the oberlehrer's family

Every picture tells a story, season 2, picture 21.

Anna Kauer, the middle one of the five daughters of the station master of Adamsweiler, Alsace, was born just before Christmas 1880 in Mörchingen (Morhange, dept. Moselle). In 1901, she married Heinrich Thiebold, a teacher from Weislingen (Alsace, near Adamsweiler) who ended up as Oberlehrer (one step up from the common or garden teacher) at the protestant Volksschule (standard school from primary up to the end of compulsory schooling) in Brebach, which is now part of Saarbrücken. Their first child, born in Brebach, died from croup or diphtheria in 1906, aged only three years and three months. Air pollution in the heavily industrialised area may have been an issue. They later moved to a lovely house in nearby Güdingen where they had three more children of whom we have various photos.

Here we have the parents with Martha (born 1907, just a year older than her cousin Ruth) and Robert (born 1910) and their dog (I presume):

And here we have all three surviving children (the youngest, Hertha, was born in 1917):

And the two sisters outside their house in Güdingen:

A systematic list of Anna Kauer's extended family is here (she is under 1.4).

Should anybody have any answers to some of the many questions I am raising in this series, please leave a comment here (I'll need to vet it, so it may take a few days before it goes public) or contact me at michaelgrr [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

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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
12. three sisters
13. travelling saleswoman
14. family portrait
15. dancing chemist
16. games time
17. desperately searching Wilhelm
18. the third Hedwig
19. patchwork portraits
20. missing brothers
21. the oberlehrer's family

I started a twitter thread for season 2 here. However, as the bird site seems to be turning into an evil empire, I have now switched to logging the entries in a similar thread on Mastodon.

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.