Making sure these photos and videos of Leo are saved in perpetuity

Leo is now 2 years, 3 months old. He is so much fun and just cuter than cute! I just need to make sure these photos and videos are saved forever, so here they are! 

Here’s Leo singing the ABCs at just about exactly two years old. 

I met Courtney Campbell many, many years ago when I worked at Disney and she entertained young children all around the world. Our kids were so lucky to get some amazing “personal concerts” when they were young and now our grandson has fallen in love with Courtney, as well. A few weeks ago, when Leo and Courtney were together at our house, Courtney sang this dinosaur song for Leo. He adored it so much that Courtney recorded a quick video for him to watch from home. He apparently plays it over and over and over. ♥️♥️ Here is Courtney’s recording and Leo’s reaction to it. I just love his “Uh-oh Kootney!” (Leo’s about two years, 2 months here.)

And then there’s Leo’s first introduction to chocolate milk (at 2 yrs 3 months)!

Carl, Thomas, and I are featured guests for the Third International Day of Provenance Research, 2021!

A few weeks ago I was interviewed for the International Day of Provenance Research which highlights the social and academic relevance of provenance research on an international scale. In that interview, I spoke about my father, Thomas and my grandfather Carl, whose art collection is still quite relevant today.

The article( in German), along with the audio file of my interview (in English) can be found HERE:

https://www.lenbachhaus.de/blog/erinnerung-leben-der-kunstsammler-carl-heumann-und-seine-familie-heute

Here is an English translation (with thanks to Google Translate and apologies to my mother, your great-Omi, who was a dedicated German teacher and is turning in her grave; she would have asked me to translate it myself! Apologies, too, for the bizarre formatting – attempting to fix it just made it all worse!):

LIVING MEMORY - The art collector Carl Heumann and his family today. A conversation with Carl’s granddaughter, Carol Heumann Snider

Several German museums are currently researching the art collector Carl Heumann (1886–1945), who created an important collection of German and Austrian art from the 18th and 19th centuries with a focus on Romanticism in the 1920s and 1930s. Because of his Jewish origins, he was persecuted under the National Socialist regime. In recognition of the fate of his persecution, the Kupferstich-Kabinett of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München turned to the descendants of Carl Heumann to jointly find a just and fair solution regarding the Find works of art from his collection.

In a conversation on the "Day of Provenance Research" on April 14, 2021 with provenance researchers Dr. Katja Lindenau (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) and Melanie Wittchow (Lenbachhaus) Carol Heumann Snider, the granddaughter of the art collector Carl Heumann, discusses her grandfather and her father Thomas Heumann. She describes how she preserves the stories of the two of them and their memories for their children and grandchildren. She gives a deep insight into the life of her family and shows how the fate of both ancestors affects all family members to this day and what possible restitutions mean to them.

The interview was conducted in English on March 19, 2021, the 135th birthday of Carl Heumann, recorded and reproduced here in written form in German. You can listen to the original interview here:

(Go to original link, above, and click on the audio file.)

Melanie Wittchow (MW): Hello and welcome to our conversation "Living memories: The art collector Carl Heumann and his family today.” My name is Melanie Wittchow. I am a provenance researcher at the Lenbachhaus in Munich.

Since 2019, we have recognized Provenance Research Day on the second Wednesday in April. This year we are also celebrating »1700 years of Jewish life in Germany«. On this occasion, we would like to talk about how provenance research helps keep memories alive.

We warmly welcome Carol Heumann Snider to this interview. She is the granddaughter of the art collector Carl Heumann from Chemnitz, Germany. We want to talk about him and his family today. Carol, thank you for joining us from Gig Harbor, Washington, USA. It's so nice to have you here today!

A warm welcome also to Katja Lindenau. She is a provenance researcher at the Kupferstich-Kabinett of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. I am very pleased that you are here today for our conversation about the art collector Carl Heumann.

More than two years ago, the museum in Dresden, together with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, called on those museums whose holdings include objects from the Carl Heumann art collection to recognize the fate of the art collector and his family and to work with the heirs of the family to get in touch. The aim is to find just and fair solutions with them regarding the works of art from the Carl Heumann collection.

Katja, you are one of the researchers in Germany who initiated this. Can you explain how and why it came about?

