Barbara, Barbara come with me to America

1956 - 1959

Göttingen

Three weeks after the Faschingsball I took my father's genealogy of my ancestors(!) to Barbara and asked her to marry me. She wanted time to consider the proposal and left for her Spring break.... And then, on a postcard from Berlin she simply wrote "Yes, I will"....

One weekend I took her to Rodenberg where my parents now lived, and my dear father fell in love with her. - She was the woman he had hoped to marry - the daughter of a local nobleman - and hadn't been permitted to. I still see Father standing at the rural train station at night waving his Basque cap after the departing Barbara. Mother unable to find the words to express her affection fell around my neck and kissed me, but it took her some time before she found a relaxed emotional access to Barbara which over the years became very warm and close.

My first meeting with Barbara's father was a different matter. Herr Oberst Lattmann let me know through his daughter that he would like to have a talk under four eyes with the "young man" before he would give his consent - he also implied that I had to ask formally for the hand of his daughter..... Barbara took me on the "Wall" - the old rampart of Göttingen - once around town and gave me instructions and advice on how to handle the situation. Marga, her stepmother, would not be present to help. Herr Eggeling, a sarcastic medical doctor living door-to-door with us in Frau Küchemann's apartment, drove the Offiziersanwärter (cadet) to Braunschweig telling me along the way, that I should be careful, among daughters of professional military officers was a disproportionate number of cases who were Rh-negative and would have still-borne children.... Rather disconcerted, I believed him for some time, until Barbara who was studying medicine debunked this grand tale.

Herr Oberst took me on a long walk through the countryside outside of Braunschweig - and I did ask him for the hand of his daughter - rather sheepishly - he smiled and invited Barbara and me to a suitable restaurant that night. - There he discovered that I did not like to drink beer (this condition had not been included in Barbara's instructions). Retired from active service father Lattmann had found a second career as signatory partner (Prokurist) in a local beer brewery..... He also had rented a room in a nearby guesthouse for me, so that there could arise no suspicion that I had slept in their apartment.....

However, as you see below, we returned to Göttingen happy enough.

Marga I met a few weeks later in a memorable encounter in the revolving door of the best restaurant in Göttingen. - Doctor Eggeling had advised that it was absolutely necessary that I kiss the hand of Frau Oberst - which I would have performed exemplarily had there not been this damned revolving door. Marga had a hard time not to burst out laughing - she was anything but the imagined "Frau Oberst" - and in a long talk on their way to the station later that night became my strongest supporter. She knew intuitively that I would not return from America to a grand wedding, but that Barbara would follow me. Eventually it was she who convinced Father Lattmann literally to let go of his only daughter.

With money borrowed from Art Kuckes I had booked a boat passage from Rotterdam to New York, Harvard had promised a scholarship, the immigration visa was applied for, I would sail after my Diplom examination in July. Father Lattmann planned a June engagement in Braunschweig. - The stakes had grown to dizzying heights - my thesis, the preparations for America, and Barbara all at the same time. Something had to give, I was no longer in control of the happening: To change our engagement plans was absurd. America had advanced from a lark to an existential condition for marrying her - under no circumstance would I subject Barbara to a life in a German single-room apartment or ask her to cook on a Lincoln stove whilst I was studying for a doctoral degree. Equally well I would not accept money from either parent. So, the weakest link would snap. Nervous, ill prepared, and with a racing heart caused by an Exedrin prescribed by Doctor Eggeling, I lost all my usual aplomb and was thrown out of one of five oral examinations by the physics professor - to return for a make-up examination in October.... It could have ended worse - if not more embarrassing. Father Lattmann pulped his already printed engagement announcements: "We have the honor to announce the engagement of Dipl. phys. Rolf Gross and Barbara Lattmann....." - because the young man had failed to obtain his degree.... Barbara came down with a nasty viral mouth infection ("hoof-and-mouth-disease"), and I had to move all my America arrangements to December, the boat passage, Harvard, and the visa. With the last money from Arthur's loan I bought Barbara a lovely gray wool dress - which she wore, barely recovered from the virus, to our engagement - to the palpable disapproval of her father.

