An Imperial Decree, 1797 — Part 1, Discovery
Posted: May 21, 2012 Filed under: Hoeber | Tags: Austrian State Archives, Hoeber, Hoffaktor, Imperial Court Agent, Jacob Hirsch, Kaiser Franz II, Oesterreiches Staatsarchiv 2 Comments »
A page from the papers of Jakob Hirsch
The Höbers of the 20th century were secular intellectuals and professionals, and any religious affiliation they had was Protestant. A century before that, however, the roots of my father’s family were solidly Jewish. The transformation of the family’s identification between 1800 and 1900, from Jewish “outsiders” to socially integrated participants in civil society, was a fairly common story among educated Germans of the period. When I was growing up I was only dimly aware of these origins, but in recent years I have learned more. My first post in this historical series concerned my 5X great-grandfather, Jacob Hirsch, who lived in Karlsruhe in the late 18th century and later changed his name to Höber. Jacob Hirsch was a leader in that city’s Jewish community, and played a role in the early development of the city on behalf of the Margrave of Baden. I knew from my parents that Jacob was a merchant who had been appointed Hoffaktor, or Imperial Court Agent, to Franz II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia. This appointment was made official in Letters Patent, a large document in elegant calligraphy on parchment with the Emperor’s seal. A distant cousin had given this parchment to my mother in Germany only in 1939, after my father had already fled to America. My mother had to leave it behind when she too left later that year. The beautiful parchment was destroyed in a bombing raid on Düsseldorf in 1943. The only thing I knew about it was what my mother told us.
Late last year, my friend Achim Bonte, a historian in Dresden, suggested that some record of this transaction might exist in Vienna, the seat of Emperor Franz II. Achim searched the online index of the Österreiches Staatsarchiv, the Austrian State Archives. Deep within the records of the Imperial Chancellery, under a subhead for titles and honors granted, Achim came up with a 1797 file with Jacob Hirsch’s name on it. It was hard to believe that something like this could have survived for 215 years, through all the European wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the depredations of the Nazis. I was stunned when Achim sent me the link.
Online Index of the Austrian State Archives, Showing Records for Jakob Hirsch in March, 1797. (Click on image for an enlarged view.)
My first thought was about getting to Vienna to see what was in this folder. I started, however, by asking about the procedures of the Staatsarchiv. I thought I’d try an email in English, and if that didn’t work I’d write in German. I explained who I was and what I was interested in, and said I was prepared to come to Vienna to view the documents. Two weeks later, an email showed up in my inbox with another startling message in a letter attached as a pdf. It said:
[In response] to your letter, the direction of the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv wishes to inform you that the granting of the title Hoffaktor to Jakob Hirsch in 1797 is preserved in our archival holdings “Imperial chancellery (Reichskanzlei)”. The record contains the draft of the diploma [i.e., the Letters Patent], the request and other attachments of Jakob Hirsch and his companion Wolf Levi in old German handwriting, altogether 15 pages. We can offer you to scan the whole record and send a CD with the files to you. The price amounts to € 37,– (excl. postal fees). Please mail us a short message if you agree to our offer and we will send you the CD with the invoice.
The letter.
This was an emotional moment. To have such documents, the real origins of my family, reappear after two centuries meant a great deal to me. I found it hard to believe it was true.
I immediately emailed back to the Archives, asking them to send the scanned records as soon as possible. Within a couple of weeks a package arrived in the mail containing the CD. As soon as I slipped the disk into my computer I realized why they sent the files on a CD rather than by emailing them to me. Each scan is in excess of 45 megabytes in size, much larger than allowed by most email programs. This means that each high-resolution image is reproduced with wonderful clarity. Each page can be enlarged so that every stroke of the pen, each dot of ink, the varying textures of the different kinds of paper, are as clear as if I were holding the originals in my hand. They are stunningly beautiful.
The CD.
There was just one problem: I was unable to read more than a few words of each page. Although I read German, these documents were written in an old German script that has only a slight resemblance to modern handwriting. I have made only slight progress in learning this odd script, and was therefore frustrated in my attempts to read the documents I finally had in my hands. Fortunately, the last step in this process of discovery was surmounted by my cousin, Britta Fischer, who has mastered this tricky handwriting. I sent her copies of the images I had obtained and in a matter of a couple of weeks she succeeded in transcribing them into computer files, so that the wording of these historic papers was here in front of me.
