POST 103: RENATE BRUCK: A TALE OF TWO GODMOTHERS

Note: In this Blog post, I discuss Renate Bruck’s two prominent godmothers, images of whom exist among Dr. Walter Bruck’s surviving papers and photographs.

Related Posts:

POST 68: DR. JULIUS BRUCK AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERN ENDOSCOPY

POST 68, POSTSCRIPT: DR. JULIUS BRUCK, ENGINEER OF MODERN ENDOSCOPY-TRACKING SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY

POST 101: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK: HIS DAUGHTER RENATE’S FIRST HUSBAND, A “SILENT HERO”

POST 102: DR. WALTER BRUCK, HIS SECOND WIFE JOHANNA GRÄBSCH & HER FAMILY

 

 

The Nuremberg Laws consisted of two race-based measures which deprived Jews of their rights. They were designed by Adolf Hitler and approved by the Nazi Party at a convention in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935. The first of these measures, termed the “Reichsbürgergesetz,” the “Reich Citizenship Law,” declared that only those of “German or kindred blood” were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were designated as “subjects of the state” without any citizenship rights. The second provision, the “Gesetz zum Schutze des Deutschen Blutes und der Deutschen Ehre,” the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour,” usually simply called the “Blutschutzgesetz” or “Blood Protection Law,” forbade marriage or extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans. These measures were among the first of the racist Nazi laws that culminated in the Holocaust.

Under the Nuremberg laws, Jews could not fly the German flag and were forbidden to employ in domestic service female subjects of German or kindred blood who were under the age of 45 years.

The first supplementary decree elaborating upon the Nuremberg Laws was passed on November 14, 1935. It defined Jews as persons with at least one Jewish grandparent and explicitly declared they could not be citizens of the Reich; it further decreed that Jews could not exercise the right to vote nor occupy public office. This was ultimately one of 13 ordinances that completed the process of Jewish segregation.

One enactment, passed on November 26, 1935, expanded the provisions of the law to include Roma (Gypsies) and Black people. While exact figures cannot be ascertained, historians estimate that the Germans and their allies killed between 250,000 and 500,000 European Roma during World War II. Although the Nazis did not have an organized program to exterminate African Germans, many of them were persecuted, as were other people of African descent. Black people in Germany and German-occupied territories were often isolated, and an unknown number were sterilized, incarcerated, or murdered.

It is important to emphasize that the racial definition of Jews under the Nuremberg Laws meant that Jews were persecuted NOT for their religious beliefs but for their so-called racial identity that was irrevocably transmitted through the blood of their ancestors.

Because the Nuremberg Laws did not define a “Jew” nor the phrase “German or kindred blood,” the critical task of defining their meaning fell to bureaucrats because of the criminal provisions for noncompliance contained within the law. Two basic categories of Jews were recognized. A full Jew referred to anyone with three Jewish grandparents, a rather straight-forward definition. Defining part-Jews, who were referred to as “Mischlinge,” a pejorative term meaning “hybrids, mongrels, or half-breeds,” was more challenging. Eventually they were divided into two classes. First-degree Mischlinge were defined as people who had two Jewish grandparents but did not practice Judaism and did not have a Jewish spouse. Second-degree Mischlinge were those who had only one Jewish grandparent.

Students of history may find it interesting to learn that out of foreign policy concerns, persecutions under the Nuremberg Laws did not begin until after the conclusion of the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin that year.

Also worth noting is one of the effects of the Nuremberg Laws. It gave rise to a horde of purportedly “licensed family researchers” who offered their services to concerned Germans afraid the Nazis would discover Jewish relatives among their ancestors. The Health Ministry as well as church offices were involved in providing birth and baptismal certificates as proof of Aryan origin.

 

Figure 1. Walter and Johanna Bruck with their daughter Renate in Breslau (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

I introduce the Nuremberg Laws in the context of talking about Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck and his wife Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch’s daughter, Renate Bruck. (Figure 1) While Renate’s mother was Protestant, Dr. Bruck’s parents were Jewish, so according to the Nuremberg Laws, Renate was considered a first-degree Mischling. Evidence suggests Walter converted to Protestantism around 1917, confirmation of which I am still trying to track down. The timing of his conversion may have corresponded with the death of Walter’s mother, Bertha Bruck née Vogelsdorf (1843-1917), in 1917 (Figure 2); Walter may have been reluctant to convert from Judaism until his mother passed away. Unlike his parents and paternal grandparents who are buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], the place of Walter’s burial or cremation is unknown. (Figure 3) What is clear is that Walter was not interred in a Jewish cemetery.

 

Figure 2. Walter Bruck’s mother, Bertha Bruck née Vogelsdorf (1843-1917) (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 3. The headstones of Dr. Walter Bruck’s father and grandfather, Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902) and Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883), and their respective wives, following restoration of their tombs in 2016

 

As for Renate Bruck, there is no indication she ever set foot in a synagogue or was taught about the Jewish religion, which makes sense if her father converted from Judaism nine years before Renate was even born. On the contrary, a preliminary examination of the five-year Tagebuch, diary, belonging to Renate and her mother covering a critical period from January 1940 through December 1944, makes it clear Renate was attending Confirmation classes throughout 1940 and early 1941, and was confirmed at age 14 in Breslau on the 17th of March 1941. (Figure 4) As far as the Nazis were concerned, however, this would not have altered Renate’s status as a first-degree Mischling. And, in fact, Renate’s lifelong friend Ina Schaesberg (Figure 5) confirms that Renate and the other Jews and half-Jews were expelled from the private school they all attended in Breslau. More will be said in a future Blog post about the contents of Johanna and Renate Bruck’s diary including their attitude towards the Nazis.

 

Figure 4. Page from Johanna and Renate Bruck’s five-year “Tagebuch,” diary, showing Renate was confirmed on the 17th of March 1941 when she was 14 years old

 

Figure 5. Renate Bruck’s lifelong friend, Ms. Ina Schaesberg, born in 1926, the same year as Renate

 

 

Among the pictures in Walter Bruck’s photo album are two showing people Renate identified as her godmothers. I was curious that Renate had two godmothers but learned that traditionally Christian children can have three godparents in total, though they can have as many as the parents want. Usually, girls have two godmothers and one godfather while boys gave two godfathers and one godmother, although there is no hard and fast rule about this. Without access to Renate’s baptismal record, it is unclear whether both godmothers were listed on it at the time of her baptism. There is no indication as to who Renate’s godfather may have been.

Renate provided information on the captions about each of her godmothers which allowed me to make some interesting connections.

Figure 6. One of Renate Bruck’s two godmothers, “Tante ‘Steffa’ Stephanie,” August Josephine Stephanie Erhlich (1884-1966) (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

Renate’s first godmother was named “Tante ‘Steffa’ Stephanie” (Figure 6); as readers can make out from the caption, her father was identified as “Geheimrat Prof. Erhlich,” and her husband was the “Commerzienrat Schwerin.” There was also a cryptic parenthetical notation after Stephanie’s father’s name, “Salvasan,” the significance of which only become apparent to me later. (Figure 7)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 7. Three photos captioned by Renate Bruck related to her godmother, Stephanie Schwerin née Erhlich, showing two elegant homes she owned with her husband, Ernst Louis Schwerin (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

A “Geheimrat” is a Privy Counselor, a member of the government or cabinet minister; in the current context, however, “Geheimrat” refers to an honorary title used in Prussia that was bestowed upon Dr. Erhlich as an accomplished doctor (see below). A “Kommerzienrat,” a Commercial Counselor, also called a commercial attaché, is a commercial expert on the diplomatic staff of a country´s embassy or large consulate.

Based on Renate’s captions, I correctly concluded that Tante Steffa was Stephanie Schwerin née Erhlich. I discovered a substantial amount of information about her on ancestry.com, including her birth certificate. Her birth name was August Josephine Stephanie Erhlich, and she was born on the 19th of October 1884 in Berlin. Her parents’ names are listed on her birth certificate as Paul Simon Erhlich and Hedwig Erhlich née Pinkus. (Figures 8a-b)

 

Figure 8a. Cover page from ancestry.com accompanying Stephanie Erhlich’s 1884 birth certificate
Figure 8b. August Josephine Stephanie Erhlich’s 1884 birth certificate listing her parents’ names as Paul Simon Erhlich and Hedwig Erhlich née Pinkus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I very quickly realized that Tante Steffa’s father was none other than Dr. Paul Erhlich (1854-1915) (Figure 9), the Nobel Prize-winning German Jewish physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. In 1908, Dr. Paul Erhlich was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to immunology. His foremost achievements were discovering a cure for syphilis in 1909 (The First Syphilis Cure Was the First ‘Magic Bullet’ | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine) and inventing the precursor to Gram staining bacteria. The techniques Dr. Erhlich developed for staining tissues made it possible to distinguish between different types of blood cells, which in turn made it possible to diagnose various blood disorders.

 

Figure 9. The noted immunologist and 1908 Nobel Prize recipient, Dr. Paul Erhlich (1854-1915), father of Renate Bruck’s godmother

 

Dr. Erhlich’s laboratory discovered Arsphenamine, the drug introduced in the early 1910s as the first effective treatment against syphilis and African sleeping sickness. Renate Bruck’s cryptic parenthetical reference to “Salvasan” was the mistakenly spelled name for “Salvarsan,” the name under which Arsphenamine was marketed, also known as “compound 606.”

