Helmut Lauschke

Women of education and of humanity

Of women who gave the example

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

The farmer's wife Martha Lorch

Lydia Grosz

Marina

Adele Bardenbrecht

With Simon in a small apartment on the outskirts of the city and the story of the student Ünett

Impressum neobooks

The farmer's wife Martha Lorch

Of women who gave the example

The names are invented

It is the understanding with the courage to love and the sacrifice for the other, which gives man the will to live with survival in misery and distress.

City Commander Ilya Igorovich Cherebilski: "I learned from Major Voroshilov that Mrs. Elisabeth Hartmann is the Jewess of your family, who was declared dead and kept hidden on a farm from the Nazis for many years." Eckhard Hieronymus: "That my mother-in-law survived the system of the extermination of Jews I owe this to a civil servant in Wroclaw, who had the insight and the incredible courage to issue an official death certificate with stamp and signature. If he had refused to issue this certificate, which most officials did when it came to rescuing Jewish people, then that kind-hearted woman would have been gassed long ago." Commander: "I must confess that I admire the courage deeply, which some Germans have proven against the system of terror and extermination. It's just not that all Germans have run after the tyrannical and violent madman and his deluded vassals blindly. It honors the few Germans, while the majority persists in dishonoring and opportunism. If I receive precise information from Major General Perschinski on where Mrs. Hartmann is staying, I will let you go to Halle to pick up your mother-in-law." Eckhard Hieronymus: "Thank you very much, Mr. Commander."

The Peoples’ Poem by Eckhard Hieronymus Dorfbrunner on the occasion of the conversation with the Russian city commander Ilya Igorovich Cherebilski in the narrow attic of his daughter Anna Friedrike in the second week after the end of World War II:

You peoples, when the blood is shed, your sons are silent. Then luck is broken too.

Dreams remain lying on the ground, where once youth jumped and knocked, there it is now quiet, completely dead quiet. Who wants to stay there?

Spaces that are in the light do not tolerate deadly cold. The wind blows, heavenly child! What's that scolding.

Therefore do not forget the mothers’ love, do not waste the children's hearts! Do not give them to shoot anymore, because the pain will then be too big.

You can cry as you like, life does not come back when the son has fallen dead. Peoples! Take it to heart.

After several weeks had passed, on a Wednesday afternoon Major Voroshilov came to the clinic and told Anna Friederike the message from the commander that the search for the grandmother had been unsuccessful. The city commander of Halle, Major General Perschinski, had communicated this, after he had made every effort to find the grandmother. Although there were inhabitants with the name Hartmann, but they denied on interview a family relationship with Mrs. Elisabeth Hartmann from Wroclaw. Nor could a trace to the farmer Ludwig and Martha Lorch be found who had taken Frau Hartmann on their horse cart. Commander Cherebilski deeply regrets having to give this message.

Anna Friederike to her son Boris: "You know that this is the reason why we kept my grandmother Elisabeth Hartmann, nee Sara Elisa Kornblum, hiding on a farm." Boris: "What were the courageous farmers once again who risked their own lives?" Mother: "These were Ludwig and Martha Lorch, who showed this humanity and accomplished their great work. It still saddens me that we no longer met my grandmother and these brave peasants after the war, who had taken so much sacrifice and renunciation during the terror regime. They were with the escape horse cart on their way to Halle, where they had not arrived. You know that your father, Ilya Igorovich, when he was the city commander of Bautzen, had hired his colleague, the city commander of Halle, Major General Perschinski, to search for my grandmother and the peasants Lorch." Boris: "Yes, that's what you said. But the search was not successful.” Mother: "That's it, and I firmly believe that your grandmother, Luise Agnes Dorfbrunner, never overcame this shock. The shock of her mother's loss after the many years of hiding from the Nazis on the farm at Lorch's, and then the death of your kind-hearted grandfather, she could not handle in her life.” Boris: "Mother, I feel your pain. Now it is time for you to overcome this pain. You have had enough of it in your life. You should not suffer any longer. You should relax, because you also have reason to be thankful that you have survived the horrors of the war, the escape from Wroclaw and the first post-war days in Bautzen.”

