J ENS B ARNIECK AND W HEELER S PARKS Between Two Worlds: A Time at Camp Catawba Fig. 1: Welcome to Camp Catawba. 1 I. In North Carolina, amidst a vast expanse of virgin wilderness, a curious abstraction sleeps: the remains of Camp Catawba. A small dirt road winds from Blowing Rock, population 1476, up the mountainside and onto the shoulders of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where several decrepit cabins teeter beneath the trees. The overgrowth is anything but subtle; glass shards jut from vacant window panes and doors swing like shadows from loose hinges. And yet, for all the rotting wood, it is not so difficult to imagine a place that once teemed with life. The grounds are still awash with a transcultural history that hangs over the cabins like the dense foliage, and to the conscious visitor, the story of exile and the search for home are at once conspicuous and palpable. I, Wheeler, was on the open road in mid-October driving south from Washington, D.C. toward Blue Ridge Mountains, and that alone was a beautiful thing: the sun rose and cast its golden light across the farmlands of rural Virginia and I felt the surge of excitement that comes from escape; for the coming ten days I was free from routine, family, city life, plans, futures, ca- 1 All photos of this article by Wheeler Sparks © 2008, printed with kind permission of the artist. J ENS B ARNIECK AND W HEELER S PARKS 314 reer. In the foothills of the Blue Ridge, I would join friend and colleague Jens Barnieck to explore the remnants of this forgotten camp, a portrait of German exile founded by a Jewish refugee during the Second World War. The story manifested many of my own sentiments as a result of expatriation, and though my personal experience with the War was only through my grandfather’s memoirs, it conjured many of the same emotions. The GPS fell into confusion as I veered off the highway toward New Market, a one street-light town, and onto the bucolic back roads of its sleepy south side. The dirt paths wound beneath a wooded canopy of autumn leaves and over pregnant hills that rose and fell in a seaworthy cadence. I found the appropriate route but would not have known so if not for the hand-painted wooden sign nailed hastily to a nearby tree trunk. Further still, the path emerged from its shady curtains onto a grassy knoll where several disconnected homesteads nestled into the hill’s slope. Here was the residence of Charles A. Miller, author of a book on Camp Catawba. As a boy, Miller had spent his summers amidst Catawba’s aged woodlands and fresh mountain streams. Earlier that year, when he introduced Jens to the Camp’s story, Miller had expounded upon his childhood experiences with professorial insight: “In Germany, did you ever come across an institution called Odenwaldschule? Catawba was modeled a bit after the reform ideas of that boarding school,” he declared. “The founder was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Vera Lachmann.” Then, yielding a more intimate tone: “We had a wonderful time there.” A pause settled over him for memory’s sake, then he continued as before, “Vera would stage plays from Aeschylus to Molière or Schiller, reciting Greek epics to the campers. We performed concerts directed by Tui St. George Tucker, a composer in residence. You may not be familiar with her name” (Miller interview). Indeed, Jens was familiar with neither Tui St. George Tucker nor Vera Lachmann, but the conversation piqued his interest. In Camp Catawba, several complex identities fused: a German poet and an avant-garde American composer who together directed an arts camp for children; an American arts camp based upon the ideals of a pre-war German boarding school; a manifestation of German exile born in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Even more compelling, the camp seemed to have played an integral role in the childhood of many young Jewish immigrants. And yet somehow, despite its German roots, the camp boasted a legacy uniquely American as well. I pulled into a small clearing beside several cabins where Miller eagerly hosted Jens the previous evening. From that point, Jens and I would commence our journey southward to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Between Two Worlds: A Time at Camp Catawba 315 II. Like the rest of Germany’s Jewish population at the brink of the Second World War, Vera Lachmann, a young, overqualified school teacher, was uncertain about the future. In 1932, she earned a PhD in classical languages from the University of Berlin and had hoped to teach at the university level when the environment for Jews in Germany suddenly and drastically changed. For the following six years up until the war began, Vera abated her anxiety by establishing a school for children excluded from public education because they were Jewish. “We first picked up children from the street,” she recalled. “’We’ was a group of like-minded friends, partly ‘Arian’ and partly Jewish, who taught those unwanted children in our small rooms.” Growth in the school was intentionally averted to dissuade prying eyes, so the clandestine institution comprised about 65 children and a handful of teachers who worked for free. “But we drew joy from it,” Vera noted (interview). Rather than giving up their ambitions all together, some intellectuals chose what German author Frank Thiess called “inner emigration,” a term used to describe those who felt obligated to stay in Germany despite, or perhaps in spite of abject sentiments for the regime. In surges of pride, Vera reasoned with her fate. “I thought, ‘I belong here, thus I will stay.’ It was foolish,” Vera admitted she stayed dangerously long in Nazi Germany, the reasons for her continually postponed exodus being “too great a love for Germany and the German language, and an inborn stubbornness” (interview). Though she weathered the storm for some time, eventually she fled the land of her birth and, alongside thousands of others, made her way to the Purple Mountains’ Majesty. III. It was early in the evening when we pulled into Boone, Blowing Rock’s northern neighbor. Breezes carried the coolness of summer faded and the air was changing alongside the leaves. The rolling hills of Appalachia left us slightly punch drunk; for hours we were served a steady visual feast of fertile farmlands and green pastures pockmarked with peaceful livestock, wooden fences, and iconic homesteads. The sweeping landscapes were distinctive, and the broadside of a paint-chipped barn proselytizing ‘Jesus Saves’ reminded me that this part of the country is a world all its own, full of cultural peculiarities. On the outskirts of Boone, we traversed an overgrown farm road, hoping it lead to David Sengel’s farmstead. The light was soft and the colors of the surrounding valley had just begun to shine under the setting sun. From the main highway, we crossed several hillsides in search of our turn when, at the J ENS B ARNIECK AND W HEELER S PARKS 316 far end of the road, we noticed a man standing in the sun where the pathway bent almost backwards, watching us. His tassled hair, matted down by an old red baseball cap, hung with his burly cinnamon beard over the better part of his conspicuous lime-green tshirt. His pants were baggy, worn and dust covered, his shoes loosely tied. He gazed inquisitively at us, and his dogs barked as we drove slowly over the hillside again and again. We had no idea where we were going and this much must have been clear to him. Eventually, he motioned us over and we rolled down the car window. I leaned slightly forward to read the shirt under his woolen beard: ‘Fog Likely Farm.’ He greeted us, his eyes at once jovial when we mentioned Chuck Miller. With that, our problem was solved: here beside a sharp turn in the road, slightly disheveled yet surrounded by a well-kempt farm, lingered David Sengel himself, piano tuner of Camp Catawba in a time gone by. With a warm smile, he sauntered away, ushering us down a gently sloping driveway until we reached a patch where the grass was well-worn in the pattern of tire treads. We parked the car and followed him down the hill toward his beautiful, rustic home. Fig. 2: David Sengel at his workshop in Boone, North Carolina. When the camp was active, he served as piano technician for the camp’s music program. Between Two Worlds: A Time at Camp Catawba 317 IV. Helene Herrmann, born in 1877 and assassinated at Auschwitz in 1944, was one of Vera’s role models from Germany. A colleague of Vera’s from the university and co-founder of the underground school in Berlin, Dr. Herrmann was deeply influenced by Stefan George (1868-1933), a poet, spiritual mentor, and luminary of the ancient Greek culture. Before the First World War, George inspired a small group of zealots to initiate new discussions about education. The German army’s defeat only strengthened his followers’ pedagogical foundations, and their teaching began to take Hellenic form. The “Georgians,” as his fervent young apostles were christened, rose to meet the expectations of their departed teacher. In fact, many are now re- Fig. 3: Morning breaks over a spectral structure that once doubled as an arts and crafts studio and the camp’s primary office. J ENS B ARNIECK AND W HEELER S PARKS 318 garded as beacons of light during a particularly dark period of German history. The circle included Claus Schenk Count Stauffenberg (1907-1944), a high ranking officer in the German army who lead the notorious “Operation Valkyrie,” a nearly successful attempt to assassinate Hitler, and Wolfgang Frommel (1902-1986), the author and editor-in-chief of an insurgent publishing house called “Die Runde.” The former was executed by the regime, the latter forced into exile in 1937, where he hid for three years in the apartment of Dutch painter Gisèle d’Ailly van Waterschoot van der Gracht (*1912). A host of other progressive Germans sought refuge alongside Frommel, and the group, mainly young men under the age of twenty, dared not approach a window for fear of being discovered. Instead, they turned their thoughts and eyes upward, as George taught them to do, and through spiritual fervor, they managed the resolve to wait. In metaphor, they took on the name Castrum Peregrini, 2 the invincible fortress of the Templar Knights near Haifa, Israel. After the fall of the Third Reich, in that very apartment, Frommel established yet another publishing house using that same fanciful name. Vera observed Hermann’s academic fervor with wonder - “How she could tear down the curtain and introduce us to other worlds! ” (Lewis) - and never forgot the import of this quality. Later, she made it part of her own technique as she recited ancient