Reunited

August 20, 2018 by joachim

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I recently visited Horst Schmidt-Boecking, one of my high school classmates, in Frankfurt.  Until his government-mandated retirement he was Professor of the Physics Department of Frankfurt’s university, aptly named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.  In his house was an oil panting my uncle did, Hermann Manskopf.

My uncle’s fame as a painter did not reach beyond the Siegerland, the region I’m born in, but I’m still proud of his achievements as a artist.  His oevre ranges from landscapes of our region to pictures of workers in the local iron-manufacturing industry — an industry going back two millennia all the way to the Celts.

Following my mother’s death in 1990, I did not come into the possession of  a single painting of my uncle. Horst told me he owned three, two in addition to the one in his house.

After I got back to New York I asked him if I could buy one and he graciously offered the one I liked as a gift.  It now hangs in our house in the Berkshires.

I’m very happy to be reminded of the place I grew up at, decades ago.

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