Note: This post is yet another example of a reader supplementing what’s known about some person, event, or place I’ve written about. In this case, the reader directed me to the website of the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives (B3A) where he astonishingly found contemporary plane crash photos of the aircraft my great-uncle Rudolf Löwenstein was traveling on when he was killed on the 22nd of August 1930 in then-Czechoslovakia.
In the recently published Post 174, I discussed the Rudolf Mosse “Annoncen-Expedition-Reklame-Büro,” the advertising expedition/agency for which my great-uncle Rudolf Löwenstein was the General Agent. I think he worked for Rudolf Mosse & Co. in Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland] from around 1905 until his untimely death in a plane crash on the 22nd of August 1930 in what is today the Czech Republic.
Following publication of Post 174, my friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen, sent an email with some positive words. He included a link to information about the accident. Several years ago, my “other” Peter friend, Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsberg,” had previously found and sent me and translated news clippings from several contemporary German newspapers with accounts of the August 1930 plane accident. I erroneously assumed the new link was merely to another article. It turned out to be something much more engrossing.
This is a good moment for a brief digression to give another “shout out” to the readers of my blog. It has happened on more occasions than I can recall that readers have found and/or brought to my attention information, websites, visuals, artifacts, etc. related to people, events, and places I’ve written about. In many instances I would never have found these on my own nor knew they exist.
In the current instance, Peter Albrecht included the link to the website of the so-called Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives (B3A), which according to the founder of the website, Mr. Ronan Hubert, was established in 1990 for the purpose of dealing with all information related to aviation accidentology. Mr. Ronan self describes as a “Historian in aircraft accidents. Aviation accidentologist. Specialized in psychological preparedness for mass disaster and human factor.” He further writes that “The primary goal of the B3A is to collect, manage and archive all information relating to aviation accidents worldwide since 1918 till [sic] today. Therefore, its records is [sic] currently composed of thousands of documents, reports, photos, etc. representing to date more than 34,400 events.”
Astonishingly, the B3A website includes one photo of the Ford 5 aircraft (Figure 1) on which my great-uncle Rudolf was traveling on the fateful day he died, plus six contemporary photos of the crash. (Figures 2-7) The plane crashed near Jihlava, Czech Republic [German: Iglau]. Details of the plane, the year it was made, the operator of the airline, the number of crew and passengers, the number/of fatalities among the crew and passengers, the captain’s hours of flying experience, the itinerary, etc. are provided. (Figure 8)
The circumstances surrounding the plane accident are also described:
“The aircraft departed Prague-Kbely Airport at 1505LT on a flight to Bratislava with an intermediate stop in Brno. While cruising at a height of 700 metres, weather conditions worsened, and the captain decided first to reduce his altitude. Shortly later, he realized the weather conditions were becoming worse and worse with thunderstorm activity. Due to low visibility, he decided to make a 180 turn to go back to Prague. While flying at a height estimated between 15 and 20 metres in limited visibility, he saw the chimney of a brickwork and made a sharp turn to the left to avoid the collision. Doing so, the aircraft stalled and hit the roof of a farmhouse then crashed half in a garden. While a passenger (Professor Vojtěch Kraus) was seriously injured, all 12 other occupants were killed. Up to date, this accident was considered as the worst involving CSA Czech Airlines since its creation in 1923.”
The names of the crew and passengers are given.
Crew: Josef Sedlář, pilot, Josef Trafina, mechanic.
Passengers: Ing. Mirko Káš, Ing. Vojtěch Jokl, Anton Müller, Vladislaw Müller, Rudolf Vonka, Boh. Jarolímek, Ing. Bernard Eimann, Judr. Anton Hamrle, Prof. Vojtěch Kraus, Marie Rybníčková, Mr. Lowenstein.
As readers can see, my great-uncle “Mr. Lowenstein” was among the passenger fatalities.
According to the contemporary newspaper accounts, translated in Post 71, of the aircraft accident which killed Rudolf and the other passengers and crews, the impact of the plane drilling into the ground was so violent that the petrol tank exploded. The plane was enveloped in a sea of flames. Even though it was raining heavily at the time, the roof of the house into which the plane crashed also caught fire. While the fire brigade extinguished the fire, help came too late. Of the 13 passenger and crew on board, 12 were killed. While the plane’s fuselage appears to have been largely intact, the engine was completely destroyed.
Most people are not apt to have had relatives, friends, or acquaintances killed in a plane crash, but for those rare readers who have lost someone in this manner, it’s intriguing to realize that a website exists which tracks this information.
Note: In this post, I discuss so-called Litfaßsäulen, German advertising columns, that were once ubiquitous in cityscapes across the country but are rapidly being removed.
This post is a spinoff of the previous one where I discussed “Annoncen-Expedition und Reklame-Büro,” advertising expedition or agency. My great uncle Rudolf Löwenstein was the local General Agent for the largest German advertising expedition, Rudolf Mosse & Co., in Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland] from around 1905 until his untimely death in 1930. Other than being inspired by my great uncle’s involvement in advertising, this post has nothing to do with my family’s history.
This article is about plaster-postered pillars invented in Berlin in 1854. In German, the advertising columns are known in the plural as Litfaßsäulen. Though I have no reason to believe that my great uncle was involved in the placement of advertisements and posters on these columns on behalf of his clients, it stands to reason he might have been, particularly as a provider of a full-service advertising campaign.
The columns have a colorful history and have even entered the realm of pop culture; more on this below. Though quickly being removed and disappearing from the German cityscape, a low-key, grassroots movement has arisen to save them from removal; it has sparked a fad of writing messages, poems, and heartfelt tributes on the columns, and having two or three people group hug a Litfaßsäule to highlight a reluctance to let them go. I remember having come across these advertising columns during multiple European trips and imaginatively being captured by their quirky, bulky shape. For this reason alone, I’ve decided to make them the subject of this post and explore a little of their history.
A Litfaßsäule is a tall cylindrical advertising column, roughly 3 meters high (i.e., ~ 9 feet), usually placed on sidewalks. (Figure 1) Although several European cities use this type of structure for advertising, they were invented in Germany. The word Litfaßsäule is uniquely German. It comes from the words Litfaß (pronounced Lit-fass) and Säule. The word Säule means “column” or “pillar.” Litfaß is not actually a German word, but instead the surname of the man who ostensibly invented this type of column, the German printer Ernst Litfaß (1816-1874) in 1854. Litfaß was not only a printer but also an actor, poet, impresario, and events manager. He made most of his fortune as the “Reklamekönig,” or advertising king, during the industrial revolution of the mid-19th century.
The Litfaßsäule and the concept of public advertising behind it was inspired by a trip Litfaß took to Paris in 1843. He was completely taken by the advertising he witnessed there, the unlikely inspiration being a circular pissoir bedecked with advertisements. Litfaß saw an opportunity where others saw only a public toilet. Another purported source of inspiration was supposedly advertisement columns in England that were lit with a lantern from the inside and drawn around the city on a wagon. So, while Litfaß did not per se invent advertising columns, he promoted the idea of permanent, cylindrical pillars.
In mid-19th century Berlin, advertisements, signs, notices, and political announcements were randomly affixed to trees, building facades, and what have you. Things looked completely disorganized. Appalled by these excessive and random postings, Litfaß suggested to the chief of police of Berlin that columns be erected all over the city on which people could hang their posters. Perhaps he deemed that these columns would fulfill or contribute to Germany’s stereotypical orderliness?
After years of negotiations, Litfaß received the first permit for his “advertising columns” on December 5, 1854. He received a monopoly from the city of Berlin for the erection of his columns that was valid until 1865. In 1855, the first 100 advertising columns were erected in Berlin and named Litfaßsäulen in his honor; another 50 columns were erected in 1865. In exchange for the monopoly, the contract also called for the installation of up to 30 public urinals in exchange for the monopoly, though none were ever built.
Initially, Litfaßsäulen were used to advertise cultural events. To ensure that no inappropriate ads were posted and that the posters were hung in an orderly fashion, an inspector was responsible for examining the columns daily.
The authorities and advertisers quickly recognized the advantages of the new advertising medium. The state could censor the content beforehand, while advertisers who purchased space were assured their advertisements would remain uncovered and visible for the entire rented period without being pasted over.
Created in Germany, the advertising medium quickly spread to neighboring European countries and eventually to the rest of the world. Paris got its own version of the ad pillars in 1868, where they are called “colonnes Morris,” Morris columns. They were named after the printer Gabriel Morris who implemented an idea like his German counterpart’s.
The columns took on a new purpose in 1870 when the Franco-German war broke out. Litfaß convinced city leadership that these columns, typically located in central locations and busy plazas, would be an ideal place to disseminate crucial information about happenings on the Front. It’s not entirely clear to me whether this condition that the latest news be published on the columns originated from the outset of the 1854 monopolistic arrangement or evolved over time. Regardless, an advantage is that people could gather around these columns and catch up on ongoing wartime developments much quicker than from newspapers, which took longer to print. Interestingly, Litfaß was also given the monopoly by the Prussian Emperor to print so-called Kriegsdepeschen, telegrams from the Front, and post them on his pillars.
After the two world wars, the columns were used to post notices by people looking for missing loved ones, as well as help-wanted ads for rubble clean up, as well as other public advertisements. Modern Litfaßsäulen publicize concerts, performances, and other cultural events from around the city.
Until 2019, there were slightly more than 2,500 columns remaining in Berlin. However, since then, many more have been removed. Historically, Berlin’s Litfaßsäulen were spread throughout the city from the busiest plazas to the most remote suburbs. The city plans to preserve 50 of the classic columns as historic monuments. Part of the justification for their removal is they require constant upkeep, for example dealing with erosion caused by dogs urinating against them. An upkeeper’s nightmare but an archaeologist’s dream is that periodically the columns need to be scraped after an average of 150 layers of posters have been pasted on them! Suffice it to say, archaeologists have a way of individually separating and reading those layers and, so inclined, could learn a lot from their study.
Ironically, while the traditional columns will effectively be removed, a new company from Stuttgart has acquired the advertising rights for 15 years to build 1,500 new columns of a newer type that will be larger and have lighting.
Germany’s most famous Litfaßsäule is in the Berlin district of Wilmersdorf. It was featured on the cover of a 1929 German children’s book, entitled “Emil and the Detectives” by Erich Kästner. (Figure 2)
In Vienna, Austria, numerous advertising pillars in the vicinity of the Vienna River cover the stone spiral staircases leading to the surface from the depths; they protect unauthorized entry into the understructure. The advertising columns are equipped with a door that can be opened from the outside with a key and from inside without one. In a 1949 Orson Welles film, entitled “The Third Man,” the protagonist Henry Lime escapes into the Viennese sewers through an advertising column. (Figure 3)
Another use of the advertising columns has been practiced in Nuremberg, Germany since 2015. Public toilets have been installed inside which can be used for a small fee. In Görlitz, Germany, on the border with Poland, the mayor has tried to stem their demise by looking into their possible use as 5G signal masts. Since 2021, in Düsseldorf, Germany, the historic advertising pillars are already being used for this purpose. They have a barely recognizable door that provides access to the technology, and an aluminum-colored radio mast “hood,” reminiscent of a woman’s hat from former times. These 5G signal masts improve reception and provide higher network stability within a radius of 400 meters (i.e., ~1,300 feet).
A 1979 German stamp (Figure 4) and 2016 20 Euro German coin (Figure 5) have been issued to commemorate Litfaßsäulen.
Note: In this post, I discuss my great-uncle Rudolf Löwenstein and the Rudolf Mosse “Annoncen-Expedition-Reklame-Büro,” advertising expedition or agency, for which he worked.
In an imagined account that may have taken place in my father’s life almost 95 years ago, in Post 71 I pictured the day he learned that his uncle, Rudolf Löwenstein, had died in a plane crash. (Figure 1) The date was the 22nd of August 1930, when his uncle was returning to Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland] in the Free City of Danzig from visiting family in then-Czechoslovakia. At the time, I’m certain my father was living with his uncle and his paternal aunt, Rudolf (1872-1930) and Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck (1870-1949), and likely two of their three children, while apprenticing as a dentist. My father would eventually open his own dental practice in April 1932 in a town 40km (i.e., ca. 25 miles) to the east of Danzig in Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland], also located in the Free City of Danzig.
