Dear Doctor,
Wishing living persons a happy birthday is common practice, but as an explorer of the soul, will it not seem particularly strange to you that one writes letters to the dead?
There are 29 entries about you in the Jewish Museum Vienna inventory. Considering that you are quite famous, those aren’t very many. You now have two museums of your own: on Berggasse in Vienna and in Maresfield Gardens in London. Your home address in Vienna was number 19, in London it is 20, which may not have any meaning. The famous couch is in London, as is the rustic furniture from Hochrotherd, which you and your daughter Anna wanted to take with you when you fled from Vienna. In a photo album kept in the London museum, under a photo of the weekend house and a second one with an open cupboard next to the year 1931, the following captions, which rhyme in German, can be found:
“Doch mehr als dieses ist uns wert das Haus der Zukunft Hochrotherd.”
“Und zum Gedenk entnehmen wir aus diesem Schrank Glas und Geschirr.”
(“But the house of the future in Hochrotherd is worth more to us than this.”
“And to commemorate, we take glass and dishes from this cupboard.”)
Doctor, when one writes letters, one can address people who would never speak to her or him. You will not answer, which makes this exchange appear a bit one-sided, but due to the circumstances, it is not possible otherwise. When one writes, one can get closer to people, even if this closeness is not mutual.