Frau Eberle’s Art
Pfäffingen, Germany

For two months in late-1984 and for four months in mid-1985, Bill, Will, Elizabeth and I lived in Gräfelfing (a Munich suburb) and Pfäffingen (a village outside Tübingen), Germany, for Bill’s research sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.  As a Senior U.S. Scientist Award Winner, his research took him first to the Technical University Munich and, later, the University of Tübingen (Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen).  This entry concerns the latter visit.

Living in Pfäffingen was a special treat. It was a very small village (the elementary school only had 40 students!) and everyone knew each other. We lived in a house designed to be “American” style.  It was, more or less, a split level, but seemed more of a chalet style to me.  Our landlady co-owned the house with her estranged husband and maintained residence there for the duration of our rental period.  We had a private 3-bedroom and bath wing, but shared the other rooms.  Through this association, Bill and I met the artist of the paintings shown here—Frau Eberle.  Her husband reproduced (by photography) her art and attached it to blank cards that were then sold at a Pfäffingen flower shop.  Done in a wonderful style that I admire, I soon learned that Frau Eberle painted the originals on glass, by reverse method, and she was nearly blind.  Try as we did, we could not buy an original but were sold some prints in a larger size.  In all, we have eight reproductions not including one each we gave to Will and Elizabeth.  We still display most of these in our home, and over time, we will add images of them to this page. (Please note that the images in the left column are thumbnails, unusual formatting for our supplemental pages.)

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