Description of parental home in Freiburg with visitors such as Thomas Mann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Hermann Hesse; study at the University of Munich; last months of war in hiding; immigration to the USA and career as a chemist at Harvard.Bernhard Witkop was born in Freiburg to Philipp Witkop, a professor of German literature and Hedwig Margarethe Hirschhorn, a descendant of the Mannheim Hirschhorn family. He studied chemistry in Munich under the Nobel prize winner Heinrich Wieland and became a professor of chemistry at Harvard University after his immigration in 1947.Hirschhorn familyChildhoo