What I learned from the documents will be the subject of my next post.
Rudi’s Ocarina
Posted: April 17, 2012 Filed under: Hoeber, Uncategorized | Tags: Hoeber, ocarina, Rudolf Hober, Stazione Zoologica 1 Comment »
Rudi's Ocarina, around 1900
The odd little musical instrument pictured above was among the things left behind when my father died 35 years ago. I didn’t learn until many years later where it came from or why my father, who was not at all musical, had it. I later figured out that this ocarina belonged to my grandfather, Rudolf Höber, called Rudi. The ocarina is made of fired terracotta with five finger holes in the front and three in back. If you blow on the stubby mouth piece it gives out whistling, high, flute-like notes. It has a little imprint indicating it was made in Italy, which may be where Rudi got it. On several occasions he worked at the laboratories at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples and loved the country and people there. They – and their music – seemed quite exotic to a North German science professor of the early 20th century.
Stazione Zoologica, Napoli, early 1900s
Rudi became well-known in Europe and the United States as a cellular physiologist. His laboratory research led to books and dozens of articles published in Europe and America. He was an admired professor at the University of Kiel and — after the Nazis threw him out in 1933 — at the University of Pennsylvania.
Rudi died in 1952 at the age of 79. Two years later, his best friend from boyhood, Prof. Albrecht Bethe, published a memoir of Rudi in Pflügers Archiv, a European scientific journal. I discovered the article in 2005, by which time I had learned enough German to read it. I was interested in Prof Bethe’s observation about Rudi’s early work:
” Just ten years after Höber began his studies, in 1902, the first edition of his Physical Chemistry of Cells and Tissues appeared as a small volume that by its sixth German edition would swell to a stately tome. But immediately upon the publication of the first edition, this book had a major impact on the scientific world and raised the physical-chemical analytic approach to a nearly independent branch of physiology.”
From a personal perspective, however, I was particularly interested in Bethe’s following observation:
” One should not imagine, however, that from the beginning Höber was only a workaholic [Arbeitstier]. He really enjoyed his year at Freiburg and often made excursions into the Black Forrest with friends. He even got to know something of the typical student life of that period, as a participant in the pub crawls and the short-lived “Hanseatic Eating Society.” He was particularly entertaining at the students’ farewell drinking parties, where he pounded out his notorious Chopping Block Waltz on the piano or played his ocarina and sang old student songs.”
And so I learned that my grandfather had a less serious side, and learned the story of the little ocarina he left behind.
Great Uncle Eduard Höber — Killed on his Honeymoon
Posted: March 26, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, Berliner Tageblatt, Dolomites, Drei Zinnen, Early mountaineering, Eduard Höber, Eichendorff, Helene Schwarz Hoeber, Rudolf Hober 1 Comment »
Eduard Höber and Helene Schwarz Höber
at the time of their marriage, 1906
My grandfather Rudolf Höber loved his older brother Eduard dearly. While Rudolf was a scientist, Eduard (1871-1906) was a humanist and man of letters. He received his D.Phil. in comparative literature , and his dissertation on the German romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff was published when Eduard was just 23. He made a career as a literary critic writing for the Berliner Tageblatt, one of the largest newspapers not just in Berlin but in all of Germany. While still a young man, Eduard was admired for his wit, intelligence and literary judgment, as well for the generous spirit that characterized his critical writing.
Eduard Höber and Rudolf Höber playing dress-up as boys, 1877
In his mid-30′s, Eduard fell in love with Helene Schwarz, a rising poet in the Berlin literary scene. He was deeply devoted to her, admiring her talent and sense. They were a good looking couple, well-suited to one another, and married on July 1, 1906.
Eduard had another passion besides literature, however: mountaineering. He had considerable experience climbing in the Alps, but this risky activity concerned his his new wife, who feared for his safety. When they married, Helene asked Eduard to give up climbing. Out of affection for her he agreed to do so — after one last climb.
