September 29, 1950: Letters to Esther on her trip to Rome
These letters were translated by Esther during an interview I did with her in 2004. She interpolated some comments which I recorded in brackets.
Addressed to Reisegesellshaft Lesch, Bologna; redirected to Bad Mergentheim, Morikestrasse 15, Germany, from Martin Ideler Hamburg-Blankenese Caprivi-strasse.4, 29.9.1950
My very good, dear Schnunn [what I called myself when I was one year old, another one was Tierlein [little animal], because I always had animals around me],
Just now, while I am writing here at the morning coffee table, you are driving along the old pilgrimage and commercial street from Livono to Rome alongside the ocean. When you receive this little letter, which will not tell you anything important, you will have already lived through Rome, Assisi, and Florence, and the wild road through the Apennines. So to sit in the bus by the hour should be a stress on the limbs. Bologna I don’t know. But I still remember in a lively way the drive into the valley to Bologna from the Apennines and into the plain of the Po River. When now you will travel to Pave and Venedi, pay attention, among many beautiful things, to the singular mountain conglomeration, which looks like a single mountain, which one sees already for a long time from afar. One sees it in the dusk between the many enormous poplar trees which Napoleon planted along the rivers and streets. Then in the west of Padua, you will see the straw thatched white farmhouses which look like in a Baltic Sea resort. [That comes from the Gothic time, from 500 AD, Theoderik the Great.] Blonde men with blonde curly hair run around there. This is right and left of Brenta and Gitta. In Padua, Mantegna the painter lived. He had his own mausoleum and on the piazza on the side of the church is the Gatta Melata, [one of those very famous monuments for one of those Roman generals who was feared and revered] by Donatello [he calls it Die Gefleckte Katze, the cat with dots]. If you are only for a short time in Venice, you will probably drive from the railroad station to the Palazzo du Carla along the main canal. Then you see to the right in two kilometers away the church in which the hotel Albergo Boncintoro is in, in which traditionally the Doge each year celebrated his marriage with the Adriatic Sea. In this hotel your father lived in Room 12. When you now have seen the Church of San Marcos with its enormous Byzantine frescos, and the palace of the Doge, with the Tintoretto picture, and the ceiling pictures of Veronese, then Venice will have been duly appreciated. This old theater background, beautiful, dirty, crowded, and full of motifs. Venice was in olden times, of course, the mistress of the commerce to the East and of the Mediterranean. Therefore, the pompous palaces of the new rich and the costly downtown center with the palace of the Doge. Also, you will get a better understanding for Carpaccio and Titian. I wish for you my much loved little girl with mothers’ pride and good wishes, still many adventures and the possibility to absorb a good nice travel companions and health and well being. I am in thought much with you and tomorrow I’ll think of you in Rome. Very cordially, your father Tin.
From Martin's wife, Esther's mother Leonie, 28. Sept.50:
My dear Tierlein,
Today your card arrived from Urfeld, which we enjoyed so much. It is good to hear that you have such a comfortable car and stayed overnight so comfortably. Today, you are in Livorno and hopefully have good weather. Here, it rains and does not get light the whole day long, as if it were November already. Today in the afternoon our friends Tappert departed [he was about 10 years older than Vati, and he was an authority on rethinking art in high schools, how important it was. This was something where my father spent much time with Tappert and three other men. Since he was an urbanite, he spent his evenings after being a schoolteacher with them at that Institute of Higher learning, and came home about 10 at night. There’s a whole box of books on this project, what they were up to].
Yesterday we had still a very full day with them. In the morning, we went to the Kunsthalle. Lunch at the fish restaurant by the inner lake, then coffee in the Coffee Wilm kitty corner from the Talia Theater where we saw with you the Oscar Wilde play. Then for tea at the studio of Mahlau [he had a studio, he was an illustrator, very prolific, also a good salesman of his stuff. He was not only a teacher at the art school where Martin was a dean. Mahlau had a nice studio and he also had kept up relationships with some reporters of very popular magazine, maybe Der Spiegel, and had himself photographed at some fancy cafe with the wife of one of those big shipbuilders, toasting and getting photographed. He was a great guy, but he knew his art would sell better if he had a little bit of scandal. His soulmate was a woman who was a woman who was really independent, Betty May. She had a class for printing designs on fabric. In fact, they got cottons from Egypt through London and then they did research on African designs and designed them so that they could be printed on these block prints and then they were sold in Africa. They were the old designs from the museums. When you see all these people who had these colorful designs in Africa, well, they were designed in Hamburg and printed in London and sold in Africa.]
[In Italy, we had a mass session with the Pope at his summer palace near Rome, and he came and he blessed us all, and he said “Because you have made the effort to come here, all your past sins are forgiven. And because I am the Pope and I have the power, I also forgive you your future sins.” So you have a sinless mother. I bought some rosaries for my Catholic relatives right there, and had them wrapped right there, and put them into a box, and gave them to my relatives, saying, “I have not even touched them.”]
