Introduction

During the five long, agonizing months of Biene’s engagement between October 1963, and February 1964, I found some relief in writing a short novel. Inextricably steeped in emotional turmoil, I used the third Punic war, and the total destruction of the city of Carthage as the historical background for the love story. Looking back, it seems strange that the ending was not a happily lived ever after, but it’s so happened that exactly at the time when Biene broke off her engagement with her Dutch fiancé, I finished the last chapter. I felt like being on top of a joyful wave that would sweep me with sweet force into her open arms. With the help of a German speech to text app, and Google Translate, I present to all my readers and followers, the novel that miraculously opened Biene’s heart to me more than 60 years ago. 

Carthage by Peter Klopp ©

The Roman Delegation

The late summer sun of 150 still warmed the limbs of the Roman sailors. It was evening, and the Gulf of Carthage shimmered blood-red in the light of the slowly setting sun. To the southwest, the heights and rocky cliffs of the peninsula could now be seen more clearly. The commission, which looked intently towards the coast from the Roman sailor, was happy to have reached its destination before nightfall and had gathered on deck so as not to miss the reception in the outer harbour by the city’s representatives. The ship had reached the cliffs and now turned sharply south past bare, high rock faces that cast their black shadows far beyond the ship into the sea. The commission shuddered in awe at the thought that the ancient, prosperous city of the Phoenicians was hidden behind this natural fortress.  The steep mountain slopes now curved more gently to the west and soon the view of the magnificently landscaped trading port, which pushed itself in front of the mighty city wall, became clear. On both quays, the crowds thronged in a colourful mix of dresses and skirts.  The Romans had not expected such a reception and now looked in amazement at the men, women and children crowded together. They were about 20 steps away from them, and the helmsman was already preparing to steer his vehicle into the narrow entrance. The inspectors and the accompanying security team felt as if they were floating through the middle of the colourful crowd. People were so densely packed on both sides of the docks.

Publius had leaned far over the railing and looked into the tanned faces of the Africans. In some he saw suspicion and fear, but in many also hope and trust. Some waved at him, he waved back. But the reprimanding look of Naso, his superior, made his arm freeze. He was surprised and asked himself why Naso had banned this friendly gesture and found no answer. 

Publius was only 19 years old, and his blue eyes still looked uncertainly into the world. He had come to Carthage partly by chance and partly by a word of authority from the new tribune of the people. He had demonstrated his tribunician power by appointing a commoner to accompany the commissioners as security staff. Otherwise, this honour was exclusively a privilege of the Roman aristocracy. Far from the political turmoil, he learned how to make clay vases from his father. Publius had few but good friends. Most people wanted nothing to do with this dreamy, withdrawn person. In addition, two strange blue eyes glowed from his head, which has often caused discomfort among his comrades. His father had been reluctant to let him go because he knew that his semi-military existence in the security force and his stay in the depraved city, which had become dissolute due to wealth and opulence, could ruin him. After all, he had raised his son with old-fashioned strictness and kept him away from the immoral activities of his peers! But he was not so stubborn as to insist on his refusal and reject the high honour bestowed upon him.

Einleitung

Während der fünf langen, qualvollen Monate von Bienes Verlobung zwischen Oktober 1963 und Februar 1964 fand ich eine gewisse Erleichterung darin, einen kurzen Roman zu schreiben. Unentwirrbar von emotionalem Aufruhr durchdrungen, habe ich den dritten Punischen Krieg und die völlige Zerstörung der Stadt Karthago als historischen Hintergrund für die Liebesgeschichte herangezogen. Rückblickend erscheint es merkwürdig, dass das Ende kein glückliches Ende war, aber es kam so, dass ich genau zu dem Zeitpunkt, als Biene ihre Verlobung mit ihrem niederländischen Verlobten löste, das letzte Kapitel beendete. Ich hatte das Gefühl, auf einer freudigen Welle zu stehen, die mich mit süßer Kraft in ihre offenen Arme treiben würde. Mithilfe einer deutschen Sprachausgabe-App und Google Translate präsentiere ich allen meinen Lesern und Folgern den Roman, der mir vor mehr als 60 Jahren auf wundersame Weise das Herz von Biene geöffnet hat.

