The Emigrants

I have barely any recollection of my own of Great-Uncle Adelwarth. As far as I can say with any certainty, I saw him only once, in the summer of 1951. That was when the Americans, Uncle Kasimir with Lina and Flossie, Aunt Fini with Theo and the little twins, and Aunt Theres, who was unmarried, came to stay with us in W for several weeks, either all together or one after the other. On one occasion during that time, the in-laws from Kempten and Lechbruck — emigrants, as is well known, tend to seek out their own kind — came to W for a few days, and it was at the resulting reunion of almost sixty members of the family that I saw my Great-Uncle Adelwarth, for the first (and, I believe, the last) time. Naturally, in the great upheaval caused by the visitors, in our own household and indeed throughout the whole village, since rooms had to be found elsewhere, he made no more impression on me at first than any of the others; but when he was called upon, as the eldest of the emigrants and their forefather, as it were, to address the gathered clan, that Sunday afternoon when we sat for coffee at the long trestle tables in the village hall, my attention was inevitably drawn to him as he rose and tapped his glass with a small spoon. Uncle Adelwarth was not particularly tall, but he was nonetheless a most distinguished presence who confirmed and enhanced the self-esteem of all who were there, as the general murmur of approval made clear — even though, as I, at the age of seven, immediately realized (in contrast to the adults, who were caught up in their own preconceptions), they seemed out-classed compared with this man. Although I do not remember what Uncle Adelwarth said in his rather formal address, I do recall being deeply impressed by the fact that his apparently effortless German was entirely free of any trace of our home dialect and that he used words and turns of phrase the meanings of which I could only guess at. After this, for me, truly memorable appearance, Uncle Adelwarth vanished from my sight for good when he left for Immenstadt on the mail bus the following day, and from there journeyed onward by rail to Switzerland. Not even in my thoughts did he remain present, and of his death two years later, let alone its circumstances, I knew nothing throughout my childhood, probably because the sudden end of Uncle Theo, who was felled by a stroke one morning while reading the paper, placed Aunt Fini and the twins in an extremely difficult situation, a turn of events which must have eclipsed the demise of an elderly relative who lived on his own. Moreover, Aunt Fini, whose closeness to him put her in the best position to tell us how things had been with Uncle Adelwarth, now found herself obliged (she wrote) to work night and day to see herself and the twins through, for which reason, understandably, she was the first to stop coming over from America for the summer months. Kasimir visited less and less often also, and only Aunt Theres came with any kind of regularity, for one thing because, being single, she was in by far the best position to do so, and for another because she was incurably homesick her whole life long. Three weeks after she arrived, on every visit, she would still be weeping with the joy of reunion, and three weeks before she left she would again be weeping with the pain of separation. If her stay with us was longer than six weeks, there would be a becalmed period in the middle that she would mostly fill with needlework; but if her stay was shorter there were times when one really did not know whether she was in tears because she was at home at long last or because she was already dreading having to leave again. Her last visit was a complete disaster. She wept in silence, at breakfast and at dinner, out walking in the fields or shopping for the Hummel figurines she doted on, doing crosswords or gazing out of the window. When we accompanied her to Munich, she sat streaming tears between us children in the back of Schreck the taxi driver's new Opel Kapitàn as the roadside trees sped past us in the light of dawn, from Kempten to Kaufbeuren and from Kaufbeuren to Buchloe; and later I watched from the spectators' terrace as she walked towards the silvery aeroplane, with her hatboxes, across the tarmac at Riem airport, sobbing repeatedly and drying her eyes with a handkerchief. Without looking back once, she went up the steps and vanished through the dark opening into the belly of the aircraft — for ever, as one might say. For a while her weeldy letters still reached us (invariably beginning: My dear ones at home, how are you? I am fine!) but then the correspondence, which had been kept up without fail for almost thirty years, broke off, as I noticed when the dollar bills that were regularly enclosed for me stopped coming. It was in the midst of carnival season that my mother put a death notice in the local paper, to the effect that our dear sister, sister-in-law and aunt had departed this life in New York following a short but bravely borne illness. All this prompted the talk again about Uncle Theo's far too early death, but not, as I well remember, of Uncle Adelwarth, who, like Theo, had died a few years or so before.