Westward. Encounters with Swiss American Women

In her private life at that time Linda was happy – and yet not really happy, as she recognizes in retrospect. “I imagined that getting engaged and then married would follow. I was very fond of Jürg Federspiel, an author, who was just becoming famous, wrote his first books, and worked as a journalist and theater critic for several newspapers. He was horribly jealous and felt that on stage I had kissed a colleague for too long.

“This led to a huge fight. I didn’t understand him and I no longer understood myself. Not just because of this incident. I believe I was in love with being in love rather than in love with Jürg.

“And then I suddenly realized that I did not want to get into a marriage that came with three bottles of red wine per day. So I broke up; my parents were very happy. They had also seen that I was not able to deal with his difficult temperament. Our friends accused me of having broken his heart forever. But thank God, that wasn’t true! In the course of his life he went on to meet several wonderful women and he has a wonderful son. I am friends not only with his family, but his ex-wives and ex-girlfriends, too. They remain a part of my life even after Jürg unfortunately died a few years ago.”