Our souls lived in that old world of the faraway times, when Nuremberg was renowned for its lebkuchen and its toy boxes, not for its trials and the subsequent gallows. The times when in such ghastly places as Cologne or Coventry the gingerbread houses crowded in an intricate confusion around the cute dignity of the stepped townhall gables, shadowed by the heavenward soaring of the cathedrals…When the vast countryside was lovely with its silent lakes and ponds reflecting the cloud castles of the minnesingers and the poetic Wittelsbachs on the mountains. The lead-glistening light of storm-brewing, grain-ripening summer afternoons long ago reflecting the heaviness of our hearts; the murmuring of brooks under alders and hazelnut bushes, from which beautiful Melusina peers out…Melusina, mind you, and not the radioactive refuse of the nearest chemical factory…

---the Death of My Brother Abel, Gregor Von Rezzori (1985)