As mentioned, Rudolf and Hedwig Löwenstein had three children, the eldest, Fedor Löwenstein (1901-1946), who died in 1946 before I was born. Hedwig passed away in 1949, also before I was born. However, as a child I met Rudolf and Hedwig’s two youngest offspring, Jeanne Goff, née Löwenstein (1902-1986) and Heinz Löwenstein (1905-1979), in Nice, France. (Figure 2) If the Löwenstein surname sounds familiar to regular readers, it’s because I’ve written multiple posts about Fedor Löwenstein and his brother Heinz Löwenstein.
As a reminder, Fedor Löwenstein was an accomplished artist, 25 of whose artworks were intercepted and confiscated by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 as they were being shipped to New York: Long time readers know I’ve been engaged in a more than 10-yearlong battle with the French Ministry of Culture to recover the three surviving paintings. Heinz Löwenstein, by contrast, fought as a member of England’s Royal Pioneer Corps and was captured in the Battle of Greece in 1941, and incarcerated and escaped from German stalags no fewer than five times. His story is truly movie-worthy.
In any case, based on what I know, Jeanne and Heinz Löwenstein were the two cousins my father was closest to. (Figures 3-4) He lived with them in Danzig, then later near Jeanne and her mother in Nice, France. The fact that these are my father’s only cousins whom I met growing up supports the notion they were close. Another of my father’s first cousins lived in New York City, where I grew up. Because my father didn’t bother to tell her about my birth, she never again spoke to him. Suffice it to say, I never met her. With rare exceptions my father was not into family, a phenomenon I don’t fully comprehend.
A brief digression. I have an ancestral tree on ancestry.com with around 1,200 names. I use it to orient myself to the people I write about on my blog. Where available, I attach images or pictures of family members, though for long-ago ancestors sometimes the best I can do is find a painted rendering of them. In the case of Rudolf Löwenstein, I’ve not yet uncovered a picture of him though I remain optimistic one or more survive. The difficulty is that none of Rudolf and Hedwig’s children had children of their own so tracking down who may have inherited Löwenstein family photos and personal papers and where they may have wound up, assuming they’ve survived, is challenging.
My paternal grandfather Felix Bruck (1864-1927) and his seven siblings including Hedwig Bruck were all born in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the same place as my father. Hedwig and Rudolf Löwenstein were married there in 1899. For reasons that are unclear to me their first child Fedor Löwenstein was born in 1901 in Munich, Germany. Their two younger children, however, were born in Danzig, respectively, in 1902 and 1905.
It’s safe to assume that no later than 1902, Rudolf and Hedwig Löwenstein had relocated to Danzig, presumably from Munich. However, contemporary Danzig address books first list Rudolf Löwenstein in the 1905 directory. (Figure 5) His occupation at the time was “Generalvertreter fur Rudolf Mosse und Paul Stabernack & Co., Berlin,” or General Agent for Rudolf Mosse & Co. The 1905 address book identifies this as the “Zentral-Bureau fur jederlei Reklame,” or the Central office for all kinds of advertising. Above the bolded ad Rudolf Löwenstein is identified as a “Kfm. (=Kaufman), Vertreter d.(=der) Annoncen-Expedition,” or translated literally as “merchant or businessman, agent for advertisement expedition.” Curious as to what precisely an advertisement expedition is, I investigated.
In German Wikipedia, I learned about Rudolf Mosse & Co., the company for who Rudolf Löwenstein was an agent. Rudolf Mosse (1843-1920) was a German-Jewish publisher, company founder, and businessman. He founded Rudolf Mosse Zeitungs-Annoncen-Expedition on the 1st of January 1867 in Berlin. He started by advertising his own business in advertisements but quickly went from being a mere intermediary to being a provider of advertising space, which he sold to advertisers. As one of the first publishers, he accomplished this by leasing entire advertising pages from several newspapers. This was a highly successful business model, so much so that five years after he founded his company it had 250 branches in Germany and abroad. Obviously, one of these branches was in Danzig and Rudolf Löwenstein was its local General Agent.
Let me say a little more, generally, about “Annoncen-Expedition,” but more specifically about Rudolf Mosse & Co. This is also drawn from German Wikipedia (i.e., U.S. Wikipedia does not include mention of these advertising expeditions). In the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, advertising expeditions mediated the placement of advertisements between newspapers and advertisers. This was only possible after the abolition in Prussia of the so-called “insertion obligation” on the 1st of January 1847. Prior to this date, advertisements were only allowed to be published in intelligence magazines. After the abolition of the insertion obligation, advertisements could also be placed in daily newspapers.
While Rudolf Mosse was a major player in the German advertising landscape during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his company was not the first advertising expedition in Germany. In 1855, the first advertising expedition was founded in Altona by the Haasenstein advertising agency. Similar companies had already emerged earlier in the Anglo-American world, as well as in France. Haasenstein collected advertisements from advertising customers, sold them to newspapers and collected a commission.
In Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and in many other cities, advertising expeditions were also founded as pure intermediaries of advertising space. Soon newspapers financed more than 50 percent of their operations by advertising, which made them attractive capital investments.
At first, the advertisements differed only slightly from the rest of the paper, forcing advertisers to find a suitable publication environment for their ads. In the decades after the founding of the German Empire in 1871, however, and amid industrialization and mass production, advertisements began to stand out and be distinctive. The advertising expeditions, above all Rudolf Mosse as mentioned above, leased the entire advertising space of some newspapers and thus went from simply being an intermediary to being a provider of advertising space. In addition, the advertising expeditions now also advised their customers on the design and placement of the advertisements.
In 1872, Rudolf Mosse founded the “Berliner Tageblatt,” followed in 1889 by the founding of the “Berliner Morgenzeitung.” Mosse purchased printers and expanded his expedition to become a newspaper publisher, thus competing with other publishers. Effectively, the advertising expeditions had grown into large media companies and were accused of favoring (their own) newspapers and influencing the content of the other publications in which ads were placed.
Between 1918 and 1929, there were fierce price wars between the advertising expeditions. Some became the objects of speculation for investors. By the mid-1920s, branches of American advertising agencies first opened in Germany, all of which operated as full-service companies. By 1932, Rudolf Mosse & Co., which had grown into the largest advertising expedition at the time, ran into financial difficulties and was acquired by a German GmbH (i.e., “Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung,” a “limited liability company (LLC)” which offers limited liability to its owners and is comparable to an American LLC).
On the 12th of September 1933, the Nazis passed the Gesetz über Wirtschaftswerbung, the “1933 Commercial Advertising Act.” This created the legal basis for the establishment of an “Advertising Council of the German Economy.” This Council served to synchronize the advertising industry in the Nazi state. The advertising expeditions were de facto brought into line and were now under the control of the Ministeriums für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
Following Rudolf Löwenstein’s untimely death in 1930, his son Heinz took over the business although the business was still listed under his father’s name. (Figure 6) The 1933 Danzig address book list introduces a slightly different business term, namely, “Reklame-Büro,” which translates literally as “advertising agency.” As opposed to an advertising expedition, I think this was a company that created and managed advertising campaigns for other businesses, developing marketing strategies to promote products or services across media channels. In other words this was a full-service company versus one that merely helped facilitate the placement of advertisements in newspapers and elsewhere.
While Heinz Löwenstein appears to still have been the General Agent for Rudolf Mosse advertising expedition in 1933, I strongly suspect it was probably the last year he was in business. The 1933 Commercial Advertising Act would have severely limited his ability as a Jew to freely run his advertising agency. Based on an unclear reference on one of his military papers, I have reason to believe that he and his wife immigrated to Palestine ca. 1935, whereupon he joined Britain’s Royal Pioneer Corps.
There is one final thing I want to discuss regarding Heinz Löwenstein’s occupation as indicated in the 1934 Danzig address book, namely, the use of the German term “propagandist.” Like me, given the years in which Heinz operated the “Reklame-Büro. Annoncen-Expedit.” after Hitler came to power, readers might erroneously assume he was a mouthpiece for the Nazi government. “Propagandist,” in the English sense is defined as “someone who creates and spreads propaganda, which is communication used to influence or persuade an audience, often with a specific agenda or viewpoint, and may not be objective.” I can’t emphasize strongly enough how implausible it would have been for Heinz to parrot Nazi ideology, given his life history. Heinz clearly saw the handwriting on the wall and, in my opinion, departed for Palestine as soon as he was able to after Hitler came to power.
Given what I believe to be true about Heinz, I turned to German Wikipedia to understand the use of the term “propagandist” in German. A German synonym for propagandist is Verkaufsfördererung. Expectedly, the term means something very different in German, a sales promoter, who is involved “in sales promotions, namely, all temporary activities with a promotional character [that] are combined within the marketing communication policy, which serve to activate the market participants (sales bodies, dealers, customers) to increase sales results, and support other marketing measures.” Use of this term in the context of running an advertising agency makes much more sense to describe the work that Heinz Löwenstein was involved in.
This suggests one final thought. Growing up my German-born father would occasionally use a German aphorism or saying to make a point. Asked to explain, he would tell me there was no comparable saying in English. While the difference between use of “propagandist” in English versus German is not quite the same thing, it is worth bearing in mind that online translators may occasionally give you inaccurate translations so further investigation may be required.
Note: In this post, I discuss a so-called “castle” presently located in southwestern Poland that was once owned by the noble von Koschembahr family. My great-granduncle Wilhelm Bruck married into this family and adopted his wife’s matronymic. The manor house which survives in dilapidated condition was once the home of his father-in-law’s two widowed sisters.
In Post 115, I introduced readers to Wilhelm Bruck (1849-1907) (Figure 1), one of my great granduncles, who married Margarete von Koschembahr (1860-1948) (Figure 2) on the 14th of September 1884 in Berlin, Germany. Wilhelm was the younger brother of my great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 3), the second-generation owner of the family business in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel.
Upon their marriage, Wilhelm added his wife’s matronymic to his name. The unusual adoption of a wife’s surname most typically happened when the wife was a so-called peer, that’s to say, was a hereditary titled noble in her own right. The result was that Wilhelm and his descendants became known as “Bruck-von Koschembahr,” though the Bruck surname was dropped entirely upon the family’s arrival in America.
By all measures the von Koschembahr descendants are my distant relatives though until the year before last I’d never been in contact with any members of this branch. While my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck was particularly impressed with links to nobiliary members on our ancestral line, took special pains to note them in his hand drawn ancestral trees, and may even have been in touch with members of this branch, this has never been of explicit interest to me. Regardless, in December 2023, I was contacted by an American descendant of this offshoot of my family, Christopher von Koschembahr. Christopher mentioned his mother had stumbled upon my blog. He also explained he was the son of Dieter von Koschembahr (1929-1995), who I knew to be one of the grandsons of Wilhelm Bruck and Margarete von Koschembahr.
As an aside, during our exchanges, Christopher asked when my father changed his surname from “Bruck” to “Brook.” I didn’t know at the time. However, in connection with my ongoing German citizenship application, I’ve since learned my father became Gary Otto Brook upon becoming an American citizen in July 1955. I think Christopher’s question stemmed from the fact that he serendipitously named his daughter “Brookes,” so had the original surname been retained, she would have been known as “Brookes Bruck.”
In March 2024, Christopher mentioned to me his intention to visit one of the former family estates currently located southwestern Poland, a short distance northeast of the German border town of Görlitz. Embedded in this email was a message from my third cousin, Kurt Polborn, to Christopher with some of the historical background on the property and the name of the Polish town where the estate is located, Żarki Średnie. Like Kurt and me, Christopher and Kurt are third cousins. A brief digression before I discuss what I know of the von Koschembahr family property and its former residents.
