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Rolf's Collection of Pictures and Stories from 50 Years Why so many pictures? |
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Some time in 2002 Cornelius asked Barbara and me for detailed information on his and our life before the time that he has a concrete memory of. We were hard pressed by his demand on details and his suspicion that our stories were over-dramatized or lopsided. How to arrive at a simple "objective" narrative record of our life, which has always appeared, like his and Anne-Celcile's life now, as wild and crazy to other people? I decided that pictures might reveal the hidden truth better than words and began to search through hundreds of loose photographs stored in several shoe boxes and scattered over dozens of albums, which Barbara had collected. The computer offered a good way of digitizing, restoring, and arranging them. This was the beginning of my Family Diary on this website — a tremendous work of dating, ordering, and annotating, which often could only be resolved with Barbara's help or on spurious little details. Not every date in the diary is firm, and it is unfinished — our and their lives are continuing at a rapid pace. Where to stop? As it happened, the sheer size of the undertaking became unmanagable when I began to reconstruct the many travels my brother Gerhard and I, and later Barbara and I undertook (see the year-by-year list of our travels!). There exists such a wealth of beautiful photographs from these trips that they burst my simple diary format, which led to separate picture pages for each of our Travels.. A third entirely separate section, Barbara's Virtual Museum is an outcrop of my preparations for two trips, our Museum-trip to Holland, Belgium, and Berlin in 2001 and the Tuscany-Umbria trip in 2002. On neither did I carry my heavy Canon camera, we only took pictures with Barbara's simple camera, but I had collected a large number of internet and art-book images of the paintings and frescoes we would be facing. The large Hieronymus Bosch site documents my extensive research, partially original, into this painter's oeuvre in 2001-2003 as a preparation for the Bosch exhibition in Rotterdam. This was such a visual success, that I began a search for pictures of modern painters, which Barbara could use for her preparation in her docent work at the Weisman Museum. Unfortunately VARS, the legal watchdog for the rights of artists, brought an early end to this work, when they threatened to prosecute any internet publication of modern artists they represent. Soon most pictures of modern art vanished from the internet. I include three collections in Barbara's Museum, which I had begun before this sad event. The Kandinsky collection, augmented by many rare reproductions of paintings in the museums of the former USSR, is exceptionally beautiful and instructive. Please respect my request not to distribute these pictures. The final chapter texts contains a number of descriptions and other writings which are referred to in the picture-book chapters. They can also be accessed separately. The majority of the original photos were taken with a succession of Canon cameras on Kodachrome 64 slide-film. Some were on Kodak 200 ASA negative-film with its disastrous grain and poor color rendition, often further spoiled by the photo labs which developed them. A new (2002) digital Canon G3 has improved definition and color and greatly reduced the computer work. The best pictures — based purely on photographic criteria — numbered several hundreds. To appreciate their beauty they needed to be large and flawless, which the old slides no longer are. To be able to copose a narrative connecting them, I had to add many lesser photographs — which required the same attention and, because of their lower photographic quality, often more work. They had to be cleaned of dirt and scratches, their white balance had to be restored, and occasionally they had to be sharpened and lightened. Slowly I learned the art of computer restoration, and they now shine brighter and more beautiful than the originals... The images are arranged like a website: you can roll the pages down on your monitor without using a separate "slide-show” program. In the latest additions I compressed the images in order that they can be looked at with a slower machine and a smaller memory. Because of this compression, the pictures will not print well. Should you want any of them on photo paper, send me an e-mail. What you now see here could never be published as a regular coffee-table book, its size and cost would be prohibitive. I finally put all of them on a closed, private website for the few of our closest friends, who asked to see them. Enjoy this "Bilderbuch"— picture-book, it produces colorful dreams! When I am depressed I look at these images, they never fail to rescue me. Your Rolf Pacific Palisades, Christmas 2003/2011 |
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Partial List of our Travel
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1947 |
Aug |
Rolf |
Gelnhausen |
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1949 |
Aug |
Rolf + Helmut Barth + Hermann |
South-Germany on foot |
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1950 |
Aug |
Rolf + Brigitte |
South-Germany + Wiesbaden, bicycle |
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1951 |
Aug-Sept |
Rolf |
South-German Baroque churches, bicycle |
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1952 |
Aug-Oct |
Rolf+ Gerhard |
Switzerland, Italy on bicycles |
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1953 |
Aug-Oct |
Rolf+ Gerhard |
Greece + Italy, auto stop and on foot |
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1954 |
Aug-Oct |
Rolf + Gerhard |
Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia, auto stop, bus, boat, train |
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1955 |
Mar-April |
Rolf + Art Kuckens |
Paris, Southern-France |
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1955 |
Oct |
Rolf+Manorial |
Paris, autostop |
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1956 |
July |
Rolf+ Barbara |
Paris, autostop |
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1960 |
July-Oct |
Barbara + Susanne |
Germany |
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1965 |
Easter |
Rolf + Susanne |
Gelnhausen |
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1966 |
June |
Rolf + Barbara |
Mexico, by car from LA |
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1967 |
June? |
Rolf |
Freiburg + München (conference) |
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1967 |
Aug-Sept |
Rolf + Barbara+ Susanne+Cornelius |
Dordogne + Germany |
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1969 |
Sept |
Rolf |
Moscow (symposium) |
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1971 |
Aug |
Rolf + Barbara |
Greek Islands |
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1971-72 |
Aug-Dec |
Rolf+Barbara+Susanne+Cornelius |