(The participants in the conversation on March 19, 2021 clockwise from top left to bottom right: Robin Knapp (technical support), Dr. Katja Lindenau (SKD), Carol Heumann Snider (granddaughter of Carl Heumann), Melanie Wittchow (Lenbachhaus)

Katja Lindenau (KL): With pleasure. In my work as a provenance researcher, I check the holdings of our museum for unlawful acquisition. One focus is on the years 1933 to 1945, when the National Socialists were in power in Germany and many works of art changed hands during this time. Much of it has been confiscated by the authorities or the owners have been forced to sell them. A few years ago, colleagues from other museums in Germany and Austria made me aware of the collection of the art collector and patron Carl Heumann.

While looking through our collection, I found two watercolor drawings by the Austrian artist Peter Fendi and an oil-on-paper drawing by Jakob Gensler showing a girl with a parrot. All three works were bought in 1944 by the art dealer C.G. Acquired Boerner in Leipzig. Bit by bit, I tried to find out more about the fate of the previous owner and how these works of art disappeared from his collection. In the end, we knew that Carl Heumann had not voluntarily sold these works, due to his Jewish origins, and we began to contact other museums and the heirs of Carl Heumann.

MW: That's how Katja and I came into contact, and I was able to find out that the Lenbachhaus had also acquired a work of art from Carl Heumann's private collection, namely the drawing "Fischerweide" by the artist Albert Emil Kirchner.

Albert Emil Kirchner, Fischerweide, 1854, pencil drawing, washed, 30.5 x 28.7 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich

KL: Carol, we spent months trying to put Carl Heumann's biography together. How and when did you find out about the fate of your grandfather Carl Heumann and your father Thomas Heumann? Did you talk about it in your family?

Carol Heumann Snider (CHS): When I was a child, we talked about my father's childhood. Since it was such a traumatic childhood, I think my father tried to protect us from the trauma he experienced himself. Paintings and watercolors hung on our walls. We knew where they came from. We knew that they came from his father, whom we of course never met. But we didn't know what my father was feeling and thought we just knew that they were from his homeland. Briefly about the background: It was obvious that my parents were immigrants. I knew my father was talking about a suitcase that he had with him when he came to the United States on the ship.

When we talked about his childhood it was mostly in situations where he couldn't escape us, and by that I mean, we were sitting in the car going to Lake Tahoe, for example, which was a four hour drive. We asked him to tell us stories. And he told us these charming stories, like when he and his brother nearly blew up the garage because they had misused their chemistry kit. Or how her little sister took a nap and they took a gingerbread cookie out of the oven and they said, "Oh, we burned your doll." I mean really funny little stories like these that every sibling does would tell.

But he never said, "I went and found my father's body and dug his grave."

These were things that we didn't find out until much later. It only started when I was going to college and my father suddenly felt the need to tell us more. He began to write his first book The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer. I think it was easier for him to talk about his trauma in the third person and give himself a pseudonym so as not to have to use the pronoun "I.”.

Most of my childhood he just wanted to protect us. But that changed later.

Thomas Heumann with his four children, Carol Heumann Snider in the middle, 2008, photo: Ulli Heumann Hanley

MW: Can you tell us when and how you first found out that works of art from your grandfather's collection are in Austrian and German museums? How did the collaboration with the provenance researchers develop?

Maybe you can tell us a little bit about Julia Eßl's visit to the USA in 2014?

CSH: Yes, it was a very special day. I think it was January 22nd, 2014. I won't forget it. I woke up, checked my e-mail, and there was a message from a woman named Julia Eßl.She said she was a provenance researcher in Austria and she thinks she had found some works from my grandfather's collection, and asked if I would be willing to speak to her. It was very exciting for me because I had never met my grandfather and only heard stories about him. And now here was someone who seemed to know something about him. So, as a granddaughter interested in her family history, I picked it up straight away.

This was also preceded by a meeting that my father had organized for our family, at which he came into contact with his children, his nieces, his nephews and of course his sister Ulli, who lives in California. He wanted us all to come together because he wanted to leave us things from his past, as he put it "with warm hands,” before he dies.

(Thomas Heumann (left outside) with his sister Ulli (3rd from left) and her family, February 2017, Photo: Claudia Bilbao (Ulli's daughter)

CHS: Among them were some official documents such as my grandfather's Jewish “ID card” and his identity card with the “J” on it. Or a document that said he had been persecuted and that he had been in a labor camp.

He passed all these things on to his family members. It was just amazing to me, it really touched me, and I wanted to know who this person was.

So that was before Julia's email. When this email came my family was planning a trip to Germany and Austria. All six of us - we have four children.

And I said to Julia that we would be in Austria in a few months and asked if we could meet.

The most important thing that stuck in my memory when I met Julia Eßl in the Albertina in Vienna was that she took me to her office and there were three or four very wide binders on a bookshelf with "Carl Heumann" on the spine.

