“From the beginning of September we should be in Germany or another German-speaking country with Georg’s scholarship. From Le Mée we made several trips over the summer to find an apartment. We didn’t have any success in Freiburg, Heidelberg and Munich. There were hardly any housing options, and certainly not for Americans with three children. We were offered a nice, inexpensive house near Innsbruck; But when we asked the school authorities there to exempt our children from Catholic religious instruction, they did, but at the same time advised us that we and the children should keep quiet about the fact that we were Jews.
So we stood in the Innsbruck post office under the picture of Emperor Franz Joseph and thought about what to do next - until it occurred to us that we hadn’t tried Göttingen yet. I wasn’t particularly keen on going to northern Germany, but called the university’s international office and found out that there was a possibility in Göttingen and that we should come to see an apartment. Georg then drove from Le Mée to Göttingen. But it turned out that she wouldn’t be free until the beginning of May. The Guggenheim Foundation agreed that we would only move to Göttingen in May. We were relieved to be able to stay in Le Mée until then, where we had settled in well, and to only have to spend three months in Germany.
When we came to Göttingen, our fears proved to be unfounded. We quickly felt good. Jeremy went to the sixth class of the Max Planck High School, Danny went to elementary school in what was then the village of Geismar, where we lived, and Jonathan first to the local kindergarten and then to the school kindergarten. The children quickly made friends with their classmates - learning German was not a problem for them at all, but that was not what learning French last year was either.”
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Zwei Seiten der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, p. 154f (translation)