A biographical sketch on Dr. Erhlich to which I link here (Paul Ehrlich – Biographical – NobelPrize.org) makes mention of his two daughters, including Stephanie (Mrs. Ernst Schwerin) and Marianne (Mrs. Edmund Landau).  Both were the result of his marriage in 1883 to Hedwig Pinkus (1864-1948). According to their marriage certificate, Stephanie and Ernst Schwerin got married in Frankfurt, Germany on the 20th of February 1904.

Along with the picture of Stephanie Schwerin née Erhlich among Dr. Walter Bruck’s papers are two showing the elegant homes she and her husband, Ernst Schwerin, owned, a large estate in Breslau, as well as a mountain retreat probably located in the Riesengebirge [today: Krkonoše, Karkonosze, or Giant Mountains in northern Czech Republic and south-west Poland]. (see Figure 7) There can be little doubt Stephanie and Ernst were wealthy, and, likely, lost much of their fortune when they fled Germany after the ascendancy of the Nazis. Primary source documents prove that in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws, both Ernst and Stephanie Schwerin had their German nationalities annulled sometime between 1935 and 1944. (Figures 10-11) Other primary source documents show that Stephanie and her husband made their way to New York City via Switzerland. They emigrated from Switzerland in October 1938. (Figures 12-13)

 

Figure 10. Proof of the annulment of Ernst Schwerin’s German nationality between 1935-1944 on account of him being Jewish

 

Figure 11. Proof of the annulment of Stephanie Schwerin née Erhlich’s German nationality between 1935-1944 on account of her being Jewish

 

Figure 12. Ernst Schwerin’s Swiss Emigration Form showing he left for New York in October 1938
Figure 13. Stephanie Schwerin’s Swiss Emigration Form showing she left for New York in October 1938

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Social Security Death Index indicated Stephanie died in New York in June 1966 (Figure 14) and her husband Ernst passed away on the 25th of November 1946. (Figure 15) I asked a friend with a subscription to Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank if he could track down their obituaries, hoping I might find a living descendant. My friend was unable to locate an obituary for Ernst Schwerin, but his wife’s obituary shows she died a most gruesome death on the 7th of June 1966 at the age of 81 by plunging from her 10th floor apartment at the Hotel Croydon. (Figure 16) According to the obituary, she left two notes in German, confirming she committed suicide. Likely, these notes were intended for her two sons, Hans Wolfgang Schwerin (1906-1987) and Guenther Karl-Joseph Schwerin (1910-1997), neither of whom ever appears to have ever been married. Hans Schwerin, who was an author, lawyer, and psychoanalyst, was a regular fixture on the Society pages during the 1950s. (Figure 17)

 

Figure 14. Stephanie Schwerin’s Social Security Death Index showing she passed away in June 1966 in New York City

 

Figure 15. Cover page from the New York Extracted Death Index showing Ernst Schwerin died on the 25th of November 1946 in Manhattan, New York

 

Figure 16. Stephanie Schwerin’s obituary dated the 8th of June 1966 showing she plunged to her death the previous day (from Newspapers.com)

 

Figure 17. Photo from the Society page of “New York Age” of Ernst and Stephanie Schwerin’s elder son, Hans Schwerin (1906-1987) (from Newspapers.com)

 

 

The second of Renate Bruck’s godmothers, Elfriede Reichelt, turns out to have been another prominent personage. As readers can make out for themselves, Renate Bruck identified her second godmother as a photographer. (Figure 18) Operating under the assumption she was well-known, a Google query confirmed this. She was born Elfriede Klara Emma Reichelt on the 30th of January 1883 in Breslau, and died of bladder cancer on the 22nd of August 1953 in Grünwald , outside Munich. She was a German art photographer, who in her time was one of the best-known professional photographers in Germany.

 

Figure 18. The second of Renate Bruck’s godmothers, noted portrait photographer Elfriede Reichelt (1883-1953), between Johanna Bruck and Elfriede’s husband, Hans Wieland, on the Brionian Islands in April 1927 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

The photograph of Elfriede Reichelt appears to have been taken in April 1927 in Brioni, Yugoslavia [today: Brijuni, Croatia], when Elfriede and her unidentified husband were vacationing there with Walter and Johanna Bruck. Her unnamed husband I was later able to determine was Hans Wieland, an industrialist from Ulm, Germany, whom Elfriede married in 1927 and separated from in 1936.

In the Deutsche Fotothek 743 of Elfriede Reichelt’s portrait photos are inventoried (Deutsche Fotothek), including multiple self-portraits. Because of copyright issues, I cannot illustrate these images here, but readers are encouraged to peruse them. Allow me to make a few observations about her photos. Reichelt had unprecedented access to Germany’s last Kaiser, Wilhelm II, and his family while they lived in exile in Doorn, Netherlands following WWI, and often photographed them. It is possible that Elfriede also photographed the Kaiser’s wife, Hermine Reuß, when she visited Dr. Walter Bruck in Breslau for dental treatments. It is even conceivable Dr. Bruck introduced the Kaiserin to Elfriede. Not surprisingly, given the friendship that existed between Walter Bruck and Elfriede Reichelt, her images include one of my renowned ancestor. Oddly, the photograph is incorrectly captioned. It is most curious that Walter Bruck’s picture is labeled as Dr. Fedor Bruck, which happens to have been my uncle’s name who was also a Breslau-trained dentist. Could Elfriede have known my uncle? The period my Uncle Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) spent in Breslau following WWI suggests this is possible. (Figure 19)

 

Figure 19. My Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) in his WWI uniform, who later attended dental school in Breslau, Germany

 

Regular readers may remember I have written multiple Blog posts about the Neisser branch of my extended family. Among Elfriede’s pictures are a few she took of Dr. Albert Neisser (1855-1916) (Figure 20) and his wife, Toni Neisser, a patron of the arts. Dr. Neisser was a German physician who discovered the pathogen that caused gonorrhea, a strain of bacteria that was named in his honor (Neisseria gonorrhoeae).

 

Figure 20. Dr. Albert Neisser (1855-1916), a member of my extended family, who along with his wife Toni Neisser, were subjects of Elfriede Reichelt’s photographs

 

Part of the pleasure I derive in doing forensic genealogy are finding connections among the people I research and write about even when the people are not blood relatives. Often these connections are trivial but nonetheless interesting. Case in point. After elementary school, Dr. Paul Erhlich attended the secondary school Maria-Magdalenen-Gymnasium (high school) in Breslau where he became friends with Dr. Alfred Neisser, who would later become a professional colleague. Coincidentally, Dr. Albert Neisser is a remote “link” between both of Renate Bruck’s two godmothers, though there is no evidence to suggest either knew Dr. Neisser. Since Elfriede Reichelt and Stephanie Erhlich were born, respectively, in 1883 and 1884, and Renate’s mother was born in 1884, it seems more likely all were schoolmates and friends growing up.

POST 102: DR. WALTER BRUCK, HIS SECOND WIFE JOHANNA GRÄBSCH & HER FAMILY

 

Note: In this post, I discuss and present a series of photos of Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s second wife, Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Bruck e Gräbsch, and some of her immediate family. While Johanna Bruck was identifiable in most photos, I was aided at times by captions provided by Johanna and Walter’s daughter, Renate Bruck. In a few instances, I arrived at the conclusion of who some of Johanna’s family members were by logical deduction.  

 

Related Posts:

POST 68: DR. JULIUS BRUCK AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERN ENDOSCOPY

POST 68, POSTSCRIPT: DR. JULIUS BRUCK, ENGINEER OF MODERN ENDOSCOPY-TRACKING SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY

POST 101: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK: HIS DAUGHTER RENATE’S FIRST HUSBAND, A “SILENT HERO”

 

 

The seven photo albums left to me by my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (1907-1994), covering the period from his early childhood during the 1910’s until he came to America in 1948, were the inspiration for researching my family and ultimately developing this family history Blog. I distinctly remember a comment from a Jewish audience member when I gave my first translated talk in Tiegenhof, today Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland, the town in the Free State of Danzig where my father had his dental practice between 1932 and 1937, remarking on how fortunate I was to have my father’s collection of photos; he remarked he had only three surviving images of his Jewish ancestors, a not uncommon circumstance among descendants of Holocaust victims. For this reason, I consider it quite fortuitous that Dr. Tilo Wahl, the German doctor who purchased the medals that once belonged to my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, chanced upon my Blog and shared pictures of Walter’s personal effects. I have experienced the same thrill and used the same forensic techniques in examining Walter’s pictures and documents as I have in studying my father’s papers, often with comparable success. In the ensuing post, I will discuss one such enthralling find involving Walter and Johanna’s daughter.

