Today we have two lovely letters from Helene to her children. By February 5, 1941, Eva and Harry been separated from their parents and in San Francisco for over a year. In her letter to Harry, Helene gives a vivid description of the weather with just a hint of her feeling bereft of her children. She also tells him a dream. In her letter to Eva, she gives dating advice. From her letters I can imagine some of what her children have written to her.
Helene’s letters are full of literary and musical references. Sometimes she throws in a phrase in English. As I look up authors and composers, I am learning so much, but I also realize how many references I inevitably miss. These letters are filled with a secret language known only to my mother, uncle, and grandparents.
Vienna, 5. February 1941
My sweet Harry-boy! What would your classmates have said if they had woken up in Vienna yesterday? The day before yesterday about 6 in the evening, it began to snow. That’s nothing particularly unusual at our latitude but I really cannot remember a snow like this one. It snowed and snowed and snowed. When I tried to open a window before I went to bed, everything started to sway. There were 60 cm of snow on the windowsill. When I tried to open up the second casement window the first part of that window had a new layer of snow on it. I gave up and closed the window after just a few minutes. In the early morning I saw the houses, streets, and squares were covered with a layer of snow like hasn’t been seen in the history of mankind. Of course, the streetcar could not run. A whole army of snow shovelers could not become master of this kind of snow. Officials went out in front of their offices and tried to shovel a way in to keep the doorway clear. All day it was impossible for the trolley to run either. The winter showed once again what a master of architecture it is. The blackest tenements were transformed into fairy palaces. Beautiful and splendid of course only from the perspective of a warm living room, because for the people who had to tromp through this to get to their work, it really wasn’t so nice. In the course of the day, the picture changed. The custodians who were keeping the snow away from the walkways were building tall snow walls on each side of the street. You couldn’t really see from one side to the other if you were out walking in it. Only occasionally was there a place that snow had been shoveled. In the course of the day, it did stop snowing. The weather was mild and the wind was still and even I who don’t really love winter months had a feeling that I wanted to go out in it. If I had given into that, I think I would have been like a small child or a little dog rolling around in the snow. It’s unbelievable how many people were out on the streets. What I missed however were playful children throwing snowballs. Not that we don’t have any children in Germany, there’s plenty of children. But the ones who are joyful and shouting and using their school bags as sleds - now that I didn’t see. Apparently, there are only students. What beautiful pictures those would have been. Every house, every bush, every tree would have been a subject for a picture postcard or maybe a Christmas card for the USA. Merry Xmas and a happy New Year! [in English] I thought of your last letter where you wrote to me that the last time it snowed in Frisco was 8 years ago and people acted like they were possessed or something. That’s the thought I had while I was falling asleep.
[A dream] I wanted to learn to fly. Okay, this is a perfectly understandable wish. I got a flight instructor, I got the usual equipment, and I was commanded to sit in the pilot’s seat which was actually a floatable children’s seat. To my question “do you really mean I am supposed to squeeze my back end into that?” I was answered rather brusquely and rudely and said I should stop my silly comments. I was belted in, given a mask for my face like you might get for an operation and I had hardly counted to three when I felt hit like I might have had a Leyden jar in my right arm and there was some sort of contraption that was 1/2 hot air balloon, 1/2 of a ship and plane combination and that’s what started to move. I had the pleasant feeling of flying and in this superficial anesthesia caused by ether, I knew that my instructor had not given me any instruction about how to act. I flew over the Wolfgang-See. At my feet, I was flying quite low, I saw a white horse and the waiters they were the ones from the Café Central and they were waving at me. Everything was beautiful and peaceful in front of me in the brightest summer sunshine. “I’ll be happy, I’ll be there soon,” I heard said to me then. Boom! I had landed somewhere. I didn’t move and I decided to wait and see what would happen with me. Then my instructor bent over me and stroked and hugged me. When I asked him if something had happened to me, I heard him say “no”. He became quite rude and said “really, how could you inconvenience me like that.” I wanted to answer “What, why?” But then I woke up and had the feeling that I was already on my way to see you. I guess it’s like the saying: time will tell. “It’s time” said David to Hans Sachs [a reference to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg]. When is the next flute concert? Bon appetit!
Many, hearty kisses
Helen
Vienna, 5. February 1941
My golden Eva child!