My first thought was, "How is it possible that someone, whom I don't know, knows my grandfather so well that entire binders can be filled with information about him?"

That just aroused the curiosity and excitement regarding my grandfather between Julia and me. We got along really well and became fast friends. After our visit in Vienna, she wrote to me and asked: “What do you think about a visit from me? And that was just the beginning of an absolutely wonderful time.”

When Julia first contacted me and said she had the opportunity to come to America, my father blocked it. But then he gave in and said, "Okay, well, I'll talk to her."

Julia came and spent three or four days with my father. They were best friends. My father couldn't show her enough things. He found a document here and another document there, they spoke German and they became dear, dear friends. When it was time for her to leave there were tears everywhere, including my father. So it was a 180 degree turn.

KL: Thank you, Carol, for this lively report on Julia Eßl's visit and the relationship between Julia and you and your father. We are both very grateful to Julia Eßl in Vienna and Hanna Strzoda in Berlin, who did a lot of research and thankfully shared their findings with us.

At the moment, three museums in Berlin, Dresden and Munich want to return works of art in the near future. Carol, you are the representative of the heirs. That means you speak for all the rightful heirs of your grandfather and regulate the communication between the members of your family and the museums regarding the restitution process. Can you tell us a little bit about what it means for your family to get back the works of art that were confiscated from your grandfather 80 years ago through persecution? We are particularly interested in what the younger generation thinks about it.

CHS: That's a really good question. In fact, as a family, we are grappling with this issue. First of all, the fact that part of the art is being restituted means everything to us because of our connection to our grandfather. This is a man we have never known, but whom we have heard of all our lives. My father spoke of him with great reverence and instilled that in us too, so we knew Carl was a wonderful man. We were sad that we didn't get to know him. This little thread of a connection from Carl to his grandchildren, to his great-grandchildren, means everything to us.

Restitution is a strange thing because it has this very strong emotional aspect. Then there is this logistical aspect. There may also be a financial aspect that we don't want to emphasize at all. But it always finds a way in.

I was the executor of my father's estate, which means that after his death, I took care of everything related to his estate. So I became the main point of contact. I brought his direct descendants, that is six people in the direct line, together. That's a very manageable amount of people to work with. But if you add the next generation, with all of our children, that number goes up to 23. So we kept it pretty small and made decisions together. We met digitally last year, but before that we visited each other.

 

(Thomas Heumann with Carol Heumann Snider's four children, 2012, photo: Carol Snider Heumann)

CHS: About two weeks ago my 30-year-old son came to visit. He is very interested in history and speaks fluent German. He asked how everything was going and I said, “Well, there are some pieces that are being returned to us and we'd like some of them because we'd like to see them on our walls. We would like to see others stay in Germany so that they can be appreciated by the people there. And maybe we want to sell one or two of them. We do not know yet."

My son, who is a very strong personality, replied, “Mom, I would like to be asked to come to the table when these things are discussed. I am also a heir to Carl. He's important to me too, and I think I'm speaking for my cousins ​​when I say please don't make any decisions without us. "

Right now our challenge is how to deal with this issue. How can we respect the opinion of our adult children without turning it into a crazy situation? Perhaps we will talk to our children each time, get their opinion, and come back with a general opinion for our family. It's really important for us to include everyone, but it's not easy. This is where we are right now.

MW: Let's go back to your two blogs that you mentioned earlier. I always love it when someone says it's important to keep memories alive. But you're not just saying that, you're living this idea.

In your two blogs "Northwestladybug" and "Letters from Omi" you tell the story of your grandfather and your father. I especially like your blog Letters from Omi because I love the idea that the blog is aimed at your grandchildren. Each contribution begins with "Dear Grandchildren" and then you tell about family members who, of course, have never met them. This is a great thing to keep memories for the future.

Let's go back to the past one more time. Your grandfather, Carl Heumann was born on March 19, 1886 in Cologne to Jewish parents. He converted to Protestantism in 1917 when he met and married your grandmother,Irmgard, who was a Protestant. Nevertheless, Carl Heumann was regarded by the Nazis as a ”full Jew.” At first he was protected by his so-called privileged mixed marriage, but in 1938 he lost his job in his own bank, he had to pay the "Jewish property tax," and was not allowed to manage his own financial affairs. In short, he was persecuted by the National Socialist system. After the death of his wife  in January 1944, he was even more vulnerable. Tragically, he was killed in the bomb attack on Chemnitz on March 5, 1945.