Lydia Grosz

Hope and confidence were "tinted". They were anchored in the final chord of B-flat major with the fermata, as if the sky were in harmony with the earth, if the stars were tangible, the sky would already be on earth. This is how Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 sounded in the Warsaw Philharmonic under the great baton of his highly musical master.

Wiktor Kulczynski ordered a break of thirty minutes, which he used to have an informative conversation with Boris. The members of the orchestra left the stage to catch a cigarette in the foyer and to get a cup of coffee or a refreshing drink of a different kind in the small liquor store outside the Philharmonic Hall. Kulczynski: "Mr. Baródin, I would like to compliment you, your play has been very good. I've never heard the Andante’s play as well as you did. Not only have you achieved the very high standard, you've surpassed it with your play. May I ask when you last played the Brahms Concerto?" Boris: "It was nine months ago when I played it under Bernstein at Carnegie Hall in New York. Then I brought it with the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra under Sir Georg Solti. "Kulczinski: "I assume that these great conductors were also enthusiastic about your presentation." Boris: "Bernstein hit me with a big laugh and the remark on the shoulder: "Boris, it was great class." Sir Solti did it in his fine way. He smiled at me, shook my hand and said: "Brahms would be happy to have been so well understood by a pianist. I congratulate you on your play." Kulczynski: "I can only join them because your piano recital was world-class. You know that for us Polish, Brahms is not as easy to play as Mozart, Tchaikovsky or Mendelssohn Bartholdy, because he wrote German in the Beethovenian sense. But you have taken us completely with your play, have us carried away, have brought us to love the good Brahms in your way. This is a merit that comes from your play, for which I express my gratitude, also on behalf of the Warsaw Philharmonic." Boris: "But now you exaggerate, Maestro Kulczynski. Because seldom have I experienced such intimate interplay with an orchestra as with the Warsaw Philharmonic orchestra." Kulczynski: "Very friendly of you. But, I can say that, we were looking forward to your coming and we prepared thoroughly." Boris: "I felt this with great joy.”

Kulczynski: "Dear Baródin, my sister is sitting in the hall. She was curious to follow your play and would be very happy to meet you in person. Would you do that and give me the honor of introducing you to my sister?" Boris: "I like doing that. It is an honor to me." He turned to the hall and saw in the fifth row an old lady in dark clothes and snow-white hair. They went down the six steps and toward the fifth row.

"Lydia," said Viktor Kulczynski, as they reached the fifth row of seats, "May I introduce Mr. Baródin? This is my sister Lydia Grosz." Boris bowed to the lady as she held out her hand to him and they shook their hands. "I'm glad to meet you,” she said in perfect High German, "I've heard a lot about your play and read about you in the reviews." Boris: "I hope you were not disappointed then." "No, quite the opposite, you are a great pianist and I was able to convince myself personally this morning. Rarely have I experienced the Brahms concert as impressively as in your play. I heard the concert from Kempff, Horowitz and Goulda, but you are not inferior to them. This is an achievement that deserves recognition at your young age!” Wiktor Kulczynski, her brother was beaming at the compliment of his sister, on whose verdict he obviously put much emphasis. He looked at Boris: "Now you hear it from my sister, who is very critical and in her younger years, she was an excellent pianist as well." Boris looked helplessly at her eyes, because he spontaneously could not think of a better answer than: "Thank you! That's very kind of you.” Lydia Grosz: "Mr. Baródin, I would like to invite you to tea in my house. Would you be able to join me between five and six? Then we can talk a little. I have learned that you are in the Polish Court. I live in Pesulski Street 17. This street leads directly to your hotel. When you get out of the hotel, it's about four hundred meters." Boris had planned to meet with Vera, but she did not know if she had the night off: "It would be a great honor for me to visit you at your home.” Lydia Grosz: "Then we'll see each other between five and six."