As I explained in the previous post, Post 172, upon learning that Christopher’s family once owned a “castle” in what is today called Żarki Średnie, Poland (Figure 4), I turned to a comprehensive 1893 map of Silesia once sent to me by Paul Newerla. I had discovered the town was called “Kesselbach” during the Prussian era, though was unable to find it on the detailed Silesian map. This is when I turned to the 1:25,000 scale “Urmesstischblätter” military maps discussed in my prior article. (Figure 5) After learning Żarki Średnie/Kesselbach was located 7.5km or 4.66 miles northeast of Gorlitz, I located it on map number “4756-Penzig/Pieńsk.” (Figures 6a-c)
I was unable to find Kesselbach in the meyersgaz.org database even by using “star as a wildcard” in the “Search” bar. This points out the advantage of having several different map sources one can turn to. It was only after I found an old postcard on eBay referring to the castle as “Schloß-Mittel Sohra” (Figure 7) that I found “Mittel Sohra,” in meyersgaz.org. (Figure 8)
Based on the picture in Wikipedia of the von Koschembahr “manor house,” as they refer to it, the mansion appeared to be maintained and in very good shape. (Figure 9) Other pictures found online seemed to corroborate this. (Figure 10) This was a grand illusion as Christopher discovered when he visited the former family estate in July 2024. (Figure 11) While the structure is still standing, the floors and roof are collapsing, the windows and doors are missing or broken, and roots are growing through the foundations and openings. (Figures 12a-b) When Christopher used hand gestures to communicate with Polish laborers working nearby on the day he visited, they gesticulated that tossing a hand grenade into the building would solve the problem.
As a retired archaeologist I have come across multiple such historic structures over the years while conducting pedestrian surveys on the public lands in the western United States. This is one reason the deteriorating mansion holds a peculiar fascination for me, different than it may for the average reader. Adding this to the history that my cousin Kurt Polborn told me about the place, I’ve been able to relate it to specific individuals who lived there. This is not always possible even with recent historic era ruins.
Let me relate the part of the story I’ve been told and connect it to historic documents I’ve uncovered.
I told readers at the outset of this post that my great granduncle Wilhelm Bruck married Margarete von Koschembahr and added her matronymic to his surname. Margarete’s father was Leopold von Koschembahr (1829-1874) (Figure 13) married to Amalie Mockrauer (1834-1918). (Figure 14) As a quick aside, my Bruck ancestors are related by marriage to Mockrauers over several generations, but that’s a story for another day.
Leopold von Koschembahr was Kurt Polborn’s great-great-grandfather. According to Kurt, Leopold filed for bankruptcy on a few occasions, and his large family would likely not have survived without the help of his mother and his Jewish in-laws. Amalie Mockrauer wrote in her diary about the financial disasters of her married life.
As a reflection of the self-perceived “superiority” of the nobility vis a vis the bourgeoisie, upon Wilhelm Bruck’s death in 1907, his widow Margarete dropped the Bruck surname and reverted to her maiden name.
Returning to the ruined manor house in Żarki Średnie, according to Kurt, Leopold von Koschembahr’s had two sisters. The older one was Julie Leopoldine Anna von Koschembahr (1827-1883), referred to as “Anna”; the younger was Isidore Mathilde Helene von Koschembahr (1833-1887), familiarly called “Isidore.” Though they were six years apart, both got married the same year in 1859. Anna married Adolph von Blankensee (1812-1871) (Figures 15a-b), while Isidore wed Major Otto von Heugel (1826-1871). (Figures 16a-b)
Their respective husbands fought in the Franco-Prussian War, also known as the Franco-German War of 1870-1871. Both died during this conflict in France within weeks of one another. Adolph von Blankensee died from Typhus on the 11th of January 1871, while his brother-in-law Otto von Heugel died on the 29th of January 1871 in a place called La-Queue-en-Brie (Figures 17a-b), a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris. Following their husbands’ deaths, the widows apparently lived together in the family manor in Kesselbach until their deaths. Both are recorded as having died in Görlitz, the largest nearby town.
The only known depiction of Anna von Koschembahr is an endearing painting from ca. 1830 standing alongside her younger brother Leopold. (Figure 18) The original of this painting is owned by the descendants of Kurt’s recently deceased uncle, Clemens von Koschembahr, Chistopher von Koschembahr’s uncle. In Post 75, I wrote about this Biedermeier-style painting because my third cousin, Agnes Stieda, née Vogel, owns a replica of this painting. (Figure 19) How a copy of this painting came to be made is unknown.
No images are known of Isidore. However, given the extensive von Koschembahr family, it is probable that a likeness of her survives among the family’s ephemera. It is my hope that one of her von Koschembahr descendants may stumble upon my blog and scrutinize their family photos.
The history of the von Koschembahr manor house is unknown. Discovery of the so-called “grundbuch,” the German land register that records property ownership and other details that would have been maintained by a special division of the local court, would provide details on the castle’s construction and ownership. Whether the grundbuch survived the devastation of WWII is also unknown.
I can only surmise what happened to the manor house following Isidore’s death in 1887. Neither Anna or Isidore had any children, However, a younger von Koschembahr sibling, Erich Wilhelm Adolf von Koschembahr (1836-1890), had two daughters, and one may have inherited the property. I would posit the estate continued to be owned by Anna and Isidore’s descendants since titled families tended to own multiple estates around the country. Regardless of what happened to the property following the death of the two widows, there can be no doubt the family lost ownership of the estate at the end of WWII when the family fled the area as the Russians were approaching.
Pictures of the manor house, including the one on Wikipedia, show the shell of the castle still in restorable condition. These pictures, probably taken in the last 10-15 years, suggest that someone lived in and maintained the property until shortly before then. I strongly suspect I’ll eventually write a postscript to this post as I learn more about the history of the von Koschembahr manor house.
The dilapidated remains of the von Koschembahr castle in Żarki Średnie holds a particular appeal to me as a retired archaeologist. Because most historic era remains found throughout the United States are not related to titled families or known individuals and are assuredly not connected to my family, learning of a surviving structure that is piques my interest. I’ll leave it at that.
Note: In this post, I draw readers’ attention to several sources of detailed topographic maps of the German Reich, including areas that are today within Poland. I will briefly discuss the origin of these maps and explain how to access the databases.
It may surprise readers to learn I often derive as much or even more pleasure writing about subjects that transcend my immediate and extended Bruck family. The current publication is one such post. Here I discuss and explain to readers where they can locate historic topographic maps of towns and areas in the former German realm where their ancestors may have come from, including areas that are today part of Poland. Much of Silesia where many of my German ancestors come from is today in Poland; learning where historic maps of the various places associated with them can be found has been invaluable in my work.
I want to begin this post by acknowledging my dear friend, Paul Newerla, who sadly passed away in January 2024. (Figure 1) Like many people with whom I’ve corresponded with on ancestral matters over the years, Paul found me through my blog. He was a lawyer who devoted himself to researching and writing about the history of Ratibor and Silesia in retirement. As a brief aside, Silesia is today divided principally into four Polish województwa (provinces): Lubuskie, Dolnośląskie, Opolskie, and Śląskie. The remainder of the historical region forms part of Brandenburg and Saxony Länder (states) of Germany and part of the Moravia-Silesia kraj (region) of the Czech Republic.
Paul was a tireless researcher (Figure 2), very generous with his time and sharing his knowledge and resources. I miss his help, insights, and kindness. Paul didn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Polish nor German, so our communications involved using an online translator. Still, his warm, self-deprecating humor came through clearly. Case in point. One day, while trying to explain some nuance to me, he prefaced his remarks by using the German word “besserwisser,” basically translated as “know-it-all,” saying he wasn’t trying to sound like one. My wife and I often jokingly use this word which just rolls off the tongue with such ease. I have fond recollections of Paul and all he taught me. I could only hope to be remembered thusly. I was very happy when Paul once told me how much pleasure he took from my research interest in my ancestors from Silesia.
Over the years, I’ve been asked by readers or family members about towns in Silesia where their ancestors come from or found places in ancestral documents citing obscure towns. Being a basically visual person, I’m curious where these places are located and how far distant from Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], where my father was born, they are. This is typically a two-step process. The first step normally involves finding the Polish place names for former German towns. Fortunately, a Wikipedia site cross-referencing the German/Polish town names exists. The obvious second step involves using Google or other resources to see what you can learn about the place, particularly if you’re curious about the history of the town over the ages.
During my email exchanges with Paul Newerla, he sent me many maps, including multiple historic ones of Ratibor and a very detailed 1893 map of Silesia. (Figure 3) In the case of the street maps of Ratibor, this has often allowed me to precisely pinpoint places associated with my family. In any case, I recently discovered to my dismay that a small place that one of my cousins asked me about is not on the 1893 map. This sent me scurrying through saved emails searching for a link to historic topographic maps of the German realm Paul had once told me about. I vaguely recalled these cover the northern and southern parts of Poland. Being of higher resolution, 1:25,000 (see below), I’ve never failed to find any old German town if a map of the area survives.
I eventually found the 2019 email from Paul with links to the maps. And, predictably, I located the German/Polish town my distant cousin had asked me about. This will be the subject of an upcoming blog where I’ll introduce readers to a distinguished branch of my Bruck family that no longer retains the Bruck surname for a surprising reason. I digress. Thinking the website and the maps might be of interest to readers, I decided to write the current post and explain to readers how to access this database.
As Paul was wont to do and which I so appreciated was provide some historical perspective. In the case of these 1:25,000 scale maps, Paul explained that on these maps, one kilometer, roughly 0.621 mile, is equal to 4 centimeters, about 1.575 inches. The production of these so-called “Urmesstischblätter” began ca. 1822 for the entire territory of Prussia, all at the scale of 1:25,000. The maps were hand-drawn unique specimens. They were not published; they were only intended to form the basis for smaller-scale maps. In German, “Messtischblatt” refers to the specific type of topographic map drawn at the 1:25,000 scale, which translates to “survey table sheet” due to the method used for creating these maps. These sheets or leaves marked the beginning of topographical cartography, which has evolved in various stages but is still based on these roots today.
Because of their military importance, the 1:25,000 scale maps are extremely accurate. These maps from the period 1822-1850 were further developed and refined until 1944. This scale allowed for a detailed depiction of features like roads, buildings, rivers, and elevation contours. These maps are valuable historical sources for studying the landscape and development of the German Empire, particularly in the Prussian era.
Maps intended for “civilian” purposes, which obviously could also have a military application, were drawn at a different scale, even down to 1:500. Indicated on each map is the scale at which it was drawn. Postwar maps showing Polish towns indicate the German-era map upon which the Polish version is based. The entire German realm, extending far into neighboring countries including current Polish counties, is covered by these 1:25,000 scale maps.
Let me provide some explanation. Each numbered square corresponds to one map at a scale of 1:25,000. (Figure 4) As readers can see, each square is numbered and named according to the largest city in the area. So, for example, Gdansk in the northern part of Poland, is numbered and named “1677-Danzig/Gdansk.” (Figure 5) The square nearest to the east is one number higher, thus “1678-Weichselmünde/Wisłoujście,” while the one nearest to the west is one number less, thus “1676-Zuckau/Zukowo.” The map to the south of the one you’re researching is always larger by a factor of 100, for example in the case of Gdansk, “1777-Praust/Pruszcz Gdański.”
Below is what a fragment of the northern directory looks like. If you click on a corresponding square, a directory appears. The headers (Figure 6) read: “Pliki” (file); “Godlo” (map number); “Tytul” (designation of the largest city based on the original German version of the map); “Nazwa wsp.” (current Polish town name); “Rok wyd.” (year of publication); and “dpi” (resolution in dots per inch). By tapping on the yellow icon in the upper left, you’ll open the corresponding map; more than one map be listed. The map can be enlarged, then navigated, by simply clicking on it, then scrolling around.
Map number “1780-Tiegenhof/Nowy Dwór Gdański” (Figure 7a-b) corresponds to the town where my father had his dental practice in the Free City of Danzig from April 1932 until April 1937. After you click on the square, you will note there is a map that includes Tiegenhof which was originally published in 1925. Once you click on the yellow icon in the upper left, then on the map itself, and scroll to the bottom, you’ll see some information about the map. In this instance, the 1925 map is based on a topographic survey the Prussian State conducted in 1908. (Figure 8) Having been to Nowy Dwór Gdański a few times and being very familiar with where my father’s dental practice was located, I can immediately find the street on which it was situated.
