[In
“Home Alone, Part 2” (posted on Rick On Theater on 15 June 2015), part of a
three-part posting of letters my father wrote my mother from Germany in 1962, I
included translations of two local newspaper articles about Dad’s arrival in
Koblenz when he took up his post as director of the Amerika Haus there. My mother joined him in October, but he spent
September alone getting started with his job and seeing that their house was ready
for occupancy.
[I
explained my dad’s position in the U.S. Foreign Service in “An American Teen in
Germany, Part 1,” posted on ROT on 9 March 2013 (Rick On Theater: An American
Teen in Germany, Part 1). To
reiterate briefly, the Amerika Haus (the plural is Amerika Häuser; its
official designation was U.S. Information Center, but we habitually called it
by its colloquial German name), a facility with a library and
auditorium/meeting hall for concerts, readings, lectures, receptions, and
performances.
[Dad’s
agency was the United States Information Agency (USIA), known abroad as the
U.S. Information Service (USIS), the cultural propaganda—officially called “public
diplomacy”—arm of the U.S. Foreign Service.
[The
two local papers, the Rhein-Post and the Rhein-Zeitung, ran profiles of my dad, the
new Information Center Director (the official job title), and he sent them home
to Mom with one of the letters. I
translated the articles and posted them with the transcribed correspondence.
[When
I helped my mother move to a new apartment in 2013, I went through a box of odds
and ends saved from the decades up till then—going back in many instances to
the years before my parents even met, including their childhoods.
[That’s
where the Koblenz letters had been stashed—but also in the cache of memorabilia
were three more clippings from German papers with other articles on my father or
his job from the years he was posted in Koblenz (1962-65). I’ve been looking for an opportunity to
translate and post them as well.
[The
1962 articles were both about the same thing: the reporting for duty of the
only U.S. civilian official in the region.
(There was a small detachment of army signal corps soldiers and two
liaison officers, one from the army and one from the air force, attached to the
German III Corps, which was based in Koblenz.)
The articles below are each different; my dad was a figure of local news
interest!
[The
three articles report on several of the many aspects of Dad’s work as Information
Center Director. We’ll hear about his
commenting on American history and politics, hosting a performance by American
artists, and presenting a prominent U.S. official giving a talk on U.S. economic
policy—all, of course, for local German audiences.
[One
article, for instance, came out the weekend after our Independence Day (Jahrestag der Unabhängigkeit;
literally, the ‘Anniversary day of independence’). The Fourth of July was an official event for
my father while he was in Koblenz; he hosted a reception at the Amerika House
for the Koblenzers whom he was meant to cultivate as the focus of his job.
[A
few words about the translations below: Though I will be as accurate and
precise as I can be, I want to make the English renderings as reader-friendly
as possible. Toward that end, I’ll take
the liberty of occasionally translating freely.
German can come out stiff and formal if rendered literally. I’ll also use American standard punctuation
rather than follow the German practices in the articles.
[I
also don’t want to interrupt the flow of the reports, so when there are things
I think need explanation or comment, I’ll save them for an afterword following
each translation.]
Rhein-Zeitung [Koblenz] Saturday/Sunday, 6/7 July 1963:
“187 Years USA: The Words were also followed by Deeds.”
Reception at the Amerika Haus —
Warm Bond with the Community
The day before yesterday, the 187th anniversary of
the independence of the United States of America was celebrated. In Berlin with a military parade and gun
salutes at the Airlift Monument, in Koblenz a more civilian, but just as
cordial connection with the German people.
Once again, quite a large number of their representatives accepted the
invitation to the Amerika Haus. For the
first time, the members of the Amerika Haus Association could also be welcomed.