Karthago von Peter Klopp ©

Die Römische Delegation

Die spät sommerliche Sonne des Jahres 150 erwärmte noch immer die Glieder der römischen Seeleute. Es war Abend geworden, und der Golf von Karthago schimmerte blutrot im Licht der langsam versinkenden Sonne. Im Südwesten erkannte man jetzt deutlicher die Höhen und Felsenklippen der Halbinsel. Die Kommission, die vom römischen Segler angestrengt zur Küste blickte, war froh, noch vor Einbruch der Nacht, ihr Ziel erreicht zu haben, und hatte sich auf Deck versammelt, um sich den Empfang im Außenhafen durch die Abgeordneten der Stadt nicht entgehen zu lassen. Das Schiff hatte die Steilküste erreicht und bog nun scharf nach Süden ab an nackten, hohen Felswänden vorbei, die ihre schwarzen Schatten weit über das Schiff hinaus ins Meer warfen. Ein Schauder der Erfurt bemächtigte sich der Kommission bei dem Gedanken, dass sich hinter diesem natürlichen Festungswerk die alte, wohlhabende Stadt der Phönizier verberge.  Die steilen Berghänge bogen nun sanfter nach Westen ab und bald wurde die Sicht frei auf den prächtig angelegten Handelshafen, der sich vor die mächtige Stadtmauer schob. Auf beiden Kais drängten sich die Massen in einem farbenfrohen Gemisch von Kleidern und Röcken.  Einen solchen Empfang hatten die Römer nicht erwartet und sahen nun staunend auf die zusammengedrängten Männer, Frauen und Kinder. Man war von ihnen etwa 20 Doppelschritte entfernt, und der Steuermann schickte sich auch schon an, sein Fahrzeug in die enge Einfahrt zu lenken. Den Kommissaren und der begleitenden Schutzmannschaft war es, als ob sie mitten durch die bunte Menge schwebten. So dicht hatten sich die Leute zu beiden Seiten der Hafenanlagen gedrängt. 

Publius hatte sich weit über die Reling gebeugt und schaute in die braun gebrannten Gesichter der Afrikaner. In manchen sah er Misstrauen und Furcht empfehlen, in vielen aber auch Hoffnung und Vertrauen. Einige winkten ihm zu, er winkte zurück. Aber der tadelnde Blick Nasos, seines Vorgesetzten, ließ seinen Arm erstarren. Er wunderte und fragte sich, warum im Naso diese freundliche Geste verboten habe, und fand keine Antwort. 

Publius war erst 19 Jahre alt, und seine blauen Augen blickten noch recht unsicher in die Welt. Er war teils durch Zufall, teils durch ein Machtwort des neuen Volkstribunen nach Karthago gekommen. Dieser hatte seine tribunizische Gewalt dadurch unter Beweis gestellt, dass er einen Bürgerlichen den Kommissaren als Fachbegleitung durchgesetzt hatte. Sonst war diese Ehre ausschließlich ein Privileg der römischen Aristokratie. Fern politischer Wirren hatte er bei seinem Vater in der Tonvasenherstellung gelernt. Publius besaß wenige, aber gute Freunde. Die meisten wollten mit diesem träumerischen, in sich gekehrten Menschen nichts zu tun haben. Überdies leuchten aus seinem Kopf zwei seltsam blaue Augen, womit er so manches Mal Unbehagen unter seinen Kameraden ausgelöst hatte. Sein Vater hatte ihn nur ungern gehen lassen, weil er wusste, dass ihm das halb militärische Dasein in der Schutzmannschaft und der Aufenthalt in der verkommenen und durch Reichtum und Üppigkeit zügellos gewordenen Stadt verderben könnte. Hatte er doch seinen Sohn in altväterlicher Strenge aufgezogen und vom sittenlosen Treiben seiner Altersgenossen ferngehalten! Aber er war auch nicht so verstockt, um auf seiner Weigerung zu bestehen und die ihm erwiesene hohe Ehre zurückzuweisen. 

Wednesday’s Photos

Still Winter on Mount Scaia

Mount Scaia is a mountain in the Monashee Mountains in Canada. Over 2200 m high, not very far from where we live at 500 m, it is located in an undeveloped provincial wilderness park. Last Thursday, our son Michael took us in his heavy duty truck on an adventure trip over a rough dirt road. His plan was to take us to the top so we could delight in the fabulous mountain scenery and capture it on our cameras. But at 2000 m, the snow on the road was so deep that even driving a super truck, Michael could not proceed without the definite chance of getting stuck. Our disappointment, however, was softened by the sight of a fully grown giant grizzly standing on a snowbank. Before we could get our cameras ready, he had disappeared in the nearby bush. Farther down, we had a delicious picnic in the pure mountain air. I posted a few photos. Enjoy!

Today’s composition is called Dance Fantasia and goes well with the adventurous trip into the Monashee Mountains. As I am striving to improve my composing skills with Logic Pro, I welcome comments with constructive criticism.