 

 

Figure 1. Johanna Gräbsch as a young lady (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 2. Johanna Gräbsch as a debutante (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are only a few pictures among Walter Bruck’s surviving photos showing Johanna Gräbsch prior to his marriage to her (Figures 1-2), and none, insofar as I can tell, that show her as a child or young girl. Prior to obtaining copies of Walter’s papers and photos, I had found Johanna’s marriage certificate to her first husband, Dr. Med. Alfred Friedrich Karl Kurt Renner, showing they had gotten married on the 6th of May 1905 in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]. The certificate listed her date and place of birth, the 10th of April 1884 in Breslau. As sometimes occurs on marriage certificates, a notation was added later showing they divorced on the 8th of March 1917. (Figures 3a-c; 4)

 

Figure 3b. Page 2 of Johanna Gräbsch and Dr. Alfred Renner’s April 1905 marriage certificate with the names of witnesses, including Dr. Renner, Johanna Gräbsch, Paul Gräbsch, and Paul Renner
Figure 3a. Page 1 of Johanna Gräbsch and Dr. Alfred Renner’s April 1905 marriage certificate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3c. Notation on Johanna Gräbsch and Dr. Alfred Renner’s April 1905 marriage certificate dated the 28th of March 1918 showing they got divorced on the 8th of March in 1917

 

 

Figure 4. Translation of Johanna Gräbsch and Dr. Alfred Renner’s April 1905 marriage certificate including notation from March 1918

 

There is one particularly joyful picture in Walter Bruck’s photo album that Renate Bruck, who later captioned some photos, rather vaguely titled. (Figure 5) The subjects were identified according to how they were related to her three children rather than herself, which initially confused me. Regardless, while only five people were identified I was eventually able to work out who all six of the people in the photo are likely to have been through logical deduction. (Figures 6a-f) I am convinced the photo was taken at the marriage or celebration of Johanna’s wedding to Dr. Alfred Renner in 1905. Renate Bruck who was the offspring of Johanna’s second marriage in 1923 to Dr. Bruck was born in 1926 and probably never met her mother’s first husband, thus would have been unlikely to recognize him; she in fact has a question mark above his picture. There appears to be a level of intimacy between the unidentified subject and Johanna which suggests to me this was her first husband, Dr. Renner.

 

Figure 5. Joyful photo of Gräbsch family gathering I think may have been taken at the dinner celebrating Johanna Gräbsch and Dr. Alfred Renner’s April 1905 marriage with Renate Bruck’s identifying captions (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 6a. Johanna’s older sister, “Tante Leni,” Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch (b. 1876-d. unknown)
Figure 6b. Johanna’s father, Karl Paul Otto Reinhold Gräbsch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6c. Johanna’s mother, Friederike Emma Gräbsch née Nerche (b. 1854-d. unknown)
Figure 6d. Johanna’s brother-in-law, “Onkel Willi,” Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg (1865-1909)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6e. Unidentified man I think is Johanna’s first husband, Dr. Med. Alfred Friedrich Karl Kurt Renner
Figure 6f. Johanna Gräbsch (1884-1963)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As to the other subjects in this photo, on Johanna’s 1905 marriage certificate her parents, misidentified on the caption as great-grandfather and great-grandmother, are named as Paul Gräbsch and Emma Gräbsch née Nerche. I found their marriage certificate on ancestry.com indicating they got married on the 26th of July 1873 in Dresden, Germany. The “Tante Leni” in the photo was Johanna’s older sister, Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch, born on the 7th of March 1876, and “Onkel Willy” was her husband, Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg. I found his death certificate showing he was only 43 years old when he died on the 12th of February 1909 in Berlin.

As an aside, I mentioned to readers in Post 99 the existence of old annual periodicals that Dr. Tilo Wahl told me about (e.g., “Handbuch für den Preußischen Hof und Staat” (a printed guide of the Royal Prussian court and administration); “Ranglisten der Königlich Preußischen Armee” (rank lists of the Prussian Army)) that were once published for persons in official positions and/or of higher rank listing the decorations they were awarded. For personalized medal groups Tilo purchases that come without attribution, these handbooks are most useful in identifying the person to whom the medals were awarded. Coincidentally, Tilo found a listing for Alfred Steinberg, Johanna’s brother-in-law, in a 1908 Prussian Ranklist showing he had been given the “Roter Adler Orden Kreuz 4.Klasse (1861-1918) (ehrenzeichen-orden.de)” (Red Eagle Order Cross 4th Class (1861-1918)) that year. (Figures 7a-b) The Order of the Red Eagle was a Prussian order of merit, the second highest Prussian award. It is providential that my research into Johanna’s family members also wound up overlapping with Tilo’s interest in phaleristics.

 

Figure 7a. Cover of the 1908 “Ranglisten der Königlich Preußischen Armee” (rank lists of the Prussian Army) listing Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg’s name
Figure 7b. Page 46 of the 1908 “Ranglisten der Königlich Preußischen Armee” (rank lists of the Prussian Army) with Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg’s name, rank, and award

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In studying the picture of Johanna Gräbsch and her immediate family, I realized there appeared to be other pictures in the same folio Dr. Tilo Wahl had not photographed. Knowing Dr. Walter Bruck’s personal papers and photos are now in the possession of his twin granddaughters, Francesca and Michele Newman, following the death of their brother in 2015, I asked them if they could scan and send me the accompanying images. They graciously agreed. While most people in the group pictures they sent are unknown to me, even though several are named (Figure 8), Johanna’s older brother Paul Gräbsch is identified on a separate picture (Figure 9); though not labeled, I think his wife Irene Elisabeth Klar née Gräbsch may be standing next to him in two of the group photos. In all, I now have images of Johanna Gräbsch, her parents, her siblings, and her brother- and sister-in-law. Finding images of people I discuss in my Blog posts is always enormously satisfying as it brings these people to life in some small way.

 

Figure 8. Two group photos of Johanna Gräbsch’s family with marginalia; Johanna’s brother is second from the right on the top picture (dated 2nd of June 1921), and his wife, Irene Elisabeth Klar, all in white, is believed to be to his left (looking at the picture) (photos courtesy of Francesca and Michele Newman)

 

Figure 9. From left to right, Johanna’s parents, Paul and Emma Gräbsch, and her brother, Paul Gräbsch (photo courtesy of Francesca and Michele Newman)

 

 

Another thing that completes the circle, so to speak, is finding primary source documents that substantiate events that may have taken place in the lives of the people I write about. In the case of Johanna Gräbsch, who is the primary subject of this post, I found her listed in a 1919 Breslau Address Book under the name “Johanna Renner née Gräbsch” (Figure 10); clearly, following her divorce from her first husband in 1917, she retained her married name until she remarried my esteemed ancestor.

 

Figure 10. Page from 1919 Breslau Address Book listing Johanna Renner née Gräbsch

 

 

Included in Dr. Walter Bruck’s surviving personal effects is a business card sized document dated the 13th of December 1923 announcing his upcoming marriage to Johanna Gräbsch. (Figure 11) Regular readers know I constantly harp about relying on primary source documents in support of dating vital events but even these are not infallible. Case in point. Included among Dr. Bruck’s surviving papers are two hand-drawn family trees I believe were developed by someone other than Dr. Bruck; one tree states Walter and Johanna got married on the 22nd of December 1922, NOT 1923 as the wedding announcement clearly indicates; obviously, the family tree is in error. (Figure 12) The date of their marriage is interesting for another reason. Walter and Johanna’s first child, Hermine, who died at less than two months of age, was born on the 18th of January 1924, less than a month after her parents got married.

 

Figure 11. Walter Bruck and Johanna Gräbsch’s wedding announcement dated the 13th of December 1923

 

Figure 12. Section of family tree found among Dr. Walter Bruck’s surviving papers erroneously showing he and Johanna married on the 22nd of December 1922 rather than in December 1923 as their wedding announcement suggests

 

Surviving photos show that Johanna and Renate lived a charmed life before the National Socialists came along. (Figures 13-17)

 

Figure 13. Photograph Dr. Walter Bruck took in September 1925 in Doorn, Netherlands of his wife Johanna standing with the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, and the Kaiser’s family and entourage (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 14. Johanna on vacation in Brioni, Croatia in 1927 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 15. Johanna reading to Renate when she was a young child (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 16. Johanna Bruck at the helm of her Adler automobile with her daughter and husband (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 17. Johanna Bruck with her husband and daughter in Breslau (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Breslau address books following the death of her second husband, Dr. Walter Bruck, in 1937, continue to list Johanna Bruck until 1941 (Figure 18), whereupon her name disappears from the directory. Until I tracked Johanna and Renate Bruck to England relying on documents I obtained through the United Kingdom’s General Register Office, I was uncertain whether they had survived WWII or where they may have landed. I have detailed the results of my forensic investigations in Posts 68 and 68 Postscript so will not repeat them here.

 

Figure 18. Page from 1941 Breslau Address Bruck showing the widow, designated as “wwe,” Johanna Bruck living at Oranienstrasse 4, the last year in which Johanna is listed in Breslau address books

 

Once I determined that Johanna and Renate Bruck survived WWII, I next wondered whether Johanna and Renate had made their way to England before or after the war. This question was eventually answered by Renate Bruck’s lifelong friend, Ms. Ina Schaesberg (Figure 19), born the same year as Renate in 1926, and still alive today.