(Carl Heumann (middle) with his wife Irmgard and the children Thomas (left outside), Ulli (middle) and Rainer (right outside) in the Reichsstraße in Chemnitz, around 1940, anonym)

MW: Your father, Thomas Heumann, survived the Second World War. He left Germany in 1953 and went to the USA. He was also persecuted under National Socialism because of his status as a “Mischling, a so-called half-Jew.

Many Jewish people do not consider themselves religious, but define themselves by their Jewish origin. Can you tell us what role your Jewish origins played in your father's life? Are there any Jewish traditions or rituals that have been kept alive in your family to this day?

CHS: To be honest, I wish they existed. It's kind of strange for me to be the descendant of someone for whom his Jewish heritage played such a tragic role. It didn't kill him directly, but in some ways everything changed for my grandfather because of his Judaism.

When I was a child, I wanted to have a menorah for Christmas. We had one, but there was nothing behind it. Perhaps my father could have made some of the Jewish heritage his own. I think he could have done more research on his Jewish heritage and shared some of it with his children. But maybe I'm too hard on my dad because I think he had a great trauma and I think when he came to the US he wanted to leave it all behind. So the short answer is no. We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve. We never really celebrated anything related to Jewish heritage.

MW: Thank you Carol for giving us these insights into your family history. That’s so valuable. In our work as provenance researchers, it is wonderful to come into contact with the families and the heirs of the works of art. It is such a pleasant working relationship with you and your family. Thank you very much.

CHS: Thank you very much too! I really like working with both of you and everyone who has contacted us. If we can travel again, we would like to come to Germany, and it would be wonderful to meet everyone in person.

MW / KL: Yes, we'd love that too.

KL: I would also like to thank you, Carol, for your continued support in this very long process of research and restitution.

Through the posts in your blog, we got to know you and your family very well and also learned a lot more about Carl Heumann. But as I said, without the support of the other provenance researchers we would not have come this far, so once again a big thank you to the others who have supported us.

CHS: Yes, also from me. You have all been absolutely wonderful and some friendships have formed.

I would like to tell about another friendship. There was a man named Waldemar Ballerstedt in Chemnitz, who we think could have been a protector of my grandfather. You can read about it on my blog.

His grandson's wife just emailed me - I recently had an operation and she wrote to me, "Carol, we're thinking of you, get well."

So two or three generations later, there is a friendship between the descendants of a Nazi, who may have been my grandfather's protectorate, and the descendants of a persecuted German Jew.

It's just so heartwarming to me that we can forgive, forget and move on.

MW: Yes, that's great to hear. Really very touching.

KL: Nice! Is there anything else you would like to tell us?

CHS: I would like to tell you one more story.

I have a grandson, Leo, who is almost two years old. When he was very young, we showed him the picture of Sophia, a painting by Joseph Hauber from my grandfather's collection that had hung in my childhood home, and then in my parents’ houses, until my father’s death in 2017.

(Leo, the great-great-grandson of Carl Heumann in front of the painting "Sophia" from the Carl Heumann Collection, Chemnitz, 2021, photo: Carol Heumann Snider)

CHS: Leo looked at the picture and waved when he was just eight months old. It then became a tradition that when he slept in our house and woke up in the morning, the first thing he wanted to do was to say good morning to Sophia. And in the evening he insisted on saying good night to Sophia.

When Leo comes to visit now, the first thing he does is go to Sophia to say hello. To me, it's just the essence of everything we try to do to keep Carl's memory and story alive for future generations. Just seeing Leo look up while Sophia looks down at him - there is just this love bond that I can't explain. But the first few times it happened, I teared up. In my will, I will state that my grandson Leo gets the picture of Sophia so that he can have it on his walls when he grows up.

MW: Thank you for this wonderful story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ashes to Ashes

Mom died in 2004. Dad died in 2017. Only today, in the wilderness above Lake Tahoe that they both so loved, were their ashes given back to the earth. 

For many years during our youth, we spent a week each summer at the City of Berkeley Family Camp on Echo Lake, in the mountains high above Lake Tahoe. This, we thought, would be a good place to scatter Mom and Dad’s ashes. 

What we didn’t expect was the first snowstorm of the season  - in September! How apropos! Mom and Dad loved to ski and spent years on the Ski Patrol at Heavenly Valley and Shaw Valley ski resorts. In fact, Mom and her dear friend Toni were the first two women ski patrol members at Squaw in the early 60s, breaking the glass ceiling for all the women who followed them. Of course it would snow today, as we bequeathed them back to the land they loved so much! 