Biene’s Engagement to a Young Dutchman

The episode with Biene’s Moroccan pen pal was barely over, when a far greater danger was looming over my horizon. There was a young Dutchman by the name of Henk. They met, fell in love and decided to get married. Henk visited Biene and her parents numerous times. Soon all four parents came together to get to know each other.

Papa Panknin had the following to say about Biene and his prospective son-in-law. “My daughter’s admirer comes to visit here often, there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s better to know your daughter’s admirer – especially my wife has this opinion – than to know nothing. Bienchen is always meticulous about her appearance, always in tip-top condition and wearing subtle war paint. There’s nothing you can do about it, the only thing you can do is fight the excesses. These are natural laws that you cannot go against. This has been the case for thousands of years. She also spends a significant part of her life in front of the mirror. It has always been that way, and the mirror was probably invented very early on, precisely because of this need. People complain about me because I walk around too poorly dressed and, among other things, wear shoes that are 30 years old and have therefore developed folds and wrinkles. Now this young man, who is staying overnight nearby, comes to us for morning coffee and other meals. Everyone made themselves beautiful. Even I put on a suit to celebrate the Reformation Day and because of the visit. Mom serves and Biene is beaming with happiness. And what is the young man wearing? Jeans and a sweater in a tasteless poison green colour. Of course, he doesn’t have proper behaviour either, but students at higher educational institutions don’t have that either. Yes, it’s not that simple. You can’t intervene in a rude way. The parents have also honoured us with their visit. Who invited them and why they came remains a mystery to me until now. The parents seem likeable and sensible. For the rest, they drank coffee and cognac and smoked cigarettes almost constantly, i.e. father and son.”

Almost eight years ago, I published a post that marked the point where the Peter and Gertrud Klopp and the Walter Panknin and His Family stories merged into one and, despite many obstacles, miraculously came to a romantic conclusion. Those of you, who have been with me for a very long time, will know the details. So with a glimpse into one of my saddest life experiences, of sixty years ago, I will repeat the old saying “All’s well that ends well”.

One Misfortune Never Comes Alone

I was still reeling under the blow of the unexpected military transfer to Maxhof, Bavaria, when another one hit me like a bolt out of the blue. Biene wrote that she had met a young Dutchman by the name of Henk, to whom she was now engaged. They were dreaming about their own home at the edge of a forest near the city of Arnhem and were planning to get married. The news nearly tore me apart, all the more as Biene described our relationship as merely a nice correspondence between friends. Although my emotions were running high, I immediately responded to her letter and thanked her for being honest. It was some sort of a miracle that I agreed to keep writing to her. That promise was so terribly out of character, so contrary to what my pride and sense of honour would have allowed me to do, that there was only one explanation. I was still in love with her.

Sleepless nights followed. I held endless conversations with myself. At times, I would place the entire blame on my shoulders. A friend of mine was perhaps right, when he said that a kiss is more powerful than words, passion stronger than tender sentiments expressed merely in letters. Then the American folk song ‘On Top of Old Smokey’ was going through my mind during those agonizing hours of wakefulness. The apparent truth of the line ‘I lost my true lover for courting too slow’ hit me especially hard. Suddenly, the pendulum swung into the opposite direction. For a short while, I found relief by putting the blame on Biene. ‘Surely, one does not get engaged overnight’, I argued. ‘Why didn’t she write me sooner? Why did she allow the correspondence to drag on so long? What about her other pen pals, the young man from Morocco, for example? Does she want to keep all her options open? Is she like a bee, as her name implies, flying in a kind of romantic dance from one flower to another to see where she would find the sweetest nectar?’ Having experienced both ends of the emotional spectrum, I finally settled for a more balanced view. The wildly swinging pendulum was coming to rest in the middle. Concern for Biene pushed anger and jealousy aside; she might have responded to the lure of marital bliss too quickly. These internal monologues went on and on through several nights, at the end of which I was completely exhausted. But I had calmed down enough to finish my letter to Biene with the words, “Just one thing you must promise me. If you perceive a danger to your happiness in that you cannot distinguish between true friendship and love between a man and a woman or if your future husband does not like our correspondence, then have the courage to say goodbye. For I do not want to destroy your happiness.”

Wednesday’s Photos

Strange Creatures Around Our House

Over the last couple of years, we have been collecting driftwood from the lakeshore and decorating the skirting of our modular home. Recently, I started to see bizarre animals and strange-looking faces in these wood sculptures. To enhance the effect, I applied with my photo editor Gaussian blur to the background. This adjustment made the fantasy creatures stand out with no distracting elements. For your viewing pleasure, I selected the following five images below. Enjoy!