The orchestra gathered on stage to continue the rehearsal. The program included Tchaikovsky's Fifth in e minor, op. 64. Wiktor Kulczynski had gone to the podium and leafed through the score. "Now let's take the fifth. It is a great work written into the heart of us Polish people. Concertmaster, may I ask for the 'A'." The young concertmaster, with dark brown eyes and black, combed back hair, paced the bow on the A-string. He had previously tuned the string tone with the first bassoon. Kulczynski: "Now please all the 'A'. For the cellos the 'A' is too deep. Please tune again", whereupon the concertmaster stroked the empty A-string again and again until all the strings were evenly tuned. Kulczynski: "Thank you. Now let's start. Note the phonetic signs with the crescendos and decrescendos. Following these signs is of utmost importance. "He raised the baton and lowered it. The A-clarinets blew the theme of the Andante: B-C-B-A-B-G / D-Es-D-C-D-B / G-F-ES-D-C-B. Boris loved the Fifth of Tchaikovsky because of the strength with which Slavic feeling is expressed. He sat down beside Mrs. Lydia Grosz, the conductor's sister, to hear the first movement. Already in the first six bars of the clarinet recital, the broad Volga stream reappeared before his eyes. From the bound sixteenths to the dotted quarters he heard the sobs of the people, including his father Ilya Igorovich. More depressing was Slavic melancholy than bringing the beginning of the Andante of this symphony. In comparison, the beginning of the Brahms piano concerto was far less depressing, even though Boris was overcome by the feeling of melancholy. In Tchaikovsky's Fifth, it was the funeral song, the funeral march, the melancholy of the utmost gravity. This melancholy of hopelessness could have infested the prisoners in the labor and extermination camps of the Nazis or of Stalin ("GULAG archipelago"), they could have hummed the funeral march, when they wrestled and emaciated with the earliest dusk to work and with the last dusk by coming back or, gathering at dawn on a cold winter day, torn and humiliated, trudged through the deep snow in sparse clothes and footwear, shuffling over frozen icy paths, under sharp watch to the excavated mass graves, to the mortuary or gas chamber. The theme of the Andante shook Boris through his soul and body. In the imagination of such ultimate loneliness and abandonment of man it came the helpless trembling over him.

Frightened and shocked, Boris sat next to Lydia Grosz, the old dark-clad lady with snow-white hair, listening to the tragic movement to the end. The melancholy had stirred him up. He gathered himself and hoped that the lady did not notice the trembling that had passed through his limbs. After this touching Tchaikovsky Andante, the orchestra paused. Wiktor Kulczynski gave instructions on how to increase the Andante's expression. Boris realized that the conductor and the orchestra were familiar with Russian music right down to their blood. He thought, however, that an increase in the performance of the Andante with the even more melancholy is not possible, because the audience should not be overwhelmed and fall in the beginning of this movement into wine cramps. He pulled himself together and said good-bye to Mrs. Grosz, who quietly added, "We'll see each other at Pesulski Street 17 this afternoon."

Boris left the hall, while Wiktor Kulczynski had finished his instructions and asked for the repetition of the beginning of the Andante movement. When leaving the Philharmonic, Boris took a few deep breaths to familiarize himself with the world outside the music. He went to the next taxi rank and was driven back to the hotel 'Polish Court'. He looked out of the window and felt the Andante from the Fifth echoed in him to the melancholy. The outside world with its car, the cyclists and hurrying passersby seemed strange and empty. The ‘non-musical’ of the world repelled him. The taxi stopped in front of the hotel. Boris got out, paid what was to pay and gave the driver a princely tip. The driver thanked Boris and handed him the bag with his notebook through the open window: "You should not forget that." Boris thanked for the attention.