Greek texts and poems to the boys by firelight at Camp Catawba. As Miller recounts, the young ones listening to Lachmann were inspired because she not only recited Homer well, “but embellished the tales as part of her own story” (Lewis). “Teaching became second nature and I left classes warm and very pleased,” Lachmann wrote. “Whether the students were five years old like the children at Camp Catawba or doctorate students, there is no difference.” But a peripatetic style was not the only thing Vera inherited from her didactic grandfather: “What is overwhelming about Stefan George, what drew me to him and what is still authoritative for me today, is the heartbeat of his poetry” (interview). In fact, teaching, as much as she loved it, became but a vehicle for her first love: “Writing poetry is the main thing. Everything else is like a garland around it,” she mused (interview). Long after she established her home in the United States, when the war had ended and the Templar Knights had come out from behind the walls of their literal and allegorical fortresses, Vera published three volumes of poetry with a familiar Dutch publisher: Castrum Peregrini. 3 2 The name means Pilgrim’s Castle. 3 Golden tanzt das Licht im Glas/ Golden Dances the Light in the Glass/ (1969), Namen werden Inseln/ Names Become Islands/ (1975) and Halmdiamanten/ Grass Diamonds/ (1982). All published by Castrum Peregrini in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Between Two Worlds: A Time at Camp Catawba 319 V. When we consider the suffering men have endured at the hands of other men, it gathers like a dark storm above our heads. The fatalist will say life is written out before us, we cannot elude events that come to pass because we are incapable of being anyone other than who we are. Through these eyes, the canvas of life is an abstract work, spattered with varying shades of good and evil, success and failure, joy and despair; there is no balance, there is only what is and what is not. These striking colors and deep contrasts offer the retrospective mind a broad and historical insight, but the present never ceases to crawl forward in obscurity. Perhaps thoughts such as these, heavy impressions of inevitable suffering, kept Vera awake at night. Even as she resisted her oppressors by educating the marginalized youth, her anguish grew. Sentiments toward her country, her identity, her neighbors, her culture, all once sources of pride, festered and grew increasingly burdensome. “Who dares to say that he entirely knows himself? ” she seethed. 4 And finally, mired in the heartland of a brutal empire and overwhelmed by the misery of it all, she tried to take her own life. Renata von Scheliha (1901-1967), a progressive aristocrat who also came of age in the intellectual circles of Stefan George, was Vera’s friend and confidant. 5 She thwarted Vera’s suicide attempt and made precipitous arrangements for her emigration. Though it is unclear precisely how Vera’s escape was accomplished, we know that Scheliha was strictly opposed to the Nazi regime - from the beginning, she was not a Jew but lived as one, abiding by the harsh rules enforced upon the Jewish population and undermining them where possible (Landmann 111). Scheliha’s brother, a Nazi diplomat who boldly used his position of power to enable Polish Jews to leave the country via Sweden, likely acquired the permit for Vera’s departure. 6 Shortly thereafter, in a brash display of heroism at the dawn of the Holocaust, he also arranged for documentation of the atrocities to be smuggled to Great Britain. Eventually, he 4 “Delphi Heute/ Delphi Today,“ read by Vera Lachmann on a CD compiled by Charles Miller. Published as “Delphi Heute/ Delphi Today” in Halmdiamanten / Grass Diamonds. Amsterdam: Castrum Peregrini Presse, 1982 (10-11). 5 In the Georgian vein, von Scheliha, one of the first German women to become a successful scholar, studied the classics, committed herself to considerable research on Homer, and widely published her work. The latter earned her the nickname “Miss Socrates” from fellow intellectuals. 6 When talking to Gabriele Kreis, author of the book Women in Exile, Vera Lachmann relates in 1980: “Luckily I had a friend, who managed to get a visa for me, when the quota had long been exhausted, and so I came to the USA via Sweden in 1939 with the Gripsholm from Gothenburg.” <http: / / www.lesbengeschichte.de/ Englisch/ bio_lach-mann_ e.html> (accessed 5 Aug. 2010). J ENS B ARNIECK AND W HEELER S PARKS 320 was caught and hanged for his supposed espionage, 7 one of many tragedies in an era of profound suffering. With Scheliha’s encouragement, Vera was persuaded to take flight, from her own midnight and that of her homeland. She drifted over the Atlantic Ocean in the realm of angels and birds, and by the golden light of morning surveyed her new home: the endless coastlines, the expansive plains, the towering cities. The landing gear jostled on the runway and a flood of new emotions surfaced. “I was not at all prepared for the elegance of the colleges to which I came,” she recalled, “nor to the culture of smiling” (interview). Though the war continued, both in Germany and the hearts of its people, in Vera’s written word and in her hopes, hers was a land of peace. VI. Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian-American author, often addresses the identity enigma that surfaced as a result of her emigration. Her words capture well what must have been Vera’s sentiment as she left Germany: “I think constantly about my life and about lives of others,” she wrote, “about lives that I never had and will never have. I see the facts in my life and then I see endless variations. It is like a puzzle and by removing one part, one changes the overall entity” (Weingarten 127-28). 8 This begs an important question: Who do we become when separated from our homes? Or perhaps just as relevant: Who will our children become if they have no immediate connection to their homeland? Indeed, a boy born in America to German parents is both fully German and fully American. In the absence of the motherland, a new identity is conceived. By definition, the old identity will slowly fade if not actively explored. For this reason, only by conscious choice can we understand our past in a manner that influences our present identity. In the words of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, “One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort” (Fragments 24). For the immigrant, these anachronisms, the lives of ancestors or the peculiarities of cultural heritage, may never seem entirely relevant in the present day. Tradition at first seems to be diluted by the presence of new cultures. At the supermarket or on the subway, at Carnegie Hall or in the classroom, we are challenged constantly by human interaction; sometimes we are changed markedly, other times imperceptibly, but an interaction with conflicting ideas and practices requires us to consider who we are by nature, thereby forcing us to reevaluate the foundations of our identity. 7 See in this context Ulrich Sahm’s book Rudolf von Scheliha 1897-1942, in particular 241-253 and 271-283. 8 The original article is in German. Translation by Jens Barnieck. Between Two Worlds: A Time at Camp Catawba 321 The frequency and randomness with which these contact points occur, and the force with which they are capable of impacting our lives, quickly remind us that man does not control the events that mold him. He is curiously poised between the jaws of fate, just as the earth spins unassisted on a delicate axis. Some people actively seek out points of interaction, like explorers on an internal journey, vying for the betterment of self and their fellow man. Others, like Vera, are forced from their homes and so must embrace the unfamiliar as a refuge. The concept of clashing cultures has fascinated scholars, novelists, filmmakers 9 and artists for ages. Friction makes life interesting and as globalization looms over the world’s peoples, these collisions play an increasingly significant role. “Transculturation breathes life into reified categories,” writes anthropologist and historian Fernando Coronil, “bringing into the open concealed exchanges among peoples and releasing histories buried within fixed identities” (xxix). . The story is not unfamiliar to the Greeks themselves, who helped immortalize an avian image that portrays the beautiful though painful process of destruction and rebirth. In light of the circumstances that surrounded Vera’s exile, as she was forced to leave her homeland and as her burrow was engulfed in flames, she doubtless hoped against all odds that a new life would emerge from the ashes with a plumage every bit as fair and gold and scarlet as the great wings of her past: “Oh guard what is […] and what was,” she warned in her poem “Catawba” (Catawba Assembly 229). 10 While there is no easy solution for the exile’s grief, Vera never allowed herself to withdraw in self-pity: she was now a “seeker, groping into the right self” (Halmdiamanten 11). She had not always been a poet, though she had always loved languages and the classics, but in the absence of her home, her verse became both a sustained memory and a living hope. Through poetry she began to express a growing sense of duty to live on, to endure her rite of passage; she expressed her obligation to persevere. Ruminations on the motherland filled her poetry, always written only in German, even long after she integrated into American society. “I find it difficult [to write poetry in another language],” she mused. “It only comes out in German” (interview). “Terra Renata,” or “Land Reborn,” was her first poem, written October 6 th , 1939, the day she stepped onto foreign soil (Landmann 115). Terra Renata Vom domespfeiler stieg ein engel nieder, Dass er nicht schwert noch lilienzweig mehr trage. 9 Philip Bohlman, in his article “The Music of Jewish Europe,” gives us an example in this regard by referring to The Jazz Singer, a film about the conflict between musical style and family identity in an immigrant Jewish family in New York City (98). 10 “Catawba” was first printed in “Namen Werden Inseln/ Names Become Islands (Amsterdam: Castrum Peregrini Presse, 1975). Here quoted after the version in Charles A. Miller’s A Catawba Assembly (229). J ENS B ARNIECK AND W HEELER S PARKS 322 Er trat mit fremdem gruss in unsre tage Und hüllte schlicht die jünglingskühnen glieder. Im liebeszorne hob er auf die klage Um dies entseelte land, und fluch dawider, Auf dass in fronten, flaggen, siegeslieder Sühnend der reine blitz der höhe schlage. Wir waren sinnig in den tod verloren, Als seiner stimme tief geläute mahnte, Nicht von des geistes ritterschaft zu wanken, Dem schönsten sang durch längsten dienst zu danken, Dem freund uns anzutraun, der bebend ahnte, Einst werde neu aus uns das Reich geboren. 