 

Figure 19. Renate Bruck’s lifelong friend, Ms. Ina Schaesberg, born in 1926, the same year as Renate

 

 

Inadvertently, I never thought to ask Ina this question until Walter and Johanna Bruck’s twin granddaughters, Michele and Francesca Newman, recently told me they had found their grandmother and mother’s Tagebuch, the journal or diary. It was at this moment Ina confirmed that Renate and her mother lived in Berlin after they left Breslau in an apartment building that survived Allied bombing during WWII. Following the war, the Berlin sector they lived in came under British occupation, which is likely how Renate met the Berlin-born British officer, Henry Ernest Graham (1904-1959) (Figure 20), who became her second husband in 1948. Several photos exist of Johanna in England following her immigration there. (Figures 21-23)

 

Figure 20. Renate Bruck with her second husband, Henry Ernest Graham (1904-1959), who was born in Berlin as Heinrich Ernst Gardenwitz and immigrated to England; Renate met him in Berlin when he was deployed there following WWII (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 21. Undated photo of Johanna and Renate Bruck in England (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 22. Johanna Bruck (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 23. Johanna Bruck (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The twins have shown great faith in sending and entrusting me with the original of their mother and grandmother’s journal, which I have since converted into a PDF and sent off to one of my cousins for transcription. (Figure 24) The journal covers the five-year period between the 1st of January 1940 and the 24th of December 1944. The memoir confirms that Johanna and Renate Bruck moved from Breslau to Berlin in February 1942. Transcription of the diary is ongoing as we speak and the major contents and findings will be the subject of a future Blog post.

 

Figure 24. Frontispiece of Johanna and Renate Bruck’s 5-Year “Tagebuch,” diary, which I am currently having transcribed and translated

 

Absent the transcription of Johanna and Renate’s years in Berlin, I was still able to learn a little bit about their time there from Ms. Bettina Mehne who I introduced to readers in Post 101. To remind readers, Renate’s first husband was Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne to whom she was only briefly married. Bettina is Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage. Knowing Matthias had been a “Geigenbauer,” a violin maker, in Berlin and aware Renate and Matthias had met or become reacquainted with him there (i.e., Matthias and Renate may have known one another from Breslau) after her arrival in February 1942, I wondered whether Renate and her mother had lived with his family when Matthias was a British prisoner-of-war during WWII. (It is still not entirely clear to me which year Renate and Matthias got married.) Bettina explained that her Mehne family had no relatives living in Berlin at the time, so as Ina Schaesberg explained, Johanna and Renate lived independently. It was only after Matthias was released that all three briefly lived together. According to Bettina, Johanna was a major drain on her father’s financial resources because of her love of chocolate, which was enormously expensive in the post-war period!

 

VITAL STATISTICS OF JOHANNA BRUCK NÉE GRÄBSCH & SOME IMMEDIATE RELATIVES

 

 

NAME EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE
         
Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (self) Birth 10 April 1884 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau marriage certificate
  Marriage (to Dr. Alfred Renner) 6 May 1905 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau marriage certificate
  Divorce (from Dr. Alfred Renner) 8 March 1917 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Notation on 1905 Breslau marriage certificate
  Marriage announcement (to Walter Wolfgang Bruck) 13 December 1923 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Wedding announcement among Walter Bruck’s personal effects
  Marriage (to Walter Wolfgang Bruck) 22 December 1923 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 5 March 1963 Elstree, Hertfordshire, England United Kingdom death certificate
Alfred Friedrich Karl Kurt Renner (first husband) Birth 20 June 1873 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau 1905 marriage certificate
  Marriage (to Johanna Gräbsch) 6 May 1905 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau marriage certificate
  Divorce (from Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch) 8 March 1917 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Notation on 1905 Breslau marriage certificate
  Death Unknown    
Walter Wolfgang Bruck (second husband) Birth 4 March 1872 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Walter Bruck’s personal biography
  Marriage announcement (to Johanna Gräbsch) 13 December 1923 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Wedding announcement among Walter Bruck’s personal effects
  Marriage (to Johanna Gräbsch) 22 December 1923 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 31 March 1937 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Walter Bruck’s Breslau death certificate
Hermine Bruck (daughter) Birth 18 January 1924 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 10 March 1924 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
Renate Stephanie Gertrude Bruck (daughter) Birth 16 June 1926 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 3 March 2013 Ramsholt, Suffolk, England United Kingdom death certificate
Karl Paul Otto Reinhold Gräbsch (father) Birth UNKNOWN    
  Marriage 26 July 1873 Dresden, Germany Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879
  Death UNKNOWN    
Friederike Emma Nerche (mother) Birth 2 June 1854 Dresden, Germany Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879
  Baptism 18 June 1854 Dresden, Germany Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879
  Marriage 26 July 1873 Dresden, Germany Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879
  Death UNKNOWN    
Paul Karl Hermann Gräbsch (brother) Birth 28 July 1874 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Hamburg, Germany death certificate
  Marriage (to Irene Elisabeth Klar) 9 April 1920 Belgard (Persante), Pomerania, Germany [today: Białogard, Koszalin, Poland] Eastern Prussian Provinces, Germany (Poland), Selected Civil Vitals, 1874-1945
  Death 31 March 1946 Hamburg, Germany Hamburg, Germany death certificate
Irene Elisabeth Klar (sister-in-law) Birth 17 April 1898 Belgard (Persante), Pomerania, Germany [today: Białogard, Koszalin, Poland] 1920 Belgard, Prussia marriage certificate
  Marriage (to Paul Karl Hermann Gräbsch) 9 April 1920 Belgard (Persante), Pomerania, Germany [today: Białogard, Koszalin, Poland] 1920 Belgard, Prussia marriage certificate
  Death UNKNOWN    
Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch (sister) Birth 7 March 1876 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau birth certificate
  Marriage (to Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg) UNKNOWN    
  Death UNKNOWN    
Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg (brother-in-law) Birth 15 September 1865   MyHeritage Germany Deaths & Burials, 1582-1968
  Marriage (to Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch) UNKNOWN    
  Death 12 February 1909 Brandenburg, Berlin, Germany Berlin death certificate
  Burial 17 February 1909 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1500-1971

 

 

POST 101: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK: HIS DAUGHTER RENATE’S FIRST HUSBAND, A “SILENT HERO”

 

POSTSCRIPT ADDED ON MAY 18, 2021 IN RED AT THE BOTTOM

 

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

—Edmund Burke—  

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

—Edmund Burke—

 

Note: This post is about a non-Jewish instrument maker named Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne, the first husband of Renate Bruck, daughter of my famed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck. Matthias’ courage during the era of the National Socialists rightfully entitles him to be called a “silent hero.” Silent heroes are Jewish men and women who resisted National Socialist persecution, and those who helped them to do so.

 

Related Posts:

POST 68: DR. JULIUS BRUCK AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERN ENDOSCOPY

POST 68, POSTSCRIPT: DR. JULIUS BRUCK, ENGINEER OF MODERN ENDOSCOPY-TRACKING SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY

 

There is a lot of “connective tissue” to this Blog post, so to speak. I draw upon information collected mostly in the last few months that occasioned incremental discoveries about Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne, who I will henceforth refer to as “Matthias Mehne.” He was Renate Bruck’s (1926-2013) first husband; she was the sole surviving daughter of my famed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), and his wife, Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch (1884-1963). (Figure 1) As a result of my recent findings, I am compelled to revise Blog Post 68 to rectify conclusions I came to springing from incomplete information or erroneous inferences.

 

Figure 1. Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) with his wife, Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Bruck née Gräbsch (1884-1963), and daughter, Renate Stephanie Gertrude Bruck (1926-2013) in their Adler automobile, in the early 1930’s (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Given the gradational way by which I typically learn about various of my ancestors, it is often impossible for me to recall what I learned when. Nevertheless, I will try in the case of Matthias Mehne.

Ironically, I initially became aware of Renate Bruck’s first husband about two years ago upon obtaining a copy of her marriage certificate to her second husband, Henry Ernest Graham. Renate married Henry on the 18th of October 1948 in Willesden, Middlesex, England, and their marriage certificate identified both of their previous spouses. At the time, I misread Renate’s first husband’s name simply as “Eugen Walter Mehne,” failing to clearly see his first name was “Matthias.” (Figure 2) As readers will see, this was a grave oversight.

 

Figure 2. Renate Bruck’s highly informative 1948 marriage certificate to her second husband Henry Ernest Graham giving the name of her first husband, which I initially misread as simply “Eugen Walter Mehne”

 

Knowing that Renate Bruck had been born in 1926 in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] and that she was already on her second marriage at 22 years of age, I assumed she had met and gotten married to Matthias Mehne in Breslau at a young age. In retrospect, given the disruptions wrought by WWII and Renate’s status as half-Jewish, this is not necessarily a given and in fact appears not to have been the case.

In Breslau address books I found a “Eugen Mehne” listed between 1908 and 1934 (Figures 3a-b), and a “Eugen Walter Mehne” for 1935, 1936, and 1939; I assumed they were the same person. I also found a birth certificate for an “Albert Eugen Mehne” (Figures 4a-b) but since he was born in 1883 and would have been 43 years Renate’s elder, I ruled him out as her husband. Given the trend to incorporate father’s forenames into their son’s name, I falsely concluded that Eugen Mehne was the son of Albert Eugen Mehne, and Renate’s first husband. This made sense at the time since I could not find information on a Eugen Walter Mehne, i.e., Matthias Mehne, or so I thought.