Deep in his tracks, the rehearsing in him made him realize that he did not notice the smile Vera sent him from the reception to the entrance as he stepped through the door. "How was it?" She asked as he approached the reception. "It worked very well,” Boris answered in a few words. He did not say a word about the effect that the Andante of Tchaikovsky's Fifth had produced in him, and was still working on him, as well as on the image associations of the broad, sluggish Volga, on whose banks his father, Ilya Igorovich, stood and called for him. Vera did not miss the strained face of the young pianist she admired, to whom she secretly gave her love. "Now you should rest and be on time for lunch. As a specialty, today there is ‘eisbein’ with sauerkraut and steamed potatoes,” Vera said. She kept the friendly smile on her face and tried to relax Boris. With no other guest standing at the front desk and no one coming to the front desk, she said that she had taken the afternoon off, "So maybe we can go for a walk around town and have a cup of coffee somewhere." Boris looked with wide eyes, because he slowly came back from the world of the Philharmonic in the outside world: "That's a good idea, Miss Vera. From when did you take off? I ask because Mrs. Lydia Grosz, the conductor's sister, invited me to the afternoon tea at five to six in her house in Pesulski Street." Vera: "Then you are already in the big company, because this lady is well known in Warsaw through her Editorials in various newspapers and their charity for orphans. To answer your question, I took my time off at two o'clock.” Boris: "Then we have some hours for a stroll through the city, which I would like to do with you." Vera: "Only if it does not overwhelm you, Boris Baródin because you have to spare for the concert. I do not want to stress you.” Boris: "You do not do that at all. A tour of the city with you, I had thought of that last night." Vera: "Okay, then we meet half past two outside the entrance. Now do not forget the lunch."

Boris remembered: “The melancholy that was heard in the beginning of the Brahms concert was so obvious to me that suddenly images came to my mind with the broad, sluggishly flowing Volga River, which was not enough compared to the beginning of the Andante in the fifth symphony by Tchaikovsky. The emotion of melancholy, as felt in Russian and set to music by the great Russian genius, is many times stronger. It is so strong that I trembled because the terrible images of the consumptive, starved prisoners in the concentration camps of the Nazi or the Stalin labor camps came to my eyes with the introductory melody in the Andante, and in my mind I heard this melody buzzing, if the inmates left for work early in the morning and returned late at night, or gathered on a cold winter morning to be exhausted and degraded to the newly excavated mass grave, or the death wall, or the gas chamber. It shook me when I imagined this loneliness and abandonment of human beings." Vera: "That's where Tchaikovsky hit you hard." Boris: "He certainly has, and every time I hear the beginning of the Andante, it seizes me trembling anew." Vera: "But Boris Baródin, you are too young to know about these atrocities. Your knowledge of it you can only get from stories." Boris: "That's right. But even the stories that I got from my father, the Soviet General Ilya Igorovich Cherebilski, and my grandfather, the former Wroclaw superintendent Eckhard Hieronymus Dorfbrunner, have weighed heavily on my soul. The stories of how cruelly people dealt with it are deeply engraved in my memory. They are terrible and unforgettable for me. Believe me, Vera, the music I play is first and foremost dedicated to these people who have been tormented, tortured, killed and crippled by this terror." Vera:" Now I understand you much better. I understand why the music is so important to you. It is the medium to talk to people not only in their heads, but in their hearts and to keep in contact with people, even if they have been killed." Boris: "That's the way you can see it. There you are in the right direction. The message I have to bring is not content with the surface, cannot be stopped by it, but aims in the depth. The message should go into the depths of the heart. How else should people get better, are they still responsive or awake, to do the good and to avoid the evil?!" Vera: "I understand, Boris Baródin, you are a missionary who wants to convert people to change and repentance through your music.” Boris: "The problem is the lack of communication among people. Add to that the ice-cold materialism, in which only the money counts. The youth in Germany feels misunderstood by the older generation.

