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 1993

These were the years when I got increasingly tired of carrying my heavy photo equipment around. Except on our travels I took less and less pictures. Barbara had a small camera with which she photographed her children and grandchildren, which I borrowed ocasionally. There exist only a few good photos.

Jenny and Kelly in their Fashion Hats made by Barbara, Denver, January 1983

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In addition, by 1991-93 the situation at Aerospace had become intolerable. The company tried hard to shake off people - after they had indiscriminately hired large numbers of cheap, young engineers to fill the program offices. Research was expensive and incresingly considered an unnecessary extravagance. And I had a good level-3-position and refused to do administrative work. Finally the vice-president of research - himself in a shaky position - ordered a complete reorganisation of the "Labs Division" (as opposed to the "Program Offices"). The result was that I was given a young smart hero (and competitor of many years) as boss, who was ordered to growl me out of the division. To cap it all off, the poor guy stuttered compulsively whenever he laid eyes on me. Our relationship soon became very ugly, but for a long time he could not trip me, I had my own support. These were 2 very trying years in which I slept badly and my blood pressure became very high....

The end of the story was that upper management took away my support, and the stutterer was ordered to call Air Force and outside supporters and tell them I was a fraud. My last papers were not accepted by the journals because he had called all possible reviewers. I was subjected to a painful internal "scientific" examination, during which they rifled my computers and research data for incriminating evidence..... After that I became convinced that I had to retire, which, because I was close to 62, was quite feasible without any loss in retirement benefits. However, before my 62nd birthday, the stutterer was demoted, because he could not deal with me!

And then happened the day which I will not forget. One morning the Company offered a "Golden Parachute" of an extra day's payment for every year of service - if I left. Within a week I had my retirement papers, had destroyed all my computer data, and unceremoniously walked out. We flew to France a day before my birthday in September for a 5-week trip from Bad Godesberg through the Burgundy to the Mediterranean Coast and back through Switzerland to Tübingen and Munich. I have not touched physics since, nor put my foot back into Aerospace. A pity, really, my professional life at Aerospace had been glorious and greatly satisfying. I had never worked on a subject not of my invention and had enjoyed an unprecedented degree of personal freedom.

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Barbara in the West Indies

Barbara had become a competent tour guide, much loved by her German tourists, and the two or three tour operators in LA vied for her services. This brought her an invitation by New World Travel to a special seminar on the Caribbean Island of Sint Marteen/Saint Martin in January. A real boondoggle, flights and all expenses paid, plush accomodations directly at the beach, and sumptuous food.

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Barbara, Susanne and her Children in Germany

For Klaus Lattmann's Birthday

In February-March Barbara flew to Klaus' 70th birthday with Susanne and her two girls.

Petra Lattmann, Gerd, and Susanne at Klaus' 70th birthday in Hamburg

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 Susanne and Kelly on the fast train

Gisela and Irmchen in Essen greeting Jenny and her dolls at the Bahnhof

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 Gisela hugging her Gold Schatz in Essen

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Irmchen and Barbara at the Bahnhof in Essen

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 Marga, Susanne and the children at grandfather's grave in Tübingen

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 Margit May showing Susanne her printing techniques. Everyone speaking German, Jenny was bored in München

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 Susanne carrying little Kelly in Andechs

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 The three on a foggy, German February day.

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The return flight became a nightmare. Susanne had wrenched her back and was delivered in Denver in a wheelchair, and little Kelly was sick all over her grandmother. Barbara, when she arrived in LA four-hours late, stank to holy heaven.

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In March Cornelius, who was now at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut spent his vacation with us, and Regine visited us on the way to a long sailing tour in the South Pacific Islands. She showed her fabulous pictures from her expedition to Papua New Guinea, hundreds of naked native warrier performing a mock battle and roasting a pig for the visitors, after which she was formally inducted into the colorful tribe.

In May I enjoyed my last boondoggle at a conference in Baltimore and a subsequent visit with Cornelius in New Haven. We visited New York on a beautiful Sunday, and on a party at his house I met all his new friends.

In July-August Barbara spent two weeks in Denver, where the following lovely picture was taken

Barbara cradling little Kelly in Denver in August '93

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And then came my sudden retirement. Barbara was on tour, and I had to make the decision all by myself. When she returned I was free, and we flew off to France....