 

Figure 3a. 1908 Breslau Address Book listing “Eugen Mehne”
Figure 3b. 1934 Breslau Address Book, the last year I could find a listing for Eugen Mehne in Breslau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4a. Cover page from ancestry.com of Albert Eugen Mehne’s birth certificate indicating he was born on the 1st of October 1883 in Dresden, Germany
Figure 4b. Albert Eugen Mehne’s 1883 birth certificate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would eventually learn that Eugen and Albert Eugen were the same person. This should have been obvious to me from the start given I found a 1907 marriage certificate for Albert Eugen Mehne (Figures 5a-c), meaning the Breslau address book listings for Eugen Mehne from 1908 until at least the mid-1930’s would have been those for the father born in 1883. Regardless, I did not initially make the connection. As mentioned above, Breslau address books for 1935 (Figure 6a), 1936 (Figure 6b), and 1939 (Figure 6c) list a “Eugene Walter Mehne” who, I thought was the father Eugen Mehne, but now realize was the son Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne. This was in fact the first documentation I found on the son, although I did not realize it at the time. None of the Breslau address books list both the father and son in the same directory; what to make of this is unclear. I forgive readers for being as confused as I was. Let us move on.

 

Figure 5a. Cover page from ancestry.com of Albert Eugen Mehne’s marriage certificate showing he got married on the 26th of September 1907 in Breslau to Hedwig Gertrud Marie Göbel
Figure 5b. Page 1 of Albert Eugen Mehne’s 1907 marriage certificate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 5c. Page 2 of Albert Eugen Mehne’s 1907 marriage certificate
Figure 6a. 1935 Breslau Address Book listing for the first time “Eugen Walter Mehne,” Albert Eugen Mehne’s son

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6b. 1936 Breslau Address Book again listing Eugen Walter Mehne
Figure 6c. 1939 Breslau Address Book, the last year I find Eugen Walter Mehne listed in Breslau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is where things stood until January of this year when I received two riveting emails following one upon the other. The first came from a Dr. Kate Kennedy, who is a writer and broadcaster, and the Associate Director for Oxford’s Centre for Life-Writing (Figure 7), after she stumbled upon Post 68 where I initially mentioned Albert Eugen Mehne. Kate proceeded to tell me a fascinating story. She is currently writing a book about a series of journeys she has taken across the globe following the trail of instruments that have a particular story to tell. One instrument Kate is researching is a missing cello that belonged to an Anita Lasker-Wallfisch that was taken from her before she was sent to Auschwitz when she lived in Breslau. Ms. Lasker-Wallfisch, born in 1925, survived the Holocaust, and is still alive as of this writing. According to Dr. Kennedy, the instrument maker Walter Matthias Mehne rescued the cello after Anita was arrested and may have given it to a judge to keep it safe for the duration of the war, although Anita is unsure of this. Regardless, to this day, the cello remains missing, and Dr. Kennedy is on a quest to track it down.

 

Figure 7. Dr. Kate Kennedy, Associate Director of Oxford’s Centre for Life-Writing

 

 

Setting aside my own confusion as to the Mehne names, Kate correctly presumed that Matthias Mehne was the son of Albert Eugen Mehne, as it was a father/son luthier business. She also told me they inhabited a shop on the corner of Tauentzien Platz in Breslau in the center of town with red violin-shaped signs inside their store, and that they refused to display a picture of Hitler, a most courageous act in the era of the National Socialists. I will return to the subject of the Mehne and Lasker-Wallfisch families below, but first I want to mention the second email I received in January.

This correspondence came from Dr. Tilo Wahl, the incredible findings of which have been the subject of my two previous posts, Posts 99 and 100. Buried within the album of photographs and documents once belonging to my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, was a photograph (Figure 8) and article (Figures 9a-c) about Renate Bruck’s first husband, whom she did not identify by name. Still, the undated German newspaper article which I painstakingly retyped into my go-to online translator, DeepL, confirmed that he went by the name “Matthias Mehne” and at the time the article was written lived in the Berlin borough of Wilmersdorf; comparing his picture taken in Berlin in 1947-1948 with Renate to the one in the news article, it is clear it is the same person. Only at this moment did I reexamine Renate’s 1948 marriage certificate and realize that her first husband’s complete name had been “Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne” (see Figure 2) and that he went by the name “Matthias Mehne”; it became obvious then that Albert Eugen Mehne had to have been his father.

 

Figure 8. Renate Bruck and her first husband, Matthias Mehne, in Berlin in around 1947 or 1948 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

Figure 9a. Undated German newspaper article about Renate Bruck’s first husband, Matthias Mehne

 

Figure 9b. Transcription of newspaper article about Matthias Mehne

 

Figure 9c. Translation of newspaper article about Matthias Mehne

 

 

Having found virtually no other information on Matthias Mehne, I turned to my German friend, Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsburg,” for help. (Figure 10) Peter did not disappoint. He found that Matthias’s father relocated to Gelsenkirchen, Germany in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, approximately 500 miles directly west of Wrocław, Poland, probably before or after WWII; Eugen Mehne is listed in a 1955 Gelsenkirchen Address Book. (Figure 11) I would later learn Albert Eugen Mehne died in Gelsenkirchen in 1963. As for Matthias Mehne, Peter discovered that he was born in 1908, had supposedly died in 1960, and was also known as “M.E.W. Mehne.” Knowing Matthias had once lived in Berlin, I did an Internet search trying to confirm his death but came up empty.

 

Figure 10. My friend, Peter Hanke, whom I kindly refer to as the “Wizard of Wolfsburg” because of his extraordinary ancestral research skills and his connection to Wolfsburg, shown in May 2020 with his latest grandson Tom (photo courtesy of Peter Hanke)
Figure 11. 1955 Gelsenkirchen Address Book listing Eugen Mehne as a “Geigenbaumeister,” violin maker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aware of the connection between the Mehne and Lasker families from before the war, I shifted my attention to researching Anita Lasker. Not surprisingly, given Anita’s incredible journey as a world-renowned cellist and Holocaust survivor, I uncovered a biography she wrote in 2000 entitled “Inherit the Truth” in which she acknowledged Walter Matthias Mehne’s courage on Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938. Quoting: 

. . .My father [Alfons Lasker] escaped arrest on that notorious Kristallnacht (night of the shattered glass), as it became known, on 9th November thanks to the courage of a great friend of ours, Walter Matthias Mehne, a violin-maker in Breslau. He was not a Jew, and he deliberately ignored the fact that the streets were crawling with members of the Gestapo looking for Jews. He climbed the stairs to our flat, took my father with him, and drove him around the town in his car for the rest of the day. He could easily have been stopped and found himself in an embarrassing and highly dangerous position. The courage of a man like Mehne is all the more noteworthy since he was a well-known figure in Breslau. His premises—it was a ‘father and son’ business—were situated on the first floor of a building on the Tauentzien Platz, right in the centre of town. It was at once recognizable from its red violin-shaped signs which hung in the windows. It was much more a meeting point for musicians than a mere shop, and a great many of those musicians were committed Nazis. Notwithstanding this, the Mehnes were steadfast in their refusal to hang up a picture of Hitler inside, although that was expected of every good citizen.

They also refused to hang out a swastika on the various ‘flag days.’ It all made them instantly suspect. But they would not yield an inch. They disapproved of what was happening and were not afraid to show it. Both father and son conducted themselves in a manner which can only be called exemplary. They were some Germans—sadly not enough of them—whose behavior was beyond reproach.

At that particular moment I was not at home but in Berlin, where I had been sent to study the cello. . .

To some, Matthias Mehne’s actions on Kristallnacht may seem like a “little” gesture in the context of Edmund Burke’s quote cited at the outset of this post, but if other Germans had acted as heroically as Matthias Mehne acted who knows how many more Jews would have been saved from the Holocaust. Unquestionably, Matthias Mehne was a “silent hero” during the Nazi era.

In acknowledging Matthias Mehne’s courage, I was reminded of a visit my wife and I made to the “Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism.” The museum opened in 2015 as a place to learn about the crimes of the Nazi era and how Hitler’s party rose to power. It is built on the site of the Brown House, which was the Nazi’s Munich headquarters. In any case, there are many memorable pictures on display there, including one I will not forget. It shows an enormous crowd of people at a speech being delivered by Hitler all giving the Nazi or Sieg Heil salute except for one bold individual standing in this sea of ardent fascist supporters with his arms down. Bravery can be a lonely odyssey.

In researching this post. I stumbled upon an article from “The Observer,” dated the 9th of November 2013, marking the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Entitled “Cellist’s tribute to the ‘unsung hero’ who saved his grandfather on Kristallnacht,” the article documents a friendship that remarkably continues today between the Mehne and Lasker-Wallfisch families. In 2013, the retired cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch joined her renowned cellist son, Raphael Wallfisch, in Austria to play an assortment of music that was regarded as taboo by the Nazis, ranging from Felix Mendelssohn to Erich Korngold; the selection of Vienna, Austria as the site of the concert was no accident because, as Anita said, “. . .Austria has been slower than Germany to come to terms with its part in the Nazi atrocities.” Incredibly, the program coordinator for the concert event was Bettina Mehne (Figure 12), Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage!