The standards of good education have been broken and mutilated. The good manners have degenerated. Order, respect for one's fellow man and the desire for neighbourly help have been lost in the society. The laissez-faire of indifference and the drug problem have taken over. Is that also in Poland?" Vera: "It started here as well. Materialism has moved into the Polish minds. Here, too, it can be felt how the youth abandons the older generation and wants to go its own way. Here, too, society is getting out of touch with the good morals. The boys complain that they are not understood by the old ones, and the old ones hold the increasing disrespect and unwillingness of learning to the youth. Boris, not everything is good, which shines for the first moment. For me as a young woman, there are added the cheeks that men take out of the women. This did not exist in the first years after the war, when everyone worked hand in hand to rebuild the devastated Poland by rebuilding respectable cities from the ruins. There was respect for the other person. The word of the ancients was much, and the youth listened to the parents and followed their advice. This has changed with the rising prosperity. Now everyone thinks that he can do it better than the other one, the younger one better than the old one." Boris: "Then there is the drug problem as well." Vera: "That is indeed the case. The drug comes from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and takes the long journey on the Trans-Siberian railway to Moscow or the Crimea, from where it comes by ship or truck to Poland." Boris: "The people in Germany has passed with the laughter. On the streets, they pass each other without any word. They have become hectic, do not care about the other, who lives the life by begging. In Germany, there are the street children, who spend the night under bridges together with the drunkards or in empty old buildings that are about to be demolished, to make room for new administrative and apartment buildings, let's call the colossal buildings also tenements.”

Vera: "There are government agencies to help these people. Above all, it is the church that has taken care of the homeless and orphans, giving them a hot meal a day and a sleeping place. But these facilities are not enough." Boris: "Then the socialism in Poland eats its children." Vera: "And that in the entire Eastern bloc. Can you imagine what that could be like in the Soviet Union, I mean in Moscow, Leningrad, the Ukrainian and Belorussian republic? People there are even poorer than here in Poland. There in the east, the state has prescribed silence to the churches. Since the churches are silent about this problem, there is no sermon like here in Warsaw, calling for active charity." Boris: "Vera, with the church you take a hot iron. My grandfather, Eckhard Hieronymus Dorfbrunner, was superintendent in Breslau until his escape with my grandmother and my mother from Silesia. He has narrated how, despite his sermons with the message of active charity, he is said to have been an eloquent preacher, the Jews, socialists and other dissidents were dragged out and beaten from their houses and homes by the Nazis. He described how twice a week packed freight trains drove through Breslau to the East, where Jews and their families including the babies were transported to the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka. My grandfather got tears when he talked about it and the failure of the church, the opportunism of the bishops and the general ignorance of the way people looked away."

They went down the avenue of resistance. Vera gripped Boris's hand, which felt the softness of her hand. She had a thin, well-drawn hand with narrow, long fingers, a hand that was predestined to play the piano. Boris: "Vera, you know that you are the first woman I hold the hand, I mean that I allow to put her hand in mine." Vera laughed: "You should not be able to save yourself from the hands of women. Every woman wants to put her hand in the hands of a famous pianist." Boris laughed, "But you are the first person to do this without my resistance." Vera: "Feeling your hand with which Chopin and Brahms was played is a great, unparalleled experience for me. Your hand is soft and slender for a man's hand. It's a very special hand I did not want to let go of when I could." Boris: "You also have a nice and soft hand that feels promising. Did you ever play an instrument?" Both formed a beautiful couple, to whom the onlookers met with curious wide eyes and turned to it after passing by. Added to this was the German language. If it was heard by passers-by, it was the rare exception for Warsaw cafes and streets. Boris also knew that after the war, the German language in Poland does not like to be heard, let alone spoken. This had to do with the harsh German of the Nazis and the SS, in which Polish people were humiliated and tortured. Although the Poles were able to speak German, they spoke French or English in the post-war exile in the Federal Republic of Germany, everything else but not German. Vera: "I always wanted to play the piano. But that had not happened since my dad's early death. As I said, I had to look after the family and raise money for maintenance." Boris: "If I show you something on the piano, would you want to accept that?" Vera: "Wanting is the minor problem, I mean, that's not a problem at all. The problem, what will be the bigger, is the ability." Boris: "That will turn out when I show you the first steps on the piano." Vera: "I cannot do that to a pianist like Boris Baródin.” Boris: "Vera, you remember the freedom to complete happiness mentioned in our conversation." Vera: "Does that mean you love me?" Boris: "I told you that you have kindled a fire in me that it got very hot. Vera, you are the first woman I make the offer with the piano because you are the first woman I hold her hand because I love you. And now I tell you too." Vera squeezed his hand and gave him the second kiss on his cheek. She didn’t shy away from the curious looking passersby. She had to kiss him because she could not find words for this "statement" of love so quickly. Boris put his arm around her shoulders, and they walked along the streets, nestled together. The pressure of the rhythmic extension of her hip as she walked against his thigh awakened erotic sensations that were previously unknown to him. "This is also the first time that I feel the walk of a young woman so sexy," he said to himself, while he looked at the wonderful naturalness of the step of her legs.