The Director of the Amerika Haus, E. M. K*****, said in his
brief commemorative speech that 187 years ago, the U.S. Declaration of Independence
triggered a permanent revolution. It
continues to this day. But the mere
proclamation of a number of principles does not guarantee that they would
actually be implemented. It is necessary
and essential that actions and procedures accompany the declaration, otherwise
one would have nothing more than a beautiful-sounding document of limited
value. In the archives of the world,
there are many documents like that gathering dust. The principles of personal freedom and
independence set out in that Philadelphia document are so universal and
all-encompassing that it is unrealistic to assume that they can be achieved in
one go or in a single effort. The
history of the United States over the past 187 years has been an ongoing effort
to achieve and expand these original goals.
The actions of the United States for the benefit of large parts of its
own population and in support of other nations, new and old, around the globe, have
demonstrated abundantly its deep commitment to universal principles and
concepts.
As the spokesman for the German participants, Regierungspräsident
Dr. Schmitt underlined the importance of Independence Day as a revolutionary
event in human history. The astonishing
rise of the United States of America to be the premier leading political and economic
power in the free world has at all times been subject to the law of the freedom
of nations and individuals, as it was epically expressed in the stunning
proclamations of the great statesmen of this nation, of a Jefferson and of a
Lincoln.
Today, the national holiday of the United States is an event
that also directly affects Europe and Germany.
For the free people of the world are joined with the United States, and
the assertion of European freedom is not possible without the alliance with the
U.S. On the national holiday of the USA,
the German people also made known their gratitude for the crucial help for the
German economic and political reconstruction which the New World rendered after
the war.
[I
can’t shake the feeling that this uncredited journalist was reporting my
father’s own words in part of this article.
(The other part was the words of Reigierungspräsident Schmitt.) Dad probably would have written a speech in
German, with the help of the Amerika Haus staff (who, except for him, were all
Germans) rather than in English, which the reporter would have had to
translate. (I assume that, as with most
official speeches by government representatives, the press were provided
written texts of Dad’s remarks.)
[By
the time he held this reception, Dad had been in Koblenz for nine months. He arrived with a knowledge of spoken German
and he would have had time to improve since.
In addition to his office staff, he was surrounded by Germans; we didn’t
live in an American compound—our neighbors all were German and so were the
service men who kept the house running (fireman, gardener, carpenter, and so
on)—and his job was to reach out to the community leaders of Koblenz and the
surrounding region.
[I
witnessed many of the occasions when he had to converse or speak in German for
his work, and we spoke German when we were in town for any number of reasons
such as dining and shopping. I was also
present when Dad gave a lecture in German to local students on the American
Civil War—so I know he was capable.
[Dad’s
remarks were clearly consonant with his official duties, praising the United
States and its founding principles, and presenting it and the purpose of the
celebration in the best light. That, in
a nutshell, was the job description for the Information Center Director. Not, of course, that he didn’t believe his
own words.
[I
was present for one Fourth of July reception—I’m pretty sure it was his first,
which makes it 1963 (which happens to be the date of this article). Mom and Dad, who were encouraged to entertain
in as an “American” way as possible, decided to introduce Germans to American
cocktails—mixed drinks weren’t a thing on the Continent in the early ’60s—by
serving Orange Blossoms (gin and orange juice) as the tipple of the day.
[Now,
accompanying the article is a photo of a man, presumably the Regeirungspräsident (RP),
introducing my father, standing to his left.
[Dad is a shockingly young man, being only 44 at the time.] Schmitt is behind a lectern, turned slightly
to his left and my father, who’s wearing a slightly self-conscious grin.
[Schmitt’s
holding a glass in his right hand as if he was just completing a toast; one can
just make out that the drink in the glass is opaque, suggesting that it’s an
Orange Blossom, rather than, say, a glass of good Rhine or Mosel wine, the more
common Koblenz reception drink. (Koblenz
is situated on a triangle of land formed by the confluence of Germany’s two
premier wine-producing rivers—the Rhine on its east and the Mosel on its north
and west.)
[Now,
a note or two from the article: The Berlin Airlift Monument (formally, in
German, Denkmal
für die Opfer der Luftbrücke, Monument for the Victims of the Airlift, or
simply, the Luftbrückendenkmal, the Airlift Monument) is a commemoration
of those who served in the 1948-49 Operation Vittles, otherwise known as the Berlin
Airlift (24 June 1948-11 May 1949). The
airlift was launched to relieve the blockaded West Berlin when the Soviet Union
cut it off from its supply sources in the Federal Republic of Germany (West
Germany).
