United States

The United States becomes both Hans Schwarz’s refuge from the persecution gathering around him in Germany and the setting of the life he makes after leaving. His parents send him across the Atlantic in the hope that the separation will be temporary; three decades later, America is still his home, but it has not resolved his sense of exile from the future he wanted.

Destination and Separation

At the beginning of December, Hans’s father tells him that his parents have decided to send him to America for the time being. Relatives in New York City will look after him and arrange for him to attend university. His parents imagine that conditions will improve within a few years and intend to remain in Germany, which his father describes as their Fatherland and home. The decision therefore divides the family: the young Hans is sent away to protect his prospects, while his parents insist on their own continuing claim to the country.

Hans leaves school at Christmas and departs on January 19, his birthday, almost exactly a year after Konradin von Hohenfels entered his life. Two days before leaving, he receives two letters. One, written in verse by Bollacher and Schulz, sends him off with an antisemitic taunt invoking Moses and Isaac. The hostile farewell makes clear that departure is not simply a family choice made in anticipation of university; it comes amid the social exclusion and humiliation Hans has experienced at school.

Education and Work

Hans arrives in America and, in retrospect, reports that he has been there for thirty years. He first attends school and then studies law at Harvard University. Law is not his chosen ambition: he wants to be a poet, but his father’s cousin insists that he study a profession before writing in his spare time. Hans follows that advice, becomes a lawyer at twenty-five, and establishes a career he describes as reasonably successful.

The United States thus gives Hans access to education and a professional future after his departure from Germany, but the path available to him is not the one he would have chosen. His legal career answers the practical demand for security; it does not replace his abandoned hope of writing a good book and a good poem.

Adult Life and Ambivalence

Hans marries a woman from Boston and has one child. He acquires an apartment overlooking Central Park, cars, and a place in the country, and belongs to several Jewish clubs. These details make visible the prosperity he has achieved during his decades in America. By the ordinary measure of career and possessions, his life appears successful.

His own assessment is more divided. He says that he lacked the courage to write when he had no money, and that, once he had money, he lacked confidence. The security and accomplishments associated with his American life therefore coexist with a lasting sense of failure over the creative work left undone. He also describes moments of pleasure in natural scenes, and takes satisfaction in using some of his financial success to support causes he considers just, including racial equality and the abolition of capital punishment. He has helped Jews build up Israel, assisted Arab refugees, and even sent money to Germany.

Narrative Significance

The United States is not depicted simply as a place of rescue or uncomplicated reinvention. It offers Hans education, work, family, material comfort, and the means to contribute to causes beyond himself; at the same time, his adult reflection measures those gains against the life of writing he did not pursue. The contrast between the temporary separation his parents expect and the thirty years Hans has spent in America gives the destination a lasting weight: what begins as protection from a hostile present becomes the setting of a whole life, without erasing the costs of leaving.