At the intersection to Pesulski Street, they said goodbye to each other and had arranged a meeting in the music hall of the hotel for the late evening, where Boris wanted to show her the first steps on the piano. He hugged her and kissed her on the mouth. "Then we can also you say to each other," Boris sent after the kiss. Vera: "See you later, Boris. I love you!" Boris looked after her for a moment and admired her gait with her bulging hips, which was favourably emphasized by her knee-length, tight-fitting olive-coloured dress and her waist. Impressed and with the news of the afternoon, he walked down the Pesulski Street to number 17. He stood in front of an old town house with a small front garden behind a wrought-iron fence. The impact holes of the grenades were closed with cement, but the war damage had not been as perfect restored as at the Old Town Hall and the other buildings downtown.

Boris rang the doorbell at the gate. Mrs. Lydia Grosz opened the front door and called: "Come, Mr. Baródin, I await you." Boris made his way to the front door. There Mrs. Grosz held out her hand and greeted him with the words: "I am glad that you came." He closed the door and followed her down the long corridor, which was hung with oil paintings, into the reception room, a large one room at the end of the hall. The room was designed with a Persian rug and tastefully decorated with old Baroque furniture. On the small, pretty desk with several drawers in the essay, two on the right, two on the left and the small fanned tray in the middle, two photos were placed behind glass in photo stands. They were photos of men, one of whom might have been at the zenith of life, and the other had a handsome young face with a high forehead, a slender nose, large dark eyes, and an expressive mouth with broad, arching lips.

"Take a seat, Mr. Baródin." Mrs. Grosz led him to the club suite in the salon corner, which was at the angle of two walls, each with a window. One window gave a view of Pesulski Street, while the other, with the small baroque desk on the right, gave a glimpse into a small garden with a tall walnut tree, two birches, and a flower and a cucumber bed. Mrs. Grosz offered him one of the three baroque armchairs while she took a seat on the two-seater couch in her dark blue costume with a violet silk scarf. "Hopefully you have had no trouble finding me," Mrs. Grosz began the conversation. Boris: "After you explained it, it was really easy to find you." Mrs. Grosz: "Then I'm glad you did not have to search long. Half an hour ago, my brother called me. He is full of praise for your Brahms presentation." Boris: "Thank you." Mrs. Grosz: "And not only he is enthusiastic about your play. I also really liked your performance. As I said in the Philharmonic, your Brahms interpretation is on the level of other great pianists. I have heard the piano concert by Kempff, Horowitz and Goulda. But you played it great. You have the talent to unfold the soul of the work and to make it audible to the Polish ear. How many times did you play this concert, Mr. Baródin?" Boris: "I have played it several times. But with each repetition, I have become more mature, I have come closer to what Brahms wants to say." Mrs. Grosz: "And he has so much to say. It ranges from the melancholy in the beginning of the first movement to the upswing, the Brahmsian question of life, which follows the accented motives, I would say, the rider motifs with the jumps, the restrained waving mirth in the Allegro appassionato, to the thoughtful certainty of the Andante in the encouragement to accept life and to cope with courage not to cease while being sincere and steadfast. A waking up work that goes toward thoughtfulness." Boris: "Yes, the piano concerto is a great work in which the emotional scale ranges from melancholy to cheerfulness, from awakening to astonishment, from the depths of suffering to the heights of joy and great hope with the completed happiness." Mrs. Grosz:" That he himself never got. Brahms had a hypersensitive soul, which he expresses in his music grand and noble.