[(Readers
may note that the German word for ‘airlift’ is Luftbrücke. Literally, that means ‘air bridge.’ That’s a means of delivering material from
one place to another by air as if over a bridge in the sky. An air bridge is the means by which an area
in a hostile or threatened territory is kept supplied by flying over enemy held
territory. West Berlin was in hostile
territory because it was 110 miles inside the German Democratic Republic (the
GDR or East Germany.), a Soviet satellite; it was threatened because of the
blockade which halted deliveries of food, fuel, and medicines.)
[Constructed
in 1951, the Airlift Memorial was outside the entrance to Tempelhof Airport, which
was also a U.S. air base and served as the Berlin end of the air bridge. (The other end was Rhein-Main Air Base in
Frankfurt.) Tempelhof is now closed, but
the monument’s still in the landmarked Platz der Luftbrücke.
[Coincidentally,
ten years after this article, I was stationed in West Berlin in the army. (I was there for two Independence Days—1972
and 1973.) During my tour in Berlin, the
commander of Tempelhof Air Base (1970-74) was Colonel Gail S. Halvorsen (b.
1920), who’d flown in the Berlin Airlift.
He became a hero to the children of Berlin—who became the adults running
the city by the 1970s—and was known as the Candy Bomber because he dropped
Hershey bars from his plane.
[(Colonel
Halvorsen also once flew me back to Berlin after I’d used an air force flight
to go on leave. I call this incident “my
little brush with actual history” and I recount it in “Berlin Memoir, Part 7,”
29 March 2017.)
[The
reason Berlin’s Independence Day celebration was so martial was that it was a
major army and air force post for U.S. forces during the Cold War. (Also French and British. The Soviets had a large military presence in
East Berlin, of course, and their headquarters was in Potsdam, 22 miles
southwest of Berlin in the GDR.) There
may have been as many as 10,000 U.S. troops in West Berlin when I was there.
[The
Amerika Haus Association (Amerika-Haus-Verein) was established to promote
intellectual and cultural exchanges between Germany and the United States. It promoted events at the Amerika Häuser such
as lectures and conferences on developments in contemporary American politics, culture
and society, and economic policies. The association
also promoted arts programming at the Amerika Häuser such as concerts,
readings, art exhibits, and theatrical performances that complemented this
mission.
[The Regierungspräsident of Koblenz to whom the article refers was Dr. Walter
Schmitt (1914-94). (Schmitt’s doctorate
was in law; he’d previously served as a district court judge.) He was appointed RP in 1957 and served until
1967.
[A
Regierungspräsident,
the head of an administrative district, was a uniquely German political
office. The closest we could come to it
in the United States would be a county executive, but the parallels are
inexact. A Regierungsbezirk
is a district within a state, in this case the Rhineland-Palatinate
(Rheinland-Pfalz), the German state of which Mainz is the capital and in which Koblenz
is located.
[There
were three Regierungsbezirke
in the Palatinate: Koblenz, Rheinhessen-Pfalz, and Trier; they were dissolved
in 2000, like most Regierungsbezirke in the reunited Germany. Currently, only four German states out of 16
in total are divided into Regierungsbezirke. The RP is an appointive managerial office,
under the jurisdiction of the Minister President (Ministerpräsident)
of the state (Land), the equivalent of a governor in the U.S.).
[I
guess it’s self-evident that the Jefferson and Lincoln whom RP Schmitt named
are Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the principal author of the Declaration of
Independence and third President of the United States (1801-09), and Abraham
Lincoln (1809-65), the Great Emancipator, leader of the Union during the Civil
War, and 16th President of the United States (1861-65). They were also two of my father’s historical
heroes.
[Finally,
I imagine it’s also obvious that “the war” to which the article refers in the
last sentence is World War II (1939-45).
