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January 1989

Suschen and Jenny, Irmchen, Barbara, Jutta, and Robert Forrest all stayed at our house in early January. Sophia was there too, maybe she took the photo. Sophia and Jutta had been recruited as house-sitters while we would be in Asia.

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Anneliese and Irmchen

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Can you hear Sophia laughing? - Clydette has also found her way to this dinner party. Looks like a quiche.

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In Winter '89: January 26 to March 18 Rolf and Barbara in Ladakh, Srinagar, India, Nepal, and Thailand:

The pictures from this long and varied Winter trip are found under these links

Ladakh and Srinagar

Nepal

India

Thailand

Here follow some of my favourite, poetic photos from those colorful weeks

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The Blue Eyes of the Buddha - Tikse Gompa, Ladakh

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Sufi-Spirit of Kashmir - Srinagar in the Snow

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The Ghosts of the Dead - Varanasi

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The Floating World of the Buddha - Sukhotai

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Barbara in Ayuttaya, Thailand

Easter 1989

Barbara cutting her Moroccan Pastilla, one of the crowning efforts of Barbara's kitchen, on the occasion of the Easter dinner at our house...... There is no table cloth and we eat off the precious Arzberg dishes and with Barbara's inherited silver....!

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And these are Barbara's celebrated Easter Eggs, of which she paints some new ones every year and none is ever like any other before or after.....

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May 4 to 26, 1989 Cornelius and Rolf in Moscow, Tbilisi, and Tashkent-Samarkand, invited by Prof. Prokhorov

This was an historical opportunity: The Soviet Union was finally collapsing, a new Duma was being elected, in Tbilisi 20 young woman, who had protested for Georgian independence were murder by the Soviet Ministry of the Interior.... There was a high tension in the air that kept us awake at night and followed us on our flights..

Pictures from this trip, my last to Russia and Central Asia, you find here

And a very recent diary without photos here

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A few of my favourite photos from this trip

The Domes of the Church inside the Imperial Palace - the Kreml, Moscow

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Svenigorod

In 1989 Vitaly Zuev drove Cornelius and me to Svenigorod. We took Natasha Prokhorova along. Now during Perestroika it was all-right to photograph my friends.

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Afterwards Vitaly took us to his datcha for supper

Georgia

The journey was organized by Prof. Prokhorov, because my long-standing mentor Prof. Basov had been voted out of his directorship of his institute and hid at home. The Academy paid for both of us (I paid for Cornelius' flight to Moscow), in exchange Cornelius gave a seminar on the laser-detection of Sichel-cell anemia. In Moscow everyone felt insecure because of the rapid changes under Gorbachov. For that reason we were chaperoned by senior members of Prokhorov's institute, Victor Apollonov and his wife Zoya to Tashkent and Samarkand and Ivan Shcherbakov and his senigmatic sphinx to Tbilisi. Both were old friends of mine. We enjoyed a wonderful time with endless political discussions. In Tbilisi Merab took us 4 to Kazbegi - and for the first time I persuaded him to walk up to Mtatsmina Sameba.

Cornelius drawing the church of Mtatsmeba Zameba below Mt. Kazbeg, Georgia

Samarkand

The sensation in Moscow had been the first congration of the Russian Duma since the 1920s. In Tbilisi 20 Georgian girls murdered by special forces of the Soviet Ministry of Interior lay on a dais behind the Cathedral, and the wife of our host in Tashkent asked me, "why should we get rid the Communist Party? The Communists have freed the Uzbeg women from the Yoke of Islam. Look at me, I earned a Ph.D, obtained with the support of the Party. I am all for Communinism." The men by contrast wore scull caps and crowded the mosques.....
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Cornelius wiped-out - Tilla Kari Madresa, Samarkand

Pacific Palisades during the Rest of the Year

Who took this garish photo? David Thornton and Barbara, Louise Severino and Traudl Friedmann, Rolf and Sophia.

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Cornelius had become a very desirable presence at the weddings of his and Barbara's friends. This time the exalted bride is Corinne Kohlmeyer. Zanette's daughter in New York.

A few days after he came back from New York (9 July) - Mumin was on her third tour and not home - Cornelius and I were present at a large meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the Shrine Auditorium. What an unholy man, what cleverness, what humor!

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July 1989 , Inga and Irakli from Tbilisi.....