... back to the letter, in Mahlau’s studio: A nice conversation until 7:00 in the evening. Then with subway to San Pauli to attend a circus in a tent. Unfortunately, we had to leave before the end of it, because Mrs Tappert was too tired. Before the Chinese troupe came. It took three hours. I had to think of your linol cut with the circus horses when you were a child. In the circus it’s really always the same stuff. Then when we came home, it was 12:30 at night.
Tomorrow I go to the Grosse family and I will bring as a birthday present to little Brigitte the little booklet that you once were given from them, so it stays in the family. Vati is very busy with the preparation of a test on October 4. Very charming letter came today from Mrs. White, who thanks Vati for his drawing of the Elbe River. She described exactly how her birthday dinner looked with decorated table and a dinner cooked by Suzanne, with which she was surprised. They are looking forward already to your arrival and think they will enjoy you as much as they love Suzanne. I am so glad that our Spatz (sparrow) has found her way as wife and daughter-in-law with such success. [It was not all that successful, and that’s why I came. It was very lonely. Mother in law used her as a maid. They had three bathrooms and the husband had diarrhea all the time and she had to clean them. She was really finikity, she was a painter, not a housewife]. How happy we are to have such dear, sweet girls. Everybody gives us compliments on you. I am only worried that the package that I sent to Suzanne did not arrive yet. It was sent on the 5th of August and has been on the way already for two months. Did I tell you already that I bought six silver dessert forks for Suzanne? Then she says, I still wait to buy the silver sets before when we can overlook the money that we will have before you depart. Everything has gotten more expensive. The forks now cost 44 marks, ten times... I am looking forward very much for your report on your trip. The letter carrier called me already on his way and gave me personally your card and Mary White’s letter. Vati was after the conference still on the train station to the Berlin train to bring the Tapperts away and now relaxes with the newspaper and is too tired tonight to write. I will still write to Suzanne and Mary White. Tappert today still looked at some of our paintings and was full of praise for them. I am so glad that Vati’s Mergentheim watercolors were very much to Tappert’s liking. When you write about your sunny travel and after I have seen again the paintings from Mergentheim I get really nostalgic for southern Germany.
We have decided to join next year an inexpensive group travel to the Lake of Constance. [They did that, there are drawings from there. Esther hung them up in Adeline’s place in Hollywood when she rented a room there]. My dear Esther now we wish you some beautiful days. Please give my greetings to Inge Tourman. I am glad for her that she has this change of pace after her repetitive occupation [she was a secretary]. When you get this letter and we send two to Rome, you hopefully have had beautiful impressions in Rome.
Cordially, with love, your mother.
Addressed to Reisegesellshaft Lesch, Bologna; redirected to Bad Mergentheim, Morikestrasse 15, Germany, from Martin Ideler Hamburg-Blankenese Caprivi-strasse.4, 29.9.1950
My very good, dear Schnunn [what I called myself when I was one year old, another one was Tierlein [little animal], because I always had animals around me],
Just now, while I am writing here at the morning coffee table, you are driving along the old pilgrimage and commercial street from Livono to Rome alongside the ocean. When you receive this little letter, which will not tell you anything important, you will have already lived through Rome, Assisi, and Florence, and the wild road through the Apennines. So to sit in the bus by the hour should be a stress on the limbs. Bologna I don’t know. But I still remember in a lively way the drive into the valley to Bologna from the Apennines and into the plain of the Po River. When now you will travel to Pave and Venedi, pay attention, among many beautiful things, to the singular mountain conglomeration, which looks like a single mountain, which one sees already for a long time from afar. One sees it in the dusk between the many enormous poplar trees which Napoleon planted along the rivers and streets. Then in the west of Padua, you will see the straw thatched white farmhouses which look like in a Baltic Sea resort. [That comes from the Gothic time, from 500 AD, Theoderik the Great.] Blonde men with blonde curly hair run around there. This is right and left of Brenta and Gitta. In Padua, Mantegna the painter lived. He had his own mausoleum and on the piazza on the side of the church is the Gatta Melata, [one of those very famous monuments for one of those Roman generals who was feared and revered] by Donatello [he calls it Die Gefleckte Katze, the cat with dots]. If you are only for a short time in Venice, you will probably drive from the railroad station to the Palazzo du Carla along the main canal. Then you see to the right in two kilometers away the church in which the hotel Albergo Boncintoro is in, in which traditionally the Doge each year celebrated his marriage with the Adriatic Sea. In this hotel your father lived in Room 12. When you now have seen the Church of San Marcos with its enormous Byzantine frescos, and the palace of the Doge, with the Tintoretto picture, and the ceiling pictures of Veronese, then Venice will have been duly appreciated. This old theater background, beautiful, dirty, crowded, and full of motifs. Venice was in olden times, of course, the mistress of the commerce to the East and of the Mediterranean. Therefore, the pompous palaces of the new rich and the costly downtown center with the palace of the Doge. Also, you will get a better understanding for Carpaccio and Titian. I wish for you my much loved little girl with mothers’ pride and good wishes, still many adventures and the possibility to absorb a good nice travel companions and health and well being. I am in thought much with you and tomorrow I’ll think of you in Rome. Very cordially, your father Tin.