I discussed another source of maps of the German Empire in Post 156, the Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs, the “Meyers Geographical and Commercial Gazetteer of the German Empire.” (Figure 9) I refer readers to this earlier post. As ancestry.com points out about the Meyers Gazetteer: “This gazetteer of the German Empire is the gazetteer to use to locate place names in German research. It was originally compiled in 1912. This gazetteer is the gazetteer to use because it includes all areas that were part of the pre-World War I German Empire. Gazetteers published after WWI may not include parts of the Empire that were lost to bordering countries. Overall, this gazetteer includes more than 210,000 cities, towns, hamlets, villages, etc.”
The maps in the Meyers Gazetteer also appear to originate from the 1:25,000 Urmesstischblätter maps. I recommend anyone researching German Empire town names to look at the links above to the Urmesstischblätter maps, as well as the Meyers Gazetteer. The meyersgaz.org website remarks: “This is the most important of all German gazetteers. The goal of the Meyer’s compilers was to list every place name in the German Empire (1871-1918). It gives the location, i.e. the state and other jurisdictions, where the civil registry office was and parishes if that town had them. It also gives lots of other information about each place. The only drawback to Meyer’s is that if a town did not have a parish, it does not tell where the parish was, making reference to other works necessary.”
“The archive currently (as of June 13, 2020) contains 29,930 different world atlases, country maps, topographic maps, road maps, panorama maps, railway maps, postal code maps, city maps and special maps. The Atlas Novas Indicibus Instructus by Matthäus Seutter, with its 52 copper engravings, is the oldest original in the map archive. Furthermore, there are several thousand topographic maps of Central Europe. The oldest maps are from 1820. The newest map, on the other hand, is the map of the Hockenheimring from 1999, which shows the old Hockenheimring before the reconstruction. There are many highlights, such as the 89-page Dunlop Autoatlas from 1927, the Conti Atlas from 1938, the general maps from 1954, the clear B.V. Aral maps, the very rare Reichsautobahnatlas from 1938 and the beautiful old French Michelin road maps for France, Spain and Germany. Our special exhibitions, such as the fantastically beautiful Soviet military maps or the Reymann´s Special Map of Central Europe are also worth a click. . .”
Naturally, the landkartenarchiv.de includes the 1:25,000 Urmesstischblätter maps. However, given the vast collection of maps in the archive, readers may find it easier to seek out 1:25,000 scale maps at meyersgaz.org or in the links to the Polish websites listed above. However, if readers are more interested in maps at a grosser scale such as 1:50,000, 1:75,000, and 1:100,000, scroll the vast collection on the landkartenarchiv.de. For readers particularly interested in German Empire maps, I draw your attention to the following:
Using the “Search” function, there appears to be an overlap between the maps that are listed. Given the enormous number of maps archived in this database, perhaps this is not surprising.
Note: In this post, I discuss some previously unknown details about my father, Gary Otto Brook (Dr. Otto Bruck), and his life before and during WWII uncovered in a file I was given by a staffer at the German Embassy in connection with my German citizenship application. The staffer ordered this file from an office in Saarburg, Germany, where my father’s 1950s dossier wound up after his compensation petition was processed.
In Post 166, I related to readers my ongoing endeavor to obtain German citizenship. The process is moving apace thanks to the assistance of an extraordinarily helpful staffer at the German Embassy in Los Angeles. I recently delivered the preliminary application and only require one additional certificate to complete my submission. For reasons I will explain below obtaining citizenship could take 18 months or more. The recovery of an unexpected document is a direct result of my ongoing efforts and is the subject of this post.
Based on my vague childhood recollections of my father’s attempt to obtain some measure of recompense for the loss of his dental practice in the Free City of Danzig during the era of the National Socialists, I would have expected an application to exist supporting his petition. I was just not sure where I might find it. However, I’m now in possession of my father’s 13-page compensation file he originally submitted in the 1950s to the then-Federal Republic of Germany. (Figure 1) The file was ordered by the staffer at the German Embassy from Saarburg, Germany, from an office I did not know existed. While alone insufficient to fulfill application requirements, it bolsters my petition. I will discuss some of the contents below.
Though not particularly revelatory in a broad sense, the petition pinpoints some of the chronological events in my father’s life providing a more nuanced understanding of their timing. The events are told firsthand in a matter of fact-style chronicling when they took place. However, they mask an undercurrent of extreme loss that leaves me almost 90 years later deeply saddened. It’s not what’s written but what’s implied about how my father’s life and by extension the lives of so many other Holocaust victims were extinguished or upended that reverberates to this day. Possibly because of the fragmented nature of our ongoing political discourse this seems even more relevant.
A related issue I’ve been grappling with is the question of success versus justice. Suffice it here to say that for most Holocaust victims or their descendants no amount of financial compensation, what could be construed as a “successful” outcome, can ever make up for the loss they suffered. Ergo, they can never obtain real justice. This is an existential question that merits further consideration outside of my blog. However, it’s a question I’ve been pondering in the context of my longstanding claim against the French Ministry of Culture to obtain compensation and repatriation for paintings confiscated by the Nazis from one of my father’s first cousins in December 1940. Notwithstanding the fact that I’m the closest surviving relative to my father’s cousin, because France has a civil law legal system, I’ve been denied the opportunity to obtain justice on behalf of my family. As my petition nears resolution, this will be the subject of an upcoming post.
Back to the subject of this post. As I proceed, I’ll describe a few of the documents attached to my father’s petition which shed further light on what I know. I need to emphasize that much of the new information about my father comes from a dry recitation of events, not from any detailed discussion about what my father thought or felt about these events. Still, reading between the lines conceals disappointment and resignation to his fate. In fact, growing up, my father often used the word “kismet,” which comes from the Arabic word “qisma” which literally means “to divide” or “allot.” As a practical matter “kismet” is used to describe something that happens by chance like it was meant to be.
One document in my father’s petition is titled “Lebenslauf” (Figure 2), translated as curriculum vitae. Most often, a curriculum vitae summarizes a job applicant’s qualifications from the standpoint of work experience, education, and skills. In terms of what my father includes, it harkens back to its original Latin meaning, “the course of one’s life.” My father, born in 1907 (Figure 3), indicates his schooling involved three years in elementary school followed by nine years in a Humanistic Grammar School. He passed his so-called “Abitur,” basically his high school-leaving examination, in 1926. Then, from 1926 to 1930, he studied dentistry at the universities of Berlin, Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], and Munich. He qualified to be a dentist on the 8th of May 1930. During 1930 and 1931, my father apprenticed, assisted, and temporarily filled in for dentists in Königsbrück, Berlin, Allenstein [today: Olsztyn, Poland], and Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland].
Let me digress for a moment. As implied above, the broad outline of my father’s life was previously known to me. Still, there are a few surprises. I was aware my father studied dentistry at the University of Berlin since I have his diploma from there, but it was a complete revelation that he studied at the universities of Breslau and Munich. His link to Breslau is less surprising given that the Bruck family had longstanding ties with this city, including the fact that my father’s older brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck, received his dental degree here. However, the fact that my father studied dentistry in Breslau makes me wonder whether he apprenticed with his renowned relative, Dr Walther Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 4), dentist to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Kaiser, his family, and other royalty. This would strongly suggest my father trained with a family member who was exceptionally skilled in his craft.
Munich and Breslau are about eight hours apart today by car. There is no indication how long my father studied in Munich, although this merits further investigation.
As far as the four places where my father apprenticed in 1930 and 1931, none are surprising. I have in my possession letters of recommendation from the respective dentists in Königsbrück (Figure 5) and Allenstein (Figure 6) commending my father on his exemplary work in their absence. Furthermore, since my father attended dental school in Berlin, then later lived in the Free City of Danzig, I would have expected he would have apprenticed in these places. In the case of Danzig, I even have a picture showing him there in his dental scrubs. (Figure 7)
Let me continue. I know from a note in my father’s surviving papers that he had his own dental practice in a town in the Free City of Danzig named Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] from April 1932 through April 1937; this town is approximately 40km (25 miles) east of Danzig. While it is technically accurate to say my father maintained an independent dental practice until April 1937, as a practical matter because of the Nazi imposed boycott of Jewish businesses, he’d ceased having patients by 1936.
My father’s compensation file includes another informative document, an “Eidesstattliche Erklaerung” (Figures 8a-b), translated as affidavit. Here my father writes that he sold his dental equipment and instruments at less than ten percent of their market value. To compound the affront, patients whom my father had treated before the boycott went into full effect stiffed him to the tune of what today amounts to many thousands of dollars.
One particularly intriguing document included with my father’s compensation application is titled “Fuhrungszeugnis,” a “Certificate of Good Conduct.” (Figure 9) It is dated the 28th of April 1937 from Tiegenhof, and signed by “Die Polizeivertbeltung,” Tiegenhof’s “Police Bureaucracy.” It gives the precise dates my father’s dental practice was in business, from the 14th of April 1932 until the 28th of April 1937. Why my father would have wanted such a document is completely understandable, though why authorities would have felt compelled to document his service when they no longer wanted it in Germany, or the Free City of Danzig is mystifying.
Following the sale of his dental equipment in Tiegenhof, my father moved to the city of Danzig in April 1937, where, in his own words, “he took over the representation of dental colleagues until March 1938.” I presume the anonymity of this larger city, where my father had multiple professional colleagues, allowed him to continue working for a while. This is like what my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck did after he was forced to shutter his own dental practice in Liegnitz [today: Legnica, Poland] in Lower Silesia after Hitler came to power in January 1933. He moved to Berlin, working under the auspices of non-Jewish dentists until that too became impossible.
I’d always been uncertain where my father spent the period between April 1937 and March 1938. I mistakenly thought he might have joined his brother in Berlin, possibly working there. Based on photographs in his albums, however, I knew that by early March 1938 he’d permanently left Germany since photos show him transiting through Vienna, Austria following his departure. (Figure 10) He was headed to Fiesole, Italy, outside Florence, to join his sister and brother-in-law, who were then operating a bed-and-breakfast there.
What caused my father to leave Germany before Kristallnacht on 9-10 November 1938 is not entirely clear, though I have no doubt he clearly saw the handwriting on the wall. The absence of a wife and any children made his departure a relatively easy decision.
A stray sentence in the affidavit accompanying his compensation petition suggests my father may have had a plan. The two first cousins with whom my father was closest were Jeanne “Hansi” Löwenstein (Figure 11) and her brother Heinz Löwenstein. (Figure 12) Both were born in Danzig, and I strongly suspect that while doing his dental apprenticeship in Danzig in 1930-1931, he lived with his aunt, Hedwig Löwenstein, nee Bruck (Figure 13), and these two cousins. Following the death of her husband Rudolf Löwenstein in a plane crash on the 22nd of August 1930, subject of Post 71, Hedwig and the family moved to Nice, France, along France’s Côte d’Azur. The precise date of their move is unknown.
Following his departure from Germany, I don’t think my father ever permanently intended to stay in Fiesole, Italy. I think his intended destination at the time was Nice, France. My father writes in his affidavit that he was unable to obtain a work permit in France so finally enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in November 1938.
Suffice it here to say that as I learn more about France’s complicity with the Nazis during WWII, I never fail to get angry anew at France’s treatment of my father and his family before, during, and after the war. For me this still seems very relevant, particularly as France has fought for ten years since 2014 to retain paintings rendered by Fedor Löwenstein (older brother of Hansi and Heinz) confiscated by the Nazis in December 1940 in Bordeaux and stored in Paris since, the provenance of which was only uncovered in 2010. I digress.
Though of no particular interest to readers, the exact dates of my father’s engagements in the French Foreign Legion (FFL) and England’s Pioneer Corps are mentioned. My father was in the FFL (Figure 14) in Algeria from the 9th of November 1938 until the 9th of November 1943. He was in the English Army (Figure 15) from the 19th of November 1943 until the 5th of May 1946, thus for two years 224 days. I have a picture of my father in his English Army uniform with his comrades-in-arm, taken in September 1945 in Rome, Italy. (Figure 16) Appearing to be almost a farewell gathering, I mistakenly concluded that my father had been demobilized from the English Army in Rome. Contrary to my assumption, in his affidavit my father writes he was demobilized in Nice, France.
For readers interested in knowing what I’ve learned about my father’s time in Nice, I discussed this in Post 26. After his discharge from the English army, my father procured a permit to work as a dental technician but was unable to work as a dentist. Because he had no connections, he could barely make ends meet.