September - October 1993 Rolf and Barbara in Southern France.

A detailed diary of this journey exists France Trip, and I will not describe it here. It rained most of the time, and - unfortunately - we hurried south before the storm clouds always hoping for some dry days further south. There were a few sunny days, and they were glorious: in Vezelay, on the Causse Mejan, in the salines in the Camargue in the Bouches du Rhone, in St. Paul de Vance.... Barbara stayed with Marga in Tübingen, and I drove the rental car to Munich in the first October snowstorm

1994

A Winter in München

The Aerospace demise had destroyed my will to retire in America. Once again the US appeared a most unpleasant place to live. Why not sell the house and move to München? This time Barbara was the practical counterpoint to my wild disgust. Through Helga she rented a house in Neubiberg at the southeastern edge of Munich. To test our resolve we would spend the Winter there. We rented out house for 4 months, shipped our Jetta to Bremen, and flew to Munich in January.

Irmgard Hammer invited us to her 80th birthday celebration in a hotel outside of Hamburg. We took the train to Bremen, picked up the car, and visited Lüder and Gundi Blome, a Lattmann cousin of Barbara's, a very spirited woman we both quickly became friends with. We also met Tony Brinkmann, a deeply depressed school friend of Barbara's. Then we drove to Hamburg and met all of Irmgard Hammer's Clan: Udo Hammer, his Italian-German wife Franka and their two unruly boys. Her daughter Renate had died two years earlier, but Renate's two children were there and Angela became a close friend for many years, when she lived in Silicon Valley, CA. And Irmgard's two Berlin nieces Ursel Brandt and Inge Pelz, the children of Irmgard's sister Eka Brandt, who I remembered from my stay in Breslau in 1940. I had never met any of these people. It was an unexpectedly lively family reunion.

It was there that I asked Irmgard whether she would hold my hand and be my guide on a visit to Silesia, Breslau, Habelschwerdt, Glatz, and Prague. Barbara ad clearly said that she did not want to be my chaperone. To my utter surprise, Irmgard said yes immediatly. I warned her, that I snored and was a difficult person to live with - she laughed and stuck to her yes.

On the way back to Munich through a series of triste-gray German February days we stayed at Gisela and Charlie Winke's house in Essen and also dropped by at the house of Marga's sister Regine in Frankfurt - and met her painting daughter Juschka Vinçon, who would continue to play an occasionally disproportional role - a few years later she proposed to Cornelius.... After a few days in Tübingen we settled down in München-Neubiberg.

München Altes Rathaus auf dem Marienplazt unter dem seidenblauen Himmel von Bayern: - Faschingstime

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Fasching at the Munchner Musikverein, Feb 1994, Fritz and Sigrun Keilmann, Jürgen Grosskreutz heavily creamed with shoe polish, Barbara skeptical, Irene Grosskreutz as vamp.

Fritz and Rolf at the same occasion

We knew München well and had many friends there. The Keilmanns invited us to a traditional Faschingsparty at their Münchener Musikverein. We saw the Grosskreutzes and the Mays often and on a completely fogged-in day, in memory of our hikes in 1972, Margit drove me to Andechs. Like in 1972 we spent a night dancing at the Weisse Fest in der Schwabinger Maximilian Brauerei. Marga visited us for a few days, and Marianne Budke-Daeg camped, protected by uncounted apotrophaic gizmos in one of the guest room of the house. There were the familiar Baroque churches near and far..., but the Damokles sword of my wish to move to München hung in the winterly darkness over our heads. Barbara avoided the subject. I investigated a few available apartments - they were so expensive that a small apartment would be all we would be able to buy for the money in our house in Pacific Palisades. It was depressing, and the worst was the darkness, which lay on my mind like a black shroud...

Easter in Rome

In March the owners of the house returned from their Winter hide-away in La Palma. We became homeless for three more months traveling all over Europe. I always wanted to see the Polish Pope in full regalia at Easter. So, at he end of March we drove to Rome, visited Jutta Micheuz in Austria, and stopped for a few days in Venice. Italy and Rome were beautiful, the Pope and his entourage of dignitaries - Ratsinger at their head - a predictable disappointment. But we saw much of Rome. Pictures from the Italy trip can be found here.

