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Then the translation would be, the Heavenly Comedy or something like
that. I packed it in my last little suitcase because it was a special edition,
bound in leather, and printed on extraordinarily thin paper. So this came,
later on, after the war, when nobody had cigarettes, but I could sometimes
find some tobacco, extraordinarily handy because I could use the last pages
of the Paradiso , which I thought always were a little bit silly, as cigarette
paper, in which I could roll my cigarettes.
So I let the Paradise go up in smoke in the years of, let's say, 1945, 1946
etc. etc.. Fortunately, later on I got cigarette papers. Only the last couple of
songs of the Paradiso have indeed been used as cigarette paper.
Now, ok, things settled down, and after many years Mai and I and our
three boys had already moved to the United States. Every three or four
years I visited Vienna, and on one occasion Martin had established himself
in a new apartment in Vienna. He had married in the meantime a very
charming lady and they had a daughter. He married very late. He estab-
lished himself in a very charming apartment, directly vis-à-vis one of the
most beautiful Imperial castles in Austria, Schönbrunn. It consists of one
major castle complex, then wonderful gardens leading up a hill, where on
top of the hill is a very charming lookout, which is called Gloriette.
Martin with his wife and daughter walked through these charming formal
gardens of the Hapsburg emperors, and they were maintained in wonder-
ful condition: rose gardens and lily gardens and fountains. On one of my
visits to Vienna, when I always stayed with Martin, he said, “By the way,
Heinz, I have a surprise for you.” I said, “That's very nice”. “I have just put
all my topics into various bookshelves, and there is a set of topics, I do not
know where to put”. I said, “Well, what are they?” “Well, twenty volumes.”
“Twenty volumes, of what?” “Come and look.”
I looked at them. It was the Wiegleb, which had survived in Vienna, but
which would have been burned to ashes if I had owned it, and had had it
in Berlin. So he said, “Ok, Heinz, if you can use the Wiegleb, here it is, it's
yours.” So I said, “That is wonderful, because I can use it all the time.” So
he packed it for me in a box, and mailed it to me. I got it at Christmas, I
think it was 1982, in Pescadero. Since I always use these volumes, they are
directly on my desk, and here they are, being a very good source of my
understanding of physics, of my understanding of the culture which gener-
ated physics. And, Paul, when you come the next time, I think you should
have a good look.
There is another little detail, and it is this. When I was still at the Uni-
versity of Illinois, some people by hearsay heard that I was once a magi-
cian. So the History of Science Society, which is a very, very good society
at the University of Illinois, invited me to give a lecture on the history of
magic. I said, this is wonderful. I would be delighted to do that. So I knew
of course a source of information on the history of magic, and this was of
course Wiegleb's textbook of natural magic. So I said, ok I accept that. I
had lots of time. I think they announced it two or three months before I
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