One night at 3 in the morning we were awoken by a telephone call from Sophiko in Tbilisi: her nice, Inga Dodelia (27), after months of excruciating headaches had been diagnosed with an extended brain tumor. The family had collected the money to send her and her husband Irakli to Los Angeles, where an emigrant Russian-Jewish doctor had offered to treat Inga in his hospital. Would we take care of them? - Well, of course, we said.... We knew Inga from 1980, she was a sweet, blond and everyone wanted to marry her to Cornelius..... Now, 9 years later, she and her husband were trained physicians and lived in Moscow. I visited the Russian emigrant physician - an anesthesiologist! (58) at the Los Angeles County Hospital. One of the funniest evenings I can remember. He had invited me to his private house in Brentwood. He insisted on babbling in Russian, and I could not convince him that I understood practically nothing. Then he produced a large bottle of Georgian cognac. The old familiar gesture of snapping his index finger at his conjugal vein. I very sadly shook my head, No, I have to drive myself home. He almost cried inconsolably about Inga's fate. There was no hope. His American Colleagues would drill 4 holes through her scull and take biopsies. This would be done the day after tomorrow. It would cost them nothing, he had certified them as indigent!

Inga spent a hell of a night at our house. Eventually in the early morning hours Irakli borrowed a syringe from Barbara's kitchen - used to inject the Gitot de la Clinique with congnac, orange juice, and the "blood of a hare" (Toklas) - and after boiling it gave her an injection. Next morning we drove her to the County Hospital. I didn't know the US had hospitals like that! Overpowering surrealist. Rats scuttling in the yard! Police ambulances screaming in the night into a heavily fortified section of the complex..... Inside, empty halls, armed marshalls, no benches, the patients' families - whole Mexican tribes - were camped on the floor along the hallways. Aside of hospital beds no other furniture, however, the doctors were the kindest, considerate - and presumably knowledgeable hospital staff imaginable - every one in that ward.

Inga, her head shorn of all hair, in a delirium under heavy sedation, whenever she saw us cried in a sing-song voice "Barbara I love you! - You must come and stay at my house. - I love you!"

Irakli asked Barbara to buy a toupee for Inga. Barbara went on a hilarious search through Hollywood and came back with four, a dark curly Georgian, a blond long Russian and two less extreme. We met Irakli in a parking lot in East LA at night and he, playing with the tressess like a juggler, weighed their merits. He finally took one of the moderate wigs and twirling it on his left index finger, took off his left sneaker where he had hidden his dollar-wads - someone had tried to rob him the night before.....

All four biopsies were positive, the tumor had the shape of a butterfly. Irakli took Inga home again - spending a fortune on a nurse accompaning her on the flight. Inga's family (whose money it was) accused him of having squandered their thousands on buying heroin...... Which he well may have done too. Inga died 1/2 a year later after a long treatment by a famous faith-healer from the Ukraine....

This charming photo of Zanette and Jutta was taken at a lady's lunch at Röckenwagner's (?) in Venice, CA. Shortly before Jutta returned to Austria on August 13.

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 On August 15, 1989 Cornelius flew to Denver to visit Susanne

Suschen with her brother in a self-pitying mood - which befell him often in those years

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1990  

East-Berlin after the Wall

On November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall came unexpectedly down, an event nearly nobody had foreseen. We were all very excited. A completely unknown German-American lady in LA called me and with a chocked voice offered her congratulations. Cornelius spontaneously did something better, he flew to Berlin, stayed at the Kempes in East Berlin and witnnessed the opening of the Brandenburg Gate (22 December, 1989)

After my visit to East-Berlin I had little desire to try that experience again. But now I felt a strong and complex obligation to visit the Kempes.

I had met Noemi Kempe on my last stay in Novosibirsk. When Cornelius and I had been in Moscow in May 1989, she had flown in and taken us to see "Chaika" at the MkhAT, an unforgettable performance. I admired her courage and independent spirit. She was Russian, a physicist working in lasers. She had met her East-German husband Volker in Moscow where he was a graduate student. They had two daughters: Vera (psychologist) and Julis (then still in high school). Volker was the director of the DDR-Academy Institute of Kybernetics and Semiconductors, one of the highest favored institutions in the DDR. Barbara and I had met him in San Francisco in 1988. Over dinner I had had a sharp and absurd dispute with him on the differences between their and "our" ideas of society. For days I felt sad. We had lost the common language of our fathers. My Russian friends consoled me: a new era would also come to the DDR....

I decided that we would fly for a few days to Berlin before we would continue to Istanbul. Volker picked us up in a large Citroen, owned by the Institute. When passing Checkpoint Charlie we had 4 different passports (East-German, Soviet, West-German, and US). The Vopos laughed and wished us luck.... Long discussions about the collaps of "Socialism" with Folker. A dinner at the academy restaurant: No beef, only pork. - Said the waiter; "The cows all left for the West. Only the swine are left over....." A few months later Volker was "displaced" from his position at the Institute and threatened to commit suicide. He was offered a position in Graz, Austria, and Julia went there with him to prevent the worst. They still live near Graz. Noemi has left physics and has turned herself into an "alternative" healer in high demand, maybe even famous.....