Other information of personal interest is the precise date my father left France, the 2nd of June 1948, and the exact date he landed in America, the 7th of June 1948. Having previously found my father’s naturalization card (Figure 17) on ancestry.com, I knew he became an American citizen through Court Order #7509013, dated the 19th of July 1955. Though both the “Bruck” and “Brook” names appear on the card, I’d never been sure if he changed his name upon landing in America in 1948 or upon becoming an American citizen. Well, as it turns out, my father changed his name to Gary Otto Brook in 1955.
The final document in my father’s compensation file I’ll discuss is titled “Staatsangehorigkeitsausweis.” (Figure 18) Issued in Berlin on the 22nd of November 1927, this is my father’s German nationality card. I have the original among my father’s surviving papers, and as implied above it bolsters my claim for German citizenship.
As to the restitution my father received for the loss of his dental practice and livelihood, it amounted to a pittance, approximately $2,500. in 1966. Unlike my uncle Fedor who miraculously survived the entire war hidden in Berlin, my father never received a regular pension from the German government.
Let me return to something I alluded to above, namely the reason for the lengthy delay in processing German citizenship applications. The explanation is rich. Because of the tragic events of October 7, 2023, in Israel, Israelis of German descent are applying in droves for German citizenship.
In closing, let me be clear that I don’t expect the above to be of much interest to readers. However, it highlights that occasionally one happens upon a primary source document related to one’s ancestors that fill in some gaps in one’s understanding of their lives. In my case, the recovery of my father’s compensation petition was a fortuitous outcome of my German citizenship application.
Note: In this post I discuss a collection of family photos I obtained from my second cousins in 2016, focusing on a few of historical significance and of personal interest.
In a post I have long intended to write, I discuss another collection of family ephemera, photos in this instance, I obtained in 2016 from my German second cousin, Margarita Vilgertshofer, née Bruck. This post harkens back and tiers off two posts I wrote that year, Posts 32 and 33. I refer readers to those earlier publications for the details describing how through a serious bit of detecting I was able to track down Margarita and her brother Antonio to Bavaria, Germany (Figure 1) though both were born in Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain.
Through circumstances I’m still unclear about, a marginal insertion on Antonio’s 1946 birth certificate notes when and where he was married in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1982. (Figure 2) I’ve previously found vital certificates for ancestors where notations on where and when vital events in their lives, typically divorces, took place. What makes this notation so unique and inexplicable is that the birth certificate is from a municipal office in Spain, but the marriage took place in Germany. How and why this information was conveyed to Spain puzzles me.
In a similar vein, the most unusual case I’ve come across of vital data for an ancestor having been transmitted from one country to another is in the instance of one of my father’s first cousins, Heinz Loewenstein. I’ve written extensively about him. He was born in the Free City of Danzig in 1905, got married there in 1931, immigrated with his wife to Palestine in the 1930s, enlisted in the English Army’s Pioneer Corps, was captured during the Battle of Greece in 1941, escaped from German stalags multiple times but always recaptured, then eventually was liberated and returned to Palestine following WWII. He and his wife divorced in Palestine or Israel, and somehow this vital data was illegibly noted in the margin of his marriage certificate from a record presumably obtained by the Federal Republic of Germany (i.e., the Free State of Danzig ceased to exist following the start of WWII and Germany’s invasion of Poland and Danzig in 1939). (Figure 3) Knowing what meticulous record keepers the Germans are may explain why this information was recorded but how the Germans obtained it is the more curious question.
Returning to the subject at hand, I want to discuss several of the more unique pictures I found among my second cousin’s large collection of images. Knowing that perusing other families’ photos can be tedious, I will merely highlight a few of historic significance plus several of personal interest.
The most historically significant photo is one taken in Doorn, Netherlands showing Germany’s last Kaiser, Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Figure 4) The circumstances that resulted in the Kaiser being in Doorn is that following Germany’s defeat during WWI, he abdicated the German throne and went into exile in the Netherlands. The picture includes the Kaiser’s second wife, Empress Hermine of Germany (née Reuß zu Greiz), her daughter by her first marriage, and his retinue in exile. In the center of this group is an unidentified Bruck family member. This photograph was the subject of Post 65, and at the time I wrote that post I had no idea who the family member was.
I only learned the identity of the ancestor by marriage when I obtained a captioned copy of the identical photo from an altogether different source. I discussed this in Post 100. (Figure 5) Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (1884-1963), the second wife of my accomplished Bruck relative from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland], Dr. Walther Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), is standing amidst Kaiser Wilhelm II and his entourage. Dr. Bruck was the Kaiser’s wife’s dentist and likely also the Kaiser’s dentist. How precisely this worked with the Kaiser being in Berlin, later in Doorn, and Dr. Bruck being in Breslau is unclear.
Another historically noteworthy photo shows the Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Figure 6) in the flower school of my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (1866-1942) (Figure 7) in Berlin when she visited it on the 15th of October 1915. The Duchess was the last German Crown Princess and Crown Princess of Prussia as the wife of Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, the son of Wilhelm II. My great aunt Franziska wrote two books featuring the elegant Ikebana-style floral wreaths and bouquets she specialized in, and, according to family lore, is reputed to have put together floral arrangements for the royal family.
Another photo among my cousin’s photo array, which crosses the line between historically noteworthy and personally interesting, shows Margarita’s mother working in Franziska’s flower school and shop in Berlin. (Figure 8) While I knew from her wedding certificate that my beloved Aunt Susanne, later murdered in Auschwitz, had been a managing director in Franziska’s flower shop, I’d never known any other family members who’d worked there.
In any case, the photos discussed above document my family’s personal relationship with Germany’s last royal family.
Further evidence of the Kaiser’s wife’s connection to my Bruck family can be found in Dr. Bruck’s Breslau house guest book, a scan of which I have, which she signed when she visited him in Breslau on the 23rd of April 1923 (Figures 9a-b), presumably to have her teeth worked on. Yet more evidence of the two families’ bond can be found in a signed children’s book that Princess Hermine Reuß gave to Dr. Bruck and his wife upon the birth of their second daughter Renate (Figures 10a-b). Their first daughter Hermine, named after the Princess, unfortunately died shortly after her birth.
My cousin Margarita’s photo collection includes some unique photos of family members. One of the most unusual is of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) in his WWI military attire. (Figure 11) My uncle Fedor has been the subject of a few posts (see Posts 17 & 31) for several reasons. Firstly, he was one of around only 5,000 Jews who survived in Germany during WWII. Secondly, he was assigned to Hitler’s dentist’s surviving dental office following the war. Thirdly, because of his pre-war friendship with one of Hitler’s dentist’s dental assistants, he had knowledge of Hitler’s fate at the end of the war. Warned by the Americans this knowledge could get him kidnapped by the Russians, he fled Berlin. For their part, the Russians were anxious to uphold the specter of Hitler as a surviving “boogeyman” who could return at any moment to again terrorize the world. The photo of my uncle in his military uniform was taken in a studio, though I know from a surviving postcard that during WWI my uncle was based on the Eastern Front in what is today the Ukraine which was then part of Russia.
A brief related anecdote. My uncle’s wife, Verena Brook, née Dick (1920-2007), was 25 years his junior. Upon my uncle’s death in 1982, my aunt offered me some of my uncle’s memorabilia. One of the more unusual items she offered, which in retrospect I should have accepted, was the section of my uncle’s WWI uniform he’d cut out where a bullet had penetrated and he’d been wounded. I suspect I could have used this for DNA analysis.
Moving on to other unique family photos.
One photo I particularly fancy shows Margarita and Antonio’s grandfather, my great uncle Wilhelm Bruck (1872-1952) in 1889. He is standing alongside a so-called Penny-farthing, an early type of bicycle. (Figure 12) It was popular during the 1870s and 1880s, with its large front wheel that provided for high speeds on account of it traveling a large distance for every rotation of the wheel. Because the bicycle had solid rubber tires the only shock absorption was in the saddle.
In multiple earlier posts, I’ve discussed the hotel, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, my family owned in Ratibor [today: Raciborz, Poland] for three generations, from roughly 1850 to around 1925. Several historic photos showing a partial view of the hotel, then located on Oderstrasse, exist. However, among my cousin’s collection is the only known photo of the front entrance of the family establishment. (Figure 13)
The Bruck’s hotel was originally purchased by Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), my great-great grandfather. The second-generation owner of the hotel was Fedor Bruck, my great-grandfather after whom my uncle Fedor Bruck was named. Though I previously had a picture of my great-grandfather, two additional photos of him survive in Margarita’s albums, including one in which he is most fashionably dressed in the finest attire of the day. (Figure 14)
Many years ago before I started doing ancestral research I visited the Mormon Church’s FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. Archived in the library’s stacks was a pretentiously titled book on my family, entitled “A Thousand Year History of the Bruck Family.” I’ve subsequently obtained a more mundanely named copy, “The Bruck Family: A Historical Sketch.” The book was written by Alfred Julius Bruck, who’d anglicized his name to “Brook” upon his arrival in England. Included in Margarita’s photos is one of Alfred Bruck and his wife, Rosie. (Figure 15) Other pictures confirm they visited Margarita and her family in Munich.
Expectedly there are many pictures of Margarita’s family within her collection, many of them very endearing. (Figure 16) The circumstances that led Margarita and her brother Antonio to having been born in Spain is because her grandfather, Wilhelm Bruck, worked in Spain in the early 20th century on the installation of the first electric lines in Barcelona. While he would return to Germany following the completion of his contractual obligations, following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, his connections in Spain permitted him to immigrate there. Additionally, both of Wilhelm & Antonie Bruck’s two children, Edgar and Eva (Figure 17), were born there so retained Spanish citizenship.
There is an intriguing picture that speaks to the aristocratic lifestyle my great aunt and uncle led in Spain showing Edgar being fed by a wetnurse. (Figure 18) During their residence in Barcelona, Wilhelm and Antonie appear to have lived in Tibidabo, the highest neighborhood in the city. (Figure 19)
Intriguingly there are a few pictures of my immediate family among Margarita’s photos I was previously aware of. One is a cabinet card of my uncle Fedor, my aunt Susanne, and my father Otto as children. (Figure 20) Another is my aunt Susanne and her two cousins, Edgar and Eva, along with a group of other actors who performed together. (Figure 21)
A riveting picture in the collection, reflective of the horrific toll of WWI, was presumably taken at a recuperative center after the war. (Figure 22) Besides medical staff, it presumably shows wounded soldiers who had one of their limbs amputated. Since I recognize no one in the photo I’m uncertain why this picture is in Margarita’s collection.
Note: In this post, I use a passage from the diary of one of my distant Bruck relatives to examine the foundations of liberal and nationalist student fraternities founded in Germany, Austria, and Chile during the 19th century, and the historic and social context behind their development.
I’ve periodically written about family ephemera I’ve accessed through near or distant relatives, most recently in Post 167 where I discussed copies of photographs I obtained from my fourth cousin Tom Brook that he inherited from his father Casper Bruck (i.e., the Bruck surname was anglicized upon our families’ respective arrivals in England and America). Often these keepsakes and souvenirs offer fascinating glimpses into the past and provide visual images of family members who were at times involved in extraordinary historical adventures or tragic events. And occasionally, I even recognize a physical resemblance or attribute passed down through the generations. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the years scrutinizing old photographs looking for elusive clues hidden in these pictures; sometimes I even learn things from what’s not in the images.
Let me provide some context for the current post, which also involves some family memorabilia, in this instance a family diary. Honestly, nothing beats a detailed memoir for a peek into people who populate one’s ancestral tree. Though by no means unique to my family nor universally true, the resolute moral fiber some of my ancestors exhibited, as reflected in their stories, stands in stark contrast to what I see around me today.
The diary or memoir in question was written in German by Bertha Jacobson, née Bruck (1873-1957) (Figure 1), for her granddaughter, Maria Jacobson (1933-2022). Bertha was my second cousin two times removed and Maria was my fourth cousin. While irrelevant, Bertha’s birth and death years correspond precisely with the birth and death years of my own grandmother, Else Bruck, née Berliner (1873-1957). Regrettably, my own grandmother left me no such memoir. Then again, Bertha was much closer to Maria than I was to my grandmother, who also survived the Holocaust and eventually made her way to America. Upon Maria’s parents’ departure from Berlin, Maria was left in the temporary care of her grandmother there, both of whom ultimately escaped and made their way to America via Cuba.
