Dear Marion,

Our letters appear to have crossed in the e-mail, and I write
again to thank you for your attention to my web-site
and particularly for your thoughtful and sensitive reading
of the Konnarock High School story. I had never noticed
the diffracted voice of the story-teller. The comparison
to a Picasso portrait gives me something to think about
and to learn from. My own reaction is to compare the essay
to a musical composition, with different movements, with
different instruments, melodies and rhythms appropriate to
the experiences to be conveyed.

Your surmise that in the summer of 1939, my parents had
financial worries is correct. All the family's liquid assets
except for $435 were confiscated, and that small sum, although
worth much more then than now, was still far from sufficient
for a family of four. The German refugee community in NYC
was saturated with German physicians, and the obstacles to
starting a medical practice in a non-German speaking community
were substantial. Then as now, there was much competition among
physicians in the cities, while rural communities were desperate
for doctors without, in many instances, being able to support them. 

Our relocation to Konnarock came about when my mother applied
to a Lutheran social agency looking for a job as a domestic employee.
She was told that although there were no job offerings for her,
the Board of American Missions was looking for a physician 
willing to relocate in Konnarock. At the time it seemed to my
parents to be the best, - perhaps the only opportunity. The 
thought of missionary work had not been uncongenial to my father,
even in Germany.  He admired Albert Schweitzer's missionary work
in Equatorial Africa, Schweitzer's philosophical treatise "Kultur
und Ethik", and Schweitzer's literary interpretation of J.S. Bach.
Even in Germany, my father had toyed with the notion of possibly
emigrating to do missionary work in the Philippines, under what
auspices, I have no idea. My father never had any interest in
evangelical missionary work. He was concerned with medicine as
a humanitarian effort, much in the spirit of the contemporary
"Physicians without Borders". For him practicing medicine was
a an effort to help human beings. It was my mother who was the
business manager.  On going to Konnarock he accepted a stipend
of $50 per month.  In 1941, this was raised to $150. There was
an understanding that the Board of American Missions would defray
all of his practice expenses, and that he should be permitted to
keep for himself any modest fees that he managed to collect from
the impoverished population. However, within months, my mother
had seen to it that he was able to defray all the costs of his work.
What happened thereafter must be the subject of another letter,
or of a formal history, or of a novel.

As you can infer, my parents were far more resistant to
Americanization than were Margot and Fritz, not even to
mention George; and I, most resistant of all, witness the
circumstance that even after seventy years during which I
made only three brief return visits to Germany, I prefer
to write in German. Both of my novels are descriptions of
culturally displaced persons. If I lived long enough, I would
write about characters that have not crossed the Atlantic;
but I won't have time.

The inscription cited in the High School story:
     WIR HABEN UNSER EIGENES FUERSTENHAUS
was related to Klemens by my father as a sentiment
of our grandfather's.

Now you know how you came to be a princess.

Jochen