cousin Charlotte

Every picture tells a story, season 2, picture 11.

These stray cousins have a tendency to be called Charlotte, so this one is Charlotte Kosmowski (note that different branches of the Kosmowsky clan disagreed about the correct spelling of the name), born 1919, daughter of the forester Albert K. in East Prussia (we saw her in that photo with the dead stag). Not to be confused with Lotti in Berlin. Here are a couple of portraits during WW2:

During WW2 she was in Kiel, where she married a guy whose name we don't know. Strangely, we do know the date of his death though, 11.12.1974, and they had a son called Frank-Rüdiger. If that rings any bells, do give me a shout. After the war, her family and her dad, forester Albert K, ended up in Hennef, Sieg (15km east of Bonn) where this photo was taken in 1970:

That's Albert on the left, then Charlotte's son and Charlotte. On the right, her cousin Fritz and his wife.

UPDATE 2.1.2023: Flickr user Colin Webb has kindly given Charlotte a blush of colour, see her on his facebook page.

UPDATE 26.4.2025: I found Albert's death notice (on page 18 of this pdf file) and thus Charlotte's married name: as of 1974, she was Charlotte Steen. Her sister was Hilde Pukis. Heinz Kosmowski is also named, but Albert's grandchildren and great-grandchildren are only referred to collectively. All of these people used the spelling with an i at the end. Albert's wife Auguste and daughter Emmy appear to have died before him.

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Season 2 so far:

1. could be a cousin
2. two weddings in Silesia
3. off to Canada
4. off to Australia
5. a very romantic poet
6. fireman August
7. 50 hundredweight of coffee
8. mysterious Minden people
9. horses for Hedwig
10. guessing the great-grandmothers
11. cousin Charlotte

The twitter thread for season 2 is here.

As the bird site seems to be going the way of MySpace, I have built a similar thread on Mastodon, which is now up to date.

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. It only loads 30 tweets at first, so you have to click "show more" a couple of times to get all 40 entries. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

I'm also adding all photos from this series to my family history album on flickr.