Editor’s note: The following letter recently was received by PAW; we are publishing it as an exception to our policy that letters in response to articles several years old normally would not appear in print.
I just discovered a PAW article on unusual objects in Firestone Library’s collections (feature, March 21, 2007) on the Internet; it mentioned some German toy soldiers. I collected these for the Class of ’39 and co-donated them to the University. Here’s why:
Working as an Orange Key guide, I got to know Freddy Fox ’39, the “keeper of Princetoniana.” When I told him I’d be spending the summer of 1978 in Central Europe researching my senior thesis, he asked me to do something for him and his Princeton class.
He and a classmate bicycled through Germany after graduation, in the summer of ’39. Freddy bought a bunch of German toy soldiers, which fascinated him because they were so grimly realistic. Later, while working for President Eisenhower, he gave the soldiers to Ike’s grandson, David. As time went by, Freddy began to regret this; he thought Princeton should have some as a reminder of the mindset that helped lead Germany into a second World War.
During my thesis research I looked for such toy soldiers at every stop, but found only two before I reached Berlin. While in the city, I dreamt one night that I went to a flea market near the Charlottenburg Palace and found a booth full of soldiers. The next morning I checked for flea markets in the newspaper, and sure enough, there was one in that location. I went there, walked precisely the route I’d walked in my dream, and found ... a booth full of soldiers. I wrote about this for PAW in 1979; nothing like it has happened to me before or since.
I’m glad the collection isn’t entirely forgotten. Those soldiers are a real “sign of their times.”