. . . My 3 week's trip thru the Soviet Union was really a strong impression (Sept. 6-27). Probably I just went there at the last "good" moment, for since then many kinds of freedom were strictly reduced again. During my 7 days at Moscow, I saw many parts of this magnificent city, and I had the opportunity to talk with many interesting people, like my hostess's friend (who is a retired geneticist and a member of the Supreme Soviet), or the Director of the Main Botanical Garden of the USSR (who is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party); during the 11 days in Soviet Georgia - with my headquarters at Thilisi - I saw many regions of that republic up to mountains of 15,000 ft. I tasted the 'successes" of 70 years of socialist economy (strikes, lack of fuel, meat and many other things) - and the fruits of private labour as well (marvelous wines, e.g.); during the last 3 days, on the Crimea, I visited an old friend, and I enjoyed the beauties of the Black Sea Coast.
The most exciting experience was seeing the renaissance of the Orthodox Church: nobody hesitated to tell me that he (or she) is a Christian, not even the member of the Supreme Soviet: before I left, he invited me to the Russian so-called "silent minute", i.e. the minute of prayer, and in Georgia, the population (6,000,000) is rebuilding one thousand churches at the same time which had been abandoned for 70 years, and badly damaged by rain and storms: churches of the 5th, 6th 7th centuries! (They were already Christians when in Germany people still "lived upon the trees"!) And nowhere I experienced resentments against my country, on the contrary, everybody congratulated me for the unification.
In this context I experienced the greatest emotion when I was invited into the house of a former officer of the Soviet Artillery; in May 1945 he had participated at the conquest of Berlin (personally, he had conquered the Reichstag, i.e., the Parliament); later on he was a professor of physics at a state-run pedagogical institute (these institutes were famous for their atheist education of the future teachers). He invited me to drink with him for brotherhood (to "hobnob", according to my English Dictionary), and promised me to pray for me to St. George and to the Holy Virgin!
Since then I assisted in 2 botanical symposia: one at Regensburg, in the first days of Oct. 1990 (in the evening of. Oct. 2, 1 assisted an ecumenical thanksgiving service in the greatest Protestant church of the city, and the other day I observed the re-unification ceremonies in the East Berlin Evangelical cathedral and in the West Berlin concert hall- on TV) - and the other one during the last days of February, 1991, at Gottingen, quite near the former iron curtin. When Gottingen was chosen for that meeting in 1988 nobody had expected Germany to be united, but now many eastern German colleagues were able to assist, and I used this opportunity to go to Thuringia for the first time after the opening of the frontier (of course, I did immediately genealogical research, for I knew that in a village, 500 yards behind the iron curtin, some Napps had lived in the 19th century, and in fact, I "discovered" more than 300 Napps in the Church Records!)
. . . let me thank you for the generous gift of the George Michael Eller book by J.W. Hook many pages of which I have read meanwhile with great interest. I noticed among others, several family names which also occur in the Rhineland, and also in my family records, like Welker and Wertz. I think future books on Eller family history should also be provided with an index of place names.
. . . This morning I phoned Georg Eller at Bingen, and it seems that his health has been reestablished, too, to a large degree. He is busy with writing a contribution to a new book on the history of his native town, Nierstein.
We have now a letter from an Eller lady who teaches in a European school in Belgium (biology and chemistry); she originates from an Eller family in the Black Forest, still missing in the ISI, but "intermediary" generations lived at Fulda (Hessen). I am sending her your EFA announcement in German. Her great great grandfather (Bernard Eller, b. 1812, in the Black Forest) emigrated to the US after the death of his wife (1861/1862), and she hopes to find out whether he has married again in the US and whether there are eventually descendants from such a second marriage. I am suggesting her to go to the Estes Park meeting.
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