11 Miller includes a poignant analysis in his book: [Renata] has the Latin meaning ‘rebirth.’ Vera had been struck by a myth from the sixth century A.D. about Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and the patron of drama. According to the myth, the child Dionysus was torn to pieces and swallowed by the Titans. For this act, Zeus smote the Titans with a thunderbolt and from their ashes created man. Man is thus part Titan and part child-Dionysus. Vera extended the Dionysos myth metaphorically to her hopes for a rebirth of Germany […]. In her distress at the destruction of Germany during the war, Vera prayed for a Germania renata, or a Germany reborn. The new Germany would be a land of philosophy and culture. (Catawba Assembly 8) In the United States, Vera first called her summer camp “Camp Rena,” an anecdote that enforces Miller’s words and also illuminates a secondary meaning in her poem. The word is reminiscent not only of Lachmann’s life before German exile, but also of her indebtedness to Renata von Scheliha. Perhaps then we can assume a greater understanding of the poem’s final image: “We were almost lost, full of death and without thought, when the deep chime of his voice admonished us never to abandon life’s dignity, but […] to confide in the friend who senses with a tremble that, one day, a new empire will be born of us all.” 11 “A Land Reborn/ From the cathedrals’ parapet, an angel descended,/ no longer carrying sword nor wearing lily blossoms./ He entered our days with a foreign greeting,/ his regal body now covered in simple clothes./ In love’s wrath, he removed both lament and curse/ from that country with no soul,/ so that lightning from above would strike/ the men of arms as an atonement, destroying their flags and proud war hymns./ We were almost lost, full of death and without thought,/ when the deep chime of his voice admonished us/ never to abandon life’s dignity,/ but to give the most beautiful singing the longest praise,/ and to confide in the friend who senses with a tremble/ that, one day, a new empire will be born of us all.” English translation by Jens Barnieck and Wheeler Sparks. While Lachmann did not approve direct translation, she often hired a former camper, Spencer Holst (1926-2001), whom she highly appreciated, to translate her work using prose (see interview with Vera Lachmann). With respect for the wonderful work of Holst, we have made every effort to honor his style of translation in our translation of this poem into English. Between Two Worlds: A Time at Camp Catawba 323 VII. The ceilings hung low and the floors creaked as we crossed the threshold into the den, a warm room with curious knick-knacks cluttering the windowsills. David Sengel pointed here and there, meekly disclosing improvements he had made by hand: additional rooms, walls, windows, central heating, electrical wiring; several decades ago when David and his wife purchased the foreclosed home, it was a hollow casing nestled into ample tracts of land and filled with a charm age only can bestow. Now, across from the front door, on a yellow bookshelf hefty with vinyl records, how-to books and anthologies of American folklore, the voices of NPR murmured from an old radio, proof that David succeeded with his electrical endeavors. Fig. 4: Camp Catawba’s Mainhouse. View from the assembly area. J ENS B ARNIECK AND W HEELER S PARKS 324 Our footsteps thundered noisily through the silent wooden halls and we climbed the stairs to our rooms. I entered timidly as David, in an unassuming tone, continued to reveal his handiwork; his furniture was carved by hand, including a magnificent cradle, a recent gift to his children, now parents themselves and only home on occasion. His words were careful and few. He seemed to be a man with much on his mind, spending his time ambling over his land to the lake he dug by hand, walking through the orchard he planted the previous fall, or woodturning in his toolshed. He glowed subtly in these contexts with a light I imagine one might have glimpsed in the face of the American transcendentalists; as with Emerson or Thoreau, every step for David was a commune with nature, as though he were, at that very moment, beholding it for the first time. “For many years a grizzled but cheerful piano tuner repaired [the piano] in the summers, testing his work with The Tennessee Waltz,” Miller recounted (Catawba Assembly 106). With that same piano tuner, grizzled now as he was then, we ate vegetables from the garden and spread homemade jam over fresh bread. During those autumn evenings, as we sat by candlelight listening to his stories, to the thrum of his wife’s banjo and the dwindling song of summer cicadas, there in David Sengel’s home, a remnant of Camp Catawba was reborn. VIII. A former student at the Odenwald-School, German-American Erika Weigand, returned to the United States from Germany and enrolled at the University of North Carolina in 1937. Several years later, when Vera made the decision to leave as well, she received pressure from Weigand to also make her home on the Atlantic seaboard. There, after years of teaching young children, Vera reaped the benefits