I'm trying to figure out what happened to the ca. 15 children of the East Prussian patchwork family we met in the Every picture series, so let's tag the three patches. There are the litters Faust 1 and Faust 2 sharing Franz Faust (1857-1938) as a father, and the Wittke family from Wilhelmine Domscheit's (1863-1942) first marriage.
Of the (at least) four children of Faust 2, we know that the sisters Auguste and Hanna moved west to the short-lived industrial city of Hamborn in the 1920s, wheras Luise landed in Lippstadt via a refugee camp in Denmark so presumably stayed in East Prussia until January 1945. We know that their brother Otto Faust (born 1895 as the first child of Faust 2) died in January 1945 in the attempt to defend East Prussia.
Browsing lots of address books of Duisburg, I now discovered that the semi-mysterious aunt Therese Vietz (who could be from any of the patches) also lived in Hamborn for several decades, actually two doors down from her sister Hanna. So from 1950 to 1980 we have three patchwork sisters living on a geographically very limited patch in the former city of Hamborn, now part of Duisburg, less than a mile apart.
The iconic town hall of Hamborn, which reminds me of the one at Elberfeld, built only a few years earlier.
Own photo. More photos from my recent visit to Hamborn in this flickr album.
So to gain some clarity I need to spell this out as a timeline. Dates before 1950 are from documents and addresses on envelopes; from 1950 onwards from the excellent collection of addressbooks of Duisburg) in the city archives.
Timeline: 100 years in Hamborn
1922 13.10. Auguste registers at Weseler Str. 95 as a lodger with a resident called Hirsch. At the time, Weseler Str. and especially its intersection with Kaiser Wilhelm Str. were becoming the big shopping destination in the new city, with the Arnold Pollmann department store completed in 1929, after which the area is now named Pollmannkreuz.
1923 2.2. Auguste moves to Wittfelderstr. 189a (still in Hamborn but on the southern edge of the city).
1923 23.3. Auguste marries Ernst.
1924 2.8.; 21.11. They live at Kampstr. 140a, which is the northern edge of the Dichterviertel (poets'/writers' quarter) , a major development of workers' accommodation built by the Thyssen company (mines and steelworks).
By 1927 they move one block further east to Knappenstraße 43 which may have been new then, as this northeastern part of the Dichterviertel was developed later than the bit around Goethestraße.
1930s Auguste's sister Hanna and her husband Fritz Krieger also live in Knappenstr., at number 51 (based on a list of residents compiled by Auguste's son born 1926 who refers to the residents listed as the "Ureinwohner", ie original or indigenous residents). Other neighbours include the Kuhwald family.
section of a map from 1936. Schachtstraße is on the left under the red number 15, Knappenstraße runs diagonally into the top right corner. Hamborn town hall, post office, and the protestant church where Auguste and Ernst married are all on the large through road Duisburger Straße just southwest of the centre of this map. Although chronically overrun by cars now, it is essentially a 15 minute city, as everything is within walking distance and there are trams too.
1943 Hanna and Fritz now live Schachtstr. 27.
1945 Ernst dies, Auguste continues to live in Knappenstraße 43 with her sons.
1950 Therese now lives in Schachtstraße 23, two doors down from Hanna and Fritz. Therese is recorded as a widow in the address book of 1950, but we don't now what happened to Mr Vietz (or even what his first name was). We also don't know whether Therese arrived at Hamborn before the war like Hanna and Auguste or whether she had to flee from East Prussia like Luise.
1973 last addressbook entry for Auguste and her son Erwin in Knappenstraße.
Around 1975 Auguste has to leave her home of five decades in Knappenstraße as the site is cleared for a new development. She moves to Obere Holtener Str. 87. This is on the northeastern edge of Hamborn, the street leading towards Holten which is now part of Oberhausen. She was in a way unlucky to be in the newer and less coherent part of the Dichterviertel, as the older part around Goethestrasse has largely survived to this day (see my photos from Goethestraße on flickr). As do the Schachtstrasse houses where Hanna and Therese lived for several decades.
1977 First addressbook entry for Auguste and Erwin in Obere Holtener Str. In Knappenstraße, the odd numbers from 29 to 59 are now missing from the address book.
1979 Auguste dies. Two of her sons still live in Hamborn. Therese and the Kriegers are still living in Schachtstraße. The town of Walsum, which in 1975 also became part of Duisburg, also has a street called Schachtstraße. Therefore:
by 1981 the former Schachtstraße has become Dr-Heinrich-Laakmann-Straße, named after a catholic priest who taught at the nearby Abteischule and died in Hamborn. Therese is still there in the address book of 1981, but the Kriegers no more.
1982 Last entry for Therese Vietz in the address books.
1984 Therese Vietz no longer appears in the address book.
2015 The last survivor of Auguste's sons dies in Hamborn.
2025 A new development of 80 homes goes up on the north side of Knappenstrasse. where the lower odd house numbers must have been. Google Street View shows vegetation on that side of the road right now, and then the 1970s four-storey apartment blocks from around number 47 onwards. So maybe the development in the 70s never extended to this area of the new project? Meanwhile the relevant houses in the former Schachtstrasse are looking really lovely on Street View.
Resources
- Lovely website from Duisburg city about the district Hamborn.
- History of the Dichterviertel (in German), the area of which Knappenstrasse is a part.
- Havenburn, Hamborn, Duisburg-Hamborn: Geschichte und Geschichten. Walter Braun Verlag Duisburg 1979. I found a copy of this at a book exchange when I visited.
PS some of the patchwork grandchildren emigrated to Australia in the 1950s, so if anybody down there sees this and has ancestors in East Prussia named Faust, Domscheit, Wittke or Witt, do let me know.
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.