By the time we got back to Meeks Bay, where we’re gathered for our second annual sibling weekend (unfortunately without Stephan, who had to bow out at the last minute), the sun was out again and Lake Tahoe was shining in all her glory. 

Mom and Dad fell in love with the Sierras, and especially Lake Tahoe and the mountain lakes around it, because it reminded them of the Alps in their home country of Germany, from where the emigrated in 1953. 

I hope that, in some way, they are back home today. 

Sophia

Joseph Hauber painted this portrait of his sister, Sophia, in 1828. She was part of my grandfather’s collection and this painting always hung in my childhood home. Today, more than a year after moving in, we finally gave her a most important place in our home - after we veeeery carefully made a few minor repairs to the old and delicate frame. 

I think she looks beautiful. 

Welcome home (again), Sophia! 

NaBloWriMo–a Mo late

I came home from this weekend’s Write in the Harbor conference determined to start writing again.

I don’t mean Facebook post writing; I mean sweat-it-out-straight-from-the-heart-blood-sweat-and-tears-head-down writing, like I used to do here.
What better time to re-dedicate myself to writing, I thought as I left the conference, than right at the beginning of November - National Blog Writing Month. It’s perfect! How inspiring!
Then I got home and looked up NaBloWriMo and came to realize that things have changed since the last time I undertook this endeavor. It turns out that November is now NaNOWriMo – National Novel Writing Month! I missed NaBLOWriMo by, well, a month. It was in October.
I can handle some self-imposed pressure to blog every day, but the pressure to write a novel is exactly what’s paralyzing me – and it’s what brought me to the conference to begin with.
I promised my father before he died that I would tell his story. He wrote for his children and grandchildren but didn’t want his story “out there” while he was still alive. After he was gone, I came across numerous files and documents with “directions” for me, things like “Carol: you’ll want to use this for the book.”
No pressure. Right, Dad?
No one who knows me would call me a procrastinator. In fact, I’m normally quite the opposite. There’s often a fire under my butt, but moss doesn’t stand a chance with me. If I can think it, I can do it – and there’s usually very little time between the two.
Except with this book. I simply can’t seem to get started.
I don’t know if it’s Dad’s voice, telling me just how he’d like the book written or if it’s my own voice, insisting that I could never meet his expectations. But the voice is persistent, and insistent, and I am obedient – and paralyzed.
One of the sessions at the writing conference today was titled “Overcoming Obstacles.” We were asked to complete two sentences regarding our writing. The first was “If I fail…” The second was “If I succeed…” My answers show just how paralyzed I feel:
“If I fail… my father will be disappointed – from the grave!”
“If I succeed… everyone will know my father’s story – and what if he didn’t actually want that?!”
The instructor pointed out that I saw even success as failure. No wonder I’m paralyzed!
Later in the class, the instructor asked us to imagine the most terrible thing that might happen if we were unsuccessful in our writing goal – and not to be afraid to “get dramatic.” My answer to this question was even more distressing. I wrote, “If I finish the book and it’s terrible or if it’s never even published, those who thought I couldn’t tell Dad’s story would be proven correct. I would die without doing the one thing I promised Dad I would do. ‘Never forget’ would be true because first-hand memories of the Holocaust would be a thing of the past – and I’d be partially responsible.”
Then I got really dramatic (per the instructor’s direction) and wrote, “’Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.’ Now we all have to repeat the Holocaust… and it’s all my fault!”
At that point, I had to go back to my notes from the session of the workshop called “Creating Your Writing Persona.” In that session, the instructor quoted Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Poisonwood Bible: “Don’t try to figure out what the other people want you to say; figure out what you have to say. It’s the only thing you have to offer.” 
And that is exactly what I’m going to have to do.
But first, I need to get back into the practice of daily writing, so Facebook notifications will be turned off for a month while I remind myself to do what I love (and remember how to do it).

Another out-of-the-blue connection to the past–in which I hear from the granddaughter of my father’s beloved nanny!

I got a call a few hours ago from a woman named Anna in Germany who, it turns out, is the granddaughter of my father’s favorite nanny, nicknamed “Halle.”

My father spoke lovingly of “Halle,” and remembered her affectionately throughout his life. Never did I think that I would actually have any direct connection to her! But 70+ years later, things keep happening to bring my father’s early life into focus for me! It is such a gift.

