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Greta Eberhardt was not ready for a child.

Working as a seamstress in a factory while Germany fought to throw itself into an industrial revolution, the woman barely had enough time for herself as it was. She was only 17, nearly a child herself, and yet, her father had grown increasingly displeased at her inability to find a suitable husband. So, when a visiting soldier showed her the slightest bit of attention, Greta fell for him instantly, giving herself to him fully and expecting to be given the same in return. She thought they would be wed soon so, upon realizing her pregnancy, she was fool enough to tell him. Greta never saw that soldier again.

Thrown out of her house as soon as her pregnancy began to show, Greta roamed the streets looking for any kind of work she could manage, and after days of fruitless searching, she finally found it in the most unlikely of places. A visiting circus was making its rounds through her hometown of Hamburg, Germany, and in a fit of desperation, the financially strapped girl promised to work for free as a costume mistress and make-up artist; all she asked for was a place to live and support for her child. The ringleader accepted her offer and immediately sent her off to work on a costume for their newest headliner, a Russian aerialist.

Greta Eberhardt had not been ready for a child. Yet, she had two.

After three months with the circus, Greta gave birth to twin baby girls as she lay in a hayloft beside the animal tamer and two clowns. She named the first Annaliesa after her favorite singer, and the second she named Katarina, the name of her dead mother. Greta swore to herself that these girls would have a good life just as soon as she could afford to leave the circus and send them to school.

But that day would never come.

The girls grew up around the circus, finding themselves the “kids” of an entire troupe of performers. They lacked the structure of a school or any kind of realistic training. While other children learned to play nicely, the twins learned how to tie the proper knot to hold the safety net in place for the tightrope walker. While their peers were practicing mathematics, Katarina and Annaliesa were practicing somersaults and cartwheels. All the while, Greta tried to sway the ringmaster to give her a proper salary so that she might save up money, but he continuously refused her, reminding her of the deal they had made. Besides, he saw in her girls a great opportunity.

As soon as they were old enough to walk, the Austerlitz twins were put to work. Hearing of the quick profit there was to be had from a sideshow spectacle, the ringmaster dressed the girls in a single costume and coined them as Siamese twins. They filled this role for much of their younger years, smiling and waving at gawking sightseers, until the girls grew old enough to make their own demands. During one performance, Katarina refused to participate in the charade, and in front of a crowd of onlookers, she pulled herself free from the costume and marched out of her stall. Furious though he was, the ringleader knew he could no longer claim to have a set of Siamese twins as word spread about the lie.

So, he moved them to a new act. Around the birth of the twins, a Russian aerialist by the same of “The Soaring Sven” joined the circus. His act, impressive as it was, had remained unchanged for a long time. Hoping to add a much-needed fresh element to his act, the ringmaster dropped the Austerlitz twins in Sven’s lap, telling him that these would be his new assistants. Over the next ten years, the girls would become his prodigies, dangling on twin aerial hoops behind him, but Sven would always be the star. As he flew through the air executing acrobatic stunts with ease, the girls were told to look cute doing simple lifts and spins behind him. He used them to bring props to him, to get the crowd excited for him, and sometimes, to get his dinner for him.

Then one day, he was found dead in his trailer. He had been poisoned. A murmur filled the circus for weeks surrounding his death. Who would kill him? Why would they want him dead? The source of his poison had been his nightly cup of coffee, and every night, it was brought to him by the same two people: the Austerlitz twins. The other performers screamed outrage to the ringmaster, but he was powerless to do anything that night. In the morning, the circus was set to perform for a group of Nazi soldiers, and nothing could go wrong. The twins were rarely seen in the days leading up to the performance. They kept in their trailer together, though they could sometimes be heard arguing with each other late into the night. Their mother, too, seemed deathly out of sorts. She moved around like a ghost, speaking to no one and refusing to answer any questions. Greta would only turn her head mournfully, clutching a cheap tin ring in her palm.

The circus practiced all day in preparation for their powerful audience, and this was all the more hastened as the headlining act had to be changed. “The Soaring Sven” had been replaced by “The Amazing Airborne Austerlitz Twins”, much to the whispering of the rest of the troupe. The girls took the stage in matching platinum blonde ringlets, twirling and spinning on hoops before their militant audience. They received a standing ovation from their crowd who looked at the bright blue-eyed girls as if they were some beacon of innocence in the grey of the city.

Then, that night, it all fell to pieces. It was found that the ringmaster had been harboring Jewish families in the circus tent, helping them escape out of the country as the circus moved from town to town. The Nazi soldiers returned with torches and guns that night, demanding that the entire troupe be seized and the tent burned. Many of the performers resisted, but the soldiers were not patient. They attacked any one who proved to be a problem, killing when necessary. The Austerlitz twins, hearing the commotion, ran to their mother, begging for her to hide them. Greta looked coldly at her children, telling them not to move. She promised to return with their belongings so that they could escape.

She did not come back.

As the soldiers were burning the trailers, one kicked open the door to the small room where the twins were waiting. He glared for a moment, but his eyes softened when he saw them in the light. The two were the picture of perfection of the Aryan race, and having seen the performance the night before, the soldier knew they simply could not be responsible for the treachery that the others had allegedly taken part in at the circus. Stepping aside, he pointed out the door, telling the girls that they had to leave now before he changed his mind. Katarina and Annaliesa immediately ran for the door, sneaking around to the front of what had once been the main circus tent. Their bright blue eyes poured across the rest of the performers who had been lined up out front to be taken away by the Nazi soldier, and then suddenly, they realized something.

Their mother was not there. In fact, she wasn’t anywhere in or around the circus. Greta wasn’t at any tavern or shop in the whole town. She had left them there, all alone, and had left to save herself. Katarina cursed into the cold night air as the twins finally gave up the search in Munich, dragging Annaliesa by the hand as far as they could go. What were they to do now? Their livelihood had been in that circus, and now, it was gone. For the next two years, the girls traveled as far as they could to get out of Germany. Annaliesa had suggested they go to London or Russia where they could find another circus to join, but travel was hard on the two girls. They had no income to speak of, and with the war raging around them, life was becoming more and more dangerous for the pair.

Upon finally making it to London, the girls found themselves in the thick of war, and their German accents did little to help them in their plight. It was there in London that they caught wind of another circus, one that could whisk them away to someplace free of war where their reputation would not follow them. So, having no other option, Katarina and Annaliesa came to Cirque de coeur torve, ready to audition and start over in a new place with a new life.