Two months after their marriage, Eduard and Helene travelled to Italy on their honeymoon. Their trip included the rugged peaks of the Dolomite s in northeastern Italy, not far from the Austrian border. There, on the morning of September 7, 1906, Eduard embarked on his promised last climb. Leaving Helene behind, he joined a climbing party to tackle the daunting Tre Cime (in German, Drei Zinnen). In the middle of the climb, Eduard’s rope broke and he fell to his death.
The Drei Zinnen, where Eduard was killed.
Eduard’s funeral in Berlin was attended by a large mass of people, including artists, writers and most of Berlin’s substantial press corps. Helene was devastated, crushed by her profound loss. A book of her poems published a year later is filled with verses of longing for her lost husband. She did not remarry until years later. My grandfather, Rudolf, never forgot the lost brother he loved so much.
- Eduard Höber and Helene Schwarz Höber in the mountains.
“The issue in this election … is the people against special privilege.” — President Truman’s 1948 speech written by a German refugee.
Posted: March 5, 2012 Filed under: Hoeber, Uncategorized | Tags: 1948 election, Hoeber, Johannes Hoeber, liberal politics, Philadelphia reform movement, President Harry S. Truman, Truman speeches 5 Comments »
President Harry S. Truman, inscribed to Johannes U. Hoeber, February 2, 1949
Less than ten years after his arrival in America, Johannes Hoeber became a speech writer for the President of the United States.
In the brutal 1948 presidential election campaign, incumbent Harry Truman was the underdog. A small group of researchers and speech writers helped him achieve his unlikely victory. When the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Truman president in 1945, the Republican old guard launched a concerted attack on the social welfare achievements of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Programs for the poor, the elderly, children, farmers, all were slashed by the Republican dominated 80th Congress. President Truman fought back hard. Though Truman lacked Roosevelt’s charisma, he had a sharp understanding of the needs of American working people and a plain-spoken manner that mass audiences could understand. He launched a hard-hitting but fact-based campaign for reelection directed at the understanding and common sense of the American electorate. They rewarded his respect for their intelligence with a solid majority of votes in the November election.
To help President Truman articulate his message, the White House created a small research and writing staff headed by former liberal Pennsylvania congressional candidate William L. Batt, Jr. Bill Batt selected five more people for the Research Division, as it came to be called, including his Philadelphia friend, Johannes Hoeber. Johannes had gotten out of Nazi Germany in late 1938, but was fluent in English and versed in social democratic political principles. Within weeks of his arrival he was enmeshed in a political reform effort in Philadelphia, and by 1943 was writing campaign speeches for the liberal Democratic candidate for mayor, William Christian Bullitt. In 1947, Johannes became a founding member of the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and president of its Philadelphia chapter. For many years, the ADA provided national leadership in the struggles for civil rights, education, health care and services for the poor. Bill Batt met Johannes through the ADA, and sought out his research abilities and writing skill for Truman’s 1948 campaign.
The Research Division office was in a hot, noisy building near DuPont circle in Washington and its members were housed in a cheap, seedy hotel nearby. This was before air conditioning, and Washington’s heat and humidity in July and August were formidable. Nevertheless, the Research Division cranked out speech after speech, sending dozens of speech outlines as well as complete scripts to the White House for final editing by the President’s personal staff.
Speech drafted by Johannes U. Hoeber, as delivered by President Harry S. Truman, September 30, 1948
In late September, on short notice, Truman’s campaign staff added a stop for a major speech in Louisville, Kentucky. No one else being available, Johannes wrote most of the speech himself, working through the weekend to get it done for the White House to review. Johannes’ files include a note from the Research Division secretary saying how pleased his colleagues in the Division were that the President delivered the speech with few changes from Johannes’ draft. You can read the full speech here. The Truman Presidential Library interviewed Johannes in 1966 about his work for the Research Division; you can read that interview here.
