Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter, which I answer by return-mail (postwendend)
because, as I've confessed before, I write in real time, - that's
computerese for typing out what's on my mind when it's there, and not
shelving it in my cerebral cortex for later retrieval and transmission.

As an ex-talkshow hostess you're at your best when you ask:

"I'm curious to grasp, at least in the most general way,
what you think disturbed Helmut about your writing.
Cultural anachronism?  Formality?  What?" 

You ask, in fact, two questions: 1) What characteristic of my writing
caused Helmut to deem my writing unsuitable for publication, and
2) What characteristic of Helmut caused Helmut to deem my writing
unsuitable for publication. 

1) The most immediate and obvious answer to the first question might be
the hypothesis that my writing is indeed no good. The difficulty with
this answer becomes immediately apparent from Helmut's comment to me,
at our first post-war encounter, that most of what was being published
in Germany was junk.  That insight is valuable because it reveals the
question of "literary value" to be a false issue, and leads to a more
cogent inquiry: Why should my junk be less publishable than other
writers' junk. That question has an answer which seems to me almost
self-evident.  Since some junk is published, and other junk is not
published, there must be some difference between other authors'
publishable junk and mine which is deemed non-publishable. Maybe
more than one difference. The most obvious and inescapable is the
Rip van Winkle effect: the metamorphosis of the language while I
was so to speak asleep or remote from the stream of events. Arguably
the German I write is the language spoken and read by sensitive and
intelligent persons in 1925, the year of Rilke's death, five years
before I was born. Eight-five years later in 2010, German has
undergone a sea-change, from which I have been insulated, both by
accident and by design.  Living abroad, I learned German selectively
from the books I read rather than from the living language that was
spoken in my environment; and since the language was the only facet
of the past that remained with us, my parents and I were especially
careful not to permit its amalgamation with the English of our day-to-day
existence. Where the criteria of publication are matters of fashion,
where authors compete against each other for the attention of publishers
and the public, and where publishers are on the economic defensive,
if only on account of Internet publication, it's not surprising to me
that the publisher's instinct in Helmut felt it couldn't take a chance.

2) The circumstance that Helmut felt he shouldn't take a chance endorsing
my writing may be interpreted in the light of his own very difficult
life. His parents were anything but Nazis, but they were far from
being "liberal". Helmut's father was militantly anti-communist and
initially interpreted and rejected Nazi fascism as a form of Communism.
My mother quoted Pastor Frielinghaus as saying with reference to the
swastika: Vergessen Sie nicht, die Fahne die weht ist rot. (Don't
forget it's a red flag that is waving.) Helmut's father was anti-Nazi,
but so far as Helmut was concerned, not sufficiently so. Helmut told
me at our first post-war meeting, of his feeling of shame, because
among his schoolmates whose fathers were Protestant clerics, his own
father was the only one not in a concentration camp.
A pathetic and tragic echo of Pastor Frielinghaus' anti-Nazi and
anti-communism stance is the suicide at age 18, of his eldest son (and
namesake) Eberhard. Children like Helmut and Eberhard whose parents
were anti-Nazi found themselves under excruciating pressure, being
expected to betray their parents as traitors to the authorities.
In his letter to Renate Haertle, Helmut characterized Eberhard's
actions as "Dummheit" (folly). What Pastor Frielinghaus wrote to my
father after the war's end, was that Eberhard who had been conscripted
into a juvenile anti-aircraft unit, made a fictitious denunciation,
I suppose some of his comrades, as Communist conspirators, I infer as
a naive and perhaps desperate attempt at self-preservation, and when
his fraud was discovered, shot himself to death with his service pistol.
After that, Helmut lived through the destruction of Germany, most
immediately of Braunschweig; he described in a letter to Renate
Haertle the exhilaration felt by him and his family, when the American
troops arrived. Helmut's life after the war was not easy. I think it
was Margrit who told me that his parents did not have the funds to
send him to the university. For five years he worked in a German 
bookstore in Spain. He returned to Germany and became an editor,
hoping himself to become a publisher. He married and had two
children, Stephan, who followed in his grandfather's footsteps
and became a prominent Protestant minister in Berlin, and Isabel
a successful business woman with two daughters, who, Helmut lamented,
were indifferent to him. Isabel is personnel manager for a large
German company, - I've forgotten which one. She supports the family;
her husband stays home, does the housework, and takes care of the
children. Helmut and his wife divorced. He told me no details, but said
ruefully: Perhaps if I had tried a little harder, I could have made it
work. About his professional activities, Helmut told me only that
he was jettisoned, and felt betrayed by a large publishing house, -
again I've forgotten the name, - where he worked for many years.  He
seems not to have been especially close to his older brother Dieter
more so to his younger sister Heidi. Dieter, a year older than I,
was of the three brothers, my principal playmate. I remember vividly
Margrit, Eberhard, Dieter and myself on lengthy bicycle excursions to
Riddagshausen on the periphery of Braunschweig. Helmut complained
that he was deemed too little to be permitted to come along. Dieter
is an accomplished musician who aspired to become a concert pianist.
Instead he turned into a socialist Protestant theologian whose ideology
persuaded him to move to the Soviet zone of divided Germany, where
he became active in public affairs, and, if de.wikipedia is to be
trusted, a collaborator of the Staatssicherheitsdienst, a circumstance
which Helmut did not disclose to me and which I learned only after
Helmut's death.  Of the two younger sisters, Heidi was only three
years old when we emigrated. Gisela must have been born after we left.
Both Heidi and Gisela were friends of Margrit. Heidi became a
pediatrician in a less affluent section of Berlin, and since her
retirement has been active in social issues. Gisela was a graphic
artist, whom Helmut described as "verrueckt" (crazy) like Margrit.
Gisela committed suicide under circumstances of which I am ignorant.
When we cleared Margrit's Detroit apartment, we found some of Gisela's
work, frames and unframed.  I'm storing it in our large upstairs bedroom.

