Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. That is right. He became engulfed in advance of the Russian Army and had to go into hiding because he had a sentence of life exile to Siberia against him. And at that time the Germans and the Russians were not at war yet, so the Russians and the Germans made an agreement that all the people of German or Baltic or Swedish origin could go to Germany, and they could declare themselves openly and go to a special German commission set up for that effect in various towns.

Mr. Jenner.

You say declare themselves openly. What do you mean by that?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Declare themselves that they are willing to go and live in Germany, instead of living in Russia.

Mr. Jenner.

Declare allegiance to the German Government?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. That is right--declare allegiance to the German Government, and declare themselves Volkdeutsche, which means of Germanic origin. Russia had many millions of people of that type, an enormous German colony. So the Germans did it in order to get all those Germans from the Volga Province into their own country. And all the other people, like my father. And he declared himself willing to go to Germany, and the Germans took him into Germany. He would rather be with the Germans than with the Communists, and spent the rest of his life

Mr. Jenner.

Was your father still anti-Communist?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; very strongly anti-Communist exceedingly strongly anti-Communist, almost fanatically so. Naturally, he had the sentence against him. And then he spent the rest of his life in Germany and was killed at the end of the war in an air raid, as far as we know--some air raid hit that place where he lived.

Mr. Jenner.

Do you know what town it was?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. No; I don't know the town, but it is an old castle in Oldenburg. It is near the Danish border. My brother is going to go right now there to visit his tomb, because neither of us had the time to go and see that place. But he is in Europe now, and he will go and see the place where he was buried.
Eventually, we received some of his papers and documents and letters through some German friends who stayed there with him.

Mr. Jenner.

Now, I take it he was--we can at least fairly say that he had sympathies, or was sympathetic with the German cause?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. No; I remember we exchanged letters with him during the war through some friends in Argentina and in Japan, before Japan got into the war. My father wrote me a letter in which he said, "George, the Nazis are no good, and Germany is going to lose the war, but I prefer to be in Germany than in Soviet Russia. At least I am free and nobody is bothering me."
It was the policy of the Germans to protect the people who had some positions in Czarist Russia. But he never became pro-Nazi. He was too clear thinking for that. He liked the Germans all right, but he was not pro-Nazi. But he hated Communism. That was his life's hatred.

Mr. Jenner.

Now, we have you back in New York City--this is when we went to lunch--around 1953--1952, 1953.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.

Mr. Jenner.

Your partnership with Mr. Hooker had terminated.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. No, no; still active. I think it was in 1952--because I was not married---we still had the partnership. I was visiting Ed Hooker in New York at that particular time, and through him I met my next wife, my last wife.

Mr. Jenner.

All right. Now, who was she?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Wynne Sharples.

Mr. Jenner.

She at that time was a student?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. She was just graduating from the medical school at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. That was her last year. And she was late in her studies. She was 28 or 29 years old at that time. So she had missed a couple of years, you see. And we fell in love with each other and decided to get married.

Mr. Jenner.

Tell me about the Sharples family.

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