Letter, 1934
Georg Karl Hermann Cronemeyer, known as Jörge, came from a well-to-do family in Bremerhaven. Born in 1907 as the third child and first son of a doctor, he was expected to pursue an academic career. However, at the age of 20, the musically inclined young man had yet to start his studies. Instead, at the urging of his father, he “fled” to his emigrated uncle Heinrich in the USA. He wrote to his parents from San Francisco, a city he would later consider his home, that it was “necessary to leave home to see what life is like.” There was no reconciliation with his father: he died in 1944, in the midst of World War II. Jörge never saw him again. Jörge’s youth in the USA passed quickly: he later referred to that chapter in his memoirs as “Gone with the wind,” which he completed shortly before his death. In it, he talks about his work-driven life and many disappointments and hardships as an adult and old man. However, he also mentions his joy in classical singing, his poems written in English, many decades-long friendships, and his lifelong connection to his family in Germany. He revisited his birthplace and early youth in 1971 during a family celebration after almost 40 years. Jörge died at the age of 71 in San Francisco in 1978.
