"a warm presence in our lives" – can I use "Präsenz"?

Question

My mother is writing a condolence letter and wants to say that

[the deceased] was always a warm presence in our lives.

She used Präsenz but this sounds odd to me. I looked up presence on Dict.cc and nothing seemed quite right. What’s the equivalent German idiom?

Answer 1

I would not use Präsenz as it boils down to phyisical presence which is not what you mean. I'd suggest to use Anwesenheit and would say something like:

Durch seine Herzlichkeit hat uns seine Anwesenheit stets mit Wärme erfüllt.

Answer 2

If someone is said to be a presence it sounds to me like an esoteric entity (think of a ghost or some kind of mystical power). In German - at least on my account - people would not say to be a presence in this context but rather say his/her presence. More generally speaking (not just about my feeling), saying someone is a presence focusses on this someone's appearance. Hence saying someone is a presence refers to his or her charisma.

Therefore it is hard to express the exact same thing in German. I would recommend:

[Seine/Ihre] [Anwesenheit/Gegenwart] in unserem Leben war [immer/stets] von Wärme und Herzlichkeit geprägt.

Or with a little stronger emphasis:

[Seine/Ihre] [Anwesenheit/Gegenwart] brachte [immer/stets] Wärme und Herzlichkeit in unser Leben.

But as I said, both are not quite the exact same thing compared to what your mother wrote. Hence my recommendations are more a matter of taste than proper translations. Both do not make a statement about [the deceased], but about his or her presence. The first one might sound a little formal (von Wärme geprägt instead of just warm, which in this case would not sound right). The second one means, that [the deceased] brought warmth in our lives.

My sincere condolences by the way.