Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family

Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family

Bouman, Jon Anthony, 1873-1958

WWP23135

1927 July 24

Letter from Jon Bouman to his family.

Gift of William C. and Evelina Suhler

Germany--History--1918-1933

Correspondence

Berlin, Germany

Rachel Dark

Denise Montgomery

English

PROOFREADING

Evelina Suhler is the granddaughter of Jon Anthony Bouman and inherited the family collection of his letters from the years of World War I. She and her husband gave the letters to the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum in 2013.

          28 Zimmerstrasse
          Berlin SW 68
          Sunday evs,

Dearest;

            Enderis returned from Vienna yesterday morning, and I had dinner with him in the evening at his palatial flat, served by his perfect maid, who makes up in efficiency for her looks. I had a long talk with E. as he had been informed by Smith that it was intended I should be in Berlin permanently. E. said that he fully appreciated my difficulties, and the more so since I told him about what I was to lose by the change. He thought that the office had no right to ask such a sacrifice of me, and he will tell Smith so. I told him this was a very delicate matter to handle, because he confirmed my previous impression that this transfer of mine is only a little wheel in a great change that will be coming over the European staff. Since the war, it has been the Paris office that has been responsible for the news from the Balkans, Austria, &c. This was a matter of policy, but facts are more and more insistent in pointing to Berlin as a great continental news centre, for which more men are needed. So probably it will have to be that way.

            Lothner has problems with children too. His wife is German and they live with her parents-in-law. Housing difficulties don’t seem to be getting much better here. His eldest daughter, Betty, is 15 and he wants her to get an American education now but he doesn’t see how he can do it.

            The children of Bodker (of Reuters) are at school in Belgium and he has gone to see them today. But all Germans have their bullet heads shorn bare, and they carry their hats with a loop on a waistband button. Queer to see all those hats dangling on protuberant stomachs.

            I have been working pretty late every day, also today, with an interval of a couple of hours in the Tiergarten where the usual bourgeois crowd promenaded about and filled the open air cafes, with bands in full blast. The park looks beautiful again, but someone has painted the face of the dwarf Alberich (on Wagner’s statue) black!

            I have seen the lorgnette that I want to give you. So that’s one thing that’s coming.

          I hope you are all keeping fit.

         With much love to all,
          Doc       

Letter

Bouman Family