Maria discovered her grandmother’s memoir when she was cleaning out her aunt’s cluttered apartment following her aunt’s death. Amidst the disarray, Maria was lucky to stumble on the diary. I knew Maria (Figure 2) and was aware of her grandmother’s diary. Because it is typewritten in German, which I don’t speak, and because Maria regularly remarked how challenging it was to decipher and comprehend the marginal and inserted handwritten notes and who precisely was being discussed, I never requested a copy. Regardless, shortly before her death Maria donated the diary to the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) in New York, along with other family papers.
Fast forward. Within the last year, Helen Winter, née Renshaw (Figure 3), another of my fourth cousins, living in Wolverhampton, England, contacted me through my blog. I’ve discussed her in multiple recent posts. Upon determining Helen is more closely related to Maria and Bertha than me, I mentioned to her in passing Bertha’s memoir. Uncertain as to the conditions under which Maria had donated the diary to the LBI, given Maria’s proclivity towards privacy in matters of family, I suggested Helen might want to check with them as to its accessibility. As it turns out, the memoir was publicly available and Helen was able to obtain a copy. Ever since, Helen has been involved in the challenging task of translating the document.
Some brief background about Helen. She is a retired lawyer, living as mentioned in England. Helen continues to be involved in some legal work but has a passion for studying and writing about our mutual ancestors relying in large part on her vast collection of family ephemera. Beyond having a large body of materials to draw upon, Helen understands German. Her grandfather once suggested she should become a translator, at which in my humble opinion she would have been excellent, though it was suggested more disparagingly in the vein that this was “a suitable job for a woman.” Suffice it to say Helen is doing an amazing job deciphering Bertha’s memoir. Thanks to her decryption, I’m discovering things about our ancestors I never had any expectation of and learning about some aspects of European history I knew little or nothing about.
To reiterate something I’ve periodically emphasized. I make no claim that my lineage is any more exceptional than those of readers, only that my family’s surviving documents, photos, etc. provide an opportunity to investigate my ancestors and more importantly examine the social and historical context in which they lived. Naturally, this transcends my own family and might be of passing interest to people who are unrelated to me.
I recall more than ten years ago giving a translated talk at the museum in Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland (German: Tiegenhof), the town formerly in the Free City of Danzig where my father had his dental practice between 1932 and 1937. A Jewish audience member was astonished that seven albums of my father’s photos survive when, but a few scant pictures of his ancestors exist. This is typical among descendants of Jewish victims or survivors of the Holocaust. My father’s pictures have provided me with a trove of individuals and topics to study.
As Helen progresses in her translation, I will periodically discuss parts that are of passing interest. Before beginning, let me provide some temporal context as to the estimated date of the diary. While Bertha Bruck does not state when she started writing her memoirs, she provides one telling clue. She mentions her husband’s sister, Martha Jacobson, née Zamorÿ, born on the 15th of June 1852, saying she was 84 and in ill health at the time, suggesting she suffered from dementia; Bertha remarked she hoped not to wind up like her. Chronologically, this would suggest she started writing the memoir in around 1936. One ancestry.com reference, however, places Martha’s death circa 1935, so possibly Bertha erred as to her sister-in-law’s age. Regardless, the memoir was likely begun in 1935 or 1936 following Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933 and before Bertha’s escape to America.
The passage that is the focus of this post opens the door to discussing the origin of so-called “Burschenschaften,” liberal and nationalist student fraternities founded in Germany, Austria, and, of all places, Chile in the 19th century; all I’ll say about the connection of these fraternities to Chile is it’s due to the German cultural influence in the country at the time.
The relevant quotation from Bertha’s memoir relates to Bertha’s grandfather and Helen’s great-great-grandfather, Jonas Bruck (1843-1911) (Figure 4), our nearest common relative. I’ve previously written about Jonas. Because of the cataclysmic and destructive events associated with WWII and the ensuing Communist era, there are few tombs of my Jewish ancestors that survive, that of Jonas and his accomplished son, Dr. Julius Bruck, being exceptions. Both Jonas and Julius along with their respective wives are entombed in Wrocław, Poland (German: Breslau) in a restored monument in the former Jewish cemetery. (Figure 5)
“With regard to those champagne lunches with the grandparents, I remember Grandfather’s conversation, which was so lively, and almost uninterrupted. I clearly remember one story. In about the year 1831, Grandfather went to Jena, as a young student. The first place one had to go was Weimar. When the crowd of young students appeared before his house on Frauenplan [Square], Goethe had already undressed. However, he came to the window—and he had attached a row of medals to his woolen nightshirt. That the man of the greatest intellect and highest art in the country should be motivated, at all, by the human littleness of earthly vanity, is such a thing as the most understanding person can hardly speak of it; his contemporary and very congenial friend, Wilhelm von Humboldt, speaks regretfully in his letters to his wife of Goethe’s ‘little weakness.’ It distressed Humboldt on behalf of this great man who was his friend, that he had asked him to obtain an order for him. While this is certainly not part of my own memories, but, because I foresee that my descendants will probably not be able to provide themselves with German education, I mention Humboldt. From his wise standing above [material] things, from his ability to, very quickly, derive a standpoint beyond the individual’s, from his personal experience. I have so often derived consolation and peace—at a great distance, of course! I hope that, if my descendants, also go into scientific oursuits, they may also still retain understanding/appreciation of the world of Goethe, Humboldt, and others, men who could only possibly have originated from Germany. It’s for this reason I have made this digression.”
There’s a lot to unpack in this brief recollection. Without Helen’s intercession, who is better versed in Prussian and German history, some aspects of Bertha’s diary would be difficult for me to make sense of.
Jonas Bruck’s visit to Jena appears to have been related to the fact that, like his sons, he was a Burschenschaftler, a member of a Studentenverbindungen, traditional student associations called Burschenschaften. The very first one, the so-called Urburschenschaft (“original Burschenschaft”), was founded on 12 June 1815 at Jena. Ergo, Jonas’ visit to the founding city.
Burschenschaften student organizations started as an expression of the new nationalism prevalent in post-Napoleonic Europe after the Napoleonic Wars of 1803 to 1815. Prussia, the largest of the Germanic states, had been significantly embarrassed during the Napoleonic era, particularly after the disastrous Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806, where their army was decisively defeated by Napoleon. This led to major territorial losses and a humiliating peace treaty that left them severely weakened and under French influence; this event exposed Prussia’s military inadequacies and forced them to undergo significant reforms to regain their standing on the European stage.
Following its founding in 1815 at the University of Jena, the Burschenschaft movement spread all over Germany. The early student groups were egalitarian and liberal and favored the political unification of Germany. A significant number of the Burschenschaften’s early members were students who had taken part in the German wars of liberation against the Napoleonic occupation of Germany.
The Burschenschaften participated in student demonstrations at the Wartburg Festival in October 1817, which was followed in March 1819 by the assassination of August von Kotzebue, a German writer who served the Russian tsar, by the nationalistic Burschenschaftler Karl Sand. These events sufficiently alarmed the major German states for them to pass the Carlsbad Decrees in 1819, which effectively provided for the suppression of the Burschenschaften.
The states represented at the meeting in Carlsbad were Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Mecklenburg, Hanover, Wurttemberg, Nassau, Baden, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, and electoral Hesse. The occasion of the meeting was the desire of the Austrian foreign minister Klemens, Prince von Metternich, to take advantage of the concern of the recent revolutionary events, particularly the murder of August Kotzebue, to persuade the German governments to jointly suppress the liberal and nationalistic tendencies within their states.
Following passage of the Carlsbad Decrees, the clubs went underground until 1848, when they actively participated in the German Revolution. The latter resulted in the short-lived German Empire (1848-1849), the ultimately failed proto state which attempted to unify the German states within the German Confederation to create a German nation-state.
As an aside, the German Empire of 1848-1849 is not to be confused with the German nation-state that existed from 1871 to 1918. The latter, also referred to as Imperial Germany, the Second Reich, or simply Germany, was the German Reich that lasted from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the November Revolution in 1918. It’s ending following the defeat of Imperial Germany in WWI marked the change in the form of government from a monarchy to a republic.
The Burschenschaften’s motto was “Ehre, Freiheit, Vaterland,” or “Honor, Freedom, Fatherland.” As mentioned, its goals included the political unification of Germany; the abolishment of Germany’s smaller states; improving student life; and increasing patriotism. After the establishment of the German Empire in 1871, the student associations faced a crisis, as their main political objective had been realized to some extent, namely, German unification.
In the 1880s, a renaissance movement, Reformburschenschaften, arose and many new Burschenschaften were founded. It was also during this time until the 1890s when the members turned increasingly anti-Semitic with many believing that Jews hampered the unification of Germany. Some members resigned in protest following the adoption at an Eisenach meeting declaring that Burschenschaft “have no Jewish members and do not plan to have any in the future.”
It is fascinating that the German nationalism of 1848 that was based upon liberal values changed during the German Empire (1871-1918) into German nationalism based upon Prussian authoritarianism, Prussia being the largest and most dominant of the former German states. Their supporters were conservative, reactionary, anti-Catholic, anti-liberal, anti-socialist, and anti-Semitic in nature.
The Reformburschenschaften were dissolved by the Nazi regime in 1935/36. In West Germany, the Burschenschaften were re-established in the 1950s but no longer played a significant role in German politics. The Burschenschaften faced a renewed crisis in the 1960s and 1970s as the German student movement of that period trended more towards the left. Today, about 160 Burschenschaften exist in Germany, Austria, and Chile that range from progressive to nationalistic.
Bertha mentions that Jonas Bruck and his fellow Burschenschaftler showed up outside the home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who lived in Weimar and was by then an elderly man. Weimar is only about 23 miles from Jena, and visiting Goethe’s hometown was likely to be a necessary pilgrimage point for students. Both Jena and Weimar were once part of the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar (Figure 6) and are today located in the German state of Thuringia. (Figure 7)
Goethe is considered to have been a “polymath,” an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. In American history Benjamin Franklin is considered one of the foremost polymaths because he was a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, and political philosopher, as well as one of the Founding Fathers.
Goethe is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day. It’s very telling that Bertha Bruck digressed to acknowledge Goethe and his friend, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), German philosopher and linguist, and opine that they could only have originated in Germany and express the hope that her descendants would retain an appreciation and understanding of their world.
Absurdly, as I was reading Bertha’s telling of Goethe showing up at his window in a nightshirt, I couldn’t dispel the image of Ebenezer Scrooge wearing his night garment being visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to come. Regardless, this passage also caught my attention because of the further absurdity of Goethe appearing at his window wearing his nightshirt bedecked with a sash of medals and awards. According to Bertha’s retelling, Humboldt was embarrassed on behalf of his friend that he had once asked him to obtain an unearned Austrian medal for him.
I forwarded this section of Bertha’s memoirs to my doctor friend from Köpenick, Berlin, Dr. Tilo Wahl (Figure 8), whom I introduced to readers in Post 99 and whose interest in so-called “phaleristics” I discussed there. This is an auxiliary science of history and numismatics which studies orders, fraternities, and award items, such as medals, ribbons, and other decorations. I thought Tilo might be interested that the famous Goethe too was interested in these. Tilo responded telling me that it was well known that Goethe had an interest in orders and medals. He was apparently involved in designing the Saxe-Weimar house order, the “vom Weißen Falken” (white falcon). (Figure 9) The first examples were made by jewelers in Goethe’s hometown of Frankfurt. He was also a great collector of coins.
I mentioned above that at least one of Jonas Bruck’s sons, Friedrich Felix Bruck (1843-1911), was also a Burschenschaftler. If the name sounds familiar it’s because he was Tom Brook’s great-grandfather whom I discussed in Post 167. I also previously wrote that Helen possesses a large collection of family ephemera. This includes a 25th anniversary yearbook, so to speak, covering 1848 to 1873, of a student association Friedrich Felix Bruck was a member of in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] called “Arminia.” (Figure 10) The expensively produced printing includes photos of all its presumed members, including Felix Bruck (Figure 11), sporting a delightful assortment of smoking and Baker boy caps and a handsome array of whiskers.
