refugees in the family

In my Every Picture series, we met Luise Faust from the East Prussian patchwork family as a young woman in 1925 and then later in life meeting up with her sisters Auguste and Hanna in Luise's garden at Lippstadt. We didn't know anything about her life other than that she had a husband and three children.

Looking up an address book of Lippstadt from 1951, we now found out that we had Luise's married name wrong, it was Hieske (not Hießke). The addressbook lists her husband Adolf Hieske as a pensioner.

With this additional information, some googling revealed that the Hieske family did not move westwards in the 1920s like the other two sisters did. They stayed in East Prussia and had to flee from there at the end of the war, which is why we find them in a refugee camp in Copenhagen in 1946. This lovely handwritten list notes that their son, Herbert Otto Hieske was born 15.4.1932 in Klein-Nuhr, Kr. Wehlau, Ostpreussen, baptised at an unknown date in the same place, and received confirmation 10.11.1946 in the refugee camp. There is a whole database of names of refugees in Denmark here.

Reading up on the little-known history of these refugee camps (eg here), we found out that at the time of Germany's capitulation there were some 250,000 refugees (plus 300,000 soldiers) in Denmark. The Allies allowed the soldiers to return to Germany but not the refugees - they were detained in camps and many of them remained stuck for several years, with the last ones returning in February 1949.

From 1946, the British Occupation Zone in Germany allowed refugees from Denmark in if they had family members livingin the zone already, which was the case for Luise (as both her sisters lived in Duisburg-Hamborn, having migrated westwards in the 1920s). Still, it appears she and her son (and possibly her husband too) were still in Denmark in November 1946. According to her nephew, Luise also had another son and a daughter, but we know nothing else about them.

I think we don't have any other photos of Luise apart from the three I've already used in the blog entries linked above, but I've made a new edit of the portrait of young Luise, improving the contrast and the crop:

Update 25.1.2026: 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.

vintage roadworks

Corrected version 8.7.2025: After I scanned and shared the photos from a little album from Dörndorf, Kreis Frankenstein, Silesia, and mentioned that many of the photos are showing a major road building project which appears to have happened near that village, I thought I could actually identify the road that is in statu nascendi in the pictures.

It was based on the little church appearing in some of the road building pictures looking exactly like the one in Dörndorf, so I wrote a whole blog entry about how the photos matched up to the course of one specific road. As that entry went live on March 23, I idly returned to the tab where I had google street view open, which I had used to stroll through the village virtually, and decided to follow the road out of the village and find the spot from where that key photo was taken. It turned out that spot didn't exist and the landscape didn't match, so the church in the photo must have been a different one. I had to very quickly take that blog entry offline again. I now think it is the very similar church of Byczeń (German: Baitzen), in which case the road would be today's DW382. Note that the photo at the top of the previous blog entry on the Dörndorf album does in fact show the Dörndorf church, as we can read the name of the village on the road sign marking the entrance to the village.

Just for the historical record (and to preserve all those links I had included), here are the photos and comments from my original entry - bear in mind that all geographic assignments below are probably wrong and I'm still trying to find out where the other photos were taken. .

First, check this photo (no. 42) - in the background you can see the little church of Dörndorf:

Then we have another one with an overlapping view, as the white house on the hill on the right of the photo above appears on the left in the photo below:

See also photos No. 39, offering a similar view, and 11, extending the view to the left.

So we get a reasonably clear impression that this road is bypassing the village of Dörndorf. The online entry of Mayers Gazeteer includes a map, which at first glance seems to be straightforward google maps, but if you click on it, it shows a historic interactive map with the German placenames. Zoom in further, and at some point it switches to a modern map, showing that the road bypassing the village (now called Plonica) is labelled as number 390, i.e. droga wojewódzka 390, a regional road of 28 km length. Confusingly, the smaller, older road going straigth through the village also has the same number. The newer version of the road 390 is a pretty straight north-south axis. Southwards, it leads to the nearby town of Reichenstein (Zloty Stok). Northwards, it crosses the river Neisse before it reaches Kamenz (Camenz in the old map, now Kamieniec Ząbkowicki).

