Eine Zierde in ihrem Hause: Die Geschichte der Ottilie von Faber-Castell

The novel begins in 1893, when Ottilie von Faber, a beautiful and melancholic girl isolated in a girls' boarding house, learns that her father has died and that her grandfather's will has made her the owner of the A. W. Faber pencil factory. At the same time, her grandfather asks her to marry not for love, but for the man who will run the company. Obedient and loyal, Ottilie agrees and in 1898 she marries Count Alexander zu Castell-Rüdenhausen, a noble officer who immediately takes over the management of the company.

Her life has been reduced to running the court household, giving birth to children — five of them — and opening charitable institutions. In the shadow of religious moralism and aristocratic obligations, her own desires and hopes remain unnoticed. But beneath the surface of the calm housewife grows a long-suppressed love for the man whom Ottilie has secretly loved for more than twenty years.

Only at the age of forty-one, after five births and decades of passive submission, Ottilie decides to publicly declare her feelings. In 1918, she divorces him and joins Philip von Brand, the man who has been waiting for her all these years. For this, she pays the ultimate price: she loses her share in a valuable company, fights for years in the courts for alimony, and is declared the black sheep by her family. Nevertheless, she spends another seventeen peaceful years with her beloved husband, and her daughter claims in a letter that their marriage was the most complete she has ever known.

Based on archival research and interviews with the company's current management, Scheib paints a portrait of a woman trapped between paternal authority, marital duty, and social moralism — a woman who ultimately chose love, even though it cost her her property and family peace.