Dear Marion,

As I read over your penultimate letter, I'm reminded that I 
haven't answered it; I haven't done justice to your many
questions. Instead I've been exhuming memories. I sent you
the URL. You can read what I dug up, but I don't know why
it should be worth your while, and I will certainly not be
offended if it isn't.

"Etwas Besonderes" is generic hybris, applicable to various
characteristics of our clan, to my father's Jewishness, to my
mother's personality, to my own literary pretensions, to my
sister's outsized collection of friends.  You shouldn't be
asking about what's special (besonderes) about us; you should
be trumpeting what's special about yourself.

Helmut's concern about our being "zugegen" - present at the
Stolperstein ceremony is his concerns for my emotional stability,
although I haven't shown him the evidence that I am vulnerable.
I suppose he reads - or thinks he can read between the lines.
(You should start using the German Internet dictionaries.
Leo in Muenchen is very useful; there's also the huge Grimm's
Woerterbuch now on line from Trier. And simply googling a
word on www.google.de will provide you with many leads.)

It's paradoxical, of course, that my father, having just escaped
Buchenwald, should feel homesick at the sight of New York harbor
and the Statue of Liberty. - It may even be a bit perverse, -
but Helmut interprets and justifies it as homesickness for a
perfect, idealized Platonic Germany, - which of course never
existed.

With respect to myself, Helmut admires my German literary style,
he is diffident and apologetic about his own adaptation to 
contemporary stylistic insensitivity. He also feels guilty
about having so decisively rejected my novel Die Andere.
He interprets my remoteness from current German and American
culture as alienation consequent to the exile. I'm too busy
writing to think about that sort of thing.

So far as my father's theology and philosophy are concerned,
beyond what I have put in the URL which I sent you, I feel
I must spend time with his letters, and some essays, to
be able to put together a conscientious synopsis. As for
music, it was J. S. Bach and then again J. S. Bach, and
trailing somewhere behind, Haendel, Beethoven Mozart and
Schubert. As for art, he worshiped Rembrandt and curiously
also Auguste Rodin. What has impressed me about my father's
"philosophy" in the past day or two as I've been thinking
about it, - is that what I learned from him was not the
content or conclusion of his thought, but the passion,
the need, the indispensability of thought as a component
of daily life. That I consider a very substantial and a
very rare achievement, which gave me my start.

It's bed time, and I'm going to say, Good Night.
Jochen