Twenty Five years ago the Iron Curtain opened, the Berlin Wall fell, and my perception of
Europe changed 180 degrees. Central Europe became the heart of the continent
again. Also my studies in the history of
science benefited from the new freedom when the borders opened: being able
to travel to former eastern Germany again.
Dr U. Jordis from Vienna, who fell
in love with the Glass Flowers of Harvard during a postdoc in Boston, went to Dresden
to uncover the traces the Blaschkas left in Hosterwitz. He established contact
with the last surviving member of the Blaschka family and accommodated subsequently, in 1993, the
visit of representatives of Harvard (Susan Rossi-Wilcox) and the Corning Museum of Glass (David Whitehouse) to the home
of the Blaschka family. On that occasion they managed to acquire the last remains of
the Blaschka studio. I was lucky as to being allowed to study these materials from September 1995
onwards, and earlier, in April of that year I visited the Berlin Blaschka models.
Communist
Czechoslovakia had its revolution in 1989 as well, and later, in 1992, the
country split into the Czech
Republic and Slovakia. In 1997 I
made my first trip to Prague and then made new contacts, which would further my Frič studies.
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