As to Manfred and Reinhard: I'm absolutely conviced that they don't "create" a history just for getting more chances to sell their seeds, no, no, no! You can't get their seeds in Germany if you don't know both - their seeds are NOT commercially available, in no shop! Only by email contact! Manfred sells at a really low price, just to cover his own costs.
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I agree with you Clara. I've known Reinhard since maybe the early 90's and have been very impressed by his honesty and all else about him.
He does so much for those of us who are passionate about tomatoes in terms of his Photogallerie and finding new varieties, and growing lots and lots of varieties, and all this with a demanding day job as well.
Quite a few years ago in e-mailing him I told him that I was having trouble keeping up with fresh stock for lots of varieties and he offered to do that for me. I think I sent him close to 100 varieties and I have those written down somewhere.
And I was sure that you participated in my seed offer where I offered seeds of the two Ludmilla's plus his Ceman vareities to everyone but when I looked your 5 requests were for other varieties.
This past Fall I read an excellent biography of Catherine the Great and I do remember about the Germans being invited to "Russia" as well as the relocations to other areas.
Deep in my heart I alwys felt that I had some Russian blood in me, thinking that maybe that came from my Swedish background when they went to Russia. The other half of my maternal background goes back to Darmstadt and on the paternal side it's 100% English way back and it's from that background that I always wondered if my love of nature and gardening was b'c at some time in the distant past I was a Celtic herbalist/healer.
One never knows.