All the past up to a moment ago is your legacy. You have a right to it.

I do not know when Robert Henri wrote these words but I envy this man for having lived in a world which accepted such statements. In my world they used to be unthinkable and they are still not a matter of course.
I do not know how much he cared about the past of his family; it might just be that we gain interest in this past only when we do not have easy acces to it, when they hide it from us - making us wonder what it is that they are hiding.

The dictionary defines a blind spot as "an area in your range of vision that you cannot see properly but which you really should be able to see." The life of my family in Triebswetter during the first half of the 20th century is scattered with such blind spots, and no one is left to tell what lies behind them. But the Past is a strong force, possessing endless ways of revealing itself, when it pleases to do so. One day an old book gets into your hands and you find answers in it, some answers. Just like I've purchased this old calendar - our past is not for free - in it a description of the time shortly after WWI, which is the time when Oma was about nine years old.
Lovrin lies only 10 km S-E of Triebswetter, so the events and the moods must have been similar in the two villages.

One day, in a better world, words like these will be written in the Constitution of former dictatures:

All the past up to a moment ago is your legacy. You have a right to it.