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Orthodox Easter on Naxos

This year Orthodox Easter was fully four weeks later. We flew to Athens in late April and stayed in Naxos. The beach was too cold for bathing, but for the first time, we hiked and wandered to Naxos' many beautiful spots. The hoped-for Easter Services were a total disaster. Instead of the moving, night-long Chrysostomos service the youth of Naxos staged a noisy, smoking firecracker display at midnight at the moment the Papas and their entourage ran around the church three times. One could not hear one's own words and the eyes teared. Only the Easter Sunday feast with two lambs-on-the-spit, which the Kritikos, our hosts had invited us to, compensated for this sad experience. Pictures from this long stay in Naxos you find here.

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Rolf with Irmgard Hammer in Silesia

After our return in May Barbara flew home to LA. She had accepted two tours. I stayed in Munich at the Grosskreutzes and then drove to pick-up Irmgard in Bad Krozingen, a small town south of Freiburg, where she had bought a one-room apartment in an old-age home.

I drove and 82-year Irmgard related the old stories from her and my past. "Did you know that your mother seduced your father before they got married?" I did, because mother had a still birth before I was born. But Irmgard knew more details, some of which I later guessed from in between the lines of mother's letters to her sister Magda - which Brigitte gave me a few years later. Her stories of the courtship of Hans Hammer and her life with him I did not know. Nor the details of her escape with two small children form Breslau in the Winter of 1945. Hans had been killed at the front in Russia. A friend of his appeared 1945 at her apartment, had given her a pistol and taught her in the attic how to use it. She showed me the place where she later burried the weapon. Of their terrible times in Schleiz, East Germany, where Udo and his cousin Inge contracted Polio and she, had she not crossed the East-German border in a harrowingly daring escape - on our way back she showed me the place - would have been forced to become an agent for the Stasi.... Of these happenings I knew little - and she talked on and on. Of her mother's lot as the daughter of an impoverished Protestant pastor in West-Prussia, of Hans' fighting his Nazi superiors (Hans was a judge) - which resulted in his transfer to the Russian front and may have indirectly led to his death..... Unfortunately, I felt not entitled to write down these memories, and what she wrote on my instigation did not get finished during her remaining years. Udo may have her notes, but he has not shared them with me.

We quickly agreed that we would first drive to Prague, which had a mythical aura in both of our minds, but neither of us had ever seen. I found us an empty apartment - the owners had decamped to the West - 2 rooms, kitchen, and bath for a rediculous price, and we explored the pittoresque old city. From there we drove straight north, crossed the Riesengebirge (Giant Mountains) on a lonely pass into Polish Silesia. Suddenly there were the places of my childhood: the Schneekoppe, Hirschberg, Waldenburg, the slopes where I had skied with father in 1940-41. We ended in Glatz, where we had lived 1933-38. - A long description of my childhood you can find in "The Summer of our Innocence" The German write-up of Irmgard's and my trip is being edited and is temporarily unavailable.

Unfortunately I lost my photographs (films) of Prague, Breslau, and Glatz. But I later found some old postcards which have to replace them.

Glatz (1937) (Polish Klodzko) seen from the railroad station. We stayed in the old hotel, the four-story building in the right foreground. To the left are the two towers of the Minoritenkirche, in the center the tower of the Rathaus, and above is the fortification of the Donjon, which Frederick II, the Great had built.

The uncanny thing was that everything was still there. A few houses had been torn down - including the one we had lived in - the steel-bridge across the Neisse (in the center of this picture) was so decrepit, that it had been closed. The hotel had assumed the looks and smells of a Soviet place, the food was awful. The Bahnhofsplatz in the foreground was littered with dead-drunk men every night. The town was verwahrlost (gone to pot) but it was still there. We followed my daily walk to school. And I saw ghost on every corner, which Irmgard couldn't see.

Glatz (1936) Brücktorbrücke from the Oberstadt to the Minoritenkirche.