After President Truman’s reelection, Johannes and Elfriede were invited to the Presidential Inaugural Ball on January 20, 1949. Their income, however, was far too modest to allow for the purchase of the obligatory ball gown, so Elfriede made her own . She stitched a floor-length skirt of black velvet and a low-cut brightly colored top of remaindered upholstery fabric, and with it wore an antique cameo with pearls she inherited from Johannes’ mother. Years later Elfriede recalled proudly that the materials for her Presidential ball gown cost her less than ten dollars.
A Rare Facility for Language
Posted: February 15, 2012 Filed under: Hoeber | Tags: Fabian Socialists, German Socialist Party, Harold J. Laski, Hoeber, Immigrant experience, Johannes Hoeber, Philadelphia reform movement 2 Comments »
Professor Harold J. Laski's Letter of Recommendation for Johannes Höber, at the time an Exchange Student from Heidelberg University, 1927
As discussed in prior posts in this series, Johannes Höber made a very rapid adjustment when he reached the United States in late 1938. Within weeks of his arrival he was writing research and policy papers for the Philadelphia City Charter Committee and in less than a year he published an article on Pennsylvania politics in the National Municipal Review. Knowing English before he arrived made all the difference.
Johannes’ education was a fortunate one. After completing his third university year at Heidelberg in 1926, he was selected to be an exchange student at the London School of Economics. He was 22, and he was the first German following World War I to be accepted as a university exchange student in England. While he had some knowledge of English before he went to London, the experience there cemented his fluency both orally and in writing. The year abroad also solidified Johannes’ political views. He was influenced by the Fabian Socialists and met Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the latter a cofounder of the London School of Economics. Most significantly, he had the opportunity to participate in Professor Harold J. Laski’s political science seminar.
Laski was a political theorist and author and, by the accounts of his students, a brilliant teacher who challenged his students to pursue clear thinking and rigorous analysis of political questions. He was a leader in the British Labour Party and later in his life became a prominent public advocate for India’s independence. In Laski’s seminar, Johannes had to argue with his fellow students and learned to articulate positions clearly and rationally — in English. Writing about Hegel is a challenge for any university student, and it must have been an unusual paper to draw Laski’s accolade contained in the letter above. Johannes must have worked very hard to write it in clear and accurate English.
After he returned to Germany from London in 1927, Johannes rarely had the opportunity to use his English over the next ten years. He retained enough of what he learned, however, to be able to summon it up when he left Nazi Germany behind in 1938 and adopted America as his new country. His ability to articulate political ideas in English led him to unusual opportunities, to be described in the next post here.
Johannes had an exceptional facility for languages, but he was also totally unconcerned about appearing foolish if he didn’t know someone’s language. He was undaunted in communicating any way he could. Many years after the events described above, in the 1950s, our family traveled to Mexico and Johannes got around surprisingly well by speaking Latin to the Mexicans he encountered!
Partners in Science
Posted: January 30, 2012 Filed under: Hoeber, Uncategorized | Tags: American Philosophical Society, cellular biochemistry, Escaping Nazi Germany, Josephine Hober, kiel physiological institute, Rudolf Hober, University of Kiel, university of pennsylvania, Woods Hole 1 Comment »
Josephine Marx Höber and Rudolf Höber in their Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania, 1934
Rudolf Höber and Josephine Marx were married in 1901. He already had his medical degree and a teaching and research position at the University of Zürich. In 1902, when he was 29, Rudolf published The Physical Chemistry of Cells and Tissues, a major theoretical work that would go through eight editions over the next 45 years. He also published as many as six technical articles annually documenting the results of his laboratory research.
With Rudolf’s encouragement, Josephine entered the medical school at Zürich and obtained her degree in 1909. She was a pioneering woman in the medical profession in Europe. Also in 1909, Rudolf and Josephine moved to Kiel, Germany, where Rudolf became professor of physiology and Director of the Physiological Institute at the University of Kiel. Although Josephine did not have an official position in the University, she was a partner and collaborator in Rudolf’s work, sharing his passion for the world of biochemistry, biophysics and the nature of cellular function. The couple travelled to the Stazione Zoologica in Naples and to the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory to conduct research. In the 1920’s, Josephine became an active participant in the laboratory work, and collaborated on several of the research articles Rudolf published both in German and in English.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they expelled Rudolf from his position at the University of Kiel. Anxious to continue his life’s work, he accepted an invitation from the University of Pennsylvania to become a visiting professor at the medical school there, and he and Josephine moved to Philadelphia in 1934. The University, however, did not provide him with the kind of laboratory, apparatus and assistance that he had had at the University of Kiel. Although he received some financial support from American foundations, including the American Philosophical Society, Rudolf was frustrated by the limited facilities and staff available to him. Part of the solution was that Josephine joined him in the lab on a full time basis – without pay.