The help the article mentions is almost certainly the Marshall Plan
(officially, the European Recovery Program), which provided economic aid to
countries of Western Europe between 1948 and 1952 to rebuild the region. Aid went to nations on both sides of the
conflict, Allied and Axis. The Federal
Republic of Germany received one of the largest parcels of financial
assistance. Then, too, came the Berlin
Airlift.
[Politically,
the U.S., with its wartime allies France and Britain, established the FRG as a
liberal democracy from their occupation zones in 1949 and guaranteed the freedom
of West Berlin. The Western Allies
accepted the FRG into NATO in 1955.
[Furthermore,
when President John F. Kennedy (1917-63; 35th President of the United States:
1961-63) delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in the divided city
on 26 June 1963—an event at which my father was an official guest—he made a powerful
statement about the U.S. and the West’s staunch support of Berlin and the FRG—and
endeared himself eternally to the German people.]
* *
* *
[The
article below is not directly about my father, but it’s about his work. The report is on a speech given by the U.S.
Ambassador to the Federal Republic at the Amerika Haus in Koblenz. Municipal dignitaries attended the address
and my father, as director of the Amerika Haus, was the official host of the
event.
[The
article is accompanied by an uncaptioned photo of Dad standing to the left of
the ambassador, who was, of course, the senior U.S. Foreign Service officer in
Germany and my father’s ultimate boss in country.
[The
Rhein-Post,
a regional newspaper that published local editions in towns around the district—this
clipping was from the Koblenz edition—ceased publication in 1964.]
Rhein-Post [Koblenz] Thursday, 7 November 1963: “USA
pushes for European Integration.”
Ambassador George McGhee spoke
before the Chamber of Commerce and Industry
KOBLENZ – On Tuesday, the President of the Koblenz
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dr. Barth, greeted His Excellency the
Ambassador of the United States, George C. McGhee, who came to Koblenz to give a
speech on " Commercial Expansion and Economic Growth in the Atlantic
Community," a joint event of the Amerika Haus and the Chamber of Industry
and Commerce.
What attention was paid to the address of His Excellency can
be seen from the fact that numerous representatives of public life from
politics, administration and business, including Regierungspräsident W.
Schmitt; Mayor Macke, who is also chairman of the board of trustees of the
Amerika Haus; and General Gaedke were present.
Mayor Macke outlined the extremely sensitive position of the
America House in his address. While
reading the thoughts and political maxims on the memorials of Presidents
Lincoln and Jefferson, he realized that despite culture and history, Europe had
not yet had statesmen like Lincoln and Jefferson.
In Europe, power has always been the instrument of politics,
in the United States, on the other hand, humanism is put into effect and
practiced. It is not so important that
the Mona Lisa has been brought to the U.S., but rather it is more important to
bring humanism to Europe. This seems to
be the mission of the Amerika Haus.
Ambassador McGhee gave a detailed speech on trade and the
economy of the past ten years. It could
rightly be said that the EEC was an economic success and initiated a
strengthened exchange of goods among the member states. The U.S. decided in 1957 to endorse the EEC
and to support its formation, despite recognizing the possibility of
discrimination against goods from non-member states. Nevertheless, the greater goal of European
integration justified this cost.
The slowdown of the European integration process would be
deeply regretted. He [i.e., Ambassador
McGhee] hoped to reflect Germany’s position accurately, saying that both
countries, the U.S. and Germany, hoped for an opportunity for renewed talks on
the question of Great Britain’s admission to the Common Market.
In the EEC, the U.S. is facing a partner of almost equal
strength for the first time, and precisely because they are so similar to one
another, these two economic bodies have to work together if they do not want to
split up.
In the forthcoming negotiations, the United States and the
European Economic Community could expand mutual access to their markets on a
basis that would be mutually beneficial. Major tariff reductions by the United States,
the EEC and other trading nations can go a long way towards alleviating
problems such as those arising from the so-called “customs gap” between the EEC
and EFTA.