In the early 1930s, Jews were forbidden to have non-Jewish household help, so “Halle” (her actual name, I learned today, was Ilse Langer) had to suddenly leave my father’s family. It was among the first times my father’s life was directly impacted by the changing political climate in Germany, and I believe it had a lasting impact on him. Little did he know that she also fondly remembered those days for the remainder of her life, calling them some of her happiest.

When Anna told me today that her grandmother named her son (Anna’s father) Thomas (my father’s name), I just about lost it.

Shortly after we spoke on the phone, I received this email from Anna:

"Dear Carol,

I am still very emotional just now, but it was lovely to have talked to you.

I can easily believe that your father, aunt and uncle loved her a lot. She was an absolutely lovely and lovable person. I remember her as calm, loving, with good sense of humour and a great love and especially understanding for children. In many ways she started to train me to understand children, when I was still a child myself by telling me lots and lots of stories about the children she had cared for in her lifetime. Among them surely your father, aunt and uncle, only I can’t remember the stories that clearly. I work at university now, training childhood educators, after working with children for years myself

Ilse ("halle") trained to be a kindergarten teacher probably very shortly before she joined the Heumanns in Chemnitz. She was born in 1915 and joined them in the early 1930ies, as far as I know. So she was probably very young and impressionable, when she stayed with the Heumanns in Chemnitz. She was called “Halla” by the children. This is not a proper German name, but a nickname invented and given specially by the children.

It was a great heartbreak to her, when she had to leave the family and I think her time and positive experiences in the Heumann-Family made her immune to the anti-semitism in the Third Reich.

I always knew her as a great humanist and pacifist. She had survived two world wars and there was no place for hatred in her heart. She had countless friends and contacts, who dropped in any time of day, when she was old. And she used to collect second-hand-goods from anyone who dropped in to give to different charities, eg. for people with disabilities and for refugees, who had to start from scratch in Germany in the 1990ies. I bet she remembered how that feels like…

More hopefully later on, so much for now. It feels good to have found and contacted you! All the best wishes across the ocean."

And then Anna sent me this (translated), written by her uncle about Ilse ("Halle"), along with a photo of her shortly before she died just before her 90th birthday, in 2006:

"Noteworthy is still the time as a teacher of two children with family Heumann in Chemnitz. For Ilse, that was a positive milestone in her life, a great time. She was loved by the children and their parents also and respected. They called her Halla and they took her traveling. She always raved about Sylt. The father was a Jew and as far as I know Consul in Portugal. He owned a noteworthy Spitzweg (art) collection. As a result of the race policy, Ilse had to stop working at the house, or rather the villa, of the Heumanns, which was in Chemnitz on the corner of Kassberg and Reichsstraße and was destroyed in 1945 by bombs. Ilse, as I said, ended up in Seifhennersdorf at the end of the 1930s and now the circle closes. She never heard from the Heumanns again. "

Apparently, Halle assumed for the rest of her life that my father, his siblings, and their parents all perished in the war. If only they could have spoken before her death in 2006. My father would have absolutely adored that!

I'm feeling pretty... verklemmt (which is not actually a word, my mom always insisted!) right now!

Camped out

For three reasons, this chair has been my home for the past few days.

First, I have been positively immersed in the past, first reading letters between my grandmother, Irmgard and her mother, Adele – correspondence that continued from 1905 to Irmgard’s untimely and tragic death in early 1944. After I finished those 603 translated pages (thanks, Ulli!), I read both books my dad wrote, and now I’m reading family letters (most also translated by Ulli), dated 1945, the year of my grandfather’s equally untimely and tragic death, to 1983, the year I got married!

I’ve read all of these works before but it is this time, perhaps because I will be in Chemnitz in less than a week, that I feel that I’ve come to know and understand relatives who I never met or barely knew. My grandmother Irmgard exuded optimism, hope, and undying love and protectiveness of her family. It is only between the lines of her writing that one gets a sense of the enormous burden that she carried, as she, by her sheer existence as the non-Jewish partner in a “privileged mixed marriage,” was all that stood between her Jewish husband and mischling (“half-breed”) children and almost certain death.

I know how her story ends and yet I tear up every time I come to the place where her letters mention more and more persistent symptoms of what turned out to be a brain tumor – and then suddenly stop.

I have also come to the realization that, had my grandfather survived, I definitely would not exist. This is hardly conjecture; I have no doubt that it’s true! My grandfather would have never accepted my mother – not for a second. Mom, with all her feisty, almost defiant, independence and her devil-may-care attitude, was the absolute antithesis of what my grandfather expected for his son. My uncle, Dad’s idolized older brother, seemed to speak for their dead father when he wrote, “Edith comes from a bourgeois background; she is Bohemian,” followed by “one should always stay in one’s box.” Suffice it to say that the elitist attitude that I often called Dad out for was something that he was exposed to his whole young life.