Harvard simply halved the scholarship, once more I went through the rigmarole of being examined for an immigration visa at the US consulate in Hamburg - swear that you will not engage in prostitution, any tuberculosis? syphilis? a Wassermann test - rebooking the passage was no problem. - Suddenly the pressure was off. Happily looking forward to six months of enforced bliss, we decided to go on a hike in the Black Forrest - but when we arrived in Freiburg by autostop it rained, and with Tante Li and uncle Ernst Köhn's encouragement we set out for Paris. After a bizarre, two-day "lift" in a Mercedes through Lorraine and the Champagne with a German WW II officer on a tryst with his secretary, we landed in the same seedy "hotel garni" on rue André des Arts where I had stayed a year earlier.

We lived on hot French fries and walked for a week all over Paris. Who cared that we were hungry and tired?

Back in Göttingen we had a wonderful summer, danced the nights through at the ball of Barbara's school and at the Taverna, went on dinner outings with Herrn Bodnarescu, visited the first Ducumenta in Kassel, and got completely soaked in a thunderstorm.... In October I finally passed the missing oral, and seen off by Barbara and my family in Hannover I took the train to Rotterdam early in December. Barbara and I had agreed that she would follow me after she had finished her medical course in July, and we would get married in Cambridge. Marga would help us to gradually win Barbara's father's agreement. My parents were very composed, they never complained or objected once to these wild plans.

America

The trip across the Northern Atlantic on the "Maasdam" was very rough, one icy storm followed the other..

The boat was two days late when we landed in Hoboken. Mrs. Kuckes, art's mother, awaited me and then took me to their modest little house in Westchester - an hour north of Manhattan - for my first Christmas in America. Two entire days I wandered through the snow slush and the ringing Salvation Army Santa Clauses in Manhattan, before Art and his brother Walter arrived. The Kuckeses were very dear which encouraged me to ask father Kuckes at a quiet moment whether he would also warrant Barbara's immigration. The Kuckes had briefly met Barbara and me in Göttingen in August 56. Taken aback by my cheek, this meant that he would be financially responsible for her in case we failed to get along, he eventually agreed: "I am sure you will like it here!" - For me it was the greatest Christmas present.

Art and Walter drove me to Cambridge. Art now worked on his PhD at Harvard and Walter studied at MIT, they shared an apartment on Mt. Auburn St. We mounted a third wire-bed on top of the double-decker in their narrow "bedroom." and I moved in with my sleeping bag. The place was a fantastic mess - I didn't mind. We shared all expenses and occasionally I cooked.

Harvard turned out to be an immediate disaster. It was still Christmas recess and it took me some time to track down Professor B. my advisor, an ambitious boyish-looking junior assistant professor - who during our long relationship continued to promise things he could not produce. On this first time he smiled sheepishly, my scholarship would only be paid out - after the tuition had been deducted - by the end of the spring semester. I would need some additional financial support.... He loaded me into his car and drove me home to his wife and three children for dinner. On the way through the dark countryside north of Cambridge he confessed that he had tried to get a NASA research assistantship for me but had failed. Nonchalant, I consoled him, I would find some other job. The turkey dinner was filling, Helen, B's wife charming in a motherly way.

Art Kuckes raised his eyebrows, but then jotted down a list of potential employers around Harvard Square, and next day I ventured into the first blizzard of the season walking from one little research outfit to the next. They listened attentively to my plight and then asked whether I was a US citizen - the work they did was all controlled by the Defense Department and classified - they crossed their wrists, sorry my dear, no chance.... Undaunted, I went to the Aero-Astro Department at MIT. I found one lonely professor working in the deserted, overheated halls, Eric Møllo-Christensen, an immigrant from Norway. He laughed, a Harvardman earning his living at MIT was decidedly a first. But he got me a research job, full-time for two months, quarter-time through the coming spring term. I was saved. Only much later did I learn that Eric Møllo-Christensen had spent two years in a German concentration camp because of his activity in the Norwegian underground....

