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Show 'Lorraine Nelson. A Biography " 19 partner in Berlin's third largest accounting firm, Vernhard Germer, who died before the boy reached majority. ' j X^ X, Alas, beyond a few additional details concerning patent rights and employment history, the .J^x biographical record on Edmund is silent. We know nothing of his childhood, nothing of his ^ 'I mother-his brothers and sisters, nothing of those formative years when a boy lays the ^* groundwork for paths he'll later tread. For all intents and purposes, he is a phantom, a ghost, a v *i r vaporous arc like that of his famous light, bridging Berlin and Newark, the two antipodes where \ . ^ he spent most of his life. *"y \ (A What could have impelled Germer toward the pursuit of efficient and "heat-less" lighting? w Was the enterprise motivated by simple ambition, the desire to improve on the existing science, \ v yi^ % \r if to better the lot of his fellow man? Or was there some absence, some distant chasm left unfilled tar ^ in the past of this inventor of the 'cold light'? Was his father cool and indifferent toward him? Or «for was Edmund himself a heartless lothario-or perhaps a poor cuckold rattled into his disaffection i v ' o by a series of failed and emotionally debilitating unions? ft} „ At first I found the historical omissions unnerving. Then I began to delight in the irony: that y i , this man, who devoted so much of his career to lighting the dimmed environs, should have his .h* own life remain largely unXit. And finally-almost without trying-I began to imagine him, to invent a history for the inventor, pulling him piece by piece from the incomplete history. In the version of his life I prefer, the elder Germer enjoyed doting on his young son and even ensured the precocious boy received the finest German education. And when Edmund was just 15, about the age when a boy might begin enjoying his father's company, Vernhard was struck down by a milk truck while crossing a busy intersection. Smote at the crossroad. Another hit-and- run victim of our trivia. Word play is often gallows humor. Mercucio sputtering "Call on me tomorrow and ye shall find me a grave man." It keeps company with humanity's darkest secrets, its castaways and psychic shadows. Freud claims it is these relationships which are most important for Kalauer because |
