As reported last week, we travelled with our company from Germany north to Nakusp and then turned south to the picturesque town of New Denver on Slocan Lake. Then we took the 31A to Kaslo, where we paid a visit to the Moyie, a paddle wheeler sternwheeler that worked on Kootenay Lake from 1898 until 1957. After nearly sixty years of service, she was sold to the town of Kaslo and restored. Today she is a National Historic Site of Canada and the world’s oldest intact passenger sternwheeler.
Diese Serie ist, wie der Gesamttitel schon andeutet, den menschlichen Werten im Geist der Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben gewidmet. Sie wurde liebevoll von meinem Vetter Dr. Hartmut Kegler zusammengestellt, die er 2015 als kleines Heftband in Deutschland veröffentlichte. Ich drücke hiermit meine Dankbarkeit aus, diese kostbaren Gedanken in meinem Blog aufnehmen zu dürfen. Möge der Leser Inspiration und viel Freude beim Lesen dieser Schrift haben. For my non-German readers I recommend using Google Translate.
Es wird oft von menschlichen Werten gesprochen, denen wir verpflichtet seien. Unsere Gesellschaft versteht sich auch mitunter als eine „Wertegemeinschaft”. Doch um welche Werte es dabei geht, wird selten genau erklärt. Es bleibt einem auch oft verborgen, wenn man nach dem geht, was in der Öffentlichkeit be- und geachtet wird: Politiker, Schauspieler, Sportsleute, der gehobene Adel lassen nicht immer die Werte erkennen, die gemeint sein könnten. Doch wenn man auf den Alltag des schlichten Mitbürgers achtet, begegnet einem manches, was ehrenwert ist. In Krankenhäusern und Altersheimen, in Kinderdörfern und Familienwerken, in Frauenhäusern und Hospizen, in Obdachlosenheimen und „Tafeln”, aber ebenso in vielen Nichtregierungsorganisationen wie „Ärzte ohne Grenzen”, „Brot für die Welt” oder Caritas, in Natur-, Umwelt- und Tierschutzvereinigungen wirken Menschen, die ethische Ziele aufopferungsvoll verfolgen und verwirklichen helfen. Sie finden in Illustrierten und Fernsehsendungen zu selten öffentliche Würdigung. Deshalb habe ich einmal versucht, einiges über menschliche Werte zusammenzutragen und habe dabei auch nicht nur weise Persönlichkeiten zitiert, sondern vor allem die Gedanken und das Wirken eines „Genies der Menschlichkeit” anklingen lassen, der mit seiner Ethik der Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben menschliche Werte nicht nur benannt, sondern auch vorgelebt hat.
Möge die Schrift Interesse und Zuspruch finden.
Hartmut Kegler
When we have company, it seems we try harder to impress our visitors with the beautiful surrounding we live in. So I travelled with our guests north to Nakusp and turned south to Summit Lake and finally New Denver, where we stopped for lunch and spent some time at the Slocan Lake with the majestic Valhalla Mountains in the background. I selected five photos and posted them in chronological order. Enjoy.
At the end of the 1950s, after giving up the house in Söcking, Bavaria, Anna von Waldenfels moved to Freiburg/Breisgau close to her sister Meta Mülbert, who lived at Maria-Theresiastraße 4. Her husband Vincenz had passed away in 1958. Anna at first rented an apartment at number 7 across the street.
In the summer of 1959, while on a bike tour through Germany with my friend Rainer Schüler, I visited both aunts, who add moved together at No. 4. I remember Aunt Anna quite well, a feisty old lady filled with an unbroken spirit and a fervour, which revealed strong nationalistic overtones. She spoke to us young men of sacrifices to be rendered in blood and honour to put Germany back on her feet again. Obviously, her heart and mind were still dreaming of an era that no longer existed. These bizarre ideas of a past imperialistic Nazi-Germany, having brought nothing but extreme suffering and total destruction to many nations under its control, were completely foreign to us growing up in democratic West Germany.
At about the same year she met for the last time her granddaughter, the then 23-year old Carola von Waldenfels (born in 1932 at Lagowitz). She had most likely made a farewell visit and proceeded from there to travel as a photographer to California, USA. The two widows maintained contact with Ernst Klopp (my father), who had remarried and lived with his new wife Erna Klopp (née Krämer) in Michelbach near Schotten.
Once a resolute, energetic lady, always leaving the impression of a governess, now suffered from bladder incontinence, which considerably restricted her mobility and physical activities. At 82, she died of cancer on 3 November 1969 in Freiburg/Breisgau. The two families Georg von Waldenfels from Haren/Ems and Meta Mülbert provided on 7 November 1967 a final resting place for Anna on her beloved husband’s side in the Starnberg forest cemetery. Her son had arranged the transfer of his mother’s remains to Söcking, but he did not deem it necessary to take care of the completion by adding a cross for his mother. Fate’s irony is that her gravesite remained nameless just as the one of her eldest brother Friedrich Klopp (1875 – 1946) in Gardelegen in the former German Democratic Republic. “Sic transit gloria mundi.”
Driftwood sculptures abound along the shorelines of the Arrow Lake. While canoeing on the lake south of Fauquier, I discovered some more, which I would like to share with you. There are also man-made structures that campsite visitors have set up following their artistic urges. Viewing them, I felt inspired to build an ‘inukshuk’ myself. Strictly speaking, these stone structures are not inukshuks. The latter have their origin in the monuments of the Inuit people in the Canadian Arctic. Among the stones, I found one that appeared to have a smiling face and in a precarious balancing act, I managed to put it on top of two other bigger stones. Enjoy.
From Gauting as their starting point, Anna and Ludwig von Waldenfels, both already at retirement age, began once again to build up a foundation for their livelihood. At the end of 1947, they leased one half of the former Wehrmacht training camp Pentenried, which had become the possession of the State of Bavaria. They purchased the living and material inventory for the property. The couple kept about 15 to 20 cows, 2 or 3 teams of horses, 2 German shepherds; they had access and use of a tractor and employed three coachmen, also Walter Schirrmeister, their former estate manager of Panwitz, as well as a certain Ulrich Kennemann, and between February 1948 and February 1949 their nephew Karl Klopp (1929 – 2019) [Peter’s brother]. At the beginning of 1950, the couple von Waldenfels gave up the lease again and went into retirement. Ludwig was 75, and Anna was 65 years old. Today there remains very little of the Pentenried estate, a few outbuildings, and a hall with pigs’ troughs dating back to the army years.
Anna and Ludwig acquired subsequently the house at Hauptstraße 1 in Söcking near Starnberg and there they spent their golden years. On 17 March 1954, Ludwig von Waldenfels died at the age of 79. His wife had him buried in his Bavarian officer’s uniform. In September 1990, the author of the Klopp Chronicles, which I am translating into English, Eberhard Klopp, visited the neglected gravesite and found Ludwig’s wooden cross, which while still showing name and vital dates of the deceased von Waldenfels had due to weathering greatly deteriorated over the past four decades. Ludwig’s unserviced gravesite No. 84/85 is located at the forest cemetery of Söcking. One searches in vain for the mention of Anna von Waldenfels (née Klopp), who has also been buried here in 1967.
The Peter and Gertrud Klopp Family 