I saved like crazy to pay my debts to Art and for Barbara's passage. I went to a movie with Art once and at one time slipped into a Boston Symphony performance in the intermission. Art had a girlfriend at Wellesley and on a couple of occasions took me along as a "blind-date." The worst thing was that I wore my engagement ring on my left hand - where the Americans wear their wedding rings - and wouldn't take it off! But on these occasions I danced for several hours - unless Art and his girl went "parking" in the woods behind Wellesley campus - and I was left to wander around in the cold with a desperately sobbing blind-date: "I know what you want!" she cried. "You are European...."

The competition at Harvard was fierce. It was soon demonstrated to me that I had learned near nothing in Göttingen. The scholarship required that I take four courses, and I only succeeded to come out with an average B by mid-term. My advisor was neither happy nor could he help - in order to get a fellowship for the next semester I would have to scramble to a B+ or an A-. - Many times in that winter I would have liked to leave and go back - but where to? I had burned all bridges.

Three days a week I walked through the deep snow to MIT at night and against the rules worked on Eric's experiment by myself. On one May night at MIT my hand slipped into the open gears of an anteluvial, home-made oscilloscope camera and in a second the tip of my left little finger was off. A frightened night watchman, I dropped blood all over the place, drove me to the Boston County Hospital where a kind Armenian doctor expertly patched the finger with a graft from my arm. I spent two days in the public ward, quite an experience....

I had sent the money to Barbara, and she had booked her passage. Father Lattman had yielded to the entreaties of Marga and his daughter. She was on the approach! Kathrin and Otto Oldenberg, a Harvard physics professor and friend of Tante Li and Uncle Ernst Köhn, offered to host the wedding at their beautiful house in Cambridge. I invited all my new friends, and just before I was to leave for New York to pick up Barbara, a check of $150 arrived from the MIT insurance as compensation for suffering the loss of an eighth of my hand! I would use it for our "honeymoon."

Now I stood at the Hoboken pier. It was a humid, hot day, the air-conditioning in the Greyhound bus to New York had dripped all over me. And then she was suddenly there, for real.

It took some time to collect Barbara's "trousseau," get it cleared by customs, and consigned to a shipper, a large box with china, two with her books and personal belongings. I had booked a hotel two blocks south of Central Park - when we got there they had reserved a suite for us at the same price. The elevator lady smiled at us and pointing at Barbara's purse said, "Watch your bag, honey." Which has become a family quotation. Our two rooms were opulently appointed and chilled ice cold.

Konrad was born in a great hurry on the gray, slushy morning of April 11, 1958. - A young student in our house drove us to Boston Lying-In Hospital, scared along by the moaning woman in his back seat. - I barely prevented the doctor from circumcising Konrad at birth..... Those were different times from today when the father is allowed into the delivery room

Konrad was a fussy baby, and to give Barbara a chance of some rest - for two months she suffered excruciating headaches from the spinal injection they had given her before delivery - we let him cry for several nights in the living room until Barbara could not hold back her milk any longer. But Barbara knew exactly how to handle babies, and he grew fast. He became funnier by the month. In July we moved to another apartment on Marlborough St in Boston cheaply sublet to us by Nahama and Hans Schechter, friends at MIT who had moved to California.

 Art Kuckes had taught me to drive and then sold me his old Ford, a practical and sturdy car, but with an atiquated suspension system. With this new acquisition we often drove to some place outside Cambridge to escape the heat in the city and the confines of our apartment.

These were high times in our life, we met many new friends. Gerhard had befriended Lenny Friedman, a Harvard psychiatrist and his lawyer wife Joan on the boat to New York and now brought them into our house. For several years they were quite involved with us. Lenny became Barbara's secret admirer - on her birthday he brought a present, a dagger-like letter-opener.... Rarely did I laugh so hard, he, the professional couldn't analyse himself and this object And I ran into petite Anita Heider, the woman with the mysterious voice. Offended by Anita's palpable sensuality, Lenny pronounced her "as phony as a three dollar bill!" - but I fell for her, head over heel.... For New Year's Eve we were invited by Lenny and Joan to a party where everyone turned out to be a psychiatrist or in treatment (their wives), and everyone was New York Jewish.... Quite an exercise in self-defense, we felt like intruders and were treated like that. We left at twelve after some drunk had fallen through a glass-table and the party went into high gear.....