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April 10 - May 5 1990, Istanbul and Eastern Anatolia

Many more pictures and stories of this adventurous trip you find here

Click here for a Map of Turkey

With the sudden end of the Cold War, the fulfillment of a very old wish to see Eastern Turkey seemed to have arrived. The Kurdish situation in Anatolia had calmed down, at least as far as we would be involved. There was no real danger traveling in the interior. Ani, the old Armenian city on the former Soviet border was accessible for the first time in a 100 years. An excellent private bus system whisked one to wherever one wanted to go. - And - what we couldn't forsee - the stupid first American invasion of Iraq was to happen two years later....

We flew from Frankfurt to Istanbul, stayed there a cold and rainy week and visited all of Sinan's mosques. We then flew to Antalya. With a rental car we explored the south coast: numerous Greek theaters and ruined citites as far as the village of Kash. We climbed the rock of Sillyon with the help of Sherifa and her brothers.

Invited to her home, Sherifa in the red pullover, her father and brothers intensely questioned Barbara

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Barbara showing photos of the children. The boy in the middle had blue eyes - contributed by whatever conquerer....

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One day we drove on an impossible road to Zelge-Serk, a Greek city high in the wild mountains. There we were greeted by children speaking fluently German.... Their school teacher had been born in Germany and had come home to teach them German.

On our way back to the car the children sold Barbara a yellow scarf and then trailed her hand in hand for a good distance. In hope of getting some "bonbon". They each got a mandarine. Barbara was happy. Without her such intimate encounters would not have been possible.

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We went by bus to Konya and on to Kappadokia, where we rented another car for 5 days to visit the Cave Churches.

Barbara in Ilhara Valley. On the first of May a late snow storm blanketed Kappadokia and the Ilhara Valley on the western its edge. Undeterred we hiked into the canyon and were rewarded with the frescoes of half a dozen of very early Christian churches in rock caves.

Barbara reading Paul's travels from the New Testament to me with a flashlight in the ice-cold hoteli at Ilhara

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Two of the most virulently Kurdish towns, Diyabakir and Dogubeyazit posed true challenges. Hundreds of jeering, grabbing children in tow we tried to find the illusive Monophysite communities and monks near the Syrian border.

Ishak Pasha Serai outside Dogubeyazit. Billed as a "pleasure palace" of a Kurdish prince, it turned out to be a Sufi tekke.

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In October, happened the improbable wedding of Debra Levi. The daughter of Jewish-German-American parents, a little too old and plump to find a suitable man, but with a degree in psychotherapy and a well-running practice finally persuaded an Indonesian musicologist and dancer to marry her. - He was of course Moslem, not fanatic, but still a Moslem. The wedding enlivened by stylized dancing by members of his group and great native food took place in a artist's house in Beverly Glen Canyon. Her intelligent, liberal but quite Jewish mother sat like a stone effigy at the fringe of the party. Debra vanished in Indonesia opening a practice for neurotic expatriates. Once two years later I met her between the shelves of our favorite bookstore in Westwood. She did not look worse for wear, just as round and matrimonial. We hugged each other.....

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The borders to Easterrn Europe being suddenly wide-open, we had a stream of friends from the sinking USSR visit us: Arkady Grazyuk in May and Victor Apollonov from Moscow in November, and finally a call from Merab Djibladze: He had been made minister of schools and culture in the newly elected Gamsakhurdia government, and had been invited by an American church group which wanted to fund three Christian(!) schools in Georgia! We saw him for a couple of days and agreed that he would come and stay with us over Christmas 1990!! Cornelius came home for Christmas and we drove Merab to San Francisco and back along US-395 through Owens' Valley. In Bridgeport at 2300 m the temperature fell below 20 F so that overnight the engine of my BMW froze! We were lucky not to have a cracked engine block... But our togetherness was not harmonious. When I complained that he was turning into a Georgian chauvinist, he said, "After 200 years of Russian occupation we have a right to be chauvinists!" - Well, soon their nationalism got them into an ugly fraternal war. Abkhasia - with Russian help - defeated the Georgian troops, Gamsakhurdia was killed and Georgia sank into chaos. Merab returned to Tbilisi in January 1991.

In between these visitors, Peter Steeger and Keiko from Tokyo came for a week. Helga Gabler passed through, and Irmgard Hammer stayed 3 weeks with us.... And in the interim Barbara also ran 6 Tours.....