One of the most revealing documents with which Helmut provided me
is his letter of February 11, 2010 to Renate Haertle in support of
the stumblingstone project. This letter was prospectively designated
to have two parts, the firsts, which was sent, described our childhood
experiences in Germany; but the second, which would have described our
postwar encounters and would have had to include an account of Helmut's
rejection of my writing, was never written, Helmut told me because he
felt unappreciated by Frau Haertle, but I think perhaps also because
the explanation would have been too painful.

Over the years, Helmut and I had recurring discussions, each of us
claiming for himself the life that was less difficult. Some months
ago I pointed out to Helmut the paradox that I needed to return to a
culture from which I was banished, while he needed to escape to William
Faulkner, Raymond Carver, John Updike et al. from the world in which
he grew up. This need was corroborated by his wish that he often
expressed to me, to emigrate permanently to New York City, if only he
could affort it.  My analysis startled him, but I think he agreed.
If I understand us correctly, his alienation was far more profound than
mine. He felt very vulnerable. He trusted no one. When I described to
him personalities whom I had newly encountered, such as Cenar Centinkaya,
the German-Turkish physician who grew up in the house where I was born,
Hildebrandt Strasse 44, Helmut commented: "Ich wuerde ihm nicht trauen."
(I wouldn't trust him.)  Of Tony Esposito, the Massachusetts Registered
Engineer whom I hired to review my Nantucket plumbing installation,
Helmut said the same: "Ich wuerde ihm nicht trauen." (I wouldn't trust
him.) More and more, I contemplate Helmut as a tragic figure to whom
Goethe's benediction of Schiller: Seine durchgewachten Naechte haben
unsern Tag erhellt.  (His sleepless nights have brightened our day.)
is eminently applicable.  

Helmut's rejection of my writing corroborates a thesis which I
first enunciated about twenty-two years ago in Chapter 1. of
Die Andere. There I describe Jakob Doehring's epiphany as follows:

"Now, in his 61st year life had led him to a conclusion altogether
different from the goal he had set himself in his youth. At that
time the world of intellect had beckoned him as his proper home.
Music, mathematics, philosophy and above all literature as the
record of all possible human thoughts and feelings had promised
him redemption from the day's afflictions. He had invested his
whole life, his best efforts, the acuity of his intellect and the
force of his will to fashion for himself a refuge in the world of
the spirit. Now he recognized that inspite of, or worse, on account
of all his efforts he had come short of his original goal. He felt
like a nomad in the desert, with his energies exhausted, whose
final accomplishment was the recognition that the vision he had
pursued was nothing more than a mirage. For Doehring this concluding
insight was the conviction that the works of literature to which
he had devoted his life did not after all possess the unconditional
value which he had thought. Presumably they had been handed down
on account of their excellence. If one looked more closely, however,
one could not deny that their selection had been the result of an
accident, or what amounted to the same, of an arbitrary decision.
At this juncture he could explain the value that he had ascribed to
them as the projection of his self-esteem and the assertion of his
own will."

"To his amazement, almost to his horror, he found himself now, having
immersed himself for years in textual material of various sorts,
overwhelmed by the conclusion that the conception of propositions
as demonstrable facts, that the critical interpretation of literature
as history that he had been taught and that he was teaching was a
mistake which would never suffice for the conclusive interpretation
of even a single text, not to mention for the definitive explanation
of an entire literary tradition, and that conventional assumptions
would inevitably lead to just such disappointment as he himself
experienced each time he walked past the endless expanse of bookshelves
on his way to his study."

