Autobiography

Chapter 38 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part IV

/ Peter Klopp / 45 Comments
Campus sign by the arch with the new logo. 2016

University of Calgary –  Image courtesy University of Calgary

Peter’s Pleading Letter and Biene’s Reassurance

(Conclusion of Peter’s Letter)

Dear Biene, I also want you to have your freedom to decide. During the first six weeks here a double burden will rest on your shoulders. I have no choice any more, since I have made mine already in December. So your yes will also be my yes and your no will be my no. Look at everything carefully when you come including the things that might shock you and then decide whether you can bear the absence of your relatives and friends for a long time. If you think you can, then throw our love onto the scales for the final decision.

The poem expresses the worry that dream and reality are no longer as close together as they once were in Michelbach and that the role in a family as wife and mother would no longer mean as much as then. How can I possibly explain that later after a few years, when we will be doing better, you would want to study from morning till evening  and to withdraw  as wife and mother from the family just to obtain a diploma? Biene, please understand me correctly. At the university there are many inspiring individual courses, which offer opportunities for intellectual enrichment. I would be the last one to oppose such desires. But a full university program as you desire indicates that you have begun to look at life, love, and marriage with different eyes. The goal that I once vaguely and exuberantly set in our book of dreams is still worth striving for and has already taken on clear and concrete forms. Yes, we evolve and we must work on us, but we should never ever attempt to change our character. Actually I don’t worry too much about you. For I know how much you are exposed to your mother’s influence. She planted contradictory ideas into your heart. Here her endeavors for your security are going too far. Perhaps in her fear about you she believes that one day I could abandon you or we could separate and then you wouldn’t have a profession to fall back on. Please reexamine earnestly if such wishes in you are genuine or if they merely represent a favor towards your anxious mother. For me this is a question of utmost importance and I hope it is for you as well.

Again I seem to be so stiff-necked, and it hurts to be like that. Just follow that one path that once had been the right one for both of us. In fact I am not commanding you to do anything Rather I am imploring you not to deviate from our life’s ideals. Even if we cannot reach them completely, the work and the endeavour towards them will provide sense and purpose of life. In an active and meaningful life true happiness will not be very far.

Give my kindest regards to your parents and your brother Walter

For now be lovingly embraced by your Peter

January 31st, Velbert

My dear Peter,

just a few lines! How much I feel for and understand your worries! Have no fear. All my dreams about our future are still the same. And I will try everything to realize them with you, believe me. As to the money my parents (my mother actually) are prepared to pay the return fare. But I will do it only as you suggested, because I know my father has enough money. If only I were already with you, then everything would be easier. I am waiting for more information from Cologne. At the moment I am completely exhausted; but I will soon answer all your questions. I am so happy that you passed your exams. Peter, I shall always be, God willing, a good wife to you.

I love you.

Your Biene

Chapter 38 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part III

/ Peter Klopp / 33 Comments
The University of Calgary campus in the winter of 2015.

University of Calgary –  Image courtesy University of Calgary.

Peter Offers Three Choices

January 22nd 1966, Calgary

My beloved Biene,

I passed the exam, also the one in English. But this appears unimportant to me in the light of your coming this spring; I will write you the details of the exam some other time.

I fear that a few things I wrote must have hurt your feelings. I am sorry and apologize. You are in the least responsible. Rather the causes for all the troubles rest with me. That’s what I think; for I have critically examined myself. You know, when I am separated from people and I am sitting for hours at the same spot and study, then painful loneliness takes control over my heart. It comes from nowhere, from the silence of a tortured soul. However, I am aware that this pain can be alleviated by a sociable life and above all by the giving and receiving of love. You see, dear Biene, in our separation I often did you wrong, when unexpected news and such moods came together in a perilous brew. From now on I will make an effort to separate the two from each other.

O Biene I appear to me like a stubborn grumbler, because I must voice my objections all over again. I worked out with my brother that as a typist in an office you will barely earn enough money for the flight back home. And how do you propose to get to Canada, if your father is not willing to pay a single penny for the fare? Biene, forgive me please, if I seem to be so harsh; but you appear to dream about a happiness that still needs to be acquired with all our strength. The wedding is just the beginning of a lengthy struggle and not the final station of perpetual bliss. Whether we stay in the basement or whether we move (by the way I found a three-room apartment with a balcony, shower, bath etc., which will become vacant in the spring), we will be lacking everything. I am still eating from the plastic plate my mother once gave me when I was a boy scout. We will need tableware, cooking utensils and a few pieces of furniture. My brother is willing to pass on a few things to us. But it goes without saying that he can’t give away everything. I got to know many student couples, who started like this and have been quite happy all the same, because they could watch their day-by-day progress. But they did not start with debts, which would be the case, if we worked all summer not for our apartment, but for your return flight.