München Max-Planck-Inst, Germany, Paris |
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1972 |
Dec |
Rolf |
Moscow |
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1974 |
Apr-May |
Rolf + Barbara |
Florenz, Tuscany, Germany |
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1976 |
May |
Rolf |
Moscow + Tbilisi (conference) |
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1976 |
June-July |
Rolf + Barbara |
Greece, Germany |
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1977 |
May-July |
Rolf |
Moscow, Tbilisi, Tashkent, Samarkand, Kiev, Minsk, Leningrad (Acad.Exchange) |
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1977 |
July-Aug |
Barb.+Heike+Susanne+Cornelius |
West-America+Canada, 6 weeks camping trip |
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1978 |
Nov-Dec |
Barbara |
Germany |
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1979 |
Aug-Sept |
Rolf |
München, Athos, |
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1980 |
Sep-Nov |
Rolf+Barbara+Cornelius |
Tbilisi, Georgia, Yervan, Kiev, Moscow (teaching at Tbilisi GU) |
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1981 |
Mar |
Barbara |
Germany |
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1982 |
Aug-Sept |
Rolf + Barbara |
Greece, Germany |
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1983 |
Sep-Nov |
Rolf |
China, Hong Kong, Narita |
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1984 |
May-Jun |
Rolf |
Moscow, Novosibirsk, Tbilisi - London to meet Barbara |
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1984 |
May-Jun |
Barbara |
Germany - London |
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1985 |
Aug-Sep |
Rolf+Barbara+ Cornelius |
Greek Islands |
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1985-86 |
Sep-July |
Cornelius + Marc, later Rolf |
Germany - India, Nepal - Ladakh (Cornelius + Rolf) |
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1986 |
June-July |
Rolf + Cornelius |
Nepal, Ladakh, Bangkok, Hong Kong |
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1987 |
Oct-Nov |
Rolf + Barbara |
Hong Kong, China |
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1988 |
May-July |
Rolf + Barbara |
Florence, Tuscany, Germany |
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1988 |
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Cornelius + Marc |
Pakistan, Tibet, China, Hong Kong |
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1989 |
Jan-Mar |
Rolf + Barbara |
Hong Kong, Ladakh, North India, Thailand |
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1989 |
May-June |
Rolf+Cornelius |
Moscow, Tbilisi, Tashkent, Samarkand |
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1990 |
Mar-May |
Rolf + Barbara |
Germany, Berlin, East-Turkey (Anatolia) |
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1991 |
Aug-Oct |
Rolf + Barbara |
Wien, Graz, Germany, Greece, |
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1993 |
February |
Barbara+Susanne+Jenny+Kelly |
Hamburg, Essen, Germany |
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1993 |
Sep-Oct |
Rolf + Barbara |
Southern France by car |
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1994 |
Jan-May |
Rolf + Barbara |
München, Germany, Austria, Rome (Easter), Greece |
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1994 |
May-June |
Rolf + Irmgard Hammer |
Silesia, Prag, Habelschwerdt, Breslau by car |
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1995 |
Jun-July |
Rolf + Irmgard Hammer |
East Prussia, Pommerania, Poland, Berlin, by car |
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1995 |
Sep-Oct |
R+B+Cor+Peter+Marc+Monique+ |
Nepal, West-Tibet (Lhasa - Kailas) |
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1996 |
May-Jun |
Barbara |
Germany |
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1996 |
Sep-Oct |
Rolf+Barbara+Uli+Margit May |
Greek Islands |
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1997 |
Mar-Apr |
Barbara |
Germany |
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1997 |
Oct-Nov |
Rolf+Barbara |
Madrid, Andalucia |
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1998 |
Oct |
Rolf+Barbara |
Paris |
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1999 |
Feb |
Rolf |
Black Forest (Irmgard Hammer's Geburtstag), Muenchen |
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1999 |
June |
Barbara |
Germany (Familientag) |
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1999 |
Nov-Dec |
Rolf+Barbara |
Kathmandu + B. trekking (Kurt's Thanksgiving) |
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2000 |
Aug |
B+R+Cor+Anne-Cecile+ Woods |
Florida, Family reunion, Cornelius+AC's wedding |
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2000 |
Sep-Oct |
Barbara |
Germany |
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2000 |
Sep-Oct |
Rolf |
Tbilisi with Books, broken hip |
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2001 |
Feb-Mar |
Barbara |
New Zealand (with Helga) |
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2001 |
June |
Rolf |
New York (at Cornelius' and AC's) - Atlanta |
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2001 |
Sep-Oct |
Rolf + Barbara |
Holland (with Marc&Monique), Belgium, Berlin Museum Tour |
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2001 |
Sep-Oct |
Cornelius + Anne-Cecile |
Tibet, Lhasa, Mt. Bönri, Crab Lake |
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2001-02 |
Christmas |
Rolf + Barbara |
Arizona, New Mexico, Grand Canyon |
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2002 |
May |
R+Cor+Sus+Kelly+Marc&Monique |
Baroque Tour (München-Innsbruck-Tübingen) |
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2002 |
Jun-Jul |
Rolf+Barbara |
München,Gelnhausen, Tuscany, Spiez - Tübingen |
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2003 |
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Barbara |
Atlanta |
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2003 |
Sep-Nov |
Rolf + Barbara |
Monterotondo, Sicily- R.: München –B. Ivrea, Tübingen, Badenweiler (Marga) |
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2003-04 |
Christmas |
Rolf + Barbara |
San Francisco, Berkeley, Napa, San Jose |
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2004 |
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Rolf+Barbara |
Greece |
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2005 |
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Rolf + Barbara |
Atlanta Reunion |
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2005 |
Sep-Nov |
Rolf + Barbara |
Rome+Greece, last visit to Greece |
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2006 |
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Barbara |
Karlsbad |
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2006/07 |
Christmas |
Rolf + Babara |
München |
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2008 |
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Rolf, Cornelius+Ulysse |
Sacro, Berlin |