For Friedelind 1970 was not a good year. She still had not paid off her debts from her master classes, and Wolfgang was the only person who could help her with them. She was back in Europe, and wrote to her lawyer Servatius in the autumn that she could not return to the USA before the debts were paid. ‘Twelve months have passed since my arrival in Europe and we have had nothing but empty talk.’ She was given no information about what was being concocted in Bayreuth. She learnt from the TV that there was progress in the plans to turn the Festival into a foundation, but that it could take a long time before any money was paid out to the heirs. And she was for the moment without any clear goal in life. She was still smarting from the death of her master classes.

Friedelind spent the summer partly by Lake Constance, but also in Salzburg, Zurich, Lucerne and elsewhere. She avoided Bayreuth. When she was staying with Verena in Nussdorf, she left a few hours before her mother was due to arrive – she did not want to see her. Instead she maintained contact with good friends, meeting Otto Klemperer and his daughter Lotte in October in Zurich, as well as Tilly and Fritz Zweig. The Zweigs remained her friends till the end. ‘They are fabulous artists, teachers and friends, both had splendid careers of their own up to Hitler,’ she wrote of them.