Hoeller, Stephan - Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead (Quest, 1982)

The year was 1949. A deep covering of snow obscured the

outline of the splendid baroque buildings in the old city of Innsbruck.

The venerable capital of the land of the Tyrol seemed

depopulated by the grim force of the Alpine Winter. The wide

avenue named after the Empress Maria Theresia, beloved

matriarch of a long-vanished united states of Eastern Europe,

was empty of its afternoon strollers, who had fled the elements

to find shelter where they could. Shelter, especially of the heated

variety, was in poor supply to be sure. The scarcity of heating

materials left most public and many private buildings without

heat. Even the historic chambers of Innsbruck's famous university

housed shivering masses of heavily clad students huddled

around professors whose learning was exceeded only by their

discomfort. Greengrocers dispiritedly offered their all-too-small

store of frostbitten vegetables for sale, while the Moroccan

Spahis and Senegalese infantrymen of the French occupational

army vociferously cursed the day when their generals decided to

station them in this land of snow and ice. Happy indeed was the

man, the woman, or the child who found it possible to repair to

a heated room on a day like this.