"His insight into the inadequacy of his professional efforts
had led him in recent weeks to a new understanding, to a presumptive
solution of the contradictions which plagued him, a solution which
caused his efforts to appear in an entirely new light. At the same
time he understood that this new perspective was so radically 
different from the usual presumptions in his field, that he had no
reason to expect on the part of his colleagues, as much as a minimum
of interest in his discovery, not even to mention their endorsement.
This new insight into his professional efforts and their deficiencies
was the purported recognition that the history of the spirit, of
literature, of art and of music, that this history was in the end
nothing more or less than political history. The history of the
spirit no less than the history of government was the chronicle
of the evolution of human events, a chronicle which mirrored
the contingencies, the happenstance by which the affairs of mankind
are settled. The history of the spirit was no more a chronicle
of the discovery of beauty and truth than was the history of 
government the fulfillment of divine providence. In political
science this sober understanding had asserted itself already
centuries ago. The history of the spirit, on the other hand, 
so it seemed to Doehring, remained shrouded in the fog of
unfounded idealism. The poets and the thinkers whose achievements
he peddled to his students were so far as the historical bases
of their efforts were concerned indistinguishable from the
emperors and kings who forced themselves on their subjects as the
representatives of God, notwithstanding that it was nothing but
obvious accident that had installed them in their positions
of power. A chain of conclusions, without his ever having
explicitly enumerated them, had led him to the conviction
that his passionate love of literature was incompatible with
its accidental tradition, and he admitted that with respect
to this love, he had deceived himself."

Here's the original German:
"Jetzt, in seinem einundsechzigsten Jahre, hatte das Leben
ihn zu einem Ziel gebracht; doch war es ein anderes als jenes,
welches er sich einst in seiner Jugend gesetzt.  Damals hatte ihm
die Welt des Geistes als seine eigentliche Heimat vorgeschwebt.
In der Musik, der Mathematik, der Philosophie, und vor allem in
der Literatur, als Niederschrift dessen, was ein Mensch zu
fuehlen und zu denken faehig war, hatte er die Erloesung von den
Bedraengissen der Gegenwart gesucht. Sein ganzes Leben, seine
besten Kraefte, die Schaerfe seiner Intelligenz und die Wucht
seines Willens, hatte er daran gesetzt sich in der Welt des
Geistes ein Zuhause zu schaffen. Nun erkannte er, dasz er trotz,
oder schlimmer noch, wegen all seiner Anstrengungen sein
urspruengliches Ziel verfehlt hatte. Er kam sich vor, wie ein
Wanderer in einer Wueste am Ende seiner Lebenskraefte, dessen
letzte Leistung in der Erkenntnis besteht, dasz es doch nur eine
Fata Morgana war, der er entgegengestrebt hatte. Fuer Doehring
bestand diese abschlieszende Einsicht in der Ueberzeugung, dasz
die literarischen Werke mit deren Studium er sein Leben
verbracht, doch keineswegs den unbedingten Wert, den er
vorausgesetzt hatte, besaszen. Vermeintlich waren sie ihrer
Vortrefflichkeiten wegen ueberliefert worden. Blickte man aber
naeher hin, so war nicht zu verkennen, dasz ihre Wahl durch den
reinen Zufall, oder was dasselbe ist, durch menschliche Willkuer,
bestimmt worden war. Er konnte sich jetzt den Wert den er ihnen
zugeschrieben hatte nur als die Veraeuszerung seines eigenen
Selbstbewusztseins und die Behauptung seines eigenen Willens
erklaeren."

"Zu seiner Verwunderung, fast zu seinem Schrecken, befand er
sich nun nach vielen Jahren der Vertiefung in Texte
verschiedenster Art von dem Beschlusz ueberwaeltigt, dasz die
Auffassung des Geschriebenen als geschichtliche Tatsache, dasz
die historisch-kritische Deutung der Literatur, wie er sie
gelernt hatte und wie er sie lehrte, ein Irrtum war, welcher
niemals zur entgueltigen Aufklaerung auch nur einiger einzigen
Schrift, geschweige denn einer literarischen Ueberlieferung
wuerde gereichen koennen, und das die gewohnte Methode
unvermeidlich zu jener Enttaeuschung fuehren muszte, die er
selbst empfand so oft er an den endlosen Buecherregalen auf dem
Wege in sein Studierzimmer vorueberschritt."

