lives of Helene and Julius

continuing with the ancient info rescued from from the website about the Weiß chronicles, and following up from generations 10-6 in this blog entry, and Generation 5 here, we now come to:

4. The businessman

Helene Kauer, born in 1885 as the youngest of the five long-lived girls from the household of railway man Christoph Kauer and his wife Margarethe Imig, later told her grandchildren that she wanted to be a teacher when she was young, but that her parents couldn’t afford the fees to send her to the teacher’s seminar. Equal opportunities, she said, ended at the age of 10. Up to the fourth year of school, boys and girls had the same lessons. After that, girls were taught things like needlework and home economics, while boys studied more academic subjects like maths. Helene said she always considered that unfair, and when the time came she made sure that her daughters were able to study at university just as her son did.

Around 1905/06. she was still living with her parents at Adamsweiler (at the small railway station mentioned above, of which her father was the boss), when her cousin Julius Düsselmann (son of her aunt Elisabeth Catharina Imig, 1851-1924), came to live at Merlenbach, Lorraine, not all that far away. Julius (1883-1950) was an adventurous type and already had made a trip to the German colony in South West Africa (today’s Namibia), where he took part in the suppression of the Herero uprising. Historians now think that the colonial rule was upheld quite heavy-handedly, with interventions bordering on genocide.

The most notorious episode is the battle at the Waterberg of August 11, 1904, in which the German troups under the command of Lothar von Trotha surrounded 6000 Hereros, including women and children. The Hereros managed to break out into the Omaheke desert, where they were left to die of thirst and starvation. However, apart from some vague hints to “horrible things” he witnessed, we don’t know in detail what Julius did there or what he thought of it all.

In any case, he came back with ill health and had to settle for a quieter lifestyle, becoming the manager of a grocery shop belonging to the mining company in Merlenbach, 50 km east of the village of Adamsweiler, where his aunt and uncle lived with their two youngest daughters, Regina Katharina (“Kätha”) and Helene. Auguste and Anna were already married and had children of their own, while Johanna worked at Saargemünd at the post office.

Julius was the 4th child of a bunch of six produced by Karl Düsselmann (1841-1927) and Elisabeth Imig (1851-1924). I remember that my great-aunt used to refer to Julius’s younger sister Alwine anagrammatically as “Tante Lawine,” i.e. Aunt Avalanche. He also had a half-brother from Karl’s earlier marriage to Maria Schledorn.

Julius’s maternal ancestors were the Imigs from Simmern. On his father’s side, they all came from the Niederrhein area, i.e. the town of Krefeld, where many of them worked in the textile industry which Krefeld is famous for (see the Krefeld clan entry). Intriguingly, Karl’s mother was called Elisabetha de la Strada (1804-1882), whose paternal line we believe to have come from Italy. The current theory is that her great-great-grandfather had immigrated from Italy (a family tradition says it was from Capri, specifically) and worked as a gardener at a castle, which we believe to be Schloss Oranienstein at Dietz, Lahn. We now have a documented Johannes de Lastrada whom we believe to be that immigrant (though the gardener may have been in a different generation, and one de la Strada who is documented in archives relating to Oranienstein was a traiteur, not a gardener) . This Johannes de Lastrada married Elisabeth Hemmler at Wetzlar in 1681, they had 6 children baptised there between 1682 and 1691. In the marriage entry and in one of the baptisms, it is noted that the father of the family is Italian. (More about the Stradas here.)

The set of Karl’s ancestors is complete back to the 8th generation (i.e. Julius's great-grandparents), and there are some patches going back to the 10th generation, where we find the names Siepmann, Wilsberg, Röshof Wolffs, de la Strada, Hemmler, Jacob, Zeisen (=Zeutzem, Zeutzheim), Enkrich, Saur, Schönau, Giesen, Baxher (Bacher?) Vossen, and Gather.

In September 1907, Helene and Julius married. They spent their honeymoon at the Belgian seaside resort of Oostende, as my great-aunt told me in a letter. Apparently, Oostende was a very posh place back then, and the very posh ladies wore very posh frocks ensuring that their physical shape remained obscured even when they went swimming.

It is also said that, before they got married, Helene and Julius consulted a geneticist who assured them that their being first cousins would not affect their chances of having healthy children. (Which leaves me wondering exactly what kind of miracle diagnostic methods the geneticists of 1907 possessed?!)

And three healthy children they did have (although only one lived to an age commensurate to those of the Kauer girls):
1.   Ruth Düsselmann, 1908-1993, see below.
2.   Werner Düsselmann, 1911-1941.
3.   Esther Düsselmann, 1918-1983.

It is reported that Julius had been keen to emigrate to America, as his half-brother Karl had done already, and his brother Wilhelm would do as well in 1924 (while his oldest sister Elise only emigrated as far as the Netherlands, together with her husband Otto Finkensieper and their three sons). However, Helene dissuaded him from this plan.

Still, enterprising as he was, he set up his own shop in Luisenthal (Saar), which seems to have done well, as he opened a second one nearby, under the supervision of Helene’s sister, Kätha.

