June 30, 1994

Liebe Margrit,

In a recent telephone conversation, when you were at the Detroit airport, waiting for the weather to permit you to fly to Buffalo, you asked me not to open a certain letter because you wished to retract its contents.  At the time I acquiesced to that request, because I wished to shield you from regrets and to make you feel better.  But as your letters arrived, I could not tell which was the one to be censored.  Therefore I opened them all, and none of them seemed to me to require retraction or apology.  I am in fact very much interested in what you think and feel, about the world in general, and about me in particular.  Nothing that you have said or done requires an apology; Nothing requires to be retracted.

So far as my own letters are concerned, you should understand that they are all written with the awareness that they might some day come under official scrutiny regarding the propriety of our conduct.  Which is not to say that either you or I have done anything wrong which we must conceal.  I have a lawyer's view of official procedures; just as I have a physician's view of illness and injury.  I have reviewed uncounted cases of civil and criminal litigation, from 1956 to the present I have been involved in numerous legal proceedings, once as plaintiff, once as  defendant, several times as witness, and most frequently as a student trying to decipher the ancient riddle, "What is justice?" and trying to understand how our judicial system works.  Your statement "America is not Nazi-Germany" is, of course, true.  We are much more pious.  We do not gloat or philosophize about our brutality.  We have no concentration camps, and the Haitians and Chinese who drown because we deny them access to our shores do not count, nor do the tens of thousands of young black men in over-crowded jails who are systematically raped by their fellow inmates with the acquiescence of their jailers.  But certain of the characteristics of the judicial processes in the two societies are quite analogous.  What is most relevant to our case is the need of prosecutors to pressure family members to incriminate and to testify against each other.  In Germany, you remember, sisters were encouraged to report the seditious activity of their brothers.  Stephan Hermlin has written a beautiful account of their dilemma in his story "In einer dunklen Welt", and your conjecture that perhaps my anxiety over our legal problems, and your thoughtful offer to dismiss Mrs. Vansant if I thought her investigation would incriminate me is, at minimum, a glance in that direction.

From the moment of our inital telephone conversation on June 19, when you told me about your tax situation, I understood that you would be exonerated if you could show that I had neglected my duty as your trustee to provide you with the information you required to complete your returns, and that the gravity of your present embarrassment would be in some proportion to the diligence with which I had fulfilled that duty, and that if the United States Attorney decided to prosecute, he would almost surely try to persuade one of us to testify against the other; and offer immunity from prosecution to whoever of us could help him secure the longest prison term for the other.

We have often commented, in letters and especially in telephone conversations, how different we are from one another, and your correspondence with me is replete with references to your anger against me and Klemens.  Initially we assumed that this anger was a private matter between ourselves; but that this the rage, however violent, would never breach the ramparts of family loyalty.  I am prepared to preserve this assumption, although what you have recently said and done may have made it obsolete.

Your letters contain frequent references to the trust and confidence which your friends place in your judgment and in your sense of responsibility; and that your family are the only ones who do not trust you.  Klemens and Laura tell me that two or three years ago you staged a hearing in the Konnarock kitchen, with youself as prosecutor, Klemens defendant, and Rose Kirby the judge.  Your current project appears to dramatize the circumstance that, because we have expelled you from the home that you inherited, you are driven to rent a house in Troutdale, where, sandwiched between two arduous days of driving, you will spend four or five hot summer days with your two foster children.  The letter which I received last evening contains even more ambitious plans, in that, if I understand it correctly, your plan is to come to Southwest Virginia in August when we are in Konnarock, but not to stay in your parents' house, but rather in a B&B in Troutdale, as you refer to it, and to invite there not only your friends from Windsor but also your friends the Ludwigs joining you in a chorus to heap shame on your brother and his wife.  Like your mother, you are a talented stage manager, and the recommendation once given to her is apposite to you as well, "Fräulein, Sie sollten ans Theater gehn."

Like any work of art, your production has had diverse reviews from the critics.  Klemens was livid.  "Es macht mich rasend", he said, as if only the German language were powerful enough to express his emotion.  He will get over it; and will be grateful to you for having given him a chance to practice anger control which unfortunately he is likely to need in other situations.

Margaret had the thoughtful comment that your sojourn in Troutdale would advertise the vacancy of the house to potential burglars or vandals. I have no such concerns, since I don't credit Konnarock vandals with sufficient intelligence to understand what is going on.  Only Erik Erikson would have been able to figure that out; and he is dead.  She also surmises that your play will become the gossip of every grocery store in the valley. There again I differ; there are scandals far jucier to gossip about, and the local folks will be impressed not by my viciousness, which is not nearly up to their standards, but by your great affluence which permits you with Jaqueline Kennedy-like insouciance to give rein to your peeves and whims by renting another house where you already own one which is bigger than anyone elses.  Helmut Frielinghaus spoke with awe of your considerable wealth, which Heidi inferred from the style in which you visited her in Berlin.

My own reaction is different.  I am impressed how selectively sensitive or insensitive you are to what people think.  You show exquisite concern for how Jeane will feel or what Rose will think, or what Roald Kirby will think, or how your friends would react if they were told that they should stay in our house at their own risk and hold us harmless for any injury which might occur to their children while they are on our property.  At the same time, you seem intent to leave no word unsaid and no act undone which will hurt my feelings or Margaret's or Klemens' and you stage a rendezvous in rented quarters in Troutdale which unavoidably publicizes and dramatizes your alienation from your family.

I am relieved that the violence of your feelings about me has finally purified the air between us.  I feel like a gardener whose planting, my concern and love for you, had obviously not done very well, who had devoted much of his life to weeding and watering his garden, and awakens one morning to find his labors have been ploughed up.  He feels sad at his loss, but he also feels exhilarated at his new freedom from the back-breaking toil.  Whether anything will ever grow again, I dare not say, perhaps only weeds, or the emotional equivalent of poison ivy, but whatever grows will have to be nurtured and cultivated by someone else.