Gerda Meyerhof: émigrée, photographer, friend to the Whole Sick Crew

W.A.S.T.E

One Matthew Cissell made his post a p-post, he posted to the the p-list, a Pynchon mailing list, about our interview with Tod Perry: Cissell was looking for info about Gerda Meyerhof and to what extent she and her husband's home functioned as a kind of informal literary salon during Pynchon's days in NYC just after graduating from Cornell.

Cissell didn't get any responses.

So, I've linked to his message here in the hopes that someone might come across this post and be able to answer his question.  His email can be found at the original post.

If you know something, do be a dear and help Matthew about.  If I can reach Mr. Perry, I'll ask him.  We'll see....

Here's the query in full:

Hello p-listers,

I know folks are gearing up for the BtZ read, which I'll have to sit out,
but I come to you with a query.

   In an interview with the good people at the Laws of Silence blog, Tod
Perry (a former classmate of Pynchon's and part of the Whole Sick Crew)
stated that:

 " On the East side we had other amusements.  And there was the fabulous
table and hospitality of Hans + Gerda Meyerhof.  They entertained a really
amazing group of intellectuals from CCNY and Columbia and elsewhere--art
historians, scholars, artists.  Often we had dinner there, Dick, Kirk, Tom,
Bob, Robin.  Frau Meyerhof sometime shook her head and said it was like
listening to a convention of the poetic plumbers.


  This piqued my interest, so I started looking and found Gerda and Hans
Meyerhof in New York (census record 1940, though the records have her
living in Queens at the time). I also came across reference to a young
jewish gal who was helping some famous photographers before coming over to
the US. This same Gerda Meyerhof was visted by the writer Martin Beradt.
Gerda eventually moved back to Europe (Switzerland) and her photography is
still noted.

  IT sounds like she and her husband had a small literary salon of a sorts,
or at least a place where some german jewish refugees visited.. This
interesting because literary salons were, to some extent, leaving houses
and arising in bars like the White Horse or San Remo.

I am pretty confident that this is the same Gerda Meyerhof. I find it
interesting that she was a photographer; perhaps this is where the young
Pynchon first started to think about light and cameras?

Can any New York Greenwich Village historians help out?

Thanks
MC