Incidentally, I only just discovered that from 1900 to 1997 there was also a local railway line linking these three places, but it appears neither in the photos we have nor on the old map. Will have to rave about that separately.

The river is significant, because we have another pair of photos showing a similar view, once of the road under construction, and once of the same landscape being flooded (check the conspicuous pattern of the trees on the horizon), so we can safely assume that this is near the Neisse (because the southern reach of the road leads towards more mountainous areas near the Czech border):

There are also a couple of photos of buildings by the riverside, which could be in or near Kamenz: No. 33, No. 34, as well as further photos of flooded landscapes.

The album also includes views of the road builders in the hillier landscapes further south, such as:

which were in the earlier parts of the album, so we're getting the impression that the road was built south to north.

As mentioned in the first blog entry, photo 21 identifies the road building company Hugo Jaensch, from Jauer:

I think there may be further revelations to be drawn from these photos, so this may well become a series ...

Update 25.1.2026: 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.

a little photo album from Dörndorf

A curious little photo album emerged from the belongings of my late inlaws, with photos from Dörndorf, Kreis Frankenstein, Silesia (where the kids form the bakery grew up), but the owner's stamp is a name we don't recognise, and the only two photos of people we know have probably been added to it later. Kreis Frankenstein is now Ząbkowice County in the south of Poland.

The album is roughly half the size of a paperback book, and designed to hold around 50 photos of format 6.5 x 9 cm, which can be slotted into the pages. The rubber stamp at the front says:

Fritz Grötzner
Dörndorf
Kreis Frankenstein

At a push, the name could be Grützner, which would be a name that gives you more search results in Silesia than Grötzner. As the ink of the stamp has filled in the middle of the letter I read as an o, I can't tell whether it is open or closed, but it doesn't have a leg on the right, as the letter u should probably have.

What we get in the album is a lovely portrait of the little church of Dörndorf, where Hedwig Geppert and Paul Gellrich got married (more about the church, which was built in 1777, here):

as well as a view of a house that has Fritz's name above the door, but sadly I can't read the line below so don't know what he's selling.

The only person to have as many as three individual portraits in the album is the one shown below, so I'll guess that this is Fritz G. His portraits appear near the beginning of the album, and he may or may not be included in some of the later group photos.

Obviously, I had to pick the one with a musical instrument. Elsewhere in the album, there is also a big bass drum dangling from the back of a car that has landed in a ditch. (That accident is the most dramatic thing documented in the album.)

Most of the photos appear to be related to a road building project, and one of these has the little church of Dörndorf on the horizon, so I'll assume that the entire project was a road that led into the village and it all happened reasonably close to it. A couple of photos show a flooded landscape, but even those are related to the road building, as a pair of matching photos with and without floodwater reveals. The lorries used in the road building have number plates starting with I K, which is as it should be for private vehicles registered in Silesia. The Roman numeral I applies across Prussia (as opposed to II for Bavaria), and the letter K specifies Silesia.

In picture 21 we can read on the side of the lorry the name of a road building company involved in the works:
Hugo Jaensch Stra[ssenbau]
Jauer Fernruf 5

I have added most of the photos to a new flickr album created for this, just leaving out a couple that have too many nazi uniforms for my taste, and the three that are almost certainly later additions. The genuine ones have only the brand of the photographic paper on the back (Agfa Lupex), whereas the cuckoos come with the stamps of different shops that processed the prints.

On flickr I also have a postcard of the village, with views of both the church and the bakery.

I'm tagging this "every picture" even though there may not have been a family member in the album originally, but there must have been some sort of connection otherwise it wouldn't be here. Make this an every picture special issue.

And as always, all hints and clues appreciated.

finding refuge at Brase

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 20 (also number 100 overall!)