Helen delved into the derivation of the name of Felix’s student association since the only reference I could find to “Arminia” was to Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609); the latter was a Dutch Reformed minister and theologian during the Protestant Reformation period whose views became the basis of Arminianism and the Dutch Remonstrant movement. He is not, however, the source name of Felix’s student association.
As Helen explained, many nationalistic student associations in Germany took the name “Arminius,” sometimes translated as “Hermann.” This was in honor of Arminius, a Germanic warrior chieftain of the so-called Cherusci, a Germanic tribe inhabiting the northwestern German plains and forests in the Weser River area. During the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D., also called the Varus Disaster, today located in the German state of Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany (see Figure 7, “Nedersachsen”), Arminius led an alliance of German tribes that ambushed three Roman legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus and his auxiliaries. What allowed Arminius to methodically outfox the Romans and anticipate their tactical response during the Battle was that he had received a Roman military education on account of his Roman citizenship. In any case, in the 19th century Arminius was seen as a hero of Germanic independence, and since the inception of the Burschenschaften student associations in 1815 they were called “Arminian.”
Followers will have observed a noticeable drift in this post away from Bertha Bruck’s actual words to an examination of the historical and social context in which my ancestors lived. I’ve concluded this may be of broader interest to readers.
REFERENCES
Arminia. (2021 April 17). In German Wikipedia.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminia
Arminius. (2025 January 6) In Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. (2024 December 29) In Wikipedia.
Note: This post is inspired by a German action-thriller I recently streamed on Netflix in which the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde cemetery in the eastern part of Berlin is shown; this is where one of my great aunts happens to be buried. Investigating further, I learned a little about the importance of this cemetery in the former German Democratic Republic or East Germany and some of the important socialist and communist personages interred here.
I recently finished streaming a German action-thriller comedy series entitled “Kleo.” It follows the revenge journey of a former East German Stasi assassin named Kleo Straub. According to the storyline, in 1987, after successfully assassinating a double agent in a West Berlin club, Kleo is falsely imprisoned for treason by her agency. When she is released after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, she plans her revenge on the conspirators who framed her, using her considerable skills as a trained assassin.
While the story is not true, it is based on real history. Fundamentally, it is historical fiction, with artistic license used to embellish real figures, politics, and history. To provide an authentic setting for the spy show, the show was filmed in different locations in Germany and Serbia.
As I will further explain, one scene in an episode of the first season was filmed in the former eastern part of Berlin and was immediately recognizable to me. This was very surprising since I claim no specific or even general knowledge of the geographic layout of Berlin, notwithstanding my family’s deeply rooted connection to this city but particularly because the landscape has been vastly altered from prewar times due to heavy Allied bombing during the war.
One historic personality who figures as a major antagonist in the first season is Erich Mielke (1907-2000). Mielke was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatsicherheit – MfS), better known as the Stasi, from 1957 until shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Dubbed “The Master of Fear” (German: der Meister der Angst) by the West German press, Mielke was one of the most powerful and most hated men in East Germany.
Wikipedia describes his role following his return to Germany from the Soviet Union after WWII as follows: “Following the end of World War II in 1945, Mielke returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany, which he helped organize into a Marxist–Leninist satellite state under the Socialist Unity Party (SED). The Stasi under Mielke has been called by historian Edward Peterson the ‘most pervasive police state apparatus ever to exist on German soil.’ During the 1950s and 1960s, Mielke led the process of forcibly forming collectivized farms from East Germany’s family-owned farms, which sent a flood of refugees to West Germany. In response, Mielke oversaw the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall and co-signed standing orders for the Border Guards to use lethal force against all East Germans who attempted to commit ‘desertion of the Republic’.”
Wikipedia goes on to further describe his fate following German reunification: “After German reunification in 1990, Mielke was prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for the 1931 policemen’s murders. A second murder trial for the 260 killings of defectors at the Inner German border was adjourned after Mielke was ruled not mentally competent to stand trial. Mielke was also charged, but never tried, with ordering two 1981 terrorist attacks by the Baader-Meinhof Group against United States military personnel in West Germany. Released from incarceration early due to ill health and senile dementia in 1995, Mielke died in a Berlin nursing home in 2000.”
According to the plot line in the German action-thriller, Kleo, suspecting Mielke, the former head of the Stasi, of a role in her indictment on treason cleverly orchestrates the now-imprisoned chief’s poisoning in Season 1, Episode 4. Her intent is not to kill him, but rather have him transported to a hospital where she can implausibly infiltrate the hospital, disguise herself as a nurse, and interrogate him. Suffice it to say, things go awry, and she winds up killing Mielke.
In Episode 6, Mielke’s State funeral takes place at the realZentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde cemetery in the eastern part of Berlin, and is presided over by another historic personality, Erich Honecker’s wife, Margot Honecker (1927-2016). Mielke is, in fact, buried in the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde.
Erich Honecker (1912-1989) was a real German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic, East Germany, from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He was the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the National Defence Council; in 1976, he became Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As leader of East Germany, Honecker was viewed as a dictator. During his leadership, the country had close ties with the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country.
As Cold War tensions eased in the late 1980s with the advent of perestroika and glasnost, the liberal reforms introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Honecker refused to make any fundamental changes to the East German political system. He continued to maintain a hardline attitude modeled on the inflexible regimes of North Korea, Cuba, and Romania. Honecker was eventually forced to resign by the SED Politburo in October 1989 to improve the government’s public image, an effort that ultimately failed and resulted in the collapse of the entire regime the following month.
Following German reunification in 1990, Honecker sought asylum in the Chilean Embassy in Moscow, but was extradited back to Germany in 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, to stand trial for human rights abuses in East Germany. Suffering from terminal liver cancer, however, the trial was abandoned, and Honecker was allowed to rejoin his family in exile in Chile, where he died in May 1994. Honecker is buried in the central cemetery in Santiago, not in the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde in Berlin.
A brief digression for context as to why I’m writing this post. My father customarily referred to family and acquaintances using sobriquets, often slightly pejorative ones. In French, the language we spoke at home when I was growing up, he called one of his aunts living in East Berlin during the Cold War “la Communiste,” the Communist. I never met her. I can no longer recall exactly when I learned her real name was Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970) (Figure 1), but I probably heard it from my German now-deceased older first cousin. This may also have coincided with when I learned that her surviving personal papers are archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau. (Figure 2) I discussed in Post 15 having visited and photographed Elsbeth’s personal papers (Figure 3) in 2014. I visited her tomb in 2012, located in none other than the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichfelde (Figure 3) in the Lichtenberg borough of Berlin. (Figure 4)
Let me provide some brief history about this cemetery. Beginning in 1900, with the burial of Wilhelm Liebknecht, founder of the Socialist Democratic Party (SPD), the cemetery became the resting place for many of the leaders and activists of Germany’s social democratic, socialist and communist movements. In 1919, the coffins of Karl Liebknecht (son of Wilhelm Liebknecht) and Rosa Luxemburg, co-founders of the Communist Party of Germany, were buried in a mass grave in a remote section of the cemetery.
Notwithstanding a 2009 Charité autopsy report casting doubt on whether Rosa Luxemberg’s remains were ever buried there, to this day a grave commemorating her and nine other foremost socialist leaders surrounds the central garden roundel at the cemetery. The Charité, incidentally, is Europe’s largest university hospital, affiliated with Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. And Humboldt University it so happens is where my uncle Professor Dr. Franz Müller (Figure 5), husband of my aunt Suzanne Müller, nee Bruck, murdered in Auschwitz, taught until the Nazis came to power in 1933 and revoked his teaching credentials.
The so-called “Monument to the Revolution” was erected in front of the mass grave where the coffins of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had been interred in 1919. It was destroyed by the National Socialists in January 1935. The division of Berlin following the Second World War caused the cemetery to be within the borders of East Berlin, where it was used to bury East German (GDR) leaders.
The current “Memorial to the Socialists” (German: Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten) was inaugurated in 1951. Although located some distance from the site once occupied by the 1926 Monument to the Revolution, the 1951 memorial was planned as its “moral successor” and as the central memorial site for East Germany’s Socialists, Communists and anti-fascist fighters.
The 1951 Memorial to the Socialists consists of a central garden roundel (Figure 6) surrounded by a semi-circular brick wall. (Figure 7) The central garden roundel is dominated by a porphyry stele or obelisk with the words Die Toten mahnen uns (English: The dead remind us), which is surrounded by 10 graves commemorating foremost socialist leaders, including Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. (Figure 8) Set into the semi-circular brick wall are gravestones and niches with the urns of distinguished Socialists and Communists, as well as a large red marble tablet bearing the names of 327 men and women who gave their lives in the cause of fighting the National Socialists between 1933 and 1945.
Of more personal interest is the area immediately behind the semi-circular brick wall of the Memorial to the Socialists, referred to as the Pergolenweg Ehrengraben (i.e. “tombs of honor”) section of the cemetery. Here are buried the urns of Socialists, Communists and anti-fascist fighters of merit who were considered distinguished enough by the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany to rest in the vicinity of the foremost party leaders yet not as eminent as to entitle them to a grave in the Memorial to the Socialists itself. Until 1989, decisions whether a person should be buried in the Memorial to the Socialists or the adjacent Pergolenweg section of the cemetery rested solely with the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, and many honored this way were also given a state funeral.
Previously unknown to me is that my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck’s headstone is in the Pergolenweg section of the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde. (Figure 9) My great-aunt’s placement in this section of the cemetery confirms what I already knew about her, namely, that Elsbeth was a very high-ranking apparatchik in the former GDR government, that’s to say, a prominent member of the Communist Party apparat or administrative system. Whether she was given a state funeral upon her death in 1970 is unknown to me.
Another thing that attests to the high esteem with which Elsbeth was regarded within the former GDR is an award she received. She was given the “Vaterländischer Verdienstorden in Silber,” the “Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver,” for “special services to the state and to the society.” This order survives with Elsbeth’s personal papers at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau. (Figure 10)
Fascinatingly, people buried in the Pergolenweg section could also have the urns of up to three family members buried with them. Amusingly, all this makes me wonder whether I could be buried alongside my great aunt. I presume this tradition ended with the demise of the GDR but it’s still entertaining to contemplate.
REFERENCES
Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde: Der Pergolenweg. Gedenkstatte der Sozialisten, Table 12. Tafel 12
Note: In this post, I discuss the contents of a collection of photographs shared with me by one of my fourth cousins, Tom Brook. They shed light on some of our mutual ancestors and give a unique glimpse into his father’s WWII deployments, primarily in Egypt, Libya, and India.
Periodically a relative or acquaintance will share with me their collection of family photos or memorabilia. Acknowledging that some readers will consider this akin to a friend inflicting their vacation photos on you, to me this is like a treasure hunt particularly when the pictures are unlabeled and I’m able to identify the subjects through logical deduction or by comparison to labeled images. Frequently, knowing the owner’s ancestral lineage helps; if they’re related to me, I’m often able to identify their ancestors because of my familiarity with our family tree.
On other occasions, the photo collections provide historic glimpses of well-known events or places or, alternatively, off-the-beat locations. It is worth remembering that World War II was a global conflict that took soldiers to often remote spots around the world. In the case of my own father’s surviving photos of his time in the French Foreign Legion while stationed in North Africa, mostly in Algeria, I’ve been told they’re unique. I would say the same regarding the collection I’m about to discuss.
My wife Ann and I recently traveled to New York to meet my fourth cousin Tom Brook and his husband Sam Wahl. (Figure 1) Beyond the fact we’d never previously met, and I was curious to make their acquaintance, Tom had mentioned his father Casper Bruck’s album of photos which he’d expressed an interest in showing me. This is an assemblage I was particularly intrigued to peruse given his family’s connection to Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] where multiple of my own ancestors also hail from. Some of our most accomplished mutual ancestors come from Breslau, several of whom are buried in the still-existing Old Jewish Cemetery [Polish: Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu]. (Figure 2) Relevantly, both of our families changed their surname to “Brook” upon their arrival in Anglo-Saxon countries.
