Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.
Vienna, 25. February 1941
Nr 76 My dear children!
Since Saturday I have been living in a sort of opium high. Of course, I’ve never really experienced even such a normal, usual experience, most certainly not a narcotic one, but I sort of imagine that this is what the effects are like. Because? I got in the post this morning Letter #1 and in the afternoon mail came #3 from January 28. And that after quite a long break.
All the dark thoughts were washed away and I was less worried about the troubles of our relatives. I thought about Chamisso’s “Kreuzschau” which is not very well known, which is why I’m telling you this legend. A pilgrim, tired from long walks, laid down on the side of the road, fell asleep, and had an unusual dream. The Lord God appeared to him and he complained that he has put too heavy a cross on him. The Lord took him into a room where there was nothing but crosses and told him to pick one out. There were splendid crosses made of pure gold. He quickly grabbed at one of those but it was so heavy that he couldn’t even lift it. Wonderful crosses made of marble. He wanted one of those, but the edges of it cut into his flesh. He tried many, many more but none of them seemed to fit him. Quite hidden away in a corner he saw a small plain cross. He grabbed that and it was so easy he could hardly feel it. He decided to take that one with the following words: “Lord, if it be your will, this cross is mine.” Then when he measured it a little more closely with his eye, it was the one he was carrying before. So he decided not to grumble. He picked it up and carried it without complaints [direct quote from poem].
I read your letters and I was happy. How happy I am that Everl is making quite a splash with her talents and that her success is not the result of cramming long nights. Rather that she has some of Papa’s intuition. I feel that Everl will be able to push her wagon home alone. Already in kindergarten, Harry had the stuff to be a self made-man. As far as kindergarten goes, read the passage of letter #61. It is sort of a prelude/foreshadowing to our telegram of the 18th of this month which we would like to get confirmation of. We didn’t think the answer would come so quickly. Because there were so many telegrams before ours to be sent before we got there made us think that it was going to take quite a while until you get ours, if you get it at all. Included is a copy of the current rules of the American General Consulate which I cannot assume you have. As long as we have not had our telegram confirmed by you, I repeat the text: “Urge affidavit and ship tickets so that we can arrive on time.” I hope the cable arrived without being garbled. Do you remember your arrival communique and the confusion caused by its mutilation?
It’s interesting that Everl mentioned poor Hansi’s episode. Paula was here at our house again yesterday after not having been here for quite a while. We remember that I told her the last time she was here about the story of your grief and how she laughed when I described how Harry couldn’t find anywhere lovely enough in the Prater or even in the Stadtpark to bury his little pet bird. And then in the garbage can he found a “Maüseleum.” Just by chance we could all remember the exact day when we were having this conversation – it was the day when Everl wrote the letter. Who could doubt telepathy after that? What do you think about the product of my education? Papa now is willing to post letters on Tuesdays too without complaining. The only comment about this is “What are you going to do when you are in Frisco and the children don’t write to you anymore? You will be without work, you will have nothing to do. No letters to write, none more to read.” The latter activity, reading letters, really does fill up all of my free time. When water for tea is boiling, when the potatoes are becoming soft, when the dishes are drying, I take the last letters to arrive out of my purse and I read through them. I don’t just know them by heart; I know even on which part of a page each word is and on the other hand I wouldn’t have any idea of what I write to you if I didn’t keep a copy. Mostly I do that by turning the carbon paper around.
Say hello to everybody from us. With many many kisses.
Helen
PARALLEL-CASSE Is Kegelgasse called Körbergasse? I’m not sure.
Today, we again see the importance of letter writing and keeping in contact with loved ones. For Helene in Vienna without her children, her entire life revolved around the post. Writing letters, waiting for letters, reading and rereading letters. The mail was delivered twice a day – meaning twice the hope and heartbreak depending on whether Helene heard from her children. Each day without mail felt like a heavy cross to bear. Vitali had been limiting the number of times he would take letters to the post office, presumably because of the cost of postage, but today he relented and is willing to go more often. Helene kept all of the letters close and reread them constantly. She kept carbon copies of her own letters so that she could recall what she wrote.
Included in this letter was the copy of the American Consulate’s instructions from February 19.
This letter makes so much more sense to me now than when Roslyn translated it in July of 2019. Helene refers to other letters she has sent, including a story she told in her letter of January 24 about a 2-year old Eva stubbornly wanting to make her way through the streets of Vienna on her own.
Helene also refers to a story about Harry trying to bury a beloved pet bird when he was kindergarten-age. I had heard part of the story from my mother Eva, one of the few stories she told about her childhood. As adults, Harry would tease her about his mistreatment at her hands. Their version of the story involved peaches and a bird: My mother always loved fresh fruit and at one point she and Harry were given fresh, juicy peaches. She liked them so much that she offered to give her pet bird to her brother if he would give her his peach. They were both satisfied with the deal until the next day when the bird died.
Helene’s point in relating both these stories seems to be to assure her children that she feels less concern for them despite their distance and youth, because they seem well able to take care of themselves, as they’ve each been able to do from a very young age.
A few weeks ago, I transcribed one of Helene’s stories, this one with a mysterious title (many of her titles are a mystery to me – the contents often barely, if at all, related to the purported subject) – Maran. The story is charming, telling the tale of Eva’s tonsillitis, a pet bird given to her as a get-well gift, the subsequent peach-bird trade, the death of the bird, ending with Harry’s heartbreaking attempts to find a suitable burial spot for his beloved pet.
Literary note: According to “The New International Encyclopaedia”, Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838) was a German poet and naturalist. He translated much of Homer into German. He had quite a life, joining the Russian polar expedition, staying with Mme de Staël, studying botany, wandering in Bohemia – nowhere near an exhaustive list of his adventures. The Encyclopaedia says that Die Kreuzschau ranked among the “finest in German literature.” The full text of the poem is online in German.