[Gustav
Adolf Barth (1900-77) was President of the Koblenz Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (Industrie- und Handelskammer [IHK] Koblenz) from 1960 to 1965. He was a Doctor of Law.
[George
C. McGhee (1912-2005) was United States Ambassador to West Germany from May 1963,
just after my father arrived at his post in Koblenz, to May 1968, after Dad
returned to the States. (While Dad was
at the Amerika Haus in Koblenz, his immediate superior was the Consul General
in Frankfurt; when he was transferred to the embassy in Bonn as the Cultural
Affairs Officer, the ambassador became his ultimate boss in Germany.)
[A
sidelight: the embassy staff officer who oversaw the consular activities,
including the Amerika Häuser, was the Deputy Chief of Mission, the embassy’s
second-in-command after the ambassador.
During McGhee’s tenure, the DCM in Bonn (1963-67) was Martin J.
Hillenbrand (1915-2005); he was effectively Dad’s day-to-day boss.
[West
Berlin, which wasn’t officially part of the Federal Republic—it was still
occupied territory from World War II—had a U.S. Mission, our diplomatic office
in the politically sensitive city. The ambassador to the FRG maintained
an office at the Berlin mission and in June 1972, about a year after I arrived
in Berlin as an army officer, a new ambassador took up his post in Bonn.
He was Martin Hillenbrand. One afternoon when Hillenbrand was in Berlin,
I paid a call to say hello and reintroduce myself to him after a decade.
[It
was part of USIA’s mission to present all aspects of American life—its arts,
its politics, its history, its core values, and so on—to the German people,
starting with their civic leaders from all sectors of the society. Addresses like this one and performances like
the one in the article below, as well as other events, both formal and
informal, were the bulk of my father’s work.
[Willi
Werner Macke (1914-85) was Mayor of Koblenz from 1960 to 1972. Lieutenant General
Ludwig Heinrich Gaedcke (1905-92) was Commanding General of the III Corps
(Bundeswehr), headquartered in Koblenz, from 1961 to 1965. These and the other men named in these three
articles were all people that my father met with and occasionally socialized
with, among numerous others from various sectors of Koblenz society, as part of
his job.
[At
one time or another while we were living in Koblenz, I met Mayor Macke and
General Gaedke; the general and his wife were part of the social circuit on
which my parents often traveled; his Weinabende (the German equivalent of cocktail
parties, literally ‘wine evenings’) were legendary for their strict adherence
to German-style rules of etiquette and comportment.
[I
don’t recall ever having met IHK President Barth or RP Schmitt, though I may
have. Over the three years of Dad’s tour
in Koblenz, I met many of the Koblenzers with whom Dad made contact as part of
his job. They were the leaders of the
various segments of the community—and some were our neighbors, such as the director
of Koblenz’s largest department store, the Kaufhof, Hans-Josef Kaesbach (1918-2012),
who lived next door to us.
[In
Koblenz—the set-up was different when Dad was transferred to the Bonn
embassy—we lived in a U.S. government-owned house, but there was no U.S.
residence compound. We lived, as the
expression among Foreign Service people is, “on the economy,” and our neighbors
and the local business people with whom we did daily business were Koblenzers.
[Dad
was mandated to cultivate the local residents and, as part of his
responsibility, so was Mom. The wives of
the men such as those who attended the ambassador’s lecture were the province
of my mother, who was an integral part of Dad’s work. Mom was known to us in those days as “Mrs.
Fifty Percent” because during his training, Dad was told that spouses were 50%
of the USIA officer’s job.
[On
Tuesday, 8 January 1963, 10 months before this article was published, Leonardo
da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” made its first appearance in the United States, exhibited
at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
[The
EEC, or European Economic Community, was the forerunner of the European Union;
it was sometimes referred to as the European Common Market, or simply the
Common Market. The EEC was created in
1957 and was absorbed into the E.U. when it was formed in 1993.
[The
“customs gap” is defined as the difference between the theoretical import duty
that should be collected and the actual import duty collected. Any gap in customs-duty collection must be made
up by higher Gross National Income contributions from member states and
ultimately borne by European taxpayers.
