Dear Marion,

Thank you for your prompt reply.
I often heard my father say: Landgraf, werde hart! and never
gave it much thought, until your report that my father's
fascination with this epigram dates from his adolescence
when he chose it as a motto tacked onto the wall over his bed.
Here's what I glean from "google.de":

Landgraf, werde hart!  	  

Dieses Sprichwort geht zurück auf eine Sage von Johannes Rothe.

Er berichtet vom Landgraf Ludwig von Thüringen (1140 - 72),
der anfänglich so milde geherrscht haben soll,
dass die Mächtigen im Lande übermütig wurden
und das Volk ausbeuteten und quälten.
Während eines Jagdausfluges verirrte sich der Landgraf
und findet bei einem Schmied im Thüringer Wald Unterkunft.
Der Schmied, der ihn nicht erkannte, habe,
während er nachts auf seinen Amboss schlug,
auf die Lässigkeit des Grafen geflucht: "Nun werde hart".

Aufgrund dieses Erlebnisses soll der Landgraf
alsbald für Zucht und Ordnung im Lande gesorgt haben.

Die heutige Form des Sprichwortes "Landgraf, werde hart!"
stammt aus Wilhelm Gerhards (1780 - 1858) Gedicht "Der Edelacker".

Die Aufforderung "Landgraf, werde hart!"
gilt als Ermahnung an einen allzu milden Vorgesetzten
oder an eine Regierung, strenger gegen Unrecht und Missstände vorzugehen.

(I can't find Wilhelm Gerhards poem on the web.)
Please let me know if you need help with the German.
I'm not ready to conclude what "Landgraf, werde hart!" meant to
my father.  From my his accounts I infer that our grandfather had,
to put it mildly, an imperious streak, and Heinz, who in adulthood
was pliant and mild, may have appealed to the motto to make him
as tough as his father Joe. Joe's real name was "Joel", and I
have suspected that he dropped the "l" because he fancied himself
as an English businessman rather than a Biblical prophet.
That's pure speculation. I have no evidence. 

Heinz never gave me any indication that he was considered, or
considered himself a rebellious adolescent. The only disagreement
with Joe(l) that Heinz ever reported, was Joe(l) disapproval of
Heinz' interest in music, painting and literature: these were
spurned by Joe(l) as being economically unproductive. Joe(l) disparaged
art as "Brotlose Kuenste." Heinz felt that in this regard at least,
his father did not understand him.

I infer that politically Joe(l) was far to the left. He accused a
relative - it may have been Tante Toni's husband - of being a war
profiteer and enriching himself "mit dem Blut unserer Soehne."
You are probably familiar with the account of how, when summoned
to an audience with the Herzog von Detmold, and told to wear a tuxedo,
he informed the Chamberlain, "Ja, wenn Seine Excellenz meinen Frack
sehen moechten, das ist leicht zu bewerkstelligen. Den kann ich ihm
per Post zur Ansicht schicken." (If his excellency wishes to see my
tuxedo, I can forward that by mail.) Joe(l) was also fiercely
anti-clerical, and in the aftermath of the Holocaust, I am embarrassed
to report that Heinz quoted him as lamenting that there were not enough
lampposts to dispose of all the rabbis. It's difficult for me to imagine
what a Seder or what Yom Kippur at Detmolder Strasse 1 in Oerlinghausen
might have been like, and more difficult even to visualize our
grandfather sitting through a lengthy ceremony in the quaint
Oerlinghausen synagogue. I am his grandson.

In the perspective of politics and religion, the ambience in which
my mother grew up in her grandparents' household at Kastanienallee 23
in Braunschweig was not too different from my father's youth in
Oerlinghausen. My mother's grandfather, August Doering (no relation
to Jakob Doehring of my novel "Die Andere") was a Social Democrat
who pulled down the shades to avoid seeing Kaiser Wilhelm parade
down the Kastanienallee, and who was in such disrepute in his church
that Pastor Eisenberg found it necessary to temper his funeral sermon
with allusions to the godlessness of the deceased.

Joe(l) Meyer embraced his gentile daughter-in-law, Marga Roessner,
with open arms. He admired her intelligence and charm. Not only did
he forgive her membership in the Evangelisch-Reformierte Kirche:
more to the point, he forgave her discipleship of Wilhelm Furtwaengler,
Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Bang and Knut Hamsun. Joe(l) was anything
but a bigot, and Elfriede, who had spent her life subservient to him
acquiesced in his feelings, and in consideration of her tolerance
was represented by her daughter-in-law as a quasi-saint, -
a characterization which I began to challenge only a few years ago,
when it occurred to me to ask why, while my parents were on vacation,
she let me scream for a month, when I was one year of age.

It's 12:30 a.m. and time to quit. I've been writing all day and
half the night: Wer soll denn das alles lesen? You'll get more
mail from me. Be forwarned.

Jochen