I'm running out of Gellrich pictures so instead here comes Hedwig Geppert in her incarnation as a Geppert by marriage (and widowed). She appears in the first picture second from right, and we don't know anybody else, so presumably that's the family she worked and stayed with at Brase, Lower Saxony, after being evicted from Silesia. The hamlet is today part of the town of Neustadt am Rübenberge and has a population of 116.

I love the way the series then zooms in on the most important personalities, ie the children and their pets:

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio
13. confirmands at Hamborn
14. streets of Hamborn
15. more grandchildren
16. a Russian winter
17. a confectioner's business
18. a lovely hat
19. the Geppert family and associates
20. finding refuge at Brase

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

a polar bear on holidays

Every picture tells a story, special edition.

Two years after I posted the photo of Heinrich and Maria and their friends posing with a fake polar bear I spotted another old photo with a similar bear posted on flickr by a collector of old photos. Here's a zoomed-in partial view of my earlier photo to remind you:

An exchange with the collector taught me that there are many of these photos, spanning from 1920 to 1970. There is a flickr gallery, and there has been an exhibition in Arles, accompanied by a book, reported in a Guardian article I missed when it came out, which was accompanied by another online gallery of bear photos.

Update 20.6.2024: Here's a new photo gallery of white bear pics taken in Zakopane, Poland.

All very exciting, but as far as I can see no clear answer re. how and why this fad arose. May just have been a business model for buskers?

I guess the polar bear makes marginally more sense in the context of a skiing resort, but there are others taken at beaches, at dance events, and with marching soldiers, so those polar bears do seem to get around a lot.

Quite a few of the flickr pics I liked had disabled sharing, but here's a few that should work - that bear does know how to have a good time:

the Geppert family and associates

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 19

Here's a rare group portrait reuniting all three kids from the Dörndorf bakery (Silesia) and their mother as well. But I have no idea who the other people are. Nor where the location is:

So we recognise first from left, young Willi Geppert, then his sisters Hedwig (third from left) and Emma (5th). Their mother Martha Stephan standing between the sisters. The guy on the right occurs in a few photos with Willi (eg here) but I have no idea who he is, could be a cousin? I'm assuming that the woman next to him and the three children are his family but that's just a guess.

As I noted before, Martha in the middle was quite short (147cm) so unless they propped her up, nobody in this photo is taller than 160 cm.

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio
13. confirmands at Hamborn
14. streets of Hamborn
15. more grandchildren
16. a Russian winter
17. a confectioner's business
18. a lovely hat
19. the Geppert family and associates

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

a lovely hat

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 18

I love the hat that Richard the young chemist is wearing in some photos from his student days (or possibly teacher in training, but we're definitely looking at his 20s here), so here comes the official hat appreciation post, first Richard on his own with the hat in question:

I'm getting the impression this is his first adult hat and he chose it half a size too large hoping he'd grow into it? Next we have a photo with his parents (Heinrich the cellist and Maria), also suitably covered:

And then a family gathering that is slightly remote. Maria's mother had died very young and when her father (Heinrich Pfersching) remarried, the new wife also brought a daughter called Maria into the family. That Maria from the other side married a man called Anton Fritz and had two daughters called Maria (again) and Ilse, both born before 1926. All of these "Fritzes" appear in this photo:

Next to Richard and his hat we have the younger Maria and Ilse in front of them. Then to the left Anton and then Maria senior and, I presume, Anna who is a half-sister to both Marias in the older generation.

Note that in 1918/19, after being evicted from Lorraine, 9-year-old Richard and his mother moved in with Heinrich Pfersching's patchwork family for half a year or so, before moving on to Elberfeld. This may explain why he remained close with his relatives in Bruchsal, even though the generations are misaligned - his aunt and uncles are not much older than him and his cousins a lot younger.