I previously introduced Tom Brook to readers in Post 143 when I discussed his role as one of the first reporters on the scene after John Lennon was shot in December 1980 outside The Dakota Building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, an event he is invariably asked about on milestone anniversaries of this tragic event. Like then, Tom still works for the BBC as the host of a weekly show called “Talking Movies,” where he reviews new releases and interviews actors.
Like other cousins I’ve discovered around the world, Tom found me through my blog when he asked if we are related. As I happened to have him in my ancestral tree, though with no details, I explained we are fourth cousins. Serendipitously, I was more recently contacted by Tom’s second cousin from Wolverhampton, England, Helen Winter, née Renshaw (Figure 3), whom I’ve previously mentioned to readers as the source of lots of family ephemera. While Helen and Tom have never linked up, Helen’s older sister Anna Renshaw clearly recalls meeting him as a child in England where both grew up. As further evidence of my ancestral connection to Tom, my fourth cousin twins (Figure 4) from Sydney, Australia, also born in England, whom I mirthfully refer to as “my movie star cousins,” are Tom’s third cousins.
In any case, during our recent encounter in New York Tom showed me his father’s photo album along with an unusually decorated cigar box that belonged to one of his ancestors, likely his great-grandfather (Figure 5); a little more on this box below. Tom allowed me to borrow the album so I could duplicate the photographs for later study. This has been invaluable because with Helen Winter’s help, together we’ve managed to identify the subjects in a few images that Tom specifically wondered about. Also, photos detailing Casper Bruck’s deployment during the war capture rare images of a few places that are today household names.
In this post, I’ll discuss a few family photos but will mostly highlight places where Casper was deployed during the war; I think this will be of broader interest to my audience. These images provide an opportunity to discuss what was going on in the war and its immediate aftermath at the time Casper took his photographs.
Given that the album belonged to Tom’s father, not unexpectedly, most images show Casper and his immediate family at various stages of their lives. In terms of family photos, I’ll address mostly those whose subjects were unknown to Tom.
One of the oldest photos in Tom’s collection is an undated Daguerreotype-like image of a youngish man with three children (Figure 6); as readers can make out, the figures are darkly illuminated. Helen Winter and I were able to determine this is Tom’s great-grandfather, Felix Friedrich Bruck (1843-1911) and his three children, Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960), Margot Giles, née Bruck (1879-1949), and Werner Friedrich August Bruck (1880-1945). Eberhard Bruck and Werner Bruck are, respectively, Helen Winter and Tom Brook’s grandfathers as young children. Margot, the only daughter, is distinguishable because she is holding a doll. A later photo dated 1930 shows Eberhard Bruck and his daughter, also named Margot (1917-1985), and Werner Bruck (Figure 7); Margot is Helen Winter’s mother.
The youngest of Felix Bruck’s children, Werner Bruck was born on the 23rd of August 1880, and his mother, Anna Elise Bruck, née Prausnitz (1853-1880) died a week later, perhaps a result of childbearing complications. Obviously, the Daguerreotype-like picture, when Werner appears to be only a year or two old, does not include his mother. The picture clearly captures the weight of her death on the family, where all look immeasurably sad. Elsewhere among Tom’s photos is a stand-alone picture of his great-grandmother. (Figure 8)
Felix Bruck never remarried. Elsewhere in Tom’s album are a few untitled pictures of him later in life where he is portlier and more difficult to recognize compared to when he was younger. (Figures 9-10) After studying the setting and comparing the photos to similar ones among Helen’s ephemera, there is no doubt the photos depict Felix. Margot Bruck was the first of his children to bear him a grandchild, Otto Giles (1904-1980), and a photo survives of Otto as a child seated on his grandfather’s lap in his study. (Figure 11)
The surviving photos taken in Felix’s study are particularly intriguing to me. Hanging on the wall above his desk are portraits of unidentified individuals I’m almost certain depict older Bruck ancestors, possibly Felix’s grandparents. (Figure 12) Unfortunately, I have no portraits to compare them against. Helen’s collection of photos includes a comparable one of Felix seated in his study with his daughter Margot standing aside him with those same portraits visible. (Figure 13)
Beyond the pictures of Tom’s great-grandparents, Tom’s album includes pictures of his grandparents (Figure 14), parents (Figure 15-16), aunt and uncle (Figure 17), and cousins. Apart from casual family acquaintances, Helen and I have been able to identify most of the subjects. A particularly endearing photo was taken in 1928 of Casper with his younger brother Peter. (Figure 18)
Let me shift now to Casper Bruck’s intriguing wartime images.
The individual pages in Casper photo album typically note the year(s) and place(s) the pictures were taken. Casper Bruck’s album includes a page of photos taken in El Alamein, Egypt, and in Benghazi and Tripoli, Libya in 1942-43. El Alamein is a town located on the Mediterranean Sea 66 miles west of Alexandria, Egypt, while Benghazi and Tripoli are in Libya further west but also along the Mediterranean. A little historic context is useful to understand Casper’s pictures.
The Second Battle of El Alamein was fought near the western frontier of Egypt between the 23rd of October and the 4th of November 1942. El Alamein was the climax and turning point of the North African campaign during WWII and the beginning of the end of the Western Desert Campaign. The Axis army of Germany and Italy suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of the British Eighth Army that prevented them from penetrating into Egypt. This kept the Suez Canal in Allied hands and prevented the full-scale invasion and seizure of the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields.
In a 13-day battle the Axis Panzerarmee Afrika was crushed and forced to retreat from Egypt and Libya to the borders of Tunisia. The Axis fought a defensive campaign in Tunisia into 1943. Although they engaged in a tenacious rearguard action, the Axis forces were in an impossible position. In May 1943, they were forced to surrender, with the loss of around 240,000 prisoners.
Casper’s album separately includes a sequence of photos taken in Cairo; I can’t say for sure when they were taken because the last numeral on the date is hidden but I think they predate his pictures from El Alamein, meaning they were likely taken earlier in 1942 before the Second Battle of El Alamein. The images from Cairo are interesting more for what they don’t show, namely, the pyramids outside the city; curiously, several famous mosques are instead illustrated. (Figure 19)
Turning to Casper’s photos of El Alamein, one image stands out. In the foreground is a corrugated metal sign reading “El Alamein Salvage,” and in the near background is written “Springbok Road.” (Figure 20) I found an identical copy of this image that sold on eBay for £6.99. I imagine this was a popular photo spot, and that multiple examples of this picture survive in the decaying albums of former English soldiers involved in the Western Desert Campaign. Several of Casper’s photos appear to show German and Italian abandoned war materiels waiting to be broken up for scrap metal, ergo the salvage effort. (Figure 21)
Another intriguing photo in Casper’s album is simply labeled “ITIES.” (Figure 22) Having no idea what this signifies, I eventually discovered this is derogatory English slang for Italians. The photo clearly shows Italian prisoners of war. What I learned while researching this image is that unlike the Germans whose retreat from El Alamein was more orderly, thereby limiting the number of their surviving soldiers captured, their Italian allies lacked motor transport to evacuate their withdrawing units thus resulting in more Italians being swept up by the British. Regardless, by November 4 the motorized elements of the Axis were in full retreat, and because of the sluggish British follow-up they were allowed to escape virtually unscathed to Tunisia.
The page on which Casper’s pictures of Benghazi and Tripoli are found is labelled “MEF 1942-43,” which stands for “Middle East Forces 1942-43.” (Figure 23) It’s not clear that Casper was in one of vanguard British infantry divisions that participated in the Tunisian campaign that ultimately defeated the Axis forces there in 1943. Photos of Casper place him in Ismailia, Cairo, and Alexcandria, Egypt between 1942 and 1945. However, this overlaps with the period between 1942 and 1946 when he was assuredly in India and Pakistan. Possibly, Casper’s regiment was duty-based in Egypt but deployed elsewhere as needed? As we speak, I’m attempting to obtain Casper’s military dossier from the United Kingdom’s Military of Defence to better understand the sequence of his deployments.
My friend Brian Cooper, an amateur English military historian who has assisted me immeasurably in learning where my father’s first cousin, Heinz Loewenstein, was incarcerated during the war, recognized that in several of Casper’s photos where he is sporting a beret, he is wearing a badge of the Glider Pilot Regiment. (Figure 24) A 1946 group picture of Casper’s regiment labeled “Sergeant’s Mess. Glider Pilot Depot” shows the regimental badge. (Figure 25) Casper’s album includes photos of him piloting his glider (Figure 26) and flying over the Indus and elsewhere. It’s obvious Casper was a glider pilot, at least in India and Pakistan. (Figure 27)
Having never previously come across any of my distant ancestors who were glider pilots during WWII, nor photos of their activities, I did a little research. It’s quite engrossing. The most widely used glider during the war was the Waco CG-4A. Given that Casper adopted a mutt during his time in India which he named “Waco” (Figure 28) it is reasonable to assume he piloted one of these crafts.
Gliders from India supported military operations in Burma during WWII. Special operation units battled the Japanese army in Burma attempting to reopen the Burma Road linking India and China. Waco CG-4A gliders were used to land troops, ammunition, medical supplies, and even mules to carry supplies. Significantly, in a special operations battle using gliders to fight the Japanese army in Burma, more than 9,000 fighters were dropped 165 miles behind Japanese lines.
Fascinatingly, some gliders carried up to three mules; the pilots or handlers always had a pistol at the ready to shoot any mules that went berserk. While this may sound cruel, it is important to understand that a glider is built of steel tubing and doped fabric (i.e., a textile material that is impregnated with a chemical compound, known as “dope,” the primary purpose of which is to cause shrinkage of the fabric, thus making it taut and improving the flow of air over it during flight) so that it would take little for a mule to kick out the side of a glider endangering the crew and craft.
Gliders were advantageous because they could deploy large numbers of troops quickly and accurately. Also, they could land in small, inaccessible areas where a larger aircraft couldn’t land. They were also used to transport heavier equipment that was too large for parachutes or other transport aircraft. The India-Burma campaign involved difficult terrain that made it difficult to land gliders, so they were often treated as semi-expendable.
Allied forces retrieved gliders using twin-engine transports, such as a C-47 transport planes (Figure 29), through a technique referred to as “glider snatching.” The tactic involved having the transport plane fly low to the ground and quickly hooking onto a special attachment point on the glider, essentially “snatching” it into the air without needing to land. This allowed for the retrieval of troops or supplies from a combat zone where landing might be impossible; this was referred to as a “glider snatch pick-up.” This maneuver was considered risky due to the need for precise timing and low flying altitude. The Allies also used twin-engine transports to snatch up gliders filled with wounded soldiers and fly them to hospitals.
Returning briefly to the cigar box Tom Brook showed me. (see Figure 5) I shared pictures I’d taken of it with Helen, who in turn passed it along to one of our mutual German cousins. It appears that one of the captions is the beginning of Heinrich Heine’s lyrical love poem, “Die Lorelei.” According to modern scholars, Heine is now seen as a romantic poet, for his passion, his independence of mind, and his hatred of political repression. However, he was critical of German Romanticism, which he saw as idealizing the feudal past, being a deterrent to political progress, and encouraging xenophobia. For this reason, his books were later banned by the Nazis. The inclusion of Heine’s poem on Felix Bruck’s cigar box may have signified his attachment to liberal principles.
More could certainly be gleaned from Casper’s photos, but my intent has merely been to highlight a few unique images that provide a sense of the theaters in which Casper Bruck fought. For readers holding comparable collections of family photos, military or otherwise, scrutinizing them with a hand lens will no doubt yield some intriguing finds. Personally, I repeatedly find myself returning to my father’s pictures, continually discovering something I’d previously missed.
REFERENCES
Battles of El-Alamein. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/battles-of-El-Alamein
India in World War II (2024, October 17). In Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_in_World_War_II
National WWII Glider Pilots Association. 1944, India/Burma was the glider snatching capital of the world. https://ww2gp.org/burma/buma_compulation.pdf
National WWII Glider Pilots Association. GliderPickup. https://www.ww2gp.org/gliderpickup/
Second Battle of El Alamein (2024, December 6). In Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_El_Alamein
Tunisia 1942-1943. British Infantry Divisions. British Military History. Docs – Tunisia 1942 – 1943 – British Infantry Divisions – British Military History
