Michael Zimmer; paid notice NY Times (See how the other half lived)
Hyfler/Rosner
Published in the New York Times on 11/2/2008
ZIMMER--Michael, who died on October 12, 2008 at the
age of 74, leaves a host of saddened friends and family
behind. Diagnosed with lung cancer only a few weeks ago, he
was taken home to his house in the West Village to die among
his books, his friends, and with a view of his beloved
garden. Michael was born in Heidelberg in 1934, the youngest
son of Sanskrit scholar and Indologist Heinrich Zimmer and
his wife Christiane, daughter of the Austrian poet and
librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal ("Der Rosenkavalier",
"Elektra"). The family fled Nazi Germany in 1939, and New
York's Columbia University offered a hospitable teaching
environment. After her husband's premature death in 1943,
Christiane settled in New York's West Village where her
house became a gathering place for luminaries from both
sides of the Atlantic, among them Hannah Arendt, Wyston
Auden and Joseph Campbell, one of Zimmer's most illustrious
disciples. Michael and his two brothers attended Horace Mann
School and Michael went on to study at Harvard University,
supported by the Mellon family who had earlyon recognized
the importance of Heinrich Zimmer's work on Indian myths and
philosophy. Always fascinated by the built environment,
Michael chose to major in architecture, studying with
masters such as Walter Gropius and Siegfried Giedion. A
short-lived career as an architect in New York followed:
Michael, by his own admission, wasn't cut out for the
compromises it entailed. After his marriage to Emily Sophia
Harding, a cousin by marriage and daughter of Alice Astor,
the couple briefly occupied the glamour pages of Vogue and
other glossies. In 1967 they had a son, Jacob and soon after
left New York to live "off the grid". In 1969, assisted by
the proceeds of the sale of a Hofmannsthal heirloom,
Picassos self portrait "Yo Picasso", they purchased a piece
of land on the island of St. Barts. After his divorce from
Harding, Michael made the little paradise his home, sharing
it with his companion, Vera Graaf and a group of like-minded
friends. "Le Camp" was a compound of mini buildings with a
solarpowered kitchen and a beautifully cultivated tropical
garden, all of which Michael used as a playful laboratory
for his ideas of the good life, guided by aesthetic
principles. It was a visionary example of "green" lifestyle,
as well as a meticulously choreographed piece of theatre
which Michael directed, smoking, talking, always a glass of
rum in hand, endlessly amusing and usually surrounded by a
bevy of awe-struck friends. When St. Barts became a
celebrity hangout, Michael was soon looking for a more
hospitable shore. He found it in Canada, on the island of
Grand Manan, where his second wife Veronique Sari took him
whalewatching and he discovered a group of defunct smoke
houses. He managed to buy and transform them into a museum
whose most striking exhibition piece was he himself, living
in the midst of it all and motoring around in an aluminum
boat shaped like a sardine can. He became the island's
keeper of memories, the man who guarded and exhibited what
the islanders threw away. The "Sardine Museum and Herring
Hall of Fame" became Michael's last great project -a poetic
environment, part museum, part curiosity cabinet, part
living memory. Michael Johannes der Baptist Karl Maximilian
Heinrich Hugo Zimmer (his full name) enjoyed what was
perceived by many as a charmed life. He lived by his own
rules and conventions, counting among his lovers and
companions men and women. Tragedy intervened only once, when
his son Jacob was killed in a drowning accident in 1990.
Michael and Jacob had many unfinished plans. May they now be
reunited to carry them out. Michael is survived by his
cousins Romana McEwen, Octavian von Hofmannsthal and
Arabella Heathcote-Amory of London, England, as well as his
nephew Christopher Zimmer and his niece, Adriana Zimmer,
both of Washington, DC. A memorial date is yet to be
announced.