The second reason that I lived in the easy chair all weekend is nowhere near as interesting: the nerve and muscle pain in my leg has been giving me such problems lately that I was afraid that I couldn’t make two 13-hour flights, just five days apart. Rest and an electric blanket seem to have done the trick, though! I have no pain at all now! Now if I can just keep things quiet for the next two days…

And third, even more mundane: I have developed a slight cold. As I’ve been sitting under my heated blanket, book in hand, I’ve been positively downing the Emergen-C and Cold-Eze!

It’s cold in Chemnitz; I don’t want to bring my own cold on top of that!

Full circle

On March 5, 1945, as air raid sirens enveloped the city of Chemnitz, my grandfather, who was surprised to find himself at home instead of on a transport to Theresienstadt with the few other remaining Jews in the city, ran to the basement to protect his beloved collection of quintessential German Romantic art.

Days later, on temporary leave from Munzig bei Meissig, the work camp where half-Jews – “mischlinge” – were taken, my  father arrived at his childhood home where he found his father’s lifeless body amid the ruins.  Carl’s round wire spectacles were barely cracked and he was still dressed in his customary three-piece black suit, which he had continued to wear daily, though he had been released from his executive banker position years before.

Sixteen-year-old Thomas collapsed, exhausted, beside his father’s lifeless body.
There were no tears, no anger, no frustration, not even fear. In their place was only a survival instinct, the knowledge that being alive and on his own, he must now act.
‘I, the living, must bury my father, the dead.’
It was not the thought of a boy, or of a teenager, but of the man he had too suddenly become.
~~~~~~~~~
On the 21st of this month, 73 years after Carl’s death, 64 years after my father emigrated to America, and exactly one year to the day after his death at the age of 89, I will travel to Chemnitz, accompanied by three generations of Carl’s descendants. We will be the guests of the city’s mayor, who has asked us to return to honor my father and grandfather at the art museum that Carl so dearly loved and to which my father recently bequeathed three inherited pieces.

(Webpage translation – see above link: The banker Carl Heumann (1896-1945) was one of the most notable art collectors in Chemnitz. The co-owner of the Chemnitz bank "Bayer and Heinze" and Portuguese vice-consul, Carl Heumann was a renowned connoisseur of the art of the 19th and early 20th century. Until 1933, he donated more than sixty graphic sheets by August Gaul, Adolph von Menzel, Julius Scholz, Carl Peschel and a graphic portfolio by Ernst Barlach to the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. On 5, March 1945, he was killed by a blast bomb while trying to recover a suitcase with valuable drawings from the basement of his house. His son, Thomas Heumann (1928-2017) emigrated to the US after after difficult times in the labor camp in Munzig near Meissen. Thomas Heumann bequeathed in honor of his father three works to the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. These will be presented for the first time together with the donations of his father at the Museum am Theaterplatz.)
I will journal preparations for, ponderings about, and experiences of the trip here.

My father wrote this to his kids the day after Trump was elected. I had no idea…

“Hi, all of you. parents and descendants ---

NOW where are you going to emigrate to??
In 1938, ("Krystal Night", November 8) my (Jewish) father told us to keep the lights off, and windows closed, so nobody would bother us in the apparently empty  house.   The burning of the synagogue across the street, was officially the work of "Germans tired of the Jews.” It was done by "people disgusted with the Jews.”
The next day, a guy at school bragged that the night before, his big brother, an SS or SA man, was one of the people setting the synagogue on fire.  The burning of the synagogue was (to remain politically correct) “by the people people against the Jews.”  My dad told me to never ever tell anybody about what I had heard.
He wouldn't believe things could get worse. He knew he had done no wrong. He did not want to take us out of school or compromise promising careers in our future.  He would not leave his house or his language.
My entire life would have been different if he had made different decisions. 
But, of course, it IS a BIG decision, and my impression of our current situation might be totally different from how you or your kids feel.
I strongly hope I am wrong in my defensive attitude.  But I believe, now more than ever, that 2016 is now quite a bit like 1938 in Europe, when my Jewish uncles left their businesses in Berlin to go to America.
I personally could not survive moving any more – I’m getting very old now.  But I would feel bad if I failed to tell you about my own experiences and fears.  I MUST tell you, especially those of you who may have a Mexican-sounding name in their ancestry.

Now I'll shut up.
Love --   Dad”
Dad died less than four months after Trump was elected. Thank god he doesn’t have to see this. It would kill him.

This is the post about my father’s death…

