Emma and Franziska Weiss, close friends of ours, grew up in the municipal orphanage of Munich in the 1920s. The orphanage must have been a horrible place. It was run by nuns who had no love at all for the children. The worst thing was that the children lost their names when they lived in the orphanage. Instead they received a number and were addressed with this number.

< Emma Weiss and Manfred Schmid

Emma was member of our theatre company and was a very funny and loving person. The last time she was on stage, she was almost 80 years old. She died in 2004 from cancer. Soon after that, her sister Franziska (Franzi) died. After the burial we talked about Emma and Franzi and how they had once lost their names in the orphanage, and we decided their names should survive them. So we chose two waterlilies to name after them. Dieter Bechthold gave me a red seedling (a sister to N. 'Eros') which we've named 'Emma Weiss' and I chose a white seedling that we have kept unnamed for a few years to name 'Franziska Weiss'.

In the summer of 2006 Emma's son baptized the two waterlilies in our pond. >