Rudolf and Josephine were equal partners in the lab for many years. The articles they wrote and published jointly continued to make findings in physiology that remain foundational in biotechnical work being done today.
Here is one of the articles Rudolf and Josephine co-authored, as published in the Journal of General Physiology:
COLLABORATION BETWEEN RUDOLF HOEBER AND JOSEPHINE MARX HOEBER
To read the complete article, click here
.
Johannes Höber “Taken into Protective Custody” by the Nazis, March 13, 1933
Posted: January 17, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: German Socialist Party, Johannes Hoeber, Mannheim, Opposition to Nazis, Rudolf Hoeber, Schutzhaft, Sozialistische Partei Deutschland, SPD 2 Comments »
Report of Johannes Höber's Arrest by the Nazis, Mannheimer Tageblatt, 13 March 1933
The newspaper article pictured above comes from the Mannheimer Tageblatt, one of the major newspapers of Mannheim, a city of half a million people. Dated March 13, 1933, the article reads as follows:
TAKEN INTO PROTECTIVE CUSTODY
The Police Report states: Over the course of the last several days the following leaders of the SPD [Sozialistisches Partei Deutschland, or German Socialist Party] were taken into protective custody:
- City Division President and State Representative Ernst Kraft,
- Division Leader of the Reichsbanner [SPD militia] Dr. Helffenstein, dentist,
- Dr.Höber, member of the Divisional leadership of the Reichsbanner [SPD militia],
- District Councillors Werner and Meier and neurologist Dr. Stern.
Protective custody was imposed on Mayor Dr. Heimerich at Theresa Hospital, where he is presently located.
The following individuals upon whom protective custody has been imposed have not been located: Senator Roth, State Representative Reinhold, the editor Harpuder, the editor Dr. Schifrin, attorney Dr. Kirschner, and reporter Diamant.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933. In the rigged Reichstag election of March 5, the Nazis received a plurality (though not a majority) of the votes cast and declared themselves rulers of the nation. In the wake of this takeover of the national government, state and local Nazi groups attacked the seats of government in state capitols and cities throughout the country. On March 8, local Nazis, supported by armed Storm Troopers and SS squads, forcefully drove the elected officials of Mannheim out of the city hall, burned the flag of the democratic Weimar republic in the city’s main square, and hoisted the Swastika banner on the city hall.
Johannes Höber, 29, was a promising young member of Mayor Hermann Heimerich’s Socialist administration when the Nazis seized control of the city. He was also an activist in the German Socialist Party (Sozialistische Partei Deutschland, or SPD) and the Reichsbanner, the Socialist Party militia formed to protect Socialists from Nazi Stormtroopers. Johannes’ “protective custody” in the city jail lasted five weeks. At one point, Johannes and the other Socialists asked to be released. In response, the Nazis took them to a balcony overlooking the courtyard of the jail, where a prearranged crowd of brown shirted Storm Troopers screamed for their blood, purportedly justifying the prisoners’ continued detention.
After he had been held for some time, Johannes’ father, Rudolf Höber, a professor of physiology at the University of Kiel, travelled to Mannheim to talk to the Nazi leadership there. Rudolf negotiated a deal under which Johannes agreed to leave Mannheim and never return in exchange for his release from “protective custody.” He and his wife, Elfriede, and his daughter, Susanne, moved to the north German city of Düsseldorf, where they lived for five years before emigrating to the United States. In fact, Johannes did not return to Mannheim for 28 years.