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio
13. confirmands at Hamborn
14. streets of Hamborn
15. more grandchildren
16. a Russian winter
17. a confectioner's business
18. a lovely hat

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

a confectioner's business

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 17

last update: 11.4.2024

Let's go back to the Krefeld Clan - the 13 children of silk weaver Wilhelm Düselmann and Elisabetha de la Strada who married in 1826 and agreed to bring up the boys protestants (like their father) and the girls catholics (like their mother).

Of the 13 children, we have seen child number 7 Karl the foreman (and father of enterprising Julius) and child number 10 August the fireman (and father of adventurous Walter).

I don't think I have any photos of any of the other 11, so if any of the hundreds of descendants out there would like to share some I'd be very grateful.

What I do have though is the husband and three children of child number 9, Henriette Düselmann, who was born in 1843.

In 1863 she married confectioner (Conditor und Zuckerbäcker) Joseph Hermann Bender (born 1840). He has a database entry here, where funnily enough only the sons are listed, whereas all the info on descendants I have concerns two of the three daughters of the couple. Anyhow, here's the confectioner in around 1895 with his son Nicolas, left, both daughters, and an employee called Nik (or possibly Josef Hermann's brother Nicolaus - I have contradictory infos on this?!):

Firstborn child Gertrud married Wilhelm Heinrich Habrich; Josefine married Wilhelm Max Holler (brother of the painter Alfred Holler), shown here:

Each had four children, so the complete set of eight born between 1902 and 1912 is here (maybe around 1915 judging by the size of the youngest standing on the bench?):

And this is a wider family gathering for Pentecost (Whitsun) 1926

Here we have the confectioner's daughters Gertrud (2nd from left) and Josefine (3rd). Far left is Gertrud's husband, Wilhelm Heinrich Habrich. Josefine's husband, Wilhelm Max Holler, is the 6th from left. On either side of him two Holler children, and on the right of the picture four Habrich children lined up.

Open questions: The woman fourth from left is unidentified according to my source, but given the symmetry of the picture with three sisters ligned up on the right, I am tempted to speculate it could be the third daughter of the confectioner, Klara Bender, see below? Trouble is we don't know much about Klara. The 8th person is named as Adolf Peters. We don't know anything about him but note that the grandmother of Gertrud and Josefine, Elisabetha de la Strada, had a brother who married a Gertraud Peters, so there could be a remote family link.

In the ancient Krefeld Clan blog entry I had two other children of Henriette and the confectioner (in addition to Gertrud and Josephine):

9.3. Nicolas Joseph Bender * 22.4.1864 Krefeld

9.4. Klara Bender * Krefeld

Digging up some old correspondence I find that Nicolas moved to Berlin and Klara was severely injured in an accident with a horse carriage.

The database entry reveals a second son I didn't know of:

Heinrich Bender * 30.10.1871

But it shows no marriage or offspring for either of the sons.

So I had the sibling order all wrong,it should be:

1. Nicolas Joseph Bender * 1864
2. Gertrud * 1870
3. Heinrich Bender * 1871
4. Josefine * 1881

And we still don't know where Klara fits in - the biggest gap to accommodate her would be before Josefine.

Another mystery that's possibly related: I have a 19th century student song book signed Hermann Bender, inherited from Esther the travelling saleswoman who came from the Krefeld clan, so it could be an heirloom linked to the old confectioner, but then again she also bought antiquarian books, so it could be a coincidence. Will have to do a separate entry on that at some point (UPDATE: done now).

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio
13. confirmands at Hamborn
14. streets of Hamborn
15. more grandchildren
16. a Russian winter
17. a confectioner's business

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

a Russian winter

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 16

During the first half of World War II, Peter the customs officer was lucky in that his work was deemed essential and he wasn't called up. Also, he was 39 years old at the start of the war, so not among the first to be considered. In 1939, he had been promoted and moved to Idar-Oberstein, just after the birth of his third (and last) daughter. We saw him with all three here.

