.

.

Two weeks after Cornelius had returned to New York he found himself a job as teacher at a special "Council" high school in Manhattan. It had been his resolve to teach at a high school to gain some "real-life experience" and do something for underprivileged children. - "Pappi, I come from a rich family, I have always lived of scholarships, now I want to live by my own wits." - I had opposed this decision, because I feared that this intelligent man with an excellent education from the best schools in the country would get stuck in a comfortable teacher' s job. He was very serious. He had discussed this step with his doctoral advisor at Yale, who had raised his brows, but finally admitted that two years would not jeopadize his academic career. For a while he stayed with Sarah-Lea Witleson - who was looking for a father of her future children - but then rented an apartment in Brooklyn.. He had to design his own curriculum (Biology and Physics) and worked very hard, fighting illiteracy and truency.. His students loved him...

Cornelius in the Tibetan rug, which he had bought in Lhasa. It finally arrived in early Summer.

..

Our other Sorgenkind Carolyn had spent several weeks in München with her great-aunt Irmgard von Neurath. When she returned, we put her up. One day we attended a concert with her at the Music Center, and met a man who offered her ajob on the spot. He was the music arranger for Star Wars and wanter her to learn the requisit electronics - free of charge and without pay. We were happy - but she was not. The highly dyslexic music man was trying to burden her with all rational decision. This lasted for several months and she walked out. She rented an apartment with her long-time bosom-friend **** in Santa Monica, and went on a search for another job. Fully unexpected and unaided by anyone she was hired by Ernest Fleischmann, the feared impresario and manager of the Los Angeles Philharmonic - as his personal secretary! The job, making travel arrangement for Ernest and running his interviews with notable directors, made full uise of her best organisatrorial talents - inherited from her grandmother Erika, who in better times had commanded three villages and the workers of the large family possessions in Pommerania. - From now on we had only to ask, and two preferred tikets for the philharmonic concerts appeared.... This job lasted a couple of years until Ernest retired, and a new manager from Holland appeared, with whom she found it difficult to work. Ernest offered her a position in his impresario business, a job which would have propelled her into the international music world. She refused. I have never forgiven her that decision. However, Ernest remained her doting friend to these days. She acts as his consort at concerts and dinners with the LA music elite. In the years to come she took up flying, became a pilot, then an instructor, and finally a copilot of a private two-engine Lear Jet - which she still is and loves with all her heart and mind. - For a two summers she was in love with Cornelius But they fought so much and bitterly, that this liaison came to an end in 1998.

From February to March Irmchen Gernand stayed with us. We took her with us skiing in Mamoth, a wonderful time for me.

That Spring I began writing "Snowdancer", a fictitious, semi-biographical Tibetan love story. Barbara read the chapters as they came from the computer - and Irmchen also struggled through some of it - and was shocked. Later Helga visited us for a few days and also read the the draft. She was outraged - everyone saw, not so surprising, Carolyn in Asya, the heroine of the tale.... They succeded completely to paralyze my writing efforts.

At this juncture Carolyn gave us tickets for a Salonen concert with Midori playing Shostakovich's First Violin Concert. All through the performance I saw Asya and Richard - her male counterpart - snowbound in a cave in the Himalayas, living through Illa von Joeden's, Carolyn's mother, experiences on their winter flight from the Soviet Armies in 1944-45. I have never before or again had such a powerful and vivid experience provoked by a piece of music. For a couple of years I would search for a CD of Midori's performance. I bought several interpretations of this concert until I found a Russian disc with Leonid Kogan, who quite obviously had been Midori's model. This turned my writing on again - for a while. Eventually I abandoned Asya, the Snowdancer unfinished and began writing Konrad and Alexandra, which would occupy me day and night for the next four years.

October 10 - 15, Christine Hogan's first and only visit.

Snowdancer did have one unexpected effect, it brought me and us a visit by my sister Christine, the first and only visit in our house ever! She had been intruiged by my description of some "flying" experience and by the explicit sex scenes - which, of course, she misunderstood like everyone else as her poor brother's attempts at pornography. - There was some truth to that. Illa had once challanged me in a discussion to write a graphic piece..... -

She announced that she needed to see me urgently. Barbara was on tour, and I had my sister to myself for three days. A very lively time. We taslked about dreams and our childhood, and I discovered that she had at least as detailed and vivid memories of Habelschwerdt and the years thereafter than I - mostly unhappy ones.

.

.

..

..... temperamentfully pointing her finger at her Big Brother..... I wouldn't tell you what she said.

.

Christine, Bud Glikbarg, Peter, Rolf and Hanka Malkiewicz. Dinner at our house after Barbara came back.

.

Christine at the Huntington Gardens, where Barbara took her to..

For Christmas my dear sister sent me a book "Eat me" a true pornographic novel by some lady from New York.... I complained, but to no avail, she refused or couldn't see that Asya and Richard's adventures were supposed to describe Buddhist experiences.... Hanka Malkiewicz even called me an immoral lecher, because Richard makes a tulku with an 18-year-old Tibetan yakherderess. Fritz Rimpoche, the tulku, would later marry Leah, Asya's daughter - but that third book of the Snowdancer had not been written yet. Only Cornelius and Barbara knew of the fantastic sequels to the original Snowdancer. You may read Asya the Snowdancer, provided you don't pass it on to someone else without telling me.

In June my goddaughter Sarah Brace got married to beautiful Stokeley, the unstable scion of a blue-blooded Boston banker's family. The wedding took place at a fabulous estate on one of the San Juan Islands north of Seattle. I flew there and found myself holding the hand of her irate mother and her MIT-professorial father, who were treated like lousy rabble. Sarah, however, had squeezed a package of securities out of Stokeley's family - her husband had and would never have any gainful occupation. She must truly love him, they now have 2 children....

Somewhere at the end of May Barbara visited the aging Marga in Tübingen. I stayed behind writing Konrad and Alexandra.

There were, as always, many visitors not all of whom left traces on film. One was our old friend Gia Tarkhan-Mouravi from Tbilisi who unexpectedly appeared in Pasadena at the same time Suschen was with us for a few days.

Rolf, Susanne, Barbara, Anneliese Grohs, and Gia Tarkhan-Mouravi in our driveway.

.

Susanne and Carolyn at lunch that day.

.

Greece again with the Mays in September and October.

On September 10 we met with Uli and Margit in Athens and took them to Santorini and Naxos. As Margit said with a shudder "two raging bulls under one roof", it became a very difficult time together.

Uli, Barbara, Margit and Rolf on the roof of our pensione in Naxos. I had fallen in the rocks on the way to Photodoti and had a deep gash along my left leg. It healed by itself.

..

.

Barbara on the Paros east coast across from Naxos.

.

Barbara and Margit - asleep again - at the moni of the Heavenly Twins, and Barbara with her Tibetan hat overlooking Paroikia. After Margit had flown back home, we took the Psyloritis once more to Amorgos.

.

Christmas 1996

For the first time Jenny flew by herself to California

Jenny the American Beauty - including the flower petals - in my red bathtub. Barbara thinks this was a year earlier or later? But I cannot find that visit in the chaotic calenders. J's hair is shorter than on the next picture (1996), and she looks younger. I kept this colorful picture.

.

 Cornelius arrived too and spoiled his nice.

.

Peter came too to see his cousin. Breakfast with Peter and Cornelius