As a human, Brahms was difficult to deal with. He was easily vulnerable, loved children and could be rude to the adults. I still remember the following anecdote from my husband, who was a violinist in the Vienna Philharmonic: if Brahms accepted an invitation, which he did not always do, he was struck by his silence. He responded sensitively and often irritably to adult comments. Leaving a company, he is said to have turned around at the door and said: "If there is one left whom I have not insulted, then I would like to apologize." Boris: "I did not know this anecdote, but I agree with it, that Brahms had to be vulnerable in his hypersensitivity. This is to be heard from his music." Mrs. Grosz: "And always the mysterious vibrates through his music." Boris: "How often the tragic swings through the music of Tchaikovsky."

Mrs Grosz: “You have heard that well, Mr. Baródin. But you know, we can handle the tragedy of Poland better than the mystery that is not always revealed. The tragedy is written in the heart of our people. Take Polish history until World War II. It is saturated with tragedy and grief." Boris: "Although both were also given up to the German people." Mrs. Grosz:"That is true, if not to the same extent, as they were given up to the Polish people. Remember the occupation of Poland by the German army, think of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The Germans did not suffer that much. You will have heard it from your parents." Boris: "My father was a Soviet general and the first post-war commander of Bautzen. My mother was raped by two Russians in the attic on the second day." Mrs. Grosz: "I'm sorry, and that's what makes me curious with your dad. Then you also speak Russian? My dad taught me a lot, but not much is left of it." Mrs. Grosz: "And from whom did you inherit your musical talent?" Boris: "From the father who was an excellent pianist and said that he was at the piano should have stayed where he had become happy, which he did not become as General of the Red Army." Mrs. Grosz: "The musicality is widespread among the Russians. But the combination of pianist and general astonishes when I have already encountered comparable combinations of professional officers with a mathematical or artistic education."

Boris: "My dad taught me the first steps on the piano. For that I am grateful to him through my life." Mrs. Grosz: "But you are right. He is then certainly a sensitive person ...” Boris: "That every child could dance around on his head, without losing his patience. The subordinates had great respect toward him."Mrs. Grosz: "This is interesting and a special story from which you emerged. Do you still have contact with your father?" Boris: "I will meet him in Moscow when I play the Brahms concert there. As Father wrote, he counts the days until my coming." Mrs. Grosz: "How wonderful. You unite German and Russian culture in your blood. This distinguishes you as a special culture bearer. I had already thought of such a thing, because Baródin is not a German name." Boris: "It is the name of my Father's mother." Mrs. Grosz: "From your Brahms performance I could hear that a good part of Slavic blood was flowing through your veins. Perhaps it is the mixed blood in you that makes the concert so waking, sensitive and lovable for us Polish. Because my brother is generally extremely reserved with compliments of this kind that he has learned to love Brahms again through your play. Frankly, I cannot remember that he did that." Boris: "Even I cannot comment on that, because I'm not objective. But when you mention that with the Slavic blood, I can also better explain why tears welled up in my eyes at the Andante in Tchaikovsky's Fifth, and I began to tremble. This sadness always upsets me deeply." Mrs. Grosz: "Mr. Baródin, because you also feel Slavic in the blood of the Slavic part. That's obvious to me, but I must also confess that this Andante shakes me very deeply. It is no weakness when tears come to the eyes. That is the participation in the destiny of the people, among whom there is so much suffering and grief."

