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CHAPTER 16 The Golden Ring of Friendship Once when I expressed my profound gratitude to a friend, he countered , “Don’t you know the proverb, ‘Friendship is a golden ring—you never know how much you give and how much you receive’?” When my thoughts wander back to my life in Germany across the distance of time and space, I do not see it in pictures of committees, councils, institutions, and activities that ‹lled my days. Rather, I visualize it as a stream of people, of individuals, broadening and swelling with the years, and many of these individuals as part of the golden ring. In earlier chapters I have dealt with friendships that grew out of my work; it now remains to give a testament of gratitude to those who— outside and apart from my causes or my career—lavishly contributed to the fullness of my life. This book may sometimes seem as much a book about women, as though I had lived in a harem. Actually, I always had men and women, old and young, rich and poor, and sometimes whole families as my friends. The homes of those in the higher ranks of culture were centers for outstanding painters, musicians, writers. There was among others the Mendelssohn family, or rather the two families of the brothers Robert and Franz, who were grandsons of Moses Mendelssohn, the philosopher and friend of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and close relatives of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, whose “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and symphonies and oratories have been performed for more than a hundred years.1 There was a medley of languages and nationalities in Robert’s house. His and Franz’s mother had been a Frenchwoman of a Protestant family, and Robert had married an Italian musician, a Catholic and a highly gifted woman, who sang and played beautifully. They loved art and had a marvelous collection: Rembrandt’s self-portrait 165 and his portrait of Hendrike, his wife, a Rubens, a Goya, Manets, and exquisite Corot landscapes. But both Robert and Franz lived for music—although they were bankers, having inherited a banking house from their father which was well known for the issue of the Russian loans during the days of the czars. I owe it to these two families that I gained access to the enthralling realm of music, which at times lifted me out of the realities and problems of life and guided me into another fascinating world where emotions and sentiments and the innermost soul have a medium of expression far above and beyond words of any language. Robert had been an intimate friend of Joseph Joachim, the violinist, and Eleonora Duse stayed at his home whenever she came to act in Berlin. His eldest daughter was her godchild and grew up to be an actress too. Strangely enough, she has something of the sound-color and timbre of Duse in her voice. Robert died after a long illness in 1917, and his widow indulged in long absences from Germany, which seemed to affect her nerves. Meanwhile, the children were in the habit of inviting statesmen, noted painters, and musicians, and once, when they were out of their teens, I helped them out with a luncheon arranged so that Einstein could meet Gerhart Hauptmann,2 both of whom had been honored by the Nobel Prize. I remember this party in particular, for Einstein hardly managed to get in a word and sat looking rather overwhelmed while the famous poet, the author of the naturalist drama The Weavers, talked about the ›avors of different wines with nebulous loquaciousness. Robert and Franz had bought acres of land and forest in the early days of the western suburb, the Grunewald. Their gardens adjoined, and there was much coming and going between the two families, since they always shared in performing or hearing music. The Franz von Mendelssohn family, equally gifted in the arts, were more normal in their habits, and a permanent family friendship developed between us. Naturally, their children, too, had to face the handicaps existing in European countries for those brought up in great wealth. They knew little about life outside the tall iron fence bordered by yew trees that surrounded their estate. One of their teachers, who had been associated with the parents for twenty years, told me how when the ‹rst of the girls was about to be married, the sisters had wanted to give her something different, something she had never owned before, and after pondering over...

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