"Die jahrelang verdraengte Einsicht in die Unzulaenglichkeit
seiner beruflichen Bestrebungen hatte ihn in den juengst
vergangenen Wochen zu einem neuen Verstaendnis, zu einer
vermeintlichen Loesung der Widersprueche die ihn plagten
gefuehrt, welche seine Bemuehungen in einem voellig neuen Licht
erscheinen liesz.  Zugleich wuszte er, dasz diese neue
Anschauungsweise von den in seinem Fache ueblichen
Voraussetzungen so grundverschieden war, dasz er keinen Anlasz
hatte, fuer seine Entdeckung auch nur das geringste Interesse,
geschweige denn Verstaendnis, von Seiten seiner Kollegen zu
erwarten. Diese neue Einsicht in seine beruflichen Bemuehungen
und deren Maengel bestand in der vermeintlichen Erkenntnis, dasz
die Geschichte des Geistes, der Literatur, der Kunst, und der
Musik, dasz diese Geschichte letzthin nichts mehr oder weniger als
politische Geschichte war. Die Geschichte des Geistes, nicht
weniger als die Geschichte der Herrscher, war die Chronik des
Ablaufes menschlicher Taten, und diese Chronik spiegelte den
Zufall, das Geratewohl, durch welche sich der Menschen Sachen
regeln. Die Geschichte des Geistes bezeichnete so wenig die
Enthuellung des Schoenen und Wahren, wie die Geschichte der
Voelker und Staaten die Verwirklichung goettlicher Vorsehung
darstellte.  In der Wissenschaft vom Staat hatte sich diese
ernuechternde Erkenntnis schon vor Jahrhunderten durchgesetzt.
Indessen war die Geschichte des Geistes, so schien ihm, noch in
den Nebel eines unbegruendeten Idealismus eingehuellt geblieben.
Die Denker und Dichter deren Errungenschaften er seinen Studenten
anpries waren in der geschichtlichen Begruendung ihres Wirkens
ununterscheidbar von den Kaisern und Koenigen die sich ihren
Untertanen jeweils als die Vertreter Gottes aufdraengten, obwohl
sie nur durch offensichtlichen Zufall zu ihrer Machtstellung
gelangt waren. Eine Kette von Schluszfolgerungen hatte ihn, ohne
dasz er selbst sie je ausdruecklich aufgezaehlt haette, zu der
Ueberzeugung geleitet, dasz seine leidenschaftliche Liebe zur
Literatur mit der Zufaelligkeit ihrer Ueberlieferung, wenn nicht
ihrer Entstehung, unvereinbar sei, und er gestand, dasz er sich
in dieser Liebe betrogen hatte."

There's more. This first chapter of Die Andere I conceived of as
an overture to the novel which stated not the theme of this
particular book but which defined the nature of literature in
general. This chapter is also a parody of Faust in his study.
However whereas in Goethe's drama the student, Wagner, was a
pompous fool, in my book, the student, Jonathan Mengs is even
more insightful than his teacher.

Mengs appears in Doehring's study to ask his opinion about a
new theory to the effect that the Bible is prototypical not
only as theology, but also as hermeutics, in other words that
our understanding of the Bible as a holy text, as the Word
of God is prototypical for our understanding of any other, -
of all books. The sanctity of the Bible is not intrinsic to
the text but to the process of reading. The spirituality of
the Bible is a projection of the spirituality of the reader.
Mengs points out to Doehring that as the Bible makes sense
only when the reader believes it to be divinely inspired,
so any other book makes sense only to the extent that the
reader has faith in its truth. The meaning of a book is
contingent at least as much on the intention and understanding
of the reader as on the design of the author.

The next step in this scheme of hermeneutics which goes
beyond the argument of Die Andere, is to determine the means
and the mechanism by which the reader selects from a potentially
very large inventory, the particular volume in which to invest
his faith. This criterion of literary value cannot be presumed
to reside (solely) in the book itself. The criterion of literary
value must also be supplied by the (potential) reader and
projected onto the text. Precisely this, the selection of
the book, is the issue which should determine which book is
published and which is not.

In subsequent chapters of Die Freunde, I intend to present the
thesis that the selection of the text to be invested with the
reader's faith is a social and political event. This circumstance
is writ very large in the case of the Bible the sanctity of whose 
books has been proclaimed for millenia. The "sanctity" - read
timeliness, significance, importance of a "secular" book is 
determined by social forces. No one wants to read a book which
has no other readers. No one wants to read an unpublished book.
In general, one reads a book in order to become part of an 
intellectual community. The creation and maintenance of such a
community is the function of bestseller lists, of bookstore and
of library displays. It is true that reading a book is for the
reader a solitary enterprise; and precisely for that reason the
solitary reader requires a book that invites him to become part
of a literary community.

The acceptance of a book by the public, requires active, intelligent
and vigorous promotion. At least with respect to my writing, Helmut
was too much buffetted by the horrors of his past even to try. I'd
like to think, just as I could run for public office, if I were to
put my mind to it, so I could successfully promote a book, - any 
book - if I chose to do so. Whether that confidence is realistic
I don't know. Practically, it doen't matter, because I don't want 
to invest my time or energies in the effort. Instead I want to devote
myself to writing more books which are more cogent, more compelling
and more poetic. I want to leave behind a set of documents of the
highest possible quality; then leave it to my grandchildren to try
to secure the publication, if they care to, of what I have put
together. Conceivably there might even be some money in it for them.