 

Figure 12. Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage, Bettina Mehne, continues the family’s involvement in classical music on the artistic management side as an entrepreneur in the platform “HELLO STAGE” and as co-author of the book “How to be your own manager”

 

In the 2013 news article, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch acknowledged wanting the concert event to be a tribute to the “unsung hero” [Matthias Mehne] who protected her father on Kristallnacht. She is quoted: “Mehne did not flinch. He was very nice, a family friend, and was totally against the establishment. He didn’t even have a picture of Hitler in his lovely shop–a meeting place in Breslau—which everyone was supposed to have. His reaction that night was all the more remarkable because he was so well known in town.” As for Bettina Mehne, she grew up hearing the story of how her father had protected Anita’s father, Alfons Lasker, on Kristallnacht.

Thinking Bettina Mehne might have some prominence, I learned she is associated with an entity known as “Keynote Artist Management,” and found her email on their website. Hoping I might reach her and learn more about her father’s first wife, I sent her a note. Fortunately, my email caught Bettina’s attention and she graciously responded the following morning. She recognized Renate Bruck’s name and mentioned that Matthias had spoken highly of her. Bettina told me her father passed away in 1991, not in 1960 as I had been led to believe.

A “Vogelsdorff Family Tree” I found on ancestry claims Renate and Matthias Mehne got married in 1945; Vogelsdorff was Renate’s paternal grandmother’s surname so the source is credible. (Figure 13) Since Renate married her second husband in 1948, her marriage to Matthias Mehne would not have lasted long, a fact Bettina confirmed. According to Bettina, Renate and Matthias were engaged before the war. The German news article about Matthias states he was a prisoner of war in England. Bettina promised to ask her mother, still living, whether she might know more about her father’s first marriage and get back to me.

 

Figure 13. Renate Bruck’s paternal grandmother, Bertha Bruck née Vogelsdorff (1844-1917) (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Given that Dr. Walter Bruck played the cello, it is likely he was acquainted with the Mehnes’ music store and would have met his daughter’s future first husband before he died in 1937. We may never know.

A potential future source of information about Renate’s life is her own diary that Dr. Walter Bruck’s twin granddaughters, Francesca and Michele Newman (Figure 14), incredibly just discovered and are sending me. Once translated, this should make for a fascinating read; I have recently learned from Renate’s lifelong friend Countess Ina Schaesberg (Figure 15) that Renate and her mother spent the entire war in Germany, not in England as I had initially surmised, in a building that survived Allied bombing. Since Renate was apparently engaged to Matthias Mehne before the war, the possibility exists that Renate and her mother lived with the Mehne family in Berlin during the war. Stay tuned!

 

Figure 14. Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s twin granddaughters, Francesca and Michele Newman (photo courtesy of Francesca & Michele Newman)

 

Figure 15. Renate Bruck’s lifelong friend, the German Countess Ina Schaesberg, who has been the source of valuable information about Renate and her family

 

In conclusion, I will simply say the fact that Renate Bruck’s first husband was alternately known as “Eugen Walter Mehne,” “Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne,” “M.E.W. Mehne,” and “Matthias Mehne” complicated my investigations.

 

REFERENCES 

“Junger Meister des Geigenbaues.” Nacht-Despeche, 1950.

 Lasker-Wallfisch, Anita. Inherit the Truth: A Memoir of Survival and the Holocaust. Thomas Dunn Books, 2000.

 Thorpe, Vanessa. “Cellist’s tribute to the ‘unsung hero’ who saved his grandfather on Kristallnacht.” The Guardian, 2013 November 9.

 

POSTSCRIPT

Almost immediately after publishing this post, I was rewarded with some new information.

I sent the link of my post to Ms. Bettina Mehne. The timing was fortuitous because she had just spoken with her mother in Berlin about Renate and Matthias. Sadly, while her mother could not add anything new, she reminded Bettina of two silver trinkets Matthias Mehne had received from Dr. Walter Bruck, along with a small silver goblet bearing Renate’s name, dated 1927. These items are now in Bettina’s possession, but it is her intention to give them to Renate’s twin daughters. I think this is very touching.

This indirectly answers another question I had, namely, whether Matthias ever met Dr. Walter Bruck. Walter died in 1937 when Renate was only 11 years old, clearly before Renate and Matthias became engaged. Possibly the trinkets were given to Matthias during professional dealings he had with Walter, or Matthias acquired the items from Renate after they got married. Regardless, it is remarkable that after all these years, these personal items will wind up with Walter’s descendants. I think this would make him happy.

Bettina also told me that none of her father’s family lived in Berlin during the war, so clearly Renate and her mother Johanna did not live with them at the time. It was only after the war when Renate and Matthias were married that all three briefly lived together.

Figure 16. Dr. Regina Stein, provenance researcher in Berlin, who generously went through Berlin address books looking for residential information for Matthias Mehne for the years 1943 -1990

My Blog post about Matthias Mehne caught the attention of Dr. Regina Stein (Figure 16), a provenance researcher (mostly for museums) in Berlin. Regina is currently doing a lot of research in Berlin address books. Voluntarily and generously, she searched through them for the violin maker Matthias Mehne, and put together two pages of address information for him for the years 1943-1990. Among the listings Regina found is one for Renate Mehne in a 1949 Berlin address book, shown living in the Wilmersdorf borough of Berlin at the same address as her husband. (Figures 17a-b) The 1949 address book listings must reflect the prior year’s residence because by late 1948 Renate was already married to her second husband and living in England.

 

Figure 17a. Listing for Renate Mehne née Bruck from a 1949 Berlin address showing her living at Xantener Strasse 24 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

 

Figure 17b. Listing for Renate’s husband, Matthias Mehne, from the 1949 Berlin address book shown at the same address

As to the newspaper article about Matthias Mehne, Dr. Stein told me it comes from the “Nacht-Despeche,” an illustrated evening newspaper in Berlin that appeared from 1950 onwards. Regina thinks the article may have been published in 1950, but “after lockdown” will confirm this by consulting microfilm.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough how helpful and generous people whom I have never personally met have been in furthering my ancestral investigations. I am enormously grateful for their contributions and assistance.

 

 

 

 

POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY

 

Note: In this post, I explore and document the connection between my renowned ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, and Germany’s last imperial family, that of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Related Posts:

POST 65: GERMANY’S LAST EMPEROR, WILHELM II, PICTURED WITH UNKNOWN FAMILY MEMBER

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

 

When formulating my Blog posts, I am acutely aware I am writing about people connected to or associated with members of my family to whom most readers are unrelated. For this reason, I try and frame the stories within a broader historical and cultural context which may be of greater interest to subscribers. Even though many of the events I write about involve people who lived during the Nazi era, which narrowly includes the period from 1933 to 1945, I hope followers will agree this tragic period in history is endlessly fascinating and obviously transcends my own family’s stories.

 

Figure 1. Painting purchased by Dr. Tilo Wahl of Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck shown wearing the medals that once graced his stately home in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

In perusing the photos of the personal effects belonging to Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (Figure 1), my second cousin twice removed, given to me by Dr. Tilo Wahl, I came upon a surprising array of materials chronicling a friendship between Walter and the family of Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941), Germany’s last emperor. I decided to investigate this connection by having the documentary evidence translated and researching when the bond may have begun and how long it continued. As readers will be able to judge for themselves, some of my findings are conjecture, others are more firmly grounded in the records I found.

 

Figure 2. Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck in his WWI military uniform (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Let me start by reviewing what I have been able to establish of Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s military service during WWI (Figure 2), at which time I surmise a relationship between Dr. Bruck and Kaiser Wilhelm II may have begun. According to contemporary newspaper accounts published in 1925 on Walter’s 25th year anniversary as dental lecturer at the University of Breslau, “During WWI, from October 1914 to August 1917, Walter headed a dental department at the fortress hospital in Breslau, and in 1917 went to Bucharest, where he worked as a consulting dentist for the Romanian military administration and later in the same capacity worked at the high command of the so-called von Mackensen Army Group.” Multiple photographs from Walter personal papers confirm his presence on the Eastern Front during WWI (Figures 3-4) and show him socializing with members of Germany’s high command.

 

Figure 3. Dr. Walter Bruck on the Eastern Front during WWI being chauffeured about (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 4. Dr. Walter Bruck on the Eastern Front during WWI with his army comrades (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

There is a suggestive account in one of the articles I translated as to Walter’s administrative acumen and dental skills which may explain how he came to the attention of upper echelon German military officers and the German Kaiser, “If the suggestions made by Walter in his writings as early as 1900 had succeeded, things would have been better at the beginning of the war for the dental supply of our army. For three years in a large dental department in the Wroclaw hospital, Bruck was able to prove that dental care, as he always thought it should be provided, can be carried out very well.”

Another quote from a contemporary news account alludes to Walter’s cutting-edge dental practices, “He [the speaker] particularly emphasized his [Walter’s] contribution to the introduction of porcelain filling and mentioned that the book Bruck wrote about it had been translated into Russian and English. The speaker also remembered Bruck’s numerous efforts to introduce dental care in the army, including oral hygiene, and mentioned that one of his works had been translated into no less than eight languages. Prof. Euler also mentioned that Bruck had been active as a writer in other fields such as prosthetics and dentistry with success and announced that he intended to hold lectures in the future in the fields of social dentistry and the history of dentistry.” Sadly, I know, from having visited a museum exhibit in Essen, Germany, that the horrific injuries sustained by soldiers during WWI led to the development of advanced prosthetics and facial and maxillary reconstructions following the war.

