Tuesday, June 27, 2023

playing cello saves lives

Some thoughts on

Inherit the truth / Die Wahrheit erben

by Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

Giles de la Mare 1996 / Weidle Verlag 1997

I had been aware of Anita Lasker’s biography – the cellist who survived both Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen – for many years, and I actually saw her son Raphael Wallfisch performing the Dvorak concerto at the Sheldonian Theatre some time in the noughties, so I felt kind of acquainted with her family already. However, a copy of her actual memoir only crossed my path now,* and I read it immediately.

She wrote the book in English for her children and grandchildren, but prepared the German version herself, which is the one I read. The book is very short considering the weight of events covered and focuses on the anecdotal events that added up to her and her sister’s survival against the odds. Like Hadley Freeman in her family memoir House of Glass, she is very good in highlighting the absurd coincidences that can decide your life and death in the context of the Nazi system setting out to kill you.

In short, her parents were born in an area that became part of Poland after 1918, which meant that in the US system of refugee quotas they were counted as Polish Jews, and had no chance at all to find asylum that way, even though her uncle, the chess master Edward Lasker, was a US citizen by then. When called up to be deported, her parents obeyed and soon disappeared without a trace.

With no parental supervision, Anita and her sister Renate got involved in forging documents to help people escape, which earned them jail terms and probably saved their lives when they arrived at Auschwitz, because convicted criminals were registered in case they were needed for further testimony in court cases.

Once in Auschwitz, Anita’s cello playing saved her life in the longer term, as she was admitted to playing in the girls orchestra. As the only cello in the small ensemble, she was clearly indispensable. Indirectly, it saved Renate too, with the reconnection made via an unlikely chain of events carried by Anita’s unusual shoes.

Compared to the privileged position at Auschwitz, the last winter of the war at Bergen Belsen turned out to be much worse, with prisoners being left to starve and rot in situ rather than being murdered and disposed of efficiently, but with further luck and resilience both sisters made it through.

After liberation of the camp, the focus returns from bare survival to the second most important thing, namely finding a cello and music to play with it (the Bach suites get a mention in this context). Oh, and getting out of Germany. All of which proves challenging but doable. So, in summary, playing cello saves lives.

I do love the photo of her they used for the cover of the English edition. My edition has a badly drawn cello on the cover, but this photo (among others) is reproduced inside the book and I was tempted to scan it for the blog. It is captioned Berlin 1938. (She went to study cello in Berlin but soon had to return to her family home at Breslau.) I will look out for the English edition too. Blackwells

UPDATE 7.8.2023 In a book exchange, I just discovered a German paperback edition (rororo) using the photo as well (and without the red hue).

Some related links:


* Note: I found a signed copy of the book in my late father's extensive collection of Holocaust-related books. One of the things he forgot to mention to me, otherwise I would have read it a lot earlier. It's also too late to find out whether he (or if not who else) met the author to get the autograph.

Thursday, June 22, 2023

the house Johanna built

Every picture tells a story, season 2, picture 40:

Johanna Kauer, the oldest of the five daughters of the station master of Adamsweiler, worked as a secretary at the Berufsschule (vocational college) Bad Kreuznach and then took early retirement on (slightly dubious) health reasons. In 1934, she built herself a house in the village of Hahnenbach, where her cousin Ferdinand Giloy ran the pub and owed her money. She got the land from him in lieu of repayment. She shared the house with various family members including her niece Ruth and her children (1943-1945) who had used Johanna's health as an excuse to get out of Königsberg in good time; her sister Kätha (1943-1953), and her cousin Ferdinand Weirich (1945-1952).

Here she is contemplating her home in 1943:

An even earlier photo shows the house with its bare walls:

Not sure who is standing outside the door on the right, could be Ruth on the right and Johanna peeping round the corner, but this is just a guess.

And here is one from the early 1960s, when Johanna's niece Ruth and her husband Richard moved in.

After their children had finished school, they gave up their flat in Idar-Oberstein to move to the sticks (not my idea of fun), which meant they had to buy the car shown in the picture (an Opel Kapitän I believe) so Richard could commute to his school. Before the move their home was literally just across the road from the school.

Johanna kept quite a few things from her parental household including an encyclopedia from the 1870s and various pieces of 19th century furniture and kitchen equipment. Since then, the possessions of various households have also washed up there when people had to flee (eg from Königsberg) or died. Thus, the house remains a treasure trove for family history, and one of the main sources of the photos I am sharing in this series. Most recently, I looked through the cookery books (which I'm not really interested in) and discovered the hand-written recipe book of Maria Pfersching, wife of Heinrich the cellist).

Johanna also made a key contribution to our family history by manually copying the Weis chronicles from 1891. Her copy survives, while the original has gone missing. She also kept letters from lots of relatives, which are now a precious resource.

