My Father, Hermann Apelt

Book excerpt: My Father, Hermann Apelt has two parts. The first part consists of my own memories, written documents of my father such as letters, articles, poems, and newspaper articles about his death. My father wrote and spoke a great deal but never published a book. Others did it for him. His best friend and colleague in the Senate of the city of Bremen, Germany, published Hermann Apelt, Reden und Schriften (speeches and writings) in collaboration with my mother, Julie Apelt, after his death in 1960. The second part consists of translations from this book. My father accomplished much in his life, in his political career as a senator, as one of the saviors of the Bremen ports, as a man of many interests, as a poet, and as a concerned father of four daughters. He traveled much and he admired the United States of America. I wrote this book in order to document the legacy this great German man, my father, has left to all of us.