Biene’s Search for Romantic Connections

Papa Panknin’s Efforts to Thwart Biene’s Visit to a Morrocan Pen-Pal

In Biene’s final high school years, her school started an international penpal exchange program, whose main purpose was to promote peace and mutual understanding among teenagers in the world. Since English was developing more and more as the lingua franca, a secondary aim of the program was to give students the opportunity to improve their English skills 

Being romantically inclined, Biene pursued this new form of connecting with other mostly male penpals with vim and vigour. Papa Panknin must have wondered about the disappearance of his postage stamps. She entertained her friends with her endearing letters as far away as Brazil. One fellow came paddling down all the way down from Hamburg to visit her. She described him in her correspondence as her future fiancé. There was also a young man from Morocco, who enticed her with glowing descriptions of his country to come and visit, meet his parental home and explore Morocco beautiful landscape. 

Then there was also me with whom she also kept up a passionate correspondence and shared so boldly all the details of her latest virtual relationship, and which she was hoping to soon become a reality. Her dad’s letter to the German embassy in Morocco, and the ambassador’s reply will provide some insight into this particular event in Biene’s life.

To the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Rabat Morocco

“My 18-year-old daughter, a high school student, maintains a correspondence with Mr Mohammed Nouari, which is generally supported by schools. To my dismay, this correspondence has degenerated into a so-called pen-pal relationship. Now Mr. Nouari, who is apparently unable to come to beautiful Germany for work reasons, has invited my daughter to visit his parents’ house and to tour his country. I now have doubts about the sense of responsibility of the schools and also of the international organization mentioned: the schools and organizations promote and arrange such youth acquaintances and do not care about the effect that the romantic and idealistic ideas that grow in young and inexperienced girls can have. The schools touch on such things, but they leave it to the parents to deal with them and to clean up the mess. 

I, therefore, consider myself entitled to ask the embassy for information and a statement before I even consider my daughter’s request to accept the invitation. Personally, I think all this is nonsense. But my views are not decisive; the prevailing zeitgeist is. People say, schools too, that my views are no longer up to date, that they are backwards, that everything is different now than it was in my time.

Given the delicacy of the matter, allow me to comment briefly on this. I am very tolerant and was not a racial fanatic during Hitler’s time. That is why, as a police officer, I did not join the SS at the time, which meant that I was not promoted to any higher ranks and I am still suffering from it now. However, I consider the mixing of the white and coloured races, if not exactly an offence against the divine order, to be improper for all parties and only justified in exceptional cases.

I cannot judge the mentality and the plans of a Moroccan of an unknown race and religion. Therefore, I cannot know the reasons for this invitation to my daughter and whether it is of an unselfish and honest nature. Ultimately, the question arises as to whether parents can take responsibility for sending a young and completely inexperienced girl on such a journey.”

The embassy’s reply:

Dear Mr. Panknin,

In response to your letter of April 30, 1963, the Embassy would like to urgently advise you against allowing your daughter to travel to Morocco. Even if Mr. Mohammed Nouari – who can only be a Muslim by name – had no bad intentions, such a visit to conservative Morocco, where women almost without exception still wear veils, would inevitably lead to clear conclusions.

As the unfortunately very numerous examples known to the Embassy show, a marriage between a European woman and a Moroccan man should be strongly discouraged, not for racial reasons, but because they are two fundamentally different cultures. In terms of the way of life and marriage, there are simply no bridges between the European and the Arab-Islamic cultures, so marriages between European women and Muslims are almost always doomed to failure.

With best regards, on behalf of the Embassy.

Wednesday’s Photos

Mother’s Day Trip to Fintry Park

Last week, my wife and I travelled to a historic site an hour’s drive south of Vernon BC. It turned out to be a pleasant trip along the shores of Okanagan Lake. Our son had told us that there is a spectacular waterfall in addition to a beautiful campground ideal for camping, boating and swimming. What attracted our eyes were the old buildings that were in a state of decay but still radiated the glamour of a bygone era. I found the fascinating story of the founder of this great estate on a tourist information board. Captain James Cameron Dun-Waters was a Scotsman who came to Canada in 1909. When he arrived at Fintry, he discovered a piece of land that he instantly recognized as having the potential to be transformed into a paradise of natural splendour. He harnessed against the advice of European engineers the power of a nearby creek and waterfall. To the latter, we tourists could climb very steep wooden stairs that led to the thunderous source high above the valley below. Here are a few photos and a video I took on my iPhone and an informative YouTube documentary on this amazing pioneer from Scotland.