In the spirit of its history of housing refugees, it is now home to two displaced persons from Ukraine. If and when that war ends without triggering the nuclear apocalypse, we will have to find a new usage model for the house, as currently there is nobody who wants to live there and look after the house. It really is quite remote, 5 km from the nearest town.

UPDATE 27.8.2023: I just added a few recent photos of old things found in the house to my flickr and tagged them Hahnenbach. I also went through earlier uploads to apply this tag more systematically.

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

Navigation tools:

With this post I'm closing season 2 (there are still plenty of photos left for a third season). So this is the table of contents of the entire season:

  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 from East Prussia
  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
  22. a double wedding
  23. mystery solved
  24. young Frieda
  25. old aunts and young children
  26. a semi-mysterious aunt
  27. a gathering at Gellrichs
  28. farm work at Bad Landeck
  29. meet the Weitze family
  30. a post-war wedding
  31. the joy of chemistry
  32. the joy of botany
  33. becoming Frieda
  34. becoming Peter
  35. bakery kids united
  36. the four from the farm
  37. neighbours at Hamborn
  38. family with fowl
  39. the elusive Nagel clan
  40. the house Johanna built

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.

I also should mention from time to time that this whole thing with old photos has been influenced by all the orphaned photos I see on flea markets, and by this little book I found at Oxfam 14 years ago.

Monday, June 19, 2023

bird flu takes off

Bird flu only gets media attention very briefly each time it either affects industrial poultry farming or poses a danger to establish itself in humans as a new virus strain. It usually stays limited to the flu season, too.

The current outbreak is different in a number of important ways, however. It has left the seasonality behind, has spread around the globe, and killed large numbers of other animals too, especially marine and coastal mammals. It is thus a lot more worrying than recent outbreaks, and could have implications ranging from species extinctions through to another human health crisis. Which is why I had a closer look at it in my latest feature which is out now:

A flying pandemic

Current Biology Volume 33, Issue 12, 19. June 2023, Pages R659-R662

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

Sandwich terns (Thalasseus sandvicensis) along the coasts of northern Europe have been suffering mass mortality in the current outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza. (Photo: Trish Hartmann/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).)

Thursday, June 15, 2023

the elusive Nagel clan

Every picture tells a story, season 2, picture 39:

In season 1 we met Luise Schilling, mother of Heinrich Nagel, the station master of Minden Stadt, wearing the elaborate festive costume of the rural surroundings of Minden. Running a farm while trying to feed 11 children born 1863-1887, the family got into financial difficulties and in 1900 had to sell the farm. So, understandably, there aren't many photos of the family with the kids growing up at a time when photography was still very much a luxury. I fact, this is the only one I know of, showing Luise with her husband, Christian Nagel, called Giesselmann, and their youngest child Sophie:

Sophie later married Heinrich Brunschier and had a daughter also called Sophie, who was the younger cousin of Frieda the pianist and may have been the girl in the picture we saw a few weeks earlier. Here I think we may have Sophie mother and daughter but I'm not entirely sure about that as the source where I pinched the photo failed to identify the younger woman.

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

Navigation tools:

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 from East Prussia
  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
  22. a double wedding
  23. mystery solved
  24. young Frieda
  25. old aunts and young children
  26. a semi-mysterious aunt
  27. a gathering at Gellrichs
  28. farm work at Bad Landeck
  29. meet the Weitze family
  30. a post-war wedding
  31. the joy of chemistry
  32. the joy of botany
  33. becoming Frieda
  34. becoming Peter
  35. bakery kids united
  36. the four from the farm
  37. neighbours at Hamborn
  38. family with fowl
  39. the elusive Nagel clan

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.

Thursday, June 08, 2023

family with fowl

Every picture tells a story, season 2, picture 38:

I'm loving this family portrait dating between 1913 and 1916:

The lady sitting down with the chicken on her lap is Maria Mentzel, the mother of our old cellist Heinrich. She died in April 1916 so that sets the upper limit for the date of the photo. Her husband, railways clerk Richard Groß, had died in July 1913, which sets the lower limit.

Standing from right to to left we have Heinrich's older sister Gertrud, then his even older half-brother Arthur Reim (who also appeared in this family portrait, but otherwise I don't think I have any other photos of him), then Arthur's wife Liesel (Elisabeth) Güde, and finally an unidentified woman.

Arthur and Liesel had one daughter, Maria. She married Erich Tübel, who took over a dance school his parents had founded in Pulsnitz (near Dresden), so this family business shaped their lives through several generations. Last time I checked the dance school was still in business run by one of Maria's grandsons, but in a different city.

Anyhow, here is Maria with a growing number of children:

I think the granny in this one is Liesel Güde again, right?

