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Today we have excerpts from a story Helene wrote about her childhood in Bilin during the late 1890s.
Below is the first page of 2 different drafts:
Potter and Poet to Boot
It was always a real treat to me when – on a school free day – I was invited to accompany my father on a business-trip by coach, railway or on Shank’s pony [on foot]. It was on such occasional trips that I found out what a wonderful teacher and companion my father was. Those were the opportunities where I let him into my world of thoughts and interests.
My dream, my passionate desire was to travel, see foreign people and go to lands of exotic plants and animals. I thought father would laugh at my crazy ideas when I talked to him about my day-dreams but he didn’t. On the contrary, he said very seriously: “Remember, you can realize all your wishes by sticking to them and wishing them and concentrate your thought on it intensely. Some people call that ‘prayer’. Prayers are intense wishes.”
In that sense I must have prayed a lot because many of my wishes came true. What I learned on those rare rides on Shank’s mare, I attribute to father’s unexcelled skill of making even the seemingly dullest things palatable. “Keep your eyes open, nothing is uninteresting.”
The Biela-Zeitung, named after the river which flows through the little town, was more my father’s hobby and mouthpiece to express his opinions publicly than it was a profitable enterprise to provide for a family of ten. To make up for the deficit of his weekly paper and to keep his printing presses going, he visited industrial concerns and successful business people to gather orders for printing jobs.
One day, smiling as usual but with a special strain of amusement around his sunny eyes and mouth, father invited me: “How about a short study-trip to Dux?”
This town was the center of one of the most important coal-basins of North-Bohemia, the ugliest place one could imagine. Even now, after about fifty years, I remember with disgust that smoky and stinking place, as the most depressing place, save the Kazet (Concentration camp Ravensbrück).
Father observed my hesitation and without taking offence, said:
“I can't blame you for not being overjoyed to escort me to this place, but we will not stay there long. Some other day I will show you that even Dux has interesting points. In order to be there in time, we have to take an early train. At the station there will be an Einspänner [horse-drawn wagon] to bring us to an interesting pottery-factory. I know you will get a real kick out of this trip - otherwise I wouldn’t have tried to persuade you to keep me company.”We took a so-called “mixed-train” consisting of about forty coal cars and only two passenger cars. The long train, which had the appearance of a giant caterpillar, stopped when the two passenger cars arrived in front of the station building. The third-class contingent – mostly women with big baskets and father and me – pushed against one another to obtain a seat. The wagon was crammed full. Some people who did not have eggs in their baskets used them for seats; many were standing, sardine-like.
Outside the station building waited a worn-out coach whose lacquered wheels were once red, attached to a mare which looked just as worn out. The coachman, likewise an old veteran with a belligerent mustache and a ruddy face, was inside the railway station waiting for passengers. When he recognized my father he saluted respectfully, not hiding his pleasure to have him for a fare. Apparently, he liked the editor of the Biela-Zeitung, who would bring him cigars and a lump of sugar for the mare; both accepted the thoughtfulness with an individual neigh. The coachman lifted me like a piece of luggage into the Einspänner, throwing over my knees a horse-perfumed blanket. Father called out his destination and immediately the coachman started to give father a detailed report of the events of the past week as far as he thought they would be of interest to the newspaperman. Endowed with a retentive memory, he made only a few notes of names, time and place with his pencil on his stiff cuffs, following with interest the report of his correspondent whose insight, sense of justice, and horse-sense he highly appreciated.
Father, knowing that the driver wasn’t listening as he was only interested in the bad road and his old mare, said: “Believe it or not, his reports are more competent than that of a professional reporter. He is a very keen observer and what he told me are facts and not gossip.”
Father prepared me for what I was going to see. Three brothers had inherited the pottery factory from their father as he had from his father. The oldest of the three owners, a very ambitious and industrious fellow, opened foreign markets for their products and in those days the factory was one of the biggest in the field. The second brother was the “artistic” manager and brain of that enterprise, making all designs himself.
The latest brainchild of the “artist” was a phosphorescent chamber pot. The youngest of the brothers was the office manager and was, as father called him, “Potter and Poet to boot”, after Hans Sachs’s exquisite self-persiflage: “Schuster and Poet dazu” – Shoemaker and Poet to boot, in Richard Wagner’s unexcelled comic-opera: “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”.
The day before our excursion to the pottery factory, father had received a request for the price for illustrated catalogues in three languages. A big job for our voracious printing enterprise. Father had not the slightest idea that the “poet” had something else up in his sleeve. While his artistic brother showed me all the vases, plates, saucers and cups and other objects of art, including a pot de chambre en miniature, the poet used the absence of his brother to tell my that he had written a book of poetry and that he wanted to have it printed: “Published by the author.” Father did not give himself away by saying: “That would be the only possibility.”
Father said to me, “Your brother Max – who usually is not over-interested in my business-affairs – will be amused this time about a private order with which the ‘poet’ honored me. I wouldn’t be surprised if my son would busy himself with composing some tunes for the poems to enlarge his guitar-repertoire.”
“What do you mean by ‘private order’? Didn’t you tell me they wanted to have catalogues printed?”
“That is correct, but while you were studying ceramics, he authorized me to print his ‘collected works’”.
“Let me see, please”, I begged.
“Sorry, editorial secret.”
“Am I not a member of the editorial staff?”
“You most certainly are, but I wish to surprise the family; besides you, only your mother and Ida belong to the staff.”
“I think it is not fair to keep me, your faithful apprentice and travelling companion, on tenterhooks.”
“I agree with you entirely and apologize. You are entitled to the first print on vellum-paper to start your own collection of classics.”
We returned home with the order. After dinner father recited at random one of the “poet’s” numerous poems.
“Ei, wie das funkelt und wie das blitzt,
Wenn Ross und reiter zu Pferde sitzt.”“What a sight! And how exciting
To see horse and rider on horse-back riding.”A Homeric laughter broke loose. My brother jumped to the piano just as father foresaw, wishing to have a similar brainstorm in composing a melody appropriate to the poem, the fantastic Pegasus-ride as well as the artistic pot de chambre.
Now that I know so much more about Helene, I appreciate many different aspects of this story. When I first read it a few years ago, I had not had her letters translated. Nor had I seen early issues of the Biela-Zeitung. In my grandmother’s letter seen in the February 6 post, we saw another example of the potter’s poetry.
Helene respected, idolized and loved her father. He encouraged her curiosity and dreams, and taught and motivated her to be a better human being.
“Die Meistersinger” was my grandmother’s favorite opera - my mother Eva was named after the heroine.
In the above story, Helene’s father invites her on a “study trip to Dux,” a town she dislikes. In at least the early editions of the Biela-Zeitung, Adolf Löwy had a regular column entitled “Walks Around Dux.” I wonder whether she was alluding to that column as she told this story. Earlier this year, I looked through several issues of the Biela-Zeitung with my friend and translator. I was surprised to find that the column was not a light-hearted look at the events and sights of Dux, but that the articles touched on the corruption and wrong-doing in the town.
“Walks Around Dux” column from June 23, 1877 edition of the Biela-Zeitung.
The article begins:
….If you should happen to believe because of the events here that we live in a civilized state, that we live in a century in which in different places they sometimes call the “Century of Intelligence,” here we cannot really claim that because what seems to be happening recently here has a rather crude and bitter aftertaste of the lovely time of rule by force. There is very little that is honorable in our city and it is a very unfortunate sign of the level of culture of a peace-loving people in the street are attacked in a dastardly fashion by hired henchmen. …