I see only three solutions out of this miserable situation: EITHER you follow completely your mother’s advice, come here for the summer, make your decision and work in a household, where you don’t have to pay for room and board, OR we get married after a certain waiting period and we let your father pay for the flights to and from Germany OR in case he doesn’t, you stay in Canada and we invite your parents to come. Later when we are financially better off we could fly together to Germany. I think this is a reasonable and responsible suggestion and I wished you would think it over during a quiet moment.

Peter’s letter to be continued

Chapter 38 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part II

/ Peter Klopp / 41 Comments

Fern

Sorge um einen Verlorenen Traum

O lass noch einmal jene Stunden

der Zweisamkeit vor Dir entstehen,

um die noch ungebrochene Blume

des stillen Glücks ein zweites mal zu sehen.

 

Ob du noch weißt, wie ich mit ungeübter Hand

Dir gold’ne Zeilen in das Buch der Träume schrieb,

den zarten Schleier, der versprach, ein ganzes Leben

in sanfter Milde zu umspannen, wo er verblieb?

 

Süße, schwere, einst entschwundene Wonne

drang in unsere Herzen mit dionysischer Gewalt;

denn wir als Glieder in der Kette, Ahn und Enkel eingereiht,

schicksalstrotzend, hoffnungsfroh fanden unseren Halt.

 

Mit ernstem Blick seh’ ich des Tages letzte Strahlen

in eisigen Höhen sich vor mir entfalten.

Wenn auch ein fernes Herz für mich noch schlägt,

Ich spüre Angst und Sorge in mir  walten.

 

 Fragend schau’ ich, den Hauch des Vergangenen suchend,

zum Abendhimmel hoch hinauf.

Teure Biene, komm und eil in meine Hütte

und schlag das Buch der Träume wieder auf!

 

Alberta Rose

Worry about a Lost Dream

Oh let once again those hours

of togetherness arise before you,

to see the still unbroken flower

of quiet bliss a second time.

 

Do you remember how I with inexperienced hand

wrote golden lines in our book of dreams,

the gentle veil, which promised to span a lifetime

in tender sweetness, where it remained?

 

Sweet and heavy bliss, once vanished, 

penetrated our hearts with Dionysian force;

for we, as links in the chain of ancestor and descendent,

rebellious and hopeful found our strength and support.

 

With somber glance, I see the last rays of the day

 in icy heights unfold before me.

Even though a distant heart still beats for me,

I sense fear and worry reign within me.

 

While seeking to catch the aura of the past,

I look questioningly up to the evening sky.

Dearest Biene, come and hurry to my  hut

and open the book of our dreams again!

Chapter 38 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part I

/ Peter Klopp / 24 Comments

383px-University_of_Calgary_Logo.svg

Will a Passionate Poem make a Difference?

Picking up the pieces of a shattered dream is better than having no pieces to pick up at all.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Poetry to the Rescue!

For three long months Biene had to endure the assaults from her parents, twin brother, relatives and friends on our plans to carve out a niche for our future in Canada. No doubt, while the arguments were partly driven by selfishness and the fear of losing daughter, sister and friend, they were also motivated by love and concern for her happiness in a distant land. Biene, endowed by nature with a big heart and a keen sense of perception felt empathy especially for her mother’s despair. Thus, she made compromises, which deeply affected me and touched a very sensitive nerve.

While Biene was struggling with real people, who were bent on imposing their idea of happiness on her, I in faraway Canada had to fight a different battle. Having no one to talk to and argue with, I battled with phantoms breaking through the crevices of my beleaguered mind, where dream and reality once so intimately interwoven were drifting apart with each new letter from Germany.

Then I remembered that two years earlier I had written a novella entitled “Carthage” (yet to be translated into English). The book written for Biene was my desperate attempt to declare my love to her and to win back her heart after the engagement with her Dutch fiancé had fallen apart. So as a prelude to a very long letter I composed  a poem. It was written in the spirit of German classic literature and poetry that I was studying at the time and was definitely inspired by my worries about all the troublesome changes made to our plans. The poem was to remind Biene of our hopes and aspirations, which we had recorded less than a year earlier in our book of dreams.

In Part II of this chapter I will publish the original poem in German and for my English speaking blogging friends I will add a translation with no attempt to preserve rhyme or rhythm. My hope is that not too much of its emotional impact is lost in translation.