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

Navigation tools:

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 from East Prussia
  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
  22. a double wedding
  23. mystery solved
  24. young Frieda
  25. old aunts and young children
  26. a semi-mysterious aunt
  27. a gathering at Gellrichs
  28. farm work at Bad Landeck
  29. meet the Weitze family
  30. a post-war wedding
  31. the joy of chemistry
  32. the joy of botany
  33. becoming Frieda
  34. becoming Peter
  35. bakery kids united
  36. the four from the farm
  37. neighbours at Hamborn
  38. family with fowl

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.

Tuesday, June 06, 2023

diatoms and extremophiles revisited

The roundup of German pieces Febuary to June 2023 reveals some returns to familiar themes:

Malaria und Coviderkenntnisse
Nachrichten aus der Chemie Volume 71, Issue 5, May 2023, Pages 63-65
free to read via Wiley Online Library
related content in English: New beginnings for malaria research

Ausgeforscht: Wer hat an der Uhr gedreht?
Nachrichten aus der Chemie Volume 71, Issue 5, May 2023, Page 114
restricted access via Wiley Online Library

Die Spitzenmuster der Kieselalgen
Nachrichten aus der Chemie Volume 71, Issue 3, March 2023, Pages 72-74
restricted access via Wiley Online Library
related content in English: Proteins behind diatoms' intricate nano-scale shells revealed (news story in Chemistry World, which I forgot to blog about, open access if you haven't accessed anything else in CW this month. I think it's a quota of two free articles per month.)

Ausgeforscht: Ketchup ausgequetscht
Nachrichten aus der Chemie Volume 71, Issue 3, March 2023, Page 106
restricted access via Wiley Online Library

At the beginning of the year I also revisited the ecology and potential applications of extremophiles (as covered in Life on the Edge and in the eponymous chapter of Astrobiology) at the request of an industry magazine called tomorrow. They published my German text here, and their own translation here.

In the course of the diatom story I also learned that there is a new book out about them which looks fascinating:

although sadly in the rush to produce a news story I didn't get round to actually reading it.

Monday, June 05, 2023

arboreal lifestyles

Today's issue of Current Biology includes a special section on the theme of plant interactions (see the cover below). My contribution is a somewhat whimsical appreciation of some of the many ways in which animal lives revolve around trees, from humans to ants, and not forgetting the sloths. The feature is out now:

How life dances around trees

Current Biology Volume 33, Issue 11, 05. June 2023, Pages R455-R458

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

Cover of the special issue, volume 33, number 11. The photo shows old oak branches laden with epiphytes in the coastal region of South Carolina, USA. Image credit: Daniela Duncan/Getty.

Thursday, June 01, 2023

neighbours at Hamborn

Every picture tells a story, season 2, picture 37:

Ernst Leopold the steel worker and Auguste from the East Prussian patchwork family settled in Hamborn (now part of Duisburg) and brought up their three sons there. Another son had died less than two months old. The Kosmowsky family lived in Knappenstraße 43 from 1927 (at least, possibly as early as 1925) until the late 1960s or early 70s, when the building was cleared to be demolished (strangely, we haven't been able to find a date for that).

The street harboured a tight-knit community – at the age of 77 the oldest surviving son was still able to compile a name of the “indigenous” residents with hundreds of names.

From this we learn that neighbours in the same house included Heinz, Karin and Christel Kuhwald, who appear to have been the same age as youngest son Werner. I believe we saw young Karin sitting on the steps in the entry about Tante Therese, although back then I didn’t know who she was.

Judging by the photos, young Werner got on well with the girls and they even appear to have gone on holidays together.

In vaguely chronological order, here's young Werner in ca. 1943 with all the Kuhwald kids and their mother, Anni:

I love this undated photo of Werner with Karin - note the photo on the wall which appears to show Anni with all three children, so this was probably taken in the Kuhwald flat:

Here he is with Christel, undated (the photo has this tilt, it's not my fault!):

and apparently on holiday in the mountains with both of them.

Other parties in Number 43 were Ursula and Erika Hölscher, Günter and Marianne Gruczka, and somebody called Herzog. Note that the list is from the perspective of the boys, so any first names are more likely to be those of the children of the respective households, rather than the parents.

On the list of indigenous residents we also find Auguste’s sister Johanna and her husband Fritz Krieger in number 51. I might type out the whole list at one point, but want to keep it separate from this post about the residents of number 43.

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

Navigation tools:

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 from East Prussia
  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
  22. a double wedding
  23. mystery solved
  24. young Frieda
  25. old aunts and young children
  26. a semi-mysterious aunt
  27. a gathering at Gellrichs
  28. farm work at Bad Landeck
  29. meet the Weitze family
  30. a post-war wedding
  31. the joy of chemistry
  32. the joy of botany
  33. becoming Frieda
  34. becoming Peter
  35. bakery kids united
  36. the four from the farm
  37. neighbours at Hamborn

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.