However, due to a heart defect that is believed to arise from a tropical disease he caught during his time in Africa (possibly typhus), he was forced to retire from business in 1918, at the age of only 35. The family, now complete after the arrival of the youngest daughter, Esther, moved to the Lower Rhine area, where the Düsselmann lineage came from. His brother Wilhelm helped him find a countryhouse with 6 acres of land and 200 apple trees at Mennrath, where they lived off the savings and the pension he received as a war veteran.

Only five years later, inflation put an end to this lazy life. Julius was forced to take on a sequence of jobs in various kinds of commerce. By 1928, the family lived in the town of Rheydt, Königsstr. 32, where the firstborn, Ruth, finished high school that year. (Rheydt is now part of the city of Mönchengladbach.)

In 1932, after a short spell of unemployment, Julius became a salesman for the textiles company C. Brühl & Co. at Rheydt (the company celebrated its centenary in 2023, but is now based in Rotenburg/Fulda). Following successful business in East Prussia, Julius was given the opportunity to start a new branch at Königsberg, which became a success. In 1936, the whole family, including faithful Aunt Kätha, moved to Königsberg, Münzstr. 10, renting a fourth floor flat with 8 rooms. They bought some of the furniture from a Jewish dentist who read the signs of the times and emigrated to Palestine. They let out the Mennrath estate. The factory, based at Kantstraße 10, started to run under Julius’s name, producing professional clothing and uniforms.

In 1937, Julius suffered severe injuries in a car accident. While he stayed in hospital, his son Werner interrupted his medical studies to run the business. At that point, the company had 150 employees and a new branch at Zinten, 30 km south of Königsberg. Werner then stayed on as a deputy manager until he was called up for military service at the beginning of the war.

In 1940, Julius split his business from C. Brühl by paying back the investment and a share of the profit.

Werner Düsselmann, who served as a simple soldier and truck driver on the Eastern front, was shot dead by snipers on the day of his 30th birthday, in 1941. His wife and young son both survived the war.

A week before Werner’s death, his sister Ruth had already paved the way for the family to return to the Hunsrück area (where her aunt Johanna Kauer lived in the house she built on her retirement in 1934), moving to Hahnenbach on the pretext of having to care for her aunt. After Werner's death, however, she returned to Königsberg to help out in the company.

In August 1943, Ruth went back west for good, taking both her children and Aunt Kätha to Hahnenbach. A year later, Königsberg suffered devastating air raids. Over 4,000 residents died, 200,000 were left without abode. Julius and Helene protected themselves from the firestorm by covering up with bath robes dunked into the water of the lake at the Königsberg castle. The factory was also damaged, but could continue production on a smaller scale, with 25-30 machines.

In December 1944, Helene went west and moved in with her sisters, daughter, and grandchildren at Hahnenbach. Julius stayed behind, but in January 1945, when visiting the seaside near Pillau, he spontaneously decided to board what turned out to be the last ship to leave the Königsberg area. Very wisely, he had been carrying his travel documents and essentials with him for a while. By the end of the month, the city was surrounded by Russian troups.

Julius arrived at Hahnenbach in February 1945. In August, as the war was over, and he set out to make a fresh start, he moved his family to Bad Nauheim (a famous art nouveau spa town north of Frankfurt), where they lived at Frankfurter Str. No. 26 at first, then moved to Frankfurter Str. 12, a substantial villa from 1898, which was to stay “in the family” until 1979. Initially, the family occupied only one room of this building. Using his old business contacts, Julius set up a wholesale trade for textiles. However, he did not have the time to develop this last business venture very much, as he died suddenly, in March 1950, at the age of 66, when visiting his daughter Esther at Frankfurt.

Helene continued to live at Frankfurter Straße 12 with her daughter Esther, who remained unmarried. They sold the property at Mennrath and set up a guest house catering for visitors to the spa facilities that Nauheim is famous for. (Come to think of it, maybe the town is more famous for the fact that Elvis Presley spent his military service time there, but I don’t know whether any of my relatives met him! They’re not very musical on that side of the family.) The two main floors of the “Pension Düsselmann” had 12 rooms with around 300 m2 total surface area, not to mention the small flat in the loft and the vast basement including a derelict bowling alley. Esther and Helene used three rooms themselves, leaving nine rooms plus the flat for paying guests or visiting family members.

Helene lived to the age of 87 in full possession of her wit and mental abilities. She died in November 1972, the only great-grandmother I got to know.

Despite having a diploma in economics and a PhD dissertation in the drawer (it had become meaningless after the war, as it dealt with trade opportunities in Eastern Europe, or something like that!), Helene’s daughter Esther did not inherit her father’s business sense. She kept spending inordinate amounts on changes to the interior layout of the house (we made jokes about how the toilets ended up in different locations each time we visited!), while leaving the roof and structure to rot. On top of that, she also liked to spend generously on taxi rides, furniture made to measure, and antiquarian books. (I shouldn’t moan about the latter, though, as she left the books to me!) When a series of strokes left her paralysed before the age of 60, the family found out that the sale of the villa was only just enough to cover her debts. She died in 1983, aged 64, leaving my grandmother, Ruth, as the last survivor of the three children of Julius and Helene.

PS I created a new portal to navigate family history blog entries in the shape of a permanent Who Is Who page. This is because the old webpage at michaelgross.info will go offline on February 2nd.