of her doctoral degree: a teaching position at Vassar College 12 in the Hudson Valley and an extended work visa for the U.S. However, just before she left Germany, Vera experienced what she called a “prophetic dream” (interview), a lucid vision that revealed to her the location of the summer camp she would operate. The desire to start a camp for children, like so many of her aspirations, had been swept away for a time. But now in 1944, spurred by the vision, she stepped down from the bus to Blowing Rock on a foggy April morning. On impulse, she visited the local lawyer who, with providence’s hand, revealed to her a former girls’ camp on eighteen wooded acres near Flat Top Mountain. Upon seeing the property, she agreed to the price: thirty-five hundred dollars with a five hundred dollar 12 Erika Weigand helped Vera to get the position at Vassar College when Vera was still in Germany and thus helped her to get a Non-quota visa. See Helga Gläser, “Etwas Chaos ist ja Tradition…” (137). Between Two Worlds: A Time at Camp Catawba 325 down payment. After some deliberation, she settled on the name Camp Catawba, after the name of a fictional state in Tom Wolfe’s novel Look Homeward, Angel. The land already boasted a central building she named the “Citadel” (later used as a dormitory for boys) and a cottage that, depending on the time of year, alternated between an office and an “Arts and Crafts” building (Catawba Assembly 12). Still, she had her work cut out for her: high up on the mountainside, the lack of running water and electricity made complex difficulties of even the simplest duties. But Camp Catawba was launched in timely fashion, only a few months after her arrival there, hosting six boys that summer, most of whom were children of German Jewish refugees. She looked out over her new domain with a growing air of accomplishment, exhibiting the pride of one who endured much to realize a distant dream: The road curving upward can sometimes take away my breath, but how often did sorrow end at the sight of the home roof! In front of the tiger lilies that fold at night, two signs of peace give benediction, the two oaks whose dragon-roots are hardening with age. (Catawba Assembly 229) IX. In his first telephone conversation with Jens, Chuck Miller mentioned another name in passing, Grete Sultan, a pianist from Berlin who fled for America in 1941. 13 One of her teachers, Richard Buhlig, an American who also taught the infamous John Cage, was very influential in her life, not only to her discipline as a musician but also to her escape from Germany. After her arrival to the United States, Grete became a close friend of Cage’s and “a fixture on New York’s ‘underground’ music scene in the 1940s” (Schäfer). She performed many of his works, several of which were dedicated to her, including his Music for Piano series (1953-1958) and Etudes Australes (1974). As Cage’s sphere of influence grew, so did his circle of friends. Tui St. George Tucker was a young addition to the established group, born in 1924 in Fullerton, CA. Her mother, an Australian, christened her after the endemic bird of New Zealand, which she believed to be her daughter’s avian equivalent - always singing with a loud but mellifluous voice. Tui moved to New York in 1946 and established herself as a virtuoso recorder player and com- 13 Grete and Vera were close friends from childhood, and the former's bourgeois family owned a performance house that hosted contemporary artists like the painter Max Liebermann, composer Richard Strauss and famous conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. As an adolescent, Grete became an accomplished pianist with a great interest in Bach as well as contemporary music. J ENS B ARNIECK AND W HEELER S PARKS 326 poser. Grete Sultan helped tremendously to spread the word about her younger colleague, premiering many of Tui’s piano works. Vera met Tui through Erika Weigand and invited her to Camp Catawba (Catwaba Assembly 105). The burgeoning composer did not care for conventionality or rules, characteristics quite evident in both the music she wrote and the lifestyle she lead. It was a conservative era and Tui’s salacious red hair, not to mention an implicit relationship with Vera, dashed the boys’ minds with a worldly curiosity. “I’d never seen a woman in jeans before. She was so outspoken - I’d never heard a woman curse! ” a camper recalled. “We absolutely adored her; she was so liberated” (Treadwell 85). Eventually, Tui became the musical director of camp activities, conducting, composing or arranging music according to the needs of the children and their instruments. “Imagine Beethoven as a summer camp instructor and you have some idea of what the young boys of Camp Catawba were up against. With [...] an explosive temper that coincided with her Dionysian lust for life, Tui seared an enduring impression on the campers. The children were often elevated to musical greatness, performing such works as Bach’s “Magnificat” and Händel’s “Messiah,” and even performing at New York’s Town Hall. At least two-dozen of the boys from Camp Catawba have gone on to become professional musicians” (Jurgrau). 