Eva Hesse Page #3

She wanted to show me how to paint.

And of course, We played

lots in the pool.

(CHILDREN LAUGHING)

You had these water balls playing,

and We Were... (CHUCKLES)

jumping into the pool.

H was great.

She painted for my other brother, Karl,

a picture cal/ed Waterball Play.

I guess she loved it, too,

being with us and just playing.

So I have very sunny impressions,

but I also have, um,

some memories later in the year.

There was something in her

which was, um...

traurig, sad.

I think H was difficult for her,

being in this country.

HESSE'. June 13th, 1964.

Our sixth day herein Kettwig.

Yesterday I had some melancholy.

I developed some of my more

troubled thoughts and feelings.

I was born in Germany, in 1936.

(INDISTINCT TALKING)

My family is from Hamburg,

Germany, northern Germany.

That's Where I was born

and that's Where Eva was born.

HESSE". My father was

a criminal lawyer.

He had just finished his two doctorates

and I had the most

beautiful mother in the world.

She looked like Ingrid Bergman.

She studied art in Hamburg.

OHARASH:
My father kept tagebucher

about my life and Eva's life.

It's really a journal.

WILLIAM:

May this book of your childhood

become a guide in your later life.

In H, you will realize how you grew up.

None of this may get lost,

my beloved child,

because there is nothing

that sustains us more

in the hardships of our lives

than a review of our childhood.

When Helen was born, freedom and truth

had vanished already from Germany.

Ft was already five months

that Hitter raged.

German Jewish life changed very quickly.

When the Nazis came

to power in January, 1933,

there were so many deprivation.

People were hurt.

They couldn't Work in their

professions anymore.

H was forbidden to work

as a so-called Jewish lawyer.

WILLIAM:
I lost my profession

on April 24th, 1933.

And then there were more hard years.

(CROWD CHANTING)

After November 10,

when all the synagogues

had been destroyed,

all Jewish businesses wrecked,

almost all the men had been arrested,

and the most horrible

atrocities of all kinds

been committed against the

Jews all over Germany.

One tried from abroad, at least, to

save the children as speedily as possible.

On December 7th,

Helen and Eva left for Holland

with the children's transport.

Will there be a reunion?

Will We get murdered first?

We were not allowed on the platform.

Helen and Eva held hands

and marched off to the train,

accompanied by criminals certified

as customs officials and Gestapo.

(CHILDREN SINGING IN GERMAN)

OHARASH:
Eva was under three,

and I was five-and-a-half.

(CHILDREN CONTINUE SINGING)

HESSE". We went to Holland.

We were supposed to be picked up by

my father's brother and his Wife,

but they Weren't allowed to do it.

We were put in

a Catholic children's home.

CHARASH:
I remember that Eva

had been toilet trained at home,

but she must have regressed with all

that happened and they spanked her.

She took sick around her birthday time,

and she was quarantined,

so they didn't let me see her.

WILLIAM:
In the beginning of February,

Ruth and I were rescued, as well.

We came to Holland

and picked up the children.

HESSE:
My father's brother and his wife

ended up in concentration camps.

And all of my grandparents

and everybody.

No one made it.

But we did.

We Went to America

via one of my father's cousins.

It was the end of summer, 1939.

H was very, very late.

H was the last chance.

July 2181,1964.

Dear Rosie, I had a slow week.

Did not push at all.

Took H easy.

I don't know What it means

to really delve into the past,

family and such.

I must be too afraid.

The first two weeks here,

I had terrible, gruesome nightmares.

Frighiful dream.

Large party-

(JAZZ PLAYING)

Hundreds of people.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Official.

(GLASS CLINKING)

Tom very drunk.

I heard someone tell him,

"Take your lovely wife home."

He carried me outside,

ran with me, fast.

(FOOTSTEPS RUNNING)

Hurt me.

We went higher and higher

through the sky.

There was a French Legion

parade beneath us.

Officers came out,

and with long, saber swords

cut the heads off all the legionnaires.

I had to control Tom. (ROARS)

Officers then grabbed us

and threw us into solitary.

We had swords held inches away,

I, by my screaming head.

I could no longer control myself,

but was warned to behave.

(TRAIN CHUGGING)

They said that if I were not a child,

they already Would've killed me.

Friday.

Initially, I felt different.

But once again, I'm left with myself.

Started Work in oil paint today.

Did two tiny,

very expressionism: paintings.

Feel rather enthused, since I enjoyed

them and they seemed real for me.

Somehow, I think that counts.

I'm still networking right,

as I know in my mind one should.

Tom also can find working difficult.

Less so, as he knows what he's about,

what he wants to achieve.

When she would talk about her work,

she would talk about it in

quite self-deprecating terms.

She would say, "You know,

I'm patshke-ing around with new things."

And I thought to myself,

that's a funny thing to say.

You would never say

Tom's patshke-ing around.

She Wasn't sure, yet.

Tom was sure.

WERNER NEKES:
I met Eva and Tom Doyle

during the Short Film Days, a film festival

of short films in Oberhausen,

and I remember that Eva liked specially

a Japanese film by Yoji Kuri, Aos.

(SCREECHES)

(SCREECHES AGAIN)

Eva took those boxes as a scene

in some of her paintings later on.

(GASPING)

Eva was ready all the time

to take all the inferences that she saw

and to work on them

to find her own way.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

In the 15 months Eva Hesse

was in Germany,

there happened a lot.

Together with Tom Doyle,

she went into every important

museum in whole Europe.

They were in London, in Paris, in Rome.

HESSE:
Brussels. Went to museum.

Bruegel and Bosch, Alechinsky, Maisys,

Calder, Moore, Chillida, Davie, Noguchi.

PETZINGER:
She was a person...

whose eyes were open, open, open.

And she needed food for her eyes.

LEWITT:
Tom and Eva Doyle, Kettwig.

Hope you had a good trip.

Now back to work.

All sculptures are objects

of one kind or another.

Don't fight it. Go, go.

Sol.

DOYLE:
We worked on each other's stuff.

I mean, she helped me

when I painted my sculpture.

And I helped her, you know, as much as... I

built frames, I built everything, you know.

Our private life was not so great,

but our working life was very good.

Except I drank a little too much, then,

you know. I was drinking a lot.

That wasn't too good.

HESSE". Saturday, October 3rd.

Tom knocked someone unconscious.

Tom Worse than ever before,

and I cried and was miserable all night.

Dearest Rosie,

my anger at Tom increases.

H verges on a breaking point.

At parties, he is obnoxious.

He goes from woman to next woman,

dips them to ground.

They love H.

I'm not proud of it, but I...

That's the way I was, you know'?

And that's the way everybody was,

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