Boris: "May I ask, who are the two men in the photos?” Mrs. Grosz: "One was my husband, who was the violinist in the Vienna Philharmonic and was deported and gassed with other orchestra members in Auschwitz, the other was my son, who was shot dead by the Germans in the street fighting in the Warsaw uprising. He wanted to study medicine, was very musical and spoke five languages." Boris: "May I express my heartfelt condolences." Mrs. Grosz: "That's very touching to me. Thank you very much. This is my destiny that I have to deal with but cannot finish. They were two men of high intelligence and great care. My husband was a Polish Jew, my son was a half-Jewish patriot who did not hesitate to give his life for the liberation of Warsaw, which he finally gave." Boris: "These are shattering stories that you carry with you." Mrs. Grosz: "You know, Herbert von Karajan headed the Vienna Philharmonic, but he was interested in his career only. He was an early member of the Nazi party in Austria and after the ‘Anschluss’ in 1938 also a member of the German Nazi party. He did not work for the Jewish orchestra members at all, did not fight for their lives. He was not a Furtwängler who abhorred the Nazis, personally approached Goebbels and fought for the lives of members of the Berlin Philharmonic." Boris: "Unfortunately, this tall, lean man could not save all of his ensemble." Mrs. Grosz: "But he tried and risked his life, which Karajan had not done. You know, Mr. Baródin, the Germans have remained a mystery to me. They are educated and hard working, have produced a Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, a Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing, but they have not understood the Faust, the Bell, or the Nathan. Take the ring parable in Nathan. It's the legacy of tolerance and justice." Boris: "I read the Nathan at school. He was even an essay topic. As far as I remember, the father had his ring copied and given a ring to each son shortly before his death. Now each son raised his claim to the title of the father's left property because he had inherited his ring. But Father's ring, the pattern ring, was indistinguishable from the copies."

Mrs. Grosz: "Now comes the punch line in the question of which son is right. Nathan says the right ring is not demonstrable, almost as unknowable as the right faith is. The father had the copies made with the intention that the rings are indistinguishable. That is the lesson we have to draw from Nathan: the commandment to tolerance and magnanimity. The hubris of the Nazis has gone severely out of hand, as if there were only Germans who have “culture and the right faith." Boris: "For their mistakes and assessments, German people have been severely punished.” Mrs. Grosz: "I agree with you, because many good Germans were also met terribly.

Now the new chapter of our peoples is to be written. That's why you're here to contribute with the Brahms concert to the conciliation and reconciliation." Mrs. Grosz poured out the tea." It's a responsible, responsive, but honourable task, in the spirit of Nathan's legacy, of both you and the artists of our peoples in general. Do you know the history of Nathan?" Boris: "No, I do not know it." Mrs. Grosz: "Lessing, as a librarian in the Wolfenbüttel library, had entered into a literary theological dispute with the Senior Pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze of the city of Hamburg. The dispute was about the freedom of research in religious matters, which attracted so much attention that the library (in July 1778) were banned by Cabinet Order for further publications. However, Lessing could not be silenced by this order. He wrote the Nathan and hoped to play the theologian an "angry antics" than with the previously written ten fragments that triggered the dispute.

In his letter to Elise Reimarus, Lessing wrote on September 6, 1778, that he was trying to "preach" undisturbed at least in his old pulpit, the theater. The source for Nathan was a novella from the 'Decamerone' by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). A performance of Nathan Lessing has never experienced. It was only after the adaptation of Schiller that Nathan was premiered in Weimar on November 28, 1801.” Boris: "I admire your knowledge of Nathan." Mrs. Grosz: "Nathan was written by Lessing in German, which belongs to world literature, because he treats the questions of freedom and tolerance. We Poles love and worship Nathan. I read him as a girl in the original version at school. Later, I experienced Nathan on stage in different languages. From Goethe, who worshiped Nathan, comes the sentence: 'May the divine feeling of tolerance and conservation expressed in Nathan be kept holy and worthy to the nation!' There the great culture speaks to us.” Boris: “Yes, I understand you. That's why we have to close the bad chapter of the past and make a fresh start. We must accept the task of forgiveness and reconciliation and make our contribution so that the chapter of unspeakable suffering can be closed once and for all." Mrs Grosz: "After this conversation, I am even more looking forward to your concert, for which I succeed the fingers