14 The ensemble often rehearsed outside, performing works from various eras and styles; the older campers presented budding compositions to the scrutiny of their tutor and Tui herself, influenced by her primary instrument, the recorder, pushed the boundaries of tonal music with the same wandering and chromatic, even quarter-tone harmonies characteristic of her contemporaries. The pieces for Vera’s camp were coming together, and she often wrote about the music in letters to the parents: “The orchestra, an innovation of the last two years, flourishes every noon in the living room. While I am setting the table, usually together with some volunteering campers, we are wrapped in the sounds of Mozart’s great G-minor Symphony, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4, or Salomon Symphony No. 7 by Haydn. You must understand of course, that the instruments used are not those precisely prescribed by the composer; but the effect is great and has surprised any visitor at camp yet (August 19, 1956)” (Catawba Assembly 227). . 14 Robert Jurgrau quoted after the website he established for Tui St. George Tucker: <http/ / www.tuistgeorgetucker.com> (accessed 6 June 2010). Between Two Worlds: A Time at Camp Catawba 327 X. We crossed the forest beneath a canopy of foliage that stretched out over our heads and crunched beneath our feet. Leaves were everywhere, their veins bulging amidst the dry branches and uneven stalks. We walked from the desolate kitchen into the bushes; the verdure draped on and over the path and we walked without burden. There in the forest, it was not difficult to understand the camp’s small but lasting legacy; serenity still thrived there. Add campfire stories, striking harmonies, strange benefactresses, swimming holes and tree swings and it seems there would be enough fodder for any child’s creative cannon. But good things come and go, and the wind rustles through the leaves. Though the pillow of soft earth beneath our feet carried impressions of the forgotten camp, of a campfire burning in the glade beside the hill, the path led on until we reached a withered shanty. Long after the camp was closed, Tui died there, whether by stubborn choice or ambivalent design is unclear, and her body rested for some time before anyone found her. The floorboards were lofted on shaky beams and the surrounding brush loomed tall over the barren ground, where nature’s compost unfolded messily beneath the wooden planks. A blue tarp covered the patchy roof and the doors were hard- Fig. 5: At Camp Catawba, humanity’s reified categories seemed to have been broken down, enabling one to see more, not unlike the light filtering through this window behind the Camp’s Mainhouse. J ENS B ARNIECK AND W HEELER S PARKS 328 bolted shut; the scene’s only anachronisms. We approached the windows with some somberness; they were thick with dirt and grime, but through the cobwebs we could make out the dusty floor, imagining the manuscripts and dozens of Tui’s hand-printed orchestral scores scattered around the room. The local residents around Catawba had been required to call upon her with frequency and worried about her health, so they had her admitted to a local retirement home. Constantly reprimanded there for her aggressive conduct, excessive profanity or drug paraphernalia, eventually she was discharged. She called a nearby acquaintance, the whiskered farmer who once tuned her pianos, who picked her up and, at her bidding, returned her to the cabin on the hill. Perhaps a quote from one of Vera’s letters paints an accurate picture of Tui’s sentiments at the time: I feel every morning when I see the sun rise behind the hills that we should consider ourselves ever so lucky to be up here: In such a beautiful green, cool spot where the rhododendron is just starting to bloom, with a wonderful group of young unselfish workers, a most interesting and lively (at times overlively) group of children, and musicians who play Bach and Handel at night as if they had been practicing all winter long, although they just met three days ago. (Catawba Assembly 36) At the rest home, Tui had become such an inconvenience that the staff’s only solution was to offer her command of an isolated room with a piano. Her curmudgeonly ways seemed to be a reaction to her unpleasant confines; the dull white walls of her asylum must have been drab in comparison to the wooded canopy of leaves about her cabin. She was a capricious woman, whose scalding anger poured with relentless fury, yet whose honest remorse resounded with a healing plea. The staff soon found that whenever she had been at the piano, she was far more willing to cooperate. Faced with this conundrum, the home maintained video documentation of her activity, especially on the occasions when she acted abusively. In one of the videos, Tui dawdles about with senile charm, looking this way and that, talking about inconsequential things. The staff asks her questions about her behavior, so she demonstrates the manner in which she allows her fingers to stroll aimlessly over piano keys: “They go wherever they want to go. It soothes me,” she says with a tired drawl. Then, she depresses the keys, the hammers tapping lightly on the strings; soft chords resonate across the white empty walls and roll over one another in sustained gestures of dissonance and consonance. She plays for a moment, then stops. Her face assumes an expression of clarity and her wondering eyes fix on the camera: “Music is my home,” she says, “I live in it” (Tucker video) . . Between Two Worlds: A Time at Camp Catawba 329 XI. We woke before dawn and ascended the hill to Camp Catawba, which now rests under the auspices of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation. As the remains of night scattered from the trees, we arrived to an isolated dell. There, as we stood cold and quiet in the clearing, the morning whispered Vera’s words: In a threatened, anxious world This glittering peace! The greenness - of the summer branches, The velvet of the grass, the windmoved dances of the leaves - Are all different from one another. Bird call that holds the stillness together. The quiet, cooly moved Is sunned-through, stirring, You can hear the quiet And the morning wind Which does not want to disturb the trees. 