on her own, working to support herself and Anita. Fiercely self-reliant and very private, Emilie lived a life of great dignity and quiet courage.

Emilie was especially close to Netaji’s nephew Sisir Kumar Bose, whom she first met in Vienna in the late 1940s, and after his marriage in December 1955 she also formed a close friendship with his wife Krishna. Krishna knew Emilie personally from 1959 until Emilie’s death in 1996. This book, illustrated with forty-eight photographs from archives and family albums, is a unique record of Emilie’s life of fortitude and the love story of Emilie and Subhas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Niyogi
• Release date: Dec 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9789385285202

Book preview

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It was a sunny summer afternoon and a little after five o’clock we were at our destination: a sprawling villa in Stadtbergen, a suburb of the city of Augsburg in Bavaria, southern Germany. In the entrance hall we were greeted by Anita and the family. I looked up and there, at the top of the staircase, stood Auntie Emilie. She wore a printed floral dress of Indian material. She looked down at us and said excitedly, ‘Do you know it is going to be sixty years soon.’

Somewhat puzzled, I asked, ‘Sixty years of what?’ She explained, ‘I met Subhas in Vienna in June 1934. Next year, that is in June 1994, it is going to be sixty years since our first meeting.’

Emilie and Subhas, mid-1930s

There was a joyous response from all of us standing at the bottom of the staircase.

‘We will be back next year and there will be a grand celebration,’ we promised.

That particular summer visit a year before the sixtieth anniversary of Emilie Schenkl and Subhas Chandra Bose’s first meeting turned out to be quite important. It had been a day-long drive from my son Sugata’s temporary home on Lake Annecy in France to Augsburg in Germany. Sisir and I were spending our summer holiday in Europe. Sisir had not been keeping well for some time. The year before, in June 1992, he had a sudden heart attack in London and we had to cancel our annual trip to Augsburg. Auntie called to say that she was anxious to see Sisir and insisted we come over to Augsburg in the summer of 1993. Sugata decided to drive from Lake Annecy in France to Augsburg in Germany. He thought that instead of an air journey, where you walked in and out of planes and walked miles in airports, a drive through Europe in summer would be more comfortable for Sisir. On our way we stopped for an early lunch in Berne, Sisir’s favourite city in Switzerland, where he had spent some time as a medical student in 1950. We crossed Lake Constance on a steamer and then resumed our drive along a beautiful tree-lined road. Europe in summer looked gorgeous with its lakes, mountains, tall trees and lush green meadows sprinkled now and then with yellow mustard flowers.

In the evening we gathered around the dining table. Anita had as usual prepared a delicious meal. We were busy chatting and exchanging news since we had met after two long years. Auntie was unusually quiet. We were aware that she was rather anxious about Sisir’s failing health. But we had no idea that she had a special reason for insisting on our visit. Just as Anita was about to serve the dessert, Auntie spoke up. She looked around the table and declared, ‘Now that the family is present I would like to make an announcement.’ Anita responded, ‘You look so serious. Are you going to announce an engagement or what?’ We all laughed. But Auntie did not smile. She looked at Sisir and said, ‘Sisir, I give you permission to publish all the letters that your uncle wrote to me and which I had preserved privately for so long.’

A few seconds of surprised silence was broken by a burst of applause around the table. Anita, her husband Martin, their daughter Maya, Sisir, Sugata and myself were there to welcome her historic decision announced at the dinner table. The bundle of letters, carefully tied with a ribbon and treasured by her more than her life could now be shared with the world. I remembered my earlier visits to Auntie’s Vienna apartment. She would graciously offer her own bed to me. There, on the lower shelf of the bedside table, was the bundle of letters lovingly wrapped with a ribbon. In the darkness of the night I had often looked at the bundle and wondered about the unique relationship between an Indian revolutionary leader and a young Austrian woman.

My first meeting with Auntie

I met Auntie Emilie for the first time during Christmas in Vienna in 1959. We already knew each other through correspondence. Sisir and I were married in December 1955. She sent a gift for me and wrote to Sisir, ‘May you be as happy as your parents’ (Sarat Chandra Bose and Bivabati Bose). Sisir’s parents were indeed a happy couple but their life was also full of suffering and struggle because of Sarat and Subhas’s leadership roles in India’s freedom movement. When I think of my mother-in-law Bivabati, I wonder how she managed her life and family responsibilities with her husband Sarat in prison for eight years in two four-year terms (1932–1935 and 1941–1945). Their son Sisir too suffered life-threatening imprisonments between 1942 and 1945, first in the Presidency Jail in Calcutta and then in the cells of the Red Fort in Delhi and the very notorious Lahore Fort. Sisir was eventually released from the Lyallpur (Faisalabad) prison in the Punjab in September 1945. Then there were worries about her brother-in-law Subhas, to whom she was very close. Subhas was in exile in Europe for a substantial part of the 1930s, when not in prison in India, and then engaged in a variety of daredevil exploits in Europe and of course most famously in Southeast Asia between 1943 and 1945 after escaping from India with Sisir’s help in early 1941.

So Auntie Emilie’s wedding wishes to me, whilst heartwarming, were also a little anxiety-provoking!

It was a white Christmas in Vienna that year (1959). The church towers, house-tops, trees and roads were all under a blanket of snow. Inside Auntie’s apartment on Bastiengasse, a log-fire roared in the fireplace. Auntie was busily decorating the Christmas tree. Anita, who had just turned seventeen, took care of my baby daughter. My three-year-old son ran around the room with Auntie’s mother—we called her ‘Omama’ (Granny)—