In mid-1942, however, his luck ran out and he was called up as a Feldwebel (sergeant). At the beginning of October he was sent to the northern part of the Russian front, so I assume that's where these wintry photos were taken:

In his letters he mentions that he served as an adjutant (ie doing clerical work for the commander) which seems to fit with the letters "adj" above his head in the picture above. He also mentions they built a "villa" which could be the building shown.

During that winter, the battle of Stalingrad happened further south, so I guess it was relatively lucky still to be sent to the northern part of the front where events were less dramatic and large swamps limited the mobility of the opposing armies during the warmer seasons.

I only have like half a dozen photos of him in active service - thankfully none of them feature any weapons or military activity, so might share the other three (similar but no snow!) at some point too. Which will probably be the last we see of him.

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio
13. confirmands at Hamborn
14. streets of Hamborn
15. more grandchildren
16. a Russian winter

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

more grandchildren

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 15
(season 3 now carrying on after a break due to the 100 years of cellotude series):

We have seen Frieda the pianist as a grandmother with the first three children of her oldest daughter here, but there were more grandchildren to come. A total of six were born in her lifetime, and another three (including me) postumously. Among the six she knew I am struggling to tell the four boys apart (their fathers were also brothers, and they were very close in age), so I'm hoping that I've captured everybody with the pictures below. First a series of three with Frieda stuck on the same chair while various children crawl on and off her:

By the way I haven't figured out where this is - will report back on that.

And here's some outdoor fun by the fire, although I'm not sure Frieda is enjoying it as much as everybody else.

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio
13. confirmands at Hamborn
14. streets of Hamborn
15. more grandchildren

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

streets of Hamborn

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 14:

Auguste from the East Prussian patchwork family lived at Hamborn (now Duisburg) most of her life, spending more than 40 years at Knappenstraße 43 from the late 1920s to around 1970. We have seen the front door of that building here and here. To get a better sense of the place, here is Auguste looking out of her window (street side I think):

and here is a view of her garden with her son Erwin:

Before moving to Knappenstraße, she and her family briefly lived in Kampstraße, where we see her looking out of the window (marked with a pen):

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio
13. confirmands at Hamborn
14. streets of Hamborn

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

confirmands at Hamborn

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 13:

Let's have a game of "Where is Wally?" Below is Werner, the youngest of the Hamborn brotherhood, on the day of his confirmation, which happened at the Lutherkirche, Obermarxloh (which was part of the city of Hamborn while it existed - even if today the church stands in Röttgersbach) in 1951. Funnily enough, everybody else is there too. Catholics tend to get individual portrait of each kid with a candle (eg young Willy here) - protestants get the group photo. Wonder if that's just protestant penny-pinching? Or an emphasis on being admitted to the faith community, versus an emphasis on personal enlightenment? In any case, I shouldn't moan because I love this group photo with the low light and the crumbling classicistic church (built 1913, restored in the 1950s, listed monument since 2012) as the background:

To make it easier, I offer you another group photo, this one is from Werner's school a couple of years earlier, and he is marked with a pen.

This one has a rubber stamp on the back saying:

Foto-Kempken
Duisburg-Hamborn
Alleestra&szllig;e 93
18. Mai 1949

NB I have now created a Hamborn tag.

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio
13. confirmation at Hamborn

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

mystery trio

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 12:

I love it when a group of people takes turns to photograph each other. We have seen elements of that in the holiday snaps from Heinrich and Maria, and in the sibling photos of the Geppert family. Here comes a perfect example of a trio arranged as three duos all snapped on the same spot. Trouble is I don't know who they are and where the photo was taken. I think these are linked to the Silesian families, and they look more like Gepperts than like Gellrichs. The lady with the conspicuous six buttons could be Emma Geppert. At a push, the tallest of the three could be her cousin Lotti Geppert, or another cousin that we don't know of?