15 15 Vera Lachmann Early Morning in Catawba from: Four Catawba Poems, edited as private, limited compilation by Charles A. Miller, 1985. Not for sale. The poems can be found in Fig. 6: Light breaks over the assembly area, where children gathered around a campfire to hear stories. J ENS B ARNIECK AND W HEELER S PARKS 330 Vera’s goals seem simple, yet her conflict expressed something in us both - the inability to preserve the past and the desire to know what the future holds. Wisdom only comes in time and with age, as retrospection lends a greater hand to the worries of youth. So like Vera, we must not be confined by what we do not know. Instead, we embrace winds of change, though the gusts may appear to lead far from heart or home. We take our home with us, and elements of it remain long after we have lost or forsaken its nearness. A friend of Vera’s from Germany, once a cook at Catawba, wrote it thusly: “I heard the rustle of the pine trees. I understood that here one could bury the searing homesickness. […] May Catawba live serenely as before, a refuge for us wanderers between two worlds” (Catawba Assembly 85). With these thoughts in mind, Jens and I cherished the last few moments. The sun warmed the remains of an autumn chill, and Camp Catawba glistened in the dew. I took a deep breath, then we climbed into the car. It was back to Germany for him, and back to Texas for me; back to the world each of us had, if only for a few days, left behind. And as we drew from the haven, I decided it was fair to say we knew Vera Lachmann. We breathed the same thin air and crossed the same woolen turf; the same mountains still loomed beside her legacy, and the same cabins still teetered amidst the rhododendron. The dirt path crunched as the car drew from the camp, and in the back of my mind, I imagined things as they once had been: Vera prepared for story a few minutes before the telling by reading the Greek to herself from a badly worn Homer. Then a cry rang out: ‘Story on the hill! ’ - or on the porch, in the living room or later in the front room of the Citadel when the boys were in their pajamas. The boys gathered …, and the entire staff with them... They listened enraptured as Odysseus hugged the belly of a sheep to smuggle himself from the cave of the Cyclops, as Herakles (Vera never referred to him with the Latin name Hercules) cleaned the Augean stable, Zeus sent a dream to Agamemnon, and the gods feasted on Olympus. And they went to bed in suspense as Vera ended the episode, ‘And that is all I’m going to tell you tonight.’ (Catawba Assembly 175) Collection 214. Camp Catawba - Vera Lachmann Papers, W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, NC, USA. Between Two Worlds: A Time at Camp Catawba 331 Works Cited Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. Dallas, TX: Dallas Institute Publications, 1990. Baumann, Günter. Dichtung als Lebensform. Wolfgang Frommel zwischen George-Kreis und Castrum Peregrini. Würzburg: Könighausen und Neumann, 1995. Bohlman, Philip V. “The Music of Jewish Europe.” Music in Motion - Diversity and Dialogue in Europe. Bielefeld: transcript, 2009. 85-102. Coronil, Fernando “Introduction to Fernando Ortiz's Cuban Counterpoint.” Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1995. Gläser, Helga. “Etwas Chaos ist ja Tradition… Vera Lachmann - Lyrikerin und Pädagogin im Exil.“ Pädagogisches Forum 3 (1993): 136-40. Kreis, Gabriele. “Vera Lachmann (1904-1985).” 2 Aug. 2010 <http: / / www.lesben geschichte.de/ Englisch/ bio_lachmann_e.html>. Lachmann, Vera. Camp Catawba - Vera Lachmann Papers, W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, NC, USA. 26 Aug. 2009 <http: / / www.library.appstate.edu/ appcoll/ ead2002/ 214camp.xml/ ead2html>. ---. Halmdiamanten / Grass Diamonds. Amsterdam: Castrum Peregrini Presse, 1982. ---. Namen werden Inseln / Names become Islands. Amsterdam: Castrum Peregrini Presse, 1975. Landmann, Michael. Figuren um Stefan George - Zehn Portraits. Amsterdam: Castrum Peregrini Presse, 1982. Lewis, John. “Review of Charles A. Miller’s Homer’s Sun Still Shines: Ancient Greece in Essays, Poems and Translations.” Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.11.20; 12 July 2010 <http: / / bmcr.brynmawr.edu/ 2004/ 2004-11-20.html>. Miller, Charles A. Telephone interview by Jens Barnieck. 5 Sep. 2007 ---. A Catawba Assembly. New Market, VA: Trackaday, 1973. ---. CD compilation © 1975 with Poems in English and German, an interview with Vera Lachmann and a lecture on Greek poetry in English by Vera Lachmann. Sahm, Ulrich. 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