From Martin's wife, Esther's mother Leonie, 28. Sept.50:
My dear Tierlein,
Today your card arrived from Urfeld, which we enjoyed so much. It is good to hear that you have such a comfortable car and stayed overnight so comfortably. Today, you are in Livorno and hopefully have good weather. Here, it rains and does not get light the whole day long, as if it were November already. Today in the afternoon our friends Tappert departed [he was about 10 years older than Vati, and he was an authority on rethinking art in high schools, how important it was. This was something where my father spent much time with Tappert and three other men. Since he was an urbanite, he spent his evenings after being a schoolteacher with them at that Institute of Higher learning, and came home about 10 at night. There’s a whole box of books on this project, what they were up to].
Yesterday we had still a very full day with them. In the morning, we went to the Kunsthalle. Lunch at the fish restaurant by the inner lake, then coffee in the Coffee Wilm kitty corner from the Talia Theater where we saw with you the Oscar Wilde play. Then for tea at the studio of Mahlau [he had a studio, he was an illustrator, very prolific, also a good salesman of his stuff. He was not only a teacher at the art school where Martin was a dean. Mahlau had a nice studio and he also had kept up relationships with some reporters of very popular magazine, maybe Der Spiegel, and had himself photographed at some fancy cafe with the wife of one of those big shipbuilders, toasting and getting photographed. He was a great guy, but he knew his art would sell better if he had a little bit of scandal. His soulmate was a woman who was a woman who was really independent, Betty May. She had a class for printing designs on fabric. In fact, they got cottons from Egypt through London and then they did research on African designs and designed them so that they could be printed on these block prints and then they were sold in Africa. They were the old designs from the museums. When you see all these people who had these colorful designs in Africa, well, they were designed in Hamburg and printed in London and sold in Africa.]
[In Italy, we had a mass session with the Pope at his summer palace near Rome, and he came and he blessed us all, and he said “Because you have made the effort to come here, all your past sins are forgiven. And because I am the Pope and I have the power, I also forgive you your future sins.” So you have a sinless mother. I bought some rosaries for my Catholic relatives right there, and had them wrapped right there, and put them into a box, and gave them to my relatives, saying, “I have not even touched them.”]
... back to the letter, in Mahlau’s studio: A nice conversation until 7:00 in the evening. Then with subway to San Pauli to attend a circus in a tent. Unfortunately, we had to leave before the end of it, because Mrs Tappert was too tired. Before the Chinese troupe came. It took three hours. I had to think of your linol cut with the circus horses when you were a child. In the circus it’s really always the same stuff. Then when we came home, it was 12:30 at night.
Tomorrow I go to the Grosse family and I will bring as a birthday present to little Brigitte the little booklet that you once were given from them, so it stays in the family. Vati is very busy with the preparation of a test on October 4. Very charming letter came today from Mrs. White, who thanks Vati for his drawing of the Elbe River. She described exactly how her birthday dinner looked with decorated table and a dinner cooked by Suzanne, with which she was surprised. They are looking forward already to your arrival and think they will enjoy you as much as they love Suzanne. I am so glad that our Spatz (sparrow) has found her way as wife and daughter-in-law with such success. [It was not all that successful, and that’s why I came. It was very lonely. Mother in law used her as a maid. They had three bathrooms and the husband had diarrhea all the time and she had to clean them. She was really finikity, she was a painter, not a housewife]. How happy we are to have such dear, sweet girls. Everybody gives us compliments on you. I am only worried that the package that I sent to Suzanne did not arrive yet. It was sent on the 5th of August and has been on the way already for two months. Did I tell you already that I bought six silver dessert forks for Suzanne? Then she says, I still wait to buy the silver sets before when we can overlook the money that we will have before you depart. Everything has gotten more expensive. The forks now cost 44 marks, ten times... I am looking forward very much for your report on your trip. The letter carrier called me already on his way and gave me personally your card and Mary White’s letter. Vati was after the conference still on the train station to the Berlin train to bring the Tapperts away and now relaxes with the newspaper and is too tired tonight to write. I will still write to Suzanne and Mary White. Tappert today still looked at some of our paintings and was full of praise for them. I am so glad that Vati’s Mergentheim watercolors were very much to Tappert’s liking. When you write about your sunny travel and after I have seen again the paintings from Mergentheim I get really nostalgic for southern Germany.
We have decided to join next year an inexpensive group travel to the Lake of Constance. [They did that, there are drawings from there. Esther hung them up in Adeline’s place in Hollywood when she rented a room there]. My dear Esther now we wish you some beautiful days. Please give my greetings to Inge Tourman. I am glad for her that she has this change of pace after her repetitive occupation [she was a secretary]. When you get this letter and we send two to Rome, you hopefully have had beautiful impressions in Rome.
Cordially, with love, your mother.