I've put this photo first as it's the only one showing the building in the background. It was clearly taken in an urban environment, rather than in the village of Dörndorf where the Gepperts came from. It could be Breslau or even Berlin, where both Emma and Lotti lived at one point. Note also that the shortest photographer naturally has the most upwards directed angle, hence we see more of the building, while the other two show more of the flowers in the foreground:

On the issue of identifying the location, I was intrigued to read in a recent feature in the Guardian that people playing geoguessr, a game that involves guessing the location of google streetview images, can also help with identifying locations in old family photos. I think the ones above would be too hard, but I will do a a round of guess where at some point.

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

push bike

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 11:

We have seen various horses in this series and some cars, but not very many bikes. So I'm very grateful for this rural idyll with mother and daughter (Martha Stephan and Hedwig Geppert) pushing one. As they got separated on eviction from Silesia and were only reunited in 1953, this must be in the mid-1950s in Westphalia, near the village of Vardingholt, where Martha had landed in 1946 and Hedwig joined her later.

Note that both women were quite short (Hedwig measured 160 cm, Martha 147 cm, according to their ID cards), so the bike appears too big for either of them to ride, maybe it belonged to whoever took the photo? We know that Hedwig started using a moped late in life.

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

family reshuffle

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 10:

Let's go back to the family portrait with the fowl from season 2 (I'll include a copy of the photo below to make things easier). It showed Maria Mentzel, mother of Heinrich the cellist, presumably between 1913 and 1916, with select members of her family, and a chicken in her lap. After posting that one, I discovered another family portrait taken in the exact same spot, with mostly different people, and the bird replaced by a baby. This photo is dated 1916:

Compare and contrast with the one I shared earlier:

Most clearly recognisable from the earlier photo is Liesel Güde, wife of Maria Mentzel's first son Arthur Reim (from a previous marriage). She's standing on the left, then we have (I think) Robert Goetzky, then his wife Gertrud (Maria's daughter, who was also in the earlier photo), then Gertrud's brother Heinrich the cellist, then a mysterious grey-bearded man, and an equally unknown boy. What's worse, I don't recognise the woman holding the baby (nor the baby, for that matter).

Maria Reim, daughter of Artur and Liesel, was born in August 1915, so that could conceivably be her, maybe with a nanny? Alternatively, Gertrud and Robert also had a daughter as their first child at some point after getting married in 1908, and I don't have a birth year for her, so that could be her as well. But I think Maria Reim is the more likely answer. We've seen her as an adult in the earlier entry, too, and I think the baby's look is vaguely compatible with the adult's.

Maria Mentzel died in April 1916 at Magdeburg, which is where the Goetzky family lived, so I am guessing that the house in the background is their home, and that the family may have gathered on the occasion of Maria's funeral. For all I know, the bearded chap and young boy could be her relatives, I don't know of any of hers outside the immediate ancestry and the descendants mentioned.

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

village life

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 9:

During the second world war, young mother Ruth (the botanist we saw here) and her little boy moved in with her parents in Königsberg. When it became clear that the city might not be safe, she moved west to the village of Hahnenbach, where her aunt Johanna had built the house we've seen earlier. In fact, she made this move twice, first in July 1941, but soon after that her brother died and she was called back to help in her father's factory at Königsberg, gave birth to her daughter there, and then moved west again in August 1943. That back-and-forth doesn't change much of the story, as both moves were uneventful and in good time. Considerable amounts of furniture safely arrived in the west. Her aunt's health and alleged need of support served as an excuse, as fleeing East Prussia wasn't really allowed.

So from the city of Königsberg they arrived to village life, glimpses of which we see here:

That's Ruth walking behind the wagon with her son by her side, as he looks quite young still, this may have been as early as the autumn of 1943.

The Hahnenbach fire brigade conducting an exercise by the eponymous river.

And Old Lina (Carolina Weirich, 1871-1951), from the village inn run by several generations of her family (Weirich / Giloy). If I have my ducks lined up correctly, Lina was a second cousin of Ruth's mother and of her aunt Johanna, who came to the village because of this family connection.

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 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.