Regardless of when Dr. Bruck’s dental skills came to the attention of the German government and military command, he would certainly have been known to them because he was at the forefront of his field and in demand.

Let me tell readers a little about Walter’s personal life. In researching when and where Walter’s older sister, Margarethe Prausnitz née Bruck (Figure 5), was born and died, I found an ancestral tree showing Walter had been married before he married Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch, the mother of his two children. This came as quite a surprise to me. According to this source, the name of Walter’s first wife was purportedly Margarethe STUTSCH.

 

Figure 5. Walter’s older sister Margarethe Bruck as a young lady (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

I have repeatedly told readers that unless I can locate primary source documents, I am hesitant to believe what I find in other people’s trees. Case in point. While I was eventually able to confirm Walter had indeed previously been married, I learned his first wife’s maiden name was SKUTSCH not Stutsch, complicating my search. Sadly, I found that Margarethe Skutsch, born the same month and year as Walter, was murdered in Theresienstadt in 1942.

I unearthed two primary source documents confirming Margarethe’s connection to Walter Bruck. The first was her Theresienstadt death certificate (Figure 6), very rarely completed post-mortem for Jews who died there, giving her married name. The second was the 1907 death certificate for Margarethe’s mother, Berta Skutsch née Grosser, at which Walter was a witness. (Figure 7) A picture from around 1917 shows Margarethe and Walter seated at an outside picnic table with the Grand Duke of Oldenburg and his wife (Figure 8), indicating they were still married at the time. Walter’s biography which abruptly ends around 1894-94 gives no indication he was married before he left for America to attend the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, so the duration of his first marriage is unknown.

 

Figure 6. Theresienstadt Ghetto death certificate for Walter Bruck’s first wife Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch giving her married name and showing she was murdered there on the 22nd of September 1942 (from holocaust.cz)

 

Figure 7. The February 1907 death certificate for Walter’s first mother-in-law, Berta Skutsch née Grosser (1842-1907), showing she died at 64 years 5 months of age, and that Walter Bruck reported her death

 

Figure 8. A picture from around 1916-1917 of Margarethe and Walter Bruck seated with the Grand Duke of Oldenburg and his wife (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Let me briefly digress and tell readers a few relevant facts about Kaiser Wilhelm II to provide context for some of the documents and photos found among Dr. Walter Bruck’s papers. Wilhelm II reigned as the German Emperor from the 15th of June 1888 until he was forced to abdicate on the 9th of November 1918, following some crushing defeats on the Western Front during WWI that led to the collapse of Germany’s war efforts. Following his abdication, on the 10th of November, Wilhelm went into exile in the Netherlands, which had remained neutral throughout WWI. He purchased a country house in the municipality of Doorn, known as Huis Doorn, and moved there in May 1920. This was to be his home for the remainder of his life.

Wilhelm was first married in February 1881 to Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, with whom he had seven children. She died in April 1921. The following year Wilhelm met Princess Hermine Reuß of Greiz. It happened when one of her sons sent birthday wishes in January of 1922 to the exiled German Emperor Wilhelm II, who then invited the boy and his mother to Huis Doorn. Wilhelm found Hermine extremely attractive, greatly enjoyed her company, and found they had much in common, both having been recently widowed. By November 1922, they got married in Doorn over the objections of Wilhelm’s monarchist supporters and children.

Hermine had five children from her first marriage to Prince Johann George Ludwig Ferdinand August of Schönaich-Carolath (1873-1920) but upon her marriage to Wilhelm it was decided that only the youngest, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath, would come live with them. Wilhelm developed a genuine fondness for Henriette whom he affectionately dubbed “the general.” He officially announced her engagement and walked her down the aisle when she got married in 1940 to Wilhelm’s grandson, Prinz Karl Franz of Prussia.

I will briefly return to Wilhelm and Hermine later. First, however, I want to mention a few vital events in the lives of Walter and his second wife, Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch.  Then, I will discuss the documents and photos among Walter’s personal effects that establish there existed a bond between he and the last German monarch and his family.

Dr. Walter Bruck married his second wife, Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch, on the 22nd of December 1922. On the 18th of January 1924, Johanna gave birth to their first daughter who sadly passed away less than two months later, on the 10th of March. This daughter was named Hermine, and it is believed and reasonable to assume she was named after Kaiser Wilhelm II’s second wife.

Walter and Johanna’s second daughter, Renate Stephanie Gertrude Bruck (Figure 9), was born on the 16th of June 1926. Among the personnel effects belonging to Walter that Dr. Tilo Wahl acquired from Walter’s grandson is a children’s book, entitled “Alpenblumenmärchen” (Alpine Flower Fairy Tales) by Ernst Kreidolf. The book was given to Renate by Princess Hermine Reuß with the dedication: “Meinem lieben Renatchen/zu Weihnachten 1928/Hermine” (i.e., To my dear Renatchen/for Christmas 1928/Hermine). (Figures 10a-b)

 

Figure 9. Touching photo of Johanna Bruck reading to her daughter Renate (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 10a. Cover of children’s book, entitled “Alpenblumenmärchen,” given to Renate Bruck at Christmas 1928 by Princess Hermine Reuß (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 10b. The dedication on the frontispiece of the children’s book given by Princess Hermine Reuß to Renate Bruck (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Other documents and photos pre-dating 1928 prove an earlier connection between Wilhelm and Walter’s families. Dr. Wahl purchased two of Walter’s guest books where visitors signed, dated, and often left personal messages upon their departure from Walter’s stately home at Kaiser Wilhelm Platz 17 (later Reichpräsidentenplatz/Hindenburg Platz). (Figure 11) In carefully perusing these guest registers, I noticed that “Hermine Kaiserin (Empress) Wilhlem II” signed one of them on “23 IV 23” (23rd April 1923). (Figures 12a-b)

 

Figure 11. Aerial photograph of Dr. Bruck’s home and dental practice at Kaiser Wilhelm Platz 17, destroyed during WWII

 

Figure 12a. Cover of Walter Bruck’s guest register recording Princess Hermine Reuß’s visit in 1923 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 12b. Page of Walter Bruck’s guest register with Princess Hermine Reuß’s signature and date of visit, the 23rd of April 1923 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Dr. Bruck’s 25th year anniversary as dental lecturer at the University of Breslau, the former Kaiser sent a personal congratulatory “Brieftelegramm” (i.e., mail telegram) on the 14th of February (Figures 13a-d), followed by a personal note from Empress Hermine on the actual date of the event, the 25th of February 1925. (Figures 14a-d) The latter message naturally acknowledged Walter Bruck’s lengthy tenure, but also indicated an intent to come to Silesia for dental treatment.

 

Figure 13a. Congratulatory mail telegram Kaiser Wilhelm II sent Dr. Walter Bruck on the 14th of February 1925 from the Haus Doorn on his 25th anniversary as dental lecturer at the University of Breslau (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 13b. Photo of Kaiser Wilhelm II accompanying mail telegram he sent Dr. Walter Bruck (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 13c. Transcription of mail telegram Kaiser Wilhelm II sent Dr. Walter Bruck

 

Figure 13d. Translation of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s mail telegram

 

Figure 14a. Page 1 of congratulatory letter Princess Hermine Reuß sent Dr. Walter Bruck on the 25th of February 1925 from the Haus Doorn on his 25th anniversary as dental lecturer at the University of Breslau (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 14b. Page 2 congratulatory letter Princess Hermine Reuß sent Dr. Walter Bruck on the 25th of February 1925 from the Haus Doorn on his 25th anniversary as dental lecturer at the University of Breslau (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 14c. Transcription of letter Princess Hermine Reuß sent Dr. Walter Bruck

 

Figure 14d. Translation of letter Princess Hermine Reuß sent Dr. Walter Bruck

 

 

It is not clear whether Walter was also Wilhelm’s personal dentist though this is a reasonable assumption. An entire page of photos in Walter’s scrap book indicates Walter and Johanna visited the Emperor and Empress at Huis Doorn in September 1925 (Figure 15), possibly to attend to Wilhelm’s dental needs. During this visit Walter took a photo of his wife Johanna surrounded by Wilhelm, Hermine Reuß, two of Hermine’s daughters, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath and Princess Hermine Caroline of Schönaich-Carolath, Major General Konrad Wilhelm Gustav Hermann Graf Finck von Finckenstein (1862 – 1939), and others. (Figures 16a-b, 17)

 

Figure 15. Page of photographs and postcards from Walter and Johanna Bruck’s visit to the Haus Doorn in September 1925 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 16a. Photograph Dr. Walter Bruck took of his wife Johanna and the Kaiser’s entourage in September 1925 with identifications (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 16b. Identifications on the back of the photograph Dr. Walter Bruck took of his wife standing amidst Kaiser Wilhelm II and his entourage (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 17. Major General Konrad Wilhelm Gustav Hermann Graf Finck von Finckenstein (1862–1939), one of the individuals Walter Bruck photographed at the Huis Doorn in September 1925

 

 

Another brief digression. For regular readers, I owe you a huge “Mea Culpa!” In Post 65, I tried to work out who was the unnamed Bruck standing amidst the Kaiser, Hermine Reuß, and their entourage. Several years ago, I obtained the identical picture, captioned otherwise, from a different branch of my extended family so never worked out that the “W.B.” who initialed the photo was Walter Bruck and that his wife was in the photo. (Figures 18a-c) In this instance my powers of deduction abjectly failed me.

