Introduction to Natural Magic - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 327

evenings, when the performances were going on, and she saw that every-
body wore the dresses and the designs she made, in the proper way.
The way in which my cousin Martin and I became much closer than just
the two sons of two siblings was that my father, Emil, and Martin's father,
Erwin, were taken prisoners of World War I practically in the first week
after the hostilities broke out. My uncle Erwin was to fight on the eastern
front, on the Russian front, and my father Emil was sent down to the
Southeast to battle the Serbs, who were already well entrenched, and were
prepared for the beginning of this war.
They were both captured. Within the first week, my father was taken as
a prisoner of war, taken away by the Serbs—today you would call them the
Yugoslavs**, but this was at that time Serbia—and my uncle Erwin was put
into one of the big trains. The Germans lost hundreds of thousands of sol-
diers in the first two or three weeks. They were completely unprepared for
trench warfare. They were still riding on horses, pulling out their sabres and
trying to attack the Russians who were deeply entrenched, and shooting
them down with their machine guns.
My uncle Erwin was transported to Siberia, where he stayed until prac-
tically 1917, when he succeeded in fleeing, and by train and on foot reached
China, ultimately arriving in Tsingtao. There he met the great philosopher
Richard Wilhelm, whose name you probably know as the translator of many
of the Chinese philosophical works, most prominent, of course, the I Ching .
They are translated into English, and, Paul, I am sure, if you have an I Ching ,
it is the one translated by Richard Wilhelm.
Ok, that's the story of Erwin. But the story of my father: he was brought
to Serbia, where the Serbs were defeated after about two months of battle,
and then he was transferred to the Italians, and became an Italian prisoner
of war, and stayed on a tiny, tiny island between Corsica and Sardinia.
But nevertheless these two boys, Heinz and Martin, grew up without
fathers, and the mothers, being very close, arranged also that the boys were
very close. So Martin practically grew up with me in our house, because
Grete was of course dancing all over Germany, making performances etc.,
etc. And if Martin was not at our house, he was staying with his Grand-
mother, the mother of Lilith and Erwin, Marie. So I was, in many cases, taken
with my mother in the evening—because the idea of a baby-sitter didn't exist
at that time—I was taken by my mother to the theatres, where Grete Wiesen-
thal performed. And I, as a good boy, was to sit in a little corner, and watch
the wonderful ladies who changed from one costume into another, and prob-
ably at that time I developed this preferred taste for women, and I think this
stuck with me for the rest of my life. If you have the chance to see these
absolutely incredible creatures, like elves, going out onto the stage, coming
back, transforming themselves into other elves and going out onto the stage
again, and you watch from the sidelines, you get a very different impression;
what incredible, magical, ethereal, creatures they are.
** Though not any longer!