Chapter 37 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part VI

/ Peter Klopp / 26 Comments
118Mountain

Rocky Mountains 1966

What Biene had Arranged with her Mother

January 14th ,1966,Velbert

My dear Peter,

Finally I can take all your fears away. My mother is looking at my departure in a calm and collected manner, because she now knows – which wasn’t clear to her before – that I can return any time in case of an emergency. She had been in the mistaken belief that I would commit myself to some sort of obligation, which would not allow me to come home so soon. My dear Peter, do not take it as my giving in or as a sign of weakness that I promised my mother to come home for Christmas. That way saying goodbye will not be so difficult. She can now hope to see me again in the not so distant future.

Also she has now gotten used to the idea of us two getting married. Only my father remains unbending. He says that he does not want to cast me out, but he would not financially support me in the least. My dear Peter, this is in complete contradiction of what my parents have promised me in the summer. I can only explain it by their desire to console me in my desperation, but they never counted on all this becoming a reality. I know now that in private they believed that while I was in England I would take my mind off our plans.

See dear Peter, I gathered from remarks that my father will write you a letter. I hope he will not hurt your feelings. That’s why I prepared you for it. Whatever he may write, don’t let him offend you.

I enjoy my work at Yale & Towne, an American company, located here in Velbert. Because of my knowledge of English, I do a lot of translations of mostly technical nature,  but also take care of my boss’s correspondence. So in a way I perform my duties almost as a personal secretary. Once I am in Canada, I would like to work in an office and later, when we are doing financially well, I would also like to enrol in a university program to obtain at least the lowest possible teaching diploma.

My dear Peter, I only hope that you are calm again and you have forgiven me. Certainly everything will turn out good in the end.

In love,

Your Biene

Chapter 37 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part V

/ Peter Klopp / 31 Comments
43Banff2

Banff – Historical Photo 1966

Peter Strikes a more Conciliatory Tone

January 13th 1966, Calgary

My dear Biene,

Much has been happening on my side, and if you hadn’t written so quickly, I would have sent you a letter anyway in the next couple of days.

Warm thoughts about you flow again through my heart. Although truth sometimes hurts, it is never as cruel as nebulous uncertainty. Many people don’t manage to bear the tragedy of life with assured hearts. They actually prefer to indulge in fuzzy daydreams and attempt to escape the challenges of life. You know now that I don’t belong to this kind of people and would not want to be categorized as such. Dear Biene, please take these philosophical considerations seriously; especially as they relate to our own experiences.

But first of all let me tell you what I think about what you have written and then let me know whether you agree. I would congratulate you very much, if the ambassador would grant your request for a work visa. Please don’t count on a positive response. For he knows the regulations and he cannot change them.  If you cannot support our original plan and wish to spare your mother any more grief, then the only way out is to make a new application from you end.

But now to your plans! Believe me, it would turn out to be a heavy burden for our entire future, if you were going to fly home and then come back after your final farewell. Not even a rich man would throw so much money out of the window and yet at the beginning we will belong to the poorest of the poor. You work and sacrifice your health to pay for the flight, then again you work throughout the summer just to fly back home and would not have any money to fly again. Did your mother not consider that they rob you of your youthful energy, which should be devoted to us both? Is this true motherly love? I really don’t want to get angry again, but I am facing a human puzzle. What grief will you cause all over again, when you have to say your final farewell! And as my wife you will fly back to Germany. Your mother will feel like having been deceived, and I will be disappointed that you rank your love to your parents higher than your care for our challenging start in life here. Your parents want that you can make a free decision. Why not? Here is a new suggestion. I go one more time to the immigration office and ask for an extension of our wedding date so that you can freely decide whether you like it or not. In case you cannot stand it or the strange environment drives you back home, then take my money as much as you need and fly home again. I am prepared to give my word to you and to your parents even in writing if necessary.

The chest with your belongings may be shipped after you have made your decision to stay. Biene. Is this not a good suggestion, if the deadline for our wedding is extended to three months? Would you be so kind and make your parents aware of this proposal? By their reaction you will know if they really want your best or whether they are simply trying to keep you near them for the foreseeable future. They pay nothing for your wedding. Do they also want that you pay for the return ticket? The $500.00 could furnish our apartment or house, if I was going to remain and teach in Calgary. Enough of it!

At Gerry’s family (Fyffe Road) a little baby girl by the name of Jaqueline has been born. My brother voiced his opinion in his humorous manner and said, ‘Now Martha has got what she wanted and hopefully from now on she will let me sleep in peace.’ I had to laugh at the way he said it.

Always in love

Your Peter