Gallery| Biographical sketches
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{*sweet in her attachment}
“I have so much [schoolwork] to catch up on, it's not funny at all. But here they have nice, new girls to help with that— and I'm becoming very spoiled. You know, it’s always been like that, and sometimes I wonder about it— but it makes a lot of other things easier.” -- 1925: letter to sister.
{*"I would give up..."}
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“It may be bad and unnatural, but it's my nature." {*?see other lines}
- 1928
“—They say I should just wean myself off all these self-indulgent, too-grown-up, —essentially, sick ideas.” (1928)
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{*quote: E.K.}
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She came into my room.... "My name is Annemarie", she said. I kissed her. "Hello." She was lovely. I liked her a lot. Annemarie was very pretty. Soft... Her mouth was childish. And shy. She had on a [...] blazer and a white shirt. Open at the neck. "
-- Ruth Landshoff-Yorck (72) (1929)
*photo w/ ruth
"Mama accuses me of the following, for everything that I bring up: that by... not giving up Ruth (after the previous arguments),I am ipso facto [renouncing] them-- my parents-- and that I am also degrading myself personally...." --1930
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"[Mama is] more upset than I've felt in years or ever, and I assure you that if [that] happens again I'll go crazy.... [.....] Mama says the same of herself and Papa, but [then] why is she doing [something] like [this]? After all, I'm not a criminal, even if that's what they claim.*" -- 1930
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"Papa, who usually never lets himself get upset, says that if things go on like this, [man- he?] simply can't have anything to do with me anymore, and he looks unbearably sad." -- 1930
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"...I'll do anything to bring my life, my job, my acquaintances [into Einklang] with you-- as I've already written to Papa." -- 1931
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[*?photo: "A very cold and hungry schoolboy."
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She is absolute in her judgement, but then she is complicated, because she suffers. She suffers because of me, for example. [...] When she told me that she had an alienated, lost daughter, I wept-- out of pity for her, not because she had called me lost.
(1935)
“Mama is mad at me again.” (She stresses the word ‘Mama’ on the first syllable, which is oddly touching.)
“So?” I try to shrug dismissively. For a while there was no sound except the soft lapping of the gondola gliding through the water, the oily, still, foul-smelling, enchanted waters of the Grand Canal. Finally Annemarie began to speak again: “She was really upset this morning on the telephone from Zurich. Our best horse had no luck in the race: I had to answer for that. Then it’s the same thing all over again: I have no morals, and I’m full of low instincts. Always the same thing.”
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"You can’t even imagine the kind of scenes taking place here. They’re too trivial and too absurd} {to describe}. Papa’s left the house,-- [what kind of a life was this for him!] He told me Mama was trying to "isolate" me.
This effort costs her and us every quiet hour. She is constantly on the lookout for [people] trying to speak to me, whether someone is coming into my room, suspecting a hidden [attack] behind every word. She asked my brother-in-law to keep my sister away from me.
All of this sounds [childish], and it would be if she didn't [really] believe in my moral depravity: if someone tries to mediate, she only rages and sincerely feels it's a betrayal of her, then she cries, Eri, this morning she cried, I [can't bear to see that]. Her heart's doing badly, too.... But you can't help her at all, you see, because she's obsessed with fixed ideas, with a mad intolerance and irritability. Most of the time she gets a fright afterwards, perhaps [anticipating] the absurdity of her behavior. But then she thinks you have driven her to this behavior and do her an injustice now, and she gets lost in suspiciousness and bitter loneliness."
-- 1931
*photo w/ E.M.
*from 1935: Quote- "isolated - jealousy"
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* In Switzerland, homosexuality did remain criminalized until 1942.