Rathaus (City Hall) in Mannheim where Johannes Hoeber worked and was later imprisoned by the Nazis
A Young Physiologist, 1890
Posted: January 3, 2012 Filed under: Hoeber, Uncategorized | Tags: kiel physiological institute, microorganisms drawings, Rudolf Hober, Rudolf Hoeber, University of Kiel, university of pennsylvania, university of zurich 1 Comment »
Rudolf Höber, page from microorganism notebook, c. 1890
Drawings of Hydra viridis and Podocoryne carnea by Rudolf Höber, age 17. [Click image to view full size.]
Rudolf Höber (1873-1953) was a prominent physiologist who conducted pioneering research into the electro-chemical properties of cell membranes. As an instructor at the University of Zurich, later a professor at the University of Kiel and head of the Physiological Institute there, and finally as a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he introduced many young doctors to the science of physiology.
Rudolf already became interested in biological science as a child, and started the serious study of microorganisms as a teenager. His notebook contains 83 meticulously detailed drawings of amoebae, paramecia, hydrae and the like. This notebook is a beautiful art object as well as a record of his studies. The image above is of one double page of that notebook, which Rudolf drew at the age of about seventeen.
Rudolf Höber's Notebook, "Die Niederen Tiere" (The Lower Animals), ca. 1890
Rudolf Höber, 1890, about the time he made his drawings of microorganisms
A First American Christmas, 1938
Posted: December 19, 2011 Filed under: Hoeber, Uncategorized | Tags: Christmas 1938, Elfriede Hoeber, Escaping Nazi Germany, Germantown Philadelphia PA, Johannes Hoeber, Josephine Hober, Rudolf Hoeber 3 Comments »
Hoeber House, 6701 Cresheim Road, Philadelphia, Christmas 1938
Johannes Hoeber (1904-1977) arrived in Philadelphia from Nazi Germany on December 22, 1938. His parents, Rudolf and Josephine, had been in Philadelphia for five years, and had rented a large house in the Germantown section of the city in anticipation of the arrival of their adult children and their grandchildren. The plan was for seven adults and three children to live there together until everyone got settled into jobs in the new country.
Johannes Hoeber, German Passport Photo, 1938
Johannes had slipped across the German border into Switzerland seven weeks earlier and had succeeded in getting an American visa in Zurich. From there he traveled across Europe and in England boarded the SS Manhattan for New York. The winter crossing was stormy, and Johannes was tormented by an abscessed tooth. His first day in America was spent with dentists getting x-rayed and getting the tooth pulled.
Christmas 1938, Philadelphia
Johannes had left his wife Elfriede and eight-year-old daughter Susanne in Germany, with a plan for them to join him later. But they were not to be reunited for many more months. Christmas eve was two days after Johannes arrived, and he joined his parents and sisters around the modest tree in the newly rented house. Money was tight and what little there was had to be saved to pay for Elfriede and Susanne’s eventual passage to the United States, so the adults agreed to forego giving each other Christmas presents. But they gathered around the Christmas tree — lit with real candles — and sang carols and recited old poems to one another, and were happy that, for a few hours, they could be at peace.
The Höbers’ Cresheim Road House as it Looks Today
Johannes and Elfriede’s Letters from Nazi Germany
Posted: November 29, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Elfriede Hoeber, Escaping Nazi Germany, Frank Hoeber, Johannes Hoeber, Letters from Nazi Germany 3 Comments »
Johannes and Elfriede Höber at the Time of their Marriage, December 1928
Johannes Höber left Nazi Germany for Philadelphia on November 12, 1938. His wife Elfriede and their nine year old daughter Susanne were unable to leave until a year later. During the months they were separated, Johannes and Elfriede exchanged long letters, with Elfriede describing the worsening situation in Germany and Johannes describing his flight from Europe and his exhilarating entry into American life. Their exchange recounts, in a very personal way, how the Nazis drove decent, talented Germans out of their country and how one refugee family made its way through frightening circumstances to a safe haven. For the last year I have been preparing these letters for publication. The work has involved deciphering and transcribing the letters and writing an introduction, extensive footnotes and an epilogue.
Johannes was my father; he died in Washington, DC in 1977 at the age of 73. A year later, Elfriede, my mother, came to live with me and my wife, Ditta, in Philadelphia. Along with her other furniture, Elfriede brought several file cabinets filled with papers she and Johannes had accumulated over their lifetime.
