Helene was very prolific in February 1941. I have 8 letters written by her in the first 7 days of the month and a total of 16 letters for all of February. You can see she’s not in a good mood as she writes this letter to her nephew Paul. Such a different tone from the funny, warm letters to her children. I guess she had to vent her anxiety on someone.

She thanks Paul for his birthday greetings – yet another example of how long mail took to get to Vienna – her birthday was in late November.

We learn a bit about what life was like in Vienna before the war – how often Paul spent time with his aunt and cousins, how much they were involved in each other’s lives. Also, we see that despite the friendly letters exchanged by Helene and Hilda Firestone, Helene felt awkward because she was writing to a stranger. Although Hilda opened her house to Helene’s son and made Paul welcome, she was nonetheless a stranger – they would meet for the first time in 1946 after they had both lost their husbands. Despite not feeling close to Hilda, Helene complains of hearing more news from her than from her beloved nephew.

Whether for financial reasons or feeling like he had nothing to say, it appears that Paul only wrote letters when there was important information to relay. He was not a chatty writer like his aunt. Given how tenuous his finances were, I could imagine he felt inadequate about trying to assist Helene and Vitali to come to America, even while feeling responsible to make it happen.

Vienna, 4 February 1941

Dear Paul! Thank you for your birthday wishes. I am very lucky. It had to come the way Hilda wrote to me. If that had not been the case, I could certainly wait for the as yet unpublished memoirs. It shouldn’t have happened to such a confirmed bachelor as you in a weak hour to make such a binding promise. After the agreement to send a detailed letter didn’t really make you do anything, we don’t have to go to court about it. Today I’m in such a pugnacious mood that I will go into the topics that you alluded to in your P.S. There were two of them:

Point 1) You were certainly wrong to accuse Hilda of indiscretion. First, Hilda wrote in a very nice conversational tone about the hours you have spent in the Firestones house and told me about it, which I am very grateful for because I find out very little from you. Every profession rubs off on someone and your legal studies may be at fault that you think it’s the right idea to only write down the important things.

Point 2) You forget that Hilda and I do not know each other personally. We have no common memories, our interests and characteristics are something we don’t know from personal acquaintance, only from descriptions of third persons. Our correspondence has despite the sincere tone of those who might be related still something lacking, the inclusion of personal realizations. To make amends for this we speak about trivial things. I, however, really reject this expression. Everything that has to do with people with whom I correspond interests me. I only correspond with people like that. It interests me if the person involved has perhaps gotten a permanent or a manicure. Or perhaps there is a new lipstick. If the boxing partner was knocked out KO. In short, anything of all the things which might not interest me in the least if they were about my own person. I have made a deal with the children to tell all the smallest details too so that the distance feels less. If you wanted to wait to write a letter until something more important happened, or until you have a good idea, oh my goodness then you’d have to wait an awful long time. I remember one of the letters that Goethe wrote to Frau von Stein. [one of Goethe’s muses per Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_von_Stein]The great Olympian wrote about his work, but he also wrote about food and even banal and trivial things. Of course, he wrote such things only to people who were close to him. I am claiming the same right, even though I have never climbed Olympus, never made it to the summit. If Everl writes to me if and with whom she went out, if Harry writes to me that his pants have holes like Swiss cheese when he fell down, that interests me more than some of the things in current events in the world. I have put blinders on and I don’t let them be torn off of me through your attempt and perhaps the best of intentions to write only about important things. And not to speak of the fact that one can’t always do what one wants.

I hear you speaking like Hamlet: what a noble spirit was destroyed here. Just kidding. As long as you were in Zelinkagasse and I was at Stubenring or Seidlgasse, we could afford the luxury of not hearing from each other for weeks. If we wanted, or if there was some issue or something, we could then clear it up by a phone call. There were only 3-6 possibilities: office, cafe, Schottenring.... Even in the worst case, maybe at home. I mention this last, because that’s the last place I ever expected to find you. But the distance between Vienna and San Francisco means we must do things differently. Do you disagree with me? Do you remember that hardly a Sunday went by without something happening that we talked to you about? Do you remember that that changed at one point? It changed yes in the sense that every day and every hour something was happening. Of course, that seemed like a matter of course to me before to speak with you about everything. Today it’s not really possible. If it were, I would have maybe gotten out of the habit, or rather you would have gotten me out of that habit by putting yourself behind a wall of silence which would be more eloquent than a torrent of words. It says, no, it screams, “please spare me all your details” then I’d do it too. But that doesn’t work anymore. Be glad I had an awful lot more on my heart.

Kisses

Helen