November 23, 1993

Liebe Margrit,

As you remember, you wrote to me last November, requesting regular disbursements of the earnings of your trust, a request with which I am complying once more by enclosing another check, this one in the amount of $-.-- In your letter at that time you repeated your offer to share in the expenses of maintaining the house in Konnarock.  In the light of that offer, I reviewed in my own mind how I feel about the house, how I feel about Papa and Mutti's property in general, how I feel about them, and by extension, how I feel about your property, - and you.  While most of the time it is probably best to pass over all of these matters in silence, there may also be some virtue in their explication, in the Socratic perspective of "knowing oneself." (Since everyone, by nature, knows himself even before making the deliberate effort, what Socrates must have meant is "Talk to yourself about yourself." And this injunction is valid enough inasmuch as in the process of conversation much may become apparent or obvious that would otherwise have been ignored.

I consider the separation anxieties of my childhood, of which you probably have the most vivid memory of any person other than myself, - remember how I spent the summer of 1936 howling on Juist, - to be the fact that has determined my relationship to Mutti and Papa, to you, to Margaret and to Klemens, all these years.  When one looks closely, one can also see how it has molded the nature of my medical practice.  As for that anxiety itself, it arose from an unsual sensitivity which created needs that Mutti could not meet, and certainly not Papa.  The dimensions of this anxiety are impossible to measure, even for me, but its consequence was an attempt to compensate for the security for which I longed by the re-creation, sometimes inadvertent, sometimes deliberate, of the relationships die mir als Ideale vorschwebten.  This is my explanation for my unwillingness, to separate myself from Mutti and Papa, and, to a lesser extent, from you, and my reluctance to let go first of Klemens, and now of his family.  mich von Mutti und Papa loszulassen, und das entsprechende Widerstreben erst Klemens, und nun seine Familie, fahren zu lassen.  I note parenthetically that you seem to have a compunction in the opposite direction, namely to break away, to separate yourself from your family, a need which, it seems to me, prevails almost always (invariably) without sufficient cause.

This prologue serves to explain not only the readiness with which I devote myself to the maintenance of the house and to the management of your assets, but in a more fundamental sense how I feel about them; and I might add, parenthetically, that Margaret shares these feelings.  We try to picture to ourselves from time to time how Mutti and Papas life would have evolved, and what would have been the status of their estate, if I had not involved myself in their affairs in the manner in which I did.

Quite objectively, I did four things for them:
1. I made a contract on their behalf with the Board which secured for them their house, and without which the house would demonstrably have been lost.  They would have had to rent, to buy, or to build another house.
2. I made a contract with the Board on their behalf which secured Papas practice for him.  It is probable but not certain, that they  would have stayed in Konnarock even without this contract.
3. For the last thirty years of their lives they made no important practical decisions without asking my advice; which they almost always followed.  One can only speculate, how they would have fared otherwise.
4. Without my involvement, it seems likely that Papa would have spent the last year, and Mutti would have spent the last four years of her life in a nursing home.  The care which they in fact received, if it had been available, would have cost at minimum $50,000 a year.