[EFTA
is the European Free Trade Association, formed in 1960 by nations which weren’t
members of the EEC, including the United Kingdom, to be a counterweight to the EEC. Since 1973, with the admission of the U.K.
and Denmark to the Common Market, and the subsequent membership of many of the founding
nations of EFTA, only four remain: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. With the departure of most of its members, EFTA
has lost its importance with respect to the EEC (or, later, the E.U.).
[The
“forthcoming negotiations” referred to in the article were probably the Kennedy
Round, the session of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
multilateral trade negotiations held between 1964 and 1967 in Geneva,
Switzerland. Named for U.S. President
Kennedy, who was assassinated six months before the opening negotiations (I
call your attention to the date of the article above, just 15 days before the
president’s death), the discussions officially opened on 4 May 1964.]
*
* * *
Trierische Landeszeitung [Trier
regional newspaper; Trier (Treves)] Monday, 9 March 1964: “German-American
Library Director K***** introduced himself.”
Reception in the German-American Library
At a reception he gave, the new director of
the German-American Library in Koblenz and Trier, Eugene M. K*****, took the occasion
of the chamber music evening of the American Kroll Quartet, hosted by the
German-American Library in the Treviris, to introduce himself to a larger circle
in Trier.
Personalities from the
intellectual life, the cultural and intergovernmental organizations of Trier,
the armed forces and the trade unions had come to the German-American Library, along
with French friends led by Consul Marcel Schublin.
A lively exchange of
ideas quickly ensued, and those present found the opportunity to thank K*****
for the work of the library and the events it had held.
K*****, who came to
Germany from Washington about a year-and-a-half ago and then took over as director
of the German-American Library, assured the TLZ [Trierische Landeszeitung ]
that the few visits he has been able to make to Trier so far have made him
aware of Trier’s great cultural importance.
The German-American Library would have a special task in Trier, however,
especially due to the border location of the city of
Trier and in view of Trier’s importance as a school town. In books and lecture events, it [i.e., the
library] strives to impart awareness of the American way of life and to present
the view of the U.S. on contemporary problems and desires to have a
conversation with the Germans about them.
That is why he [i.e., Director K*****] is pleased with the interest that
young people in particular are showing in this work.
[Accompanying the report is
a photo of my father among four men dressed in white-tie-and-tails. All five men are holding wine glasses as if
making a toast, and I presume the four in evening dress are the musicians of
the Kroll Quartet. The caption reads: “The
director of the German-American Libraries in Koblenz and Trier, Eugene M.
K*****, took the guest performance of the New York Kroll Quartet as an
opportunity to introduce himself to a larger circle of Trier’s leading figures.”
[Trier, formerly known in
English as Treves, is a city on the banks of the Mosel River in the
Rhineland-Palatinate, 100 miles southwest of Koblenz. The German-American Library in Trier (known
in German as DAB, for Deutsch-Amerikanische Bücherei) was a satellite facility
of the Koblenz Amerika Haus, so my father was its director ex officio.
[A word about the materials
in the DAB’s, including the Amerika Haus library in Koblenz: the collection was
divided into two general categories of books and other publications. One category was works of literature, but
only American literature. They may have
been in German translation or in English, but library patrons wouldn’t find
Cervantes, Dumas, Dante, or Mann on the shelves.
[The second category of
holdings were books and other materials about
the United States. Covering as many
aspects of the U.S. as can fit in the facilities, this material would also be
available in German or English—but these materials could be authored by writers
from anywhere in the world. For
instance, a reader would be likely to find Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy
in America in the DAB as well as John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage..
[The Treviris was the
common nickname for the Katholisches Vereinshaus Treviris (Catholic Association
House), a monumental secular building erected in 1895 and demolished in 1974. (Treviris is a Latin name for Trier from the
time it was a Roman provincial capital.)
After Trier’s municipal theater was destroyed in World War II, the
Treviris served as an event venue from 1947.