…the one I have started so many times since he collapsed at 3:15 AM on the morning of February 21st, almost six months ago. The one I just can’t seem to ever finish.
For most of my life, the mere thought of my father dying would prompt my throat to close up and tears to well in my eyes. The world needed my father, I reasoned (unreasonably); he simply couldn’t leave us – ever.
That’s about as far as I got every time I began this post because at this point I simply become overwhelmed at the enormity of the story I have to tell - the story of my father’s childhood as a Mischling (half-Jew) in Nazi Germany, the story of his mother’s role as unwitting protectorate of her family, and of her sudden death in January, 1944 which cast my father, his siblings, and their Jewish father into chaos. It’s the story of my Jewish grandfather whose passion was his highly regarded collection of German Romanticist art – a separate, but related story that continues to this day as we await word regarding restitution of some works from his collection which found their way to various museums in Austria and Germany.
Every time I begin to write about my father’s death, I feel obligated to speak to the enormity of his entire life.
But today I decided that it’s just too much to ask of myself, so I’ve given myself permission to write only about one small event -  the last time I saw my father.
This much, I can do.
Ironically, I don’t have a single photo of Dad and me together during that visit, which took place from January 26th through January 30th of this year, less than a month before his death. But I do have lots of pictures of Elisabeth with her Opa. (Elisabeth, who was on hiatus between graduation from CRNA school in California and the beginning of her job as a Nurse Anesthetist at University of Washington Medical Center, came with me to visit Dad and Lou in Ashland.)
Baby steps. I can finish this post.
I can post photos from that visit by just going through my photos in the folder at Pictures/Events and Excursions/2017/January – Ashland.
These first photos actually sum up Dad perfectly. He is in his perfectly organized workshop. Always the practical engineer, Dad decided that his walker needed some storage space, so he shuffled into his garage workshop, my index finger in his belt loop to steady him. And there, Dad proceeded to improve his walker using spare parts that he’d saved from some other random project. (Because he was German, and organized, and frugal, and inventive.)

Dad was quite unstable on his feet, so Elisabeth stayed close by, ready to catch him, should he begin to fall.

How ironic, I thought, that I’m concerned about him falling as he works on his walker – with power tools, no less!
One of our main goals on this trip was to fill Dad and Lou’s freezer with lots of healthy homemade meals. Caring for Dad had become a full-time job for Lou, and she was exhausted. Surely we could help by cooking a few simple meals!
When Elisabeth and I are on a mission, we are a force to be reckoned with! Or not to be reckoned with, depending on perspective. Of one mind, we knew our mission: plan, shop, cook, freeze.
On it.



The day after our cooking extravaganza, Elisabeth asked Opa about “the suitcase.” This suitcase, which has always contained works from my grandfather’s art collection and has lived under my parents’ bed for well over 60 years, deserves a blog post (or book chapter) of its own, but suffice it to say that it’s all my father had to his name in April, 1953 as he arrived in America.

I loved watching Dad and Elisabeth exploring the contents of the suitcase together – and I was amazed that my dad was able to kneel, crouch, and be the least bit comfortable on the floor! Maybe he wasn’t at all comfortable; maybe he powered through, understanding the important connections being made – even, in a way, between generations that would never meet.
 
The suitcase is now empty. Much of the art will being going back to two European museums, lovingly bequeathed by my father, in honor of his father.
The next day, having watched the toll my father’s deteriorating physical (and mental) condition was having on Lou, and concerned that some action would need to be taken soon, Elisabeth and I (with Lou’s approval) visited an assisted care facility.

It was a heartbreaking but necessary next step. We didn’t tell Dad.
That evening, we did what we’ve done after dinner since Elisabeth was a baby – we played a game.

I have no idea who won. It didn’t matter.
A few weeks later, just days before my father died, his sister, Ulli, visited from Berkeley. Oh, what these two have been through together!

It seems only fitting that the last photos taken of Dad are with his beloved little sister. The sweetness of this last goodbye almost has me wondering…

For those who came to Dad’s memorial and saw the botched version of the slide show that Tom and I had so carefully timed to the tenth of a second (that somehow played with NO timing at all), here is something a bit closer to what you should have seen -- though the music and transitions are still botched. (Would Dad appreciate the perfectionist in me that is still so frustrated at not being able to show this slideshow to you exactly as it was created?!)
And for those who weren’t at the memorial, here’s a glimpse of my father’s life.