In the 1980’s, I would take care of Elfriede’s bills and correspondence when she was traveling. One day I began to explore the file cabinets. And in one cabinet, jammed in at the back of a particularly tight and over-filled drawer, was a thick folder stuffed with yellowed, tattered pages. It was not an American manila folder like all the others, but a kind of black pasteboard, old and foreign-looking. The folder looked as though no one had opened it in many, many years. When I cautiously turned back the cover and began to read, I found that the papers in the folder were a long set of letters written by Johannes and Elfriede. They were all in German; many were typed and many others were written with a fountain pen in my mother’s distinctive, regular but nearly indecipherable hand. The earliest letters and postcards at the back of the folder were dated in November 1938 and the latest at the front of the folder were dated in October 1939. They were the letters my parents exchanged during the year they were apart.
Letter from Elfriede in Düsseldorf to Johannes in Philadelphia, 2 January 1939
When I first found the letters, my knowledge of German was sketchy. Having turned away from Germany in 1939, my parents rarely spoke the language at home and most of the German I knew I had learned in high school. Working with a German-English dictionary, I could only make out a few parts of the letters that were typed; the handwritten letters entirely defeated my attempts at comprehension. In addition, the letters were full of unintelligible terms that appeared in no dictionary – Abo, Wobla, Staka, Affi – and perplexing names – Onkel Karl, Onkel Paul, Felix, Nepomuk – that didn’t belong to anyone I had ever hear my parents mention. I felt that I would never figure these letters out and that I would be defeated by the handwriting, the foreign language, the mysterious terms and the unidentifiable names. But there was something about the letters – their secrecy, their mystery, and the dark times in which they were written – that kept calling me back.
Over a period of years I worked on the letters, laboring to find their meaning. I returned to evening German classes to be better able to deal with the language. I struggled again and again to decipher the words and their significance. It eventually became apparent, from the context, that many words were a code that Johannes and Elfriede understood but others could not. It dawned on me that the letters were written with the assumption that they might be opened by the Nazi authorities. If that were to happen, Johannes and Elfriede wanted to ensure that their own words would not endanger them or their friends or family. From context and research, however, and from repeated readings, I believe that I have been able to decode most of the content of the letters.
Working with the letters has shown me that my parents’ story is not so dark as I had imagined. Indeed, the letters are full of cleverness, good fortune and a persistent optimism in the face of frightening difficulties. At the same time, there is a tension, a sense of strain I feel each time I pick them up. I sensed in these letters how emotionally challenging the events of 1938-1939 were for my parents. I often found the same anxiety transmitted through their words to me. There were periods when I gave up all work on the letters for a year or two at a time.
But I did go back, and eventually there was a huge reward for me in reading, deciphering and understanding the letters in this book. Although Johannes died in 1977 and Elfriede in 1999, through the letters I got to meet and know them as two new people. As a father, Johannes could be difficult, but in the letters he is charming, caring, clever, ambitious and loving and concerned for the welfare of Elfriede and my then-nine-year-old sister, Susanne. He helped and encouraged Elfriede to do what she had to do to escape from Germany and bring Susanne to him. As a mother, Elfriede could be reserved, even stolid, but in these letters I discovered an affectionate, concerned, engaged and loving wife and mother.
Letter from Johannes in Philadelphia to Elfriede in Düsseldorf , 24 January 1939
In deciphering these letters I also discovered two fine, passionate, but very different writers. My father’s letters are carefully organized and precise, self-conscious and at the same time full of colorful detail and rich accounts of people, places and events that convey his deep interest in the world he observed. My mother’s letters are sometimes slightly chaotic, but they convey a full sense of her strong feelings about what she was experiencing. Her letters are often laced with a breezy wit, though the humor is mostly ironic and often witheringly sarcastic. I never knew my mother was as funny as she is in these letters.
The transcribed letters come to 300-400 pages; they will make an engaging book. I am working on this project with a historian friend in Dresden to prepare an edition in German and I am now translating the letters for an English edition. My expectation is that the manuscripts in both languages will be finished before the end of 2012. I am looking forward to the day when I can share these letters with all of you.