Although I just sent you a rather paunchy letter yesterday, I am sitting at the machine again in order to chat with you. Today we got your unnumbered letter* from the 18th of December. It was a whooping cough letter because it took 49 days to get to us and if you remember your experience with that, you will hardly have forgotten the words of head doctor.... Whooping cough, if it is not treated by a doctor, will last for 49 days and nights, but if you call the doctor right away, it will last only 7 weeks.
I regretted that you had to cut off that letter you were writing to us so quickly, but the reason made me happy - you were hurrying so that you would reach the train for Oakland in time, so it’s okay, I could do without the final part of your letter. I hope you had a very nice day spending the day with your friend and I am looking forward to the time when I will have the privilege of having your friends to visit me.
Your hatred of men** shocked me in the same way as Harry’s hatred of women. You big, big children. If you have the intention to buy a pair of shoes, you go from one street to the next, you look in all the windows at the shoes that are on display, and when you think you’ve found the right ones, you go into the store and try them. The same thing you do for gloves. One enjoys them, likes them, considers them, tries them on, and all this is true of important things as well as of unimportant matters. But every man or woman who crosses our way, do we immediately think that that is the one that is custom made for us? I used to think the way you do and for awhile I was suffering Weltschmerz [the pain of the world, world-weariness] over this and I felt I was the most unhappy child, forgotten by lord God on earth. If a boy who was perhaps my crush at the time was engaged to another, my inferiority complex feelings would really come out. I thought I was ugly and stupid and I thought that bad luck had chosen me. It is much better for a woman to be the last love of a man rather than the first. Certainly, I was not the first woman your father fell in love with, and nor was he the first man who played a role in my life. The result? I have my Eva-doll and my Harry-boy, just like I wanted. If I meet a person sometime whom I don’t think I can live without, then I would have to laugh at myself. Don’t think I’m so old that I no longer understand the debut poem of a fine German poet [Heinrich Heine] which goes like this:
A boy loves a girl
Who chooses another;
He in turn loves another
And marries her.
It is an old story,
Yet remains ever new;
And he to whom it happens,
It breaks his heart in two.It’s a terribly un-modern poem, but it comes from a man who as far as language and matters of the heart go is a decisive influence.
I am delighted with all of my heart that you are so choosy. Take a good look at the person concerned before you show him affection. The first impression is sometimes quite decisive. If you don’t like something about him, then hands off [in English]. It always will come out later that if you change your opinion and you believe that you might have been biased at first, the first impression was right. You should read Auch Einer [another one/either one] by Theodor Vischer. What about the saying: “I can’t taste it or I can’t smell it”? [way of saying: I can’t stand somebody] Your subconscious is rejecting that person and your real instinct is to warn you about something. If the person in question has a pleasant appearance or some other advantages in society - brilliant and dazzling - then sometimes you’re just entirely too ready to ignore your inner voice and then you think it’s your fault because you mistrust this person who seems to have such wonderful qualities. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said it best: you think a person is a scoundrel until you are convinced of the opposite opinion. Usually, it’s the other way around and that’s how we get into so many disappointing situations.
I’ll consider this in the next letter.
Kiss, kiss, kiss
Helen*Number 15.
**Who is it that made you an enemy of men and how did it happen?
Some notes on the references above:
The original poem is also a song by Robert Schumann:
Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen,
Die hat einen andern erwählt;
Der andre liebt eine andre,
Und hat sich mit dieser vermählt.
Das Mädchen nimmt aus Ärger
Den ersten besten Mann,
Der ihr in den Weg gelaufen;
Der Jüngling ist übel dran.Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
Doch bleibt sie immer neu;
Und wem sie just passieret,
Dem bricht das Herz entzwei.
English translation by Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005):
A boy loves a girl
Who chooses another;
He in turn loves another
And marries her.The girl, out of pique,
Takes the very first man
To come her way;
The boy is badly hurt.It is an old story,
Yet remains ever new;
And he to whom it happens,
It breaks his heart in two.
From Wikipedia:
Friedrich Theodor Vischer (German: [ˈfɪʃɐ]; 30 June 1807 – 14 September 1887) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, and writer on the philosophy of art. Today, he is mainly remembered as the author of the novel Auch Einer, in which he developed the concept of Die Tücke des Objekts (the spite of objects), a comic theory that inanimate objects conspire against humans.