A few days later we drove to Habelschwerdt (Polish Bystryca Klodzko), where we had moved to in 1938. A small enchanted, old town 20 km south of Glatz. Tears in my eyes I realized that it was the landscape which defined meine Heimat, my origins. The people spoke only Polish, they had been moved there 1947-50 from Eastern Poland, the German-Slavic culture was gone - except in the characteristc, bulbous Baroque church-towers - Silesia as I had know was no more. But the landscape pulled all my heartstrings.

The Jestelkoppe and the Weisstritztal from our house (1994).

I finally found our house at the edge of town.

The right half of this small duplex may father bought in 1938. It had just been finished. We lived a peaceful life through the War, until we were deported to West Germany by the Allied/Polish authorities in May 1946.

I was taking pictures from the fence when the woman who lived there came out and invited us in - in German! Her name is Krystyna. She was born in this house in 1951. She got married, and her children were born there too. Fifty years! We had lived seven years in this house. What was I doing here? We sat in my mother's living room, tiny compared to my memory. They showed me the entire house, which was in excellent condition. Krystyna's mother lived in West-Germany. I did not ask how come... .

Magda, Waclaw, Margund, and Krystyna Poniewierski, and Margund's boyfriend behind her (ul. Lenskiego 31, 57-500 Bystrycza Klodzka, Poland)

Krystyna and Margund spoke German well. They had many questions. "I have waited for you for 50 years," said Krystyna and went up-stairs. She returned with a postcard from 1938, which she had found somewhere and had kept for me!

Habelschwerdt (1938) seen from the Floriansberg on the other side of the Neisse. The tower of the Rathaus, where father had had his office, and the Catholic church behind it. In the foreground is the railroad bridge across the Neisse. The station is to the right.

More photos of Habelschwerdt and the surounding villages you find here.

Irmgard and I eventually drove to Breslau where Irmgard and my mother had been born. Now I had to try to see Irmgard's ghosts: the school where she had been a student of Tante Magda Hammer, the Opera - on her wish we saw a Johann Strauss Operetta there - the Royal Schloss, where in 1813 the European uprising against Napoleon had started, and which I remembered vividly, the vanished house of my grandmother Hammer - a plan of her apartment I can still draw from memory - the famous Rathaus and the University, where father received his doctorate, the churches where they had been baptized and married.... She also took me to a cemetery - completely flattened into a park, no sign, no markers - where she showed me the locations of my grandfather Hammer's grave and those of my great-grandparents and Brigitte's father.....

We drove back following Irmgard's escape route from the Soviet Armies and later from the East German regime.... It was then that Irmgard asked me whether I would take her to Ostpreussen, formerly German East-Prussia, where her second husband had come from. I promised her to think about it, maybe in 1995... I left the car in a garage in Bad Godesberg - Irmchen paid for it for 2 years - and flew home.

Barbara received me with open arms at the airport: "Now you can sell the house and we can move to München. I have made up my mind." But now I was in no mood for such a rash change. I buckled down and started to write, first the Summers of our Innocence, then Konrad and Alexandra. The moment of despair had passed. The difficulties of such a move had become apparent. Und our house appeared more beautiful, more our own than ever before.

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Barbara takes Margit May on Painter Tour through the Southwest

In August Margit came to California and Babara and she went on a three-week tour to Zion, Brice, the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert. With incredible dexterity and speed Margit filled her large canvasses with the red and brown rocks of the canyons, the colorful earth of the desert, and the adobe churches and houses of the Indians.

Brice Canyon, while Margit painted Barbara prepared a lunch picnic in the shade of the trees.

When they returned Margit spread her 12 paintings on the floor of our living room, and we enjoyed the privilege to critize and discuss them with the artist.

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 December. As my great Christmas present for Susanne and the girls I made a huge dollhouse for them, which Barbara populated with tiny furnishings, dinnerware, and dolls just like the dollhouse Christine had inherited from my Hammer grandfather.

In October Noemi and Volker Kempe came from Graz to celebrate their 60th birthday with their two daughters, Julia from Berkeley and Vera from the East Coast. And at Christmas arrived Cornelius from New Haven and our, by now annual guest, Regine Wörner from Stuttgart. A full house, to which were, over New Year, added Sasha and Tanya Romanovsky with their two children from Palo Alto