My studies at Harvard were not going well. By the end of the spring term I would have to pass my PhD admission orals. After the Göttingen experience this prospect weighed heavily on my conscience. And happen it did, a second time: my oral committee included two powerful professors who did not think too highly of my academic performance - and perhaps they wanted to teach my good advisor B. a lesson - he was due to be promoted to associate professor. May that be as it was, B. took me to his office after the three-hour grilling and told me that I had not passed, the committee refused to retry my case, but I could stay on and and work on the previously decided thesis research project at full pay ($400) as graduate research assistant. He knew that I had no other means of support. I swallowed this setback and accepted the offer, and Barbara and I went for a long walk at night trying to figure out what to do. All I knew was that I still wanted to get a PhD, how I couldn't tell her. Prof. B. was no experimentalist and of no help, but I knew exactly how to attack the experimental side of the "thesis" subject ("shock refraction by solid objects measured in a special shock-tube") and after a couple of months was able to show quite remarkable results.

To steady my mind I had begun making jewellery in our kitchen. In 1956 Barbara had introduced me to an aunt, Tante Alix, in Kassel who was a professional goldsmith. She had made an amber necklace for her (seen on Barbara's picture of 1956 and the Christmas picture above) and for her wedding had given her an intriguing necklace of 24 simple gold ringlets. I now spent days trying to make a similar necklace without copying Tante Alix's work. On a visit to New York with Lenny and Joan during Yom Kippur I had also seen a silver necklace with then fashionable baroque amethysts and decided I would make something like that for Barbara. The necklace still exists.

In August the Oldenbergs thoughtfully offered us their cabin in New Hampshire. On August 15 we drove there and found a rustic log cabin near a river in the woods near Passaconway. It was a cool, heavenly quiet spot. Only the noise of a small electric generator attracted Konrads curiosity for a few hours at night. Shopping had to be done in Conway. It rained two days later and the unimproved road to Conway was full of water-filled puddles. I drove, Gerhard next to me, Konrad in a primitive car seat with Barbara in the back. Maybe 35 mph was to fast, the car started to jump, swerving towards one then the other side of the road. I lost control, and the car flipped over in the ditch. Gerhard suffered a concussion of head and jaw, Barbara had a broken rib, I a lacerated nose, but Konrad lay in the grass next to the car with a broken spine - dead.

We spent a couple of days in the hospital and then buried Konrad in the small cemetery in Passaconway. I found a big rock in the river and later in December made a name-plate and attached it in the middle of the first snow storm.

We rented a much smaller place on Massachusetts Ave, and I effectively threw Gerhard out. He never forgave me, but Barbara and I needed to be by ourselves. Gerhard's broken jaw had healed imperfectly. The doctor decided it had to be operated on, first broken again and then reset properly. My car insurance - prodded by Joan Friedman - paid for the operation and the hospital. Gerhard returned with a perfect jaw and - a very painful spirococcal infection in his testicles picked up at the hospital.... He collapsed on the sofa in our livingroom. Who else whould have taken care of him?

Another refugee to our place, in this case from her own nightmares, was Anita. Her marriage was falling apart, and she was having increasingly dramatic apparitions - headless corpses emerging from a chest - and paranoid fantasies of attacks on herself by John and his two brothers. Unaccustomed to the manifestations of a growing psychosis we were fascinated by her tales.

One afternoon in October Prof. Emmons the most powerful of my committee members at Harvard appeared at my lab and after first congratulating me on my good work started shouting that I was an idiot, that I didn't understand what I was doing, and that I should get lost. My measure was full - I went to Prof. B. and told him that I was leaving, there was no reason why I should subject myself to such gratuitous abuse. Much pained B. found me a job with a former classmate of his, Raimo Haakinen at Douglas Aircraft Corp. in Santa Monica, CA. Two days after Christmas we flew with one of the first Boeing 707s to Los Angeles. - Barbara was four months pregnant.