[The Kroll Quartet was an American
classical string quartet active between 1944 and 1969. Its membership in 1964 comprised William
Kroll (1901-80) and William Stone, violinists; Harry Zaratzian (b. 1922),
violist, and Avron Twerdowsky (1915-78),
cellist. It was part of Dad’s
responsibilities, and a major element of the USIA mission, to present American
performing and fine artists and the works of American artists, writers, and
thinkers.
[Among other events my
father hosted, in addition to this concert by the Kroll Quartet, was a reading
(in German) of Edward Albee’s 1960 absurdist one-act play The American Dream and a performance by actress
Celeste Holm and her husband and partner Wesley Addy, who were on a State
Department-sponsored goodwill tour.
[Dad also arranged for
performances by young American artists to show off our artistic
accomplishments. Nearly every German
town has at least an orchestra or an opera troupe, and larger towns, like
Koblenz, had both, plus a ballet company and a municipal theater. Because the U.S. doesn’t have the same
cultural environment, American artists come to these small companies to work
when their careers are just beginning.
So when an American singer, musician, or dancer was part of one of the
Koblenz companies, Dad tried to arrange for a recital at the Amerika Haus.
[Marcel Charles Schublin (1920-94)
was a French diplomat who served as French Consul and Chief of the Chancery in
Trier from 1957 to 1965. (In the
diplomatic field, the chancery is the building of a foreign mission that houses
the diplomatic offices. The embassy is
actually the ambassador’s residence. No
one observes this distinction, however, and it’s commonly understood that the
embassy is where the offices are and the ambassador’s quarters are simply
called “the residence.”
[Chef de la Chancellerie,
Schublin’s French title, seems to be the equivalent of what we’d call the Chief
of Mission, the senior diplomat at the post.
Schublin, who spoke fluent German, was also instrumental in founding the
Deutsch-Französischen Gesellschaft/Association Franco-Allemande (German-French
Society) in Trier in 1957. The “French
friends” of which the report speaks were probably members of this organization.
[Trier, or Trèves in
French, was seized by the Franks from the Romans in 459 and became part of the
Kingdom of Eastern Francia, the successor to Charlemagne’s empire, in 870 until
it was absorbed into the Holy Roman Empire in the 9th or 10th century.
[In the 17th and 18th
centuries, Trier was coveted by France, which finally succeeded in taking the
city in 1794. France held onto Trier
until after the Napoleonic era ended in 1815.
Then, after World War II, Trier, Koblenz, and all of the
Rhineland-Palatinate became part of the French Zone of Occupation until
1949. After that, France continued to
maintain a presence in the Palatinate, both militarily and diplomatically.
[Dad arrived in Koblenz to
take up his post as Information Center Director (aka: Director of the Amerika Haus) at the end of September
1962, 17 months earlier—just shy of 1½ years.
Incidentally, while he waited for our house to be readied and my mother
to join him, Dad stayed at the French Club, which was the former French
officers’ club from when Koblenz was part of the French occupation zone; it was
renamed the French Club and opened to all, becoming one of our favorite places
to eat. (I had escargots [snails] there for the first time, and salade
niçoise.)
[The city of Trier’s “border
location” is that it sits only nine miles from the border with Luxembourg, and
30 miles from France and 58 miles from Belgium.
As to why Dad referred to Trier as a “school town” (Schulstadt), his point isn’t clear. The University of Trier was founded in 1473,
but closed in the 18th century; it was reopened, but not until six years after
this report was written. Two other
university-level institutes operate in Trier today, but they both post-date
Dad’s tenure in Germany.
[As in any city, there are
dozens of kindergartens, primary schools, and secondary schools, including Realschulen and Gymnasien, but that doesn’t
seem a rationale for characterizing Trier as a “school town.” (A Gymnasium is a university
preparatory school much like a prep school in the U.S., a college in the U.K.,
or a lycée in France. A Realschule
is a step below that in the German school system, preparing students through
10th grade for entry into vocational school, technical college, or the mid-level
civil service.