 

Figure 18a. Same picture as Figure 15a. obtained several years ago from a different branch of my family, showing a then-unknown Bruck standing with Kaiser Wilhelm II and his family and entourage in Doorn (photo courtesy of Andreas Pauly)

 

Figure 18b. Back of Figure 18a dated the 28th of May 1926 initialed by a then-unrecognized “W.B.,” now known to be Walter Bruck (photo courtesy of Andreas Pauly)
Figure 18c. Translation of caption on Figure 17b. It is now clear Johanna and Walter were expecting the birth of Renate Bruck, born on the 16th of June 1926, coincidentally, nine months after their visit to the Haus Doorn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From a brief note dated the 4th of October 1925 sent from Huis Doorn, Walter had obviously sent a copy of the aforementioned photo to Wilhelm because his staff acknowledged receipt of the picture and said His Majesty had found the photo to be “excellent.” (Figures 19a-b) As an aside and as mentioned in Post 99, I have shared images of all of Dr. Bruck’s personal papers and photos with Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska, Branch Manager of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Breslau where Walter’s father and grandfather are interred. Renata noted the high quality of Walter’s photographs so checked a publication mentioning Walter Bruck written by professor of dentistry at the University of Wrocław, Prof. Barbara Bruziewicz-Mikłaszewska, and learned he had run the Photography Department at the University of Breslau. My esteemed ancestor was indeed a man of eclectic interests.

 

Figure 19a. Handwritten letter sent on the 4th of October 1925 by one of Wilhelm’s staff thanking Dr. Walter Bruck for sending the picture he took of the Kaiser and his entourage (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 19b. Translation of the letter sent by Wilhelm’s staffer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is unclear from Walter’s surviving papers how long the personal friendship between Kaiser Wilhelm’s family lasted nor how long he continued as Empress Hermine’s dentist before the rise of the National Socialists would have made this impossible. There is no indication in Walter’s personal biographical account that he was raised in a Jewish home; on the contrary, several passages from Walter’s memoir state he attended or was taught in Catholic or nondenominational schools and I have long suspected he converted to Christianity like many German Jews at the time did. As students of history know all too well, this would not have afforded him any protection in the Nazi era.

There is direct evidence the Nazis tried to remove Walter Bruck from his teaching post at the University of Breslau following their ascension to power in 1933. This proof does not come from Walter’s papers but from another source. I remind readers that in Post 99 I included a photo taken on the Eastern Front during WWI of Walter Bruck riding in an open car with General Field Marshall August von Mackensen and their respective wives. (Figure 20)

 

Figure 20. Dr. Walter Bruck riding with General Field Marshal August von Mackensen during WWI on the Eastern Front; Walter’s first wife, Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch (1872-1942), is thought to be seated next to him (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Dr. Tilo Wahl found the following passage in Mackensen’s biography, entitled “Zwischen Kaiser und ‘Führer’: Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen,” written by Theo Schwarzmüller, specifically discussing Walter Bruck and Mackensen’s intervention on his behalf:

GERMAN 

“. . . An Rust (Anmerkung: preußischer Kultusminister) wandte sich Mackensen auch im Fall von Professor Walther Bruck aus Breslau, eine internationale Kapazität der Zahnmedizin. Wegen jüdischer Abstammung wurde ihm die Lehrbefugnis entzogen, obwohl er sie seit Kaisers Zeiten besaß und schon sein Vater an der Universität Breslau gelehrt hatte. Bruck war evangelisch getauft, christlich erzogen, “immer national” und als Arzt am AOK [=Armeeoberkommando] Mackensen ausgezeichnet, wie er hilfesuchend versicherte. Zunächst lehnte Rust unter Hinweis auf die Gesetze ab, wonach Juden keine Beamten mehr sein dürften. Allerdings galten für Kriegsteilnehmer auf Wunsch Hindenburgs vorerst Ausnahmen. Nach “nochmaliger Prüfung” wurde nach mehreren Monaten Bruck die Lehrbefugnis wieder erteilt, was Mackensen ihm telegrafisch mitteilen konnte. Insgesamt verloren im Dritten Reich mehr als 1000 Hochschullehrer, vor allem Juden und Demokraten, ihre Stellung. Dadurch büßte Deutschland seine führende Position in den Naturwissenschaften ein. Auch der alte NS-Kämpfer Rust, von Hitler bald zum Reichsminister befördert, propagierte die arische Universität, was Gelehrte wie Albert Einstein und Fritz Haber vertrieb. Für Bruck engagierte sich Mackensen, weil dieser eine ihm nahe, deutschnationale Gesinnung vorweisen konnte.“

 

ENGLISH 

“. . .Mackensen also turned to Rust [NOTE: Prussian Minister of Culture, Bernard Rust] in the case of Professor Walther Bruck from Breslau, an international authority in dentistry. Because of his Jewish descent, his teaching license was revoked, although he had held it since the time of the Kaiser and his father had already taught at the University of Breslau. Bruck had been baptized a Protestant, had been raised a Christian, had ‘always been national,’ and had distinguished himself as a physician at the AOK [NOTE: Army High Command] Mackensen, as he helpfully asserted. At first, Rust refused, citing the laws that Jews could no longer be civil servants. However, at Hindenburg’s [NOTE: German general and statesman Paul von Hindenburg] request, exceptions applied for the time being to war veterans. After ‘reconsideration,’ after several months, Bruck was again granted the teaching license, which Mackensen was able to inform him of by telegraph. In total, more than 1000 university professors, mainly Jews and democrats, lost their positions in the Third Reich. As a result, Germany forfeited its leading position in the natural sciences. Even the old Nazi fighter Rust, soon promoted to Reich Minister by Hitler, propagated the Aryan university, which drove away scholars such as Albert Einstein and Fritz Haber. Mackensen became involved with Bruck because the latter could demonstrate a German-national outlook close to his own.”

There is another astonishing document included among Walter’s personal papers that Dr. Tilo Wahl brought to my attention. It is a letter sent by the University of Breslau’s curator, “Der Kurator de Universität und der Technischen Hochschule” (the curator of the university and the technical college) to Walter, dated the 24th of April 1936. (Figures 21a-c) The curator revoked an earlier ruling declaring Walter was no longer a Professor which had effectively removed him from his teaching position. As Tilo aptly points out, humiliatingly, the letter is lacking any form of salutation.

 

Figure 21a. Letter sent by the University of Breslau’s curator to Walter Bruck dated the 24th of April 1936 reversing an earlier decision to revoke his title as “Professor” (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 21b. Transcription of the letter sent by the University of Breslau’s curator to Walter Bruck

 

Figure 21c. Translation of the letter sent by the University of Breslau’s curator to Walter Bruck

 

Notwithstanding Walter’s ties to the former Kaiser, August von Mackensen, and other high-ranking German officials, there can be no doubt that Walter would have seen their interventions as anything other than a temporary reprieve from Nazi persecution. Given Kaiser Wilhelm and Kaiserin Hermine’s well-known anti-Semitic views, it is highly unlikely either would have interceded on Walter’s Bruck’s behalf had he lived beyond 1937 and been arrested or deported. Wilhelm held the Jews responsible for the two world wars. As to Wilhelm’s views on Nazism, he hoped the Nazis’ early successes would lead to the restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy, with his eldest grandson as the fourth Kaiser. Hermine actively petitioned the Nazi government for this on her husband’s behalf. For his part Hitler felt nothing but contempt for Wilhelm, blaming him for Germany’s greatest defeat, and the petitions were ignored.

Notwithstanding his disdain for the Kaiser, Hitler was not averse to using the occasion of Wilhelm’s death on the 4th of June 1941 several weeks before the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union for political advantage. Hitler wanted to bring Wilhelm’s body back to Germany for burial to demonstrate to the Germans the direct descent of the Third Reich from the old German Empire. However, Wilhelm had made it clear that he did not want his body returned to Germany until the monarchy was restored, and his wishes were respected.  However, Wilhelm’s request that the swastika and other Nazi regalia not be displayed at his funeral was ignored.

One final thought. Dr. Wahl purchased Walter’s appointment book from his grandson in 2013 and copied it for me. Walter’s calendar shows that in April 1937, the month following his death, Walter still had patients scheduled. (Figures 22a-b) Based on my own father’s experience in his dental practice in Tiegenhof [Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland], also in 1937, as the Nazis ramped up their anti-Jewish measures, his clients disappeared. I have no doubt Walter saw his once amazing life rapidly slipping away. Barring an unknown medical condition, I am more convinced than ever that Walter took his own life on the 31st of March 1937 to protect his wife and half-Jewish daughter. (Figure 23)

 

Figure 22a. The cover of Dr. Walter Bruck’s appointment book (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 22b. Dr. Walter Bruck’s appointment book covering the period of late March-early April 1937 showing he still had patients scheduled; Walter died on the 31st of March 1937 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 23. Dr. Walter Bruck’s death announcement

 

REFERENCE

 

Schwarzmüller, Theo. Zwischen Kaiser und ‘ Führer’. Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen. 2001. Munich: Schöningh (p. 278 footnote)

 

VITAL STATISTICS OF WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK & SOME IMMEDIATE RELATIVES

 

 

NAME EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE
         
Walter Wolfgang