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Address Unknown
Kressman Taylor
FOREWORD
IN THIS DRAMATIC SERIES OF LETTERS (between an American living in San Francisco and his former business partner who returned to Germany) American writing has been enriched by one of those rarities in the field of literature, a perfect short story. Further, it is one of those inevitable stories, so significantly conceived and so naturally expressed that both the average reader and the professional author are likely to experience a kindred shocked reaction: “Why, I could have written that. Why didn’t I think of that before!” In every work of genius, says Goethe reflectively, we recognize our own rejected thoughts.
Kressma
Address Unknown springs out of a background, she says, of reality. It is based upon a few actual letters. And in discussion of these letters with her husband, Elliott Taylor, the idea of this story emerged, its finished form, she generously says, owing perhaps as much to her husband and his enthusiasm as to herself. Thus, from the first, it would seem, Address Unknown took on a kind of communal or social quality.
In a country of several hundred thousand short story writers, a country in which the short story is a popular and traditional, even a common and often extremely vulgar literary form, it is unusual for one short story by an unheard-of author to awaken the widespread interest of Address Unknown. Its publication in Story met with a public reaction rare in the eight-years’ history of that literary magazine, for within ten days the entire printing of that issue was sold out. The ensuing demand, which could not be fulfilled, saw the even more unusual phenomenon of some appreciative readers (this was in Hollywood) ru
Motion-picture producers began wiring east. It was ordered by English publishers and translation into foreign languages was begun. At about this point it seemed Address Unknown ought to have a good substantial binding on it and its own independent, and perhaps permanent, place on the country’s bookshelf. This is it. On a shelf of significance there seems no doubt it will hold a challenging place.
—WHIT BURNETT , editor of Story Magazine
Note to the electronic edition: Address Unknown first appeared in 1938 in the literary magazine Story. The foreword below appeared in its first separate book publication the following year. Curiously, although the story remains popular in French, German, and other languages, the original has largely been forgotten in the United States, as has the author, Kathrine Kressma
Address Unknown
by
Kressma
SCHULSE-EISENSTEIN GALLERIES
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
NOVEMBER 12, 1932
Herrn Martin Schulse Schloss Rantzenburg Munich, Germany
MY DEAR MARTIN :
Back in Germany! How I envy you! Although I have not seen it since my school days, the spell of Unter den Linden is still strong upon me — the breadth of intellectual freedom, the discussions, the music, the lighthearted comradeship. And now the old Junker spirit, the Prussian arrogance and militarism are gone. You go to a democratic Germany, a land with a deep culture and the begi
As for me, I am not so happy. Sunday morning finds me a lonely bachelor without aim. My Sunday home is now transported over the wide seas. The big old house on the hill — your welcome that said the day was not complete until we were together again! And our dear jolly Elsa, coming out beaming, grasping ray hand and shouting “Max, Max!” and hurrying indoors to open my favorite Schnaps. The fine boys, too, especially your handsome young Heinrich; he will be a grown man before I set eyes upon him again.
And di
Of course you are right to go. You have never become American despite your success here, and now that the business is so well established you must take your sturdy German boys back to the homeland to be educated. Elsa too has missed her family through the long years and they will be glad to see you as well. The impecunious young artist has now become the family benefactor, and that too will give you a quiet little triumph.
The business continues to go well. Mrs. Levine has bought the small Picasso at our price, for which I congratulate myself, and I have old Mrs. Fleshman playing with the notion of the hideous Mado
A delightful letter came yesterday from Griselle, She writes that she is about to make me proud of my little sister. She has the lead in a new play in Vie
Fourteen years since the war! Did you mark the date? What a long way we have traveled, as peoples, from that bitterness! Again, my dear Martin, let me embrace you in spirit, and with the most affectionate remembrances to Elsa and the boys, believe me,
Your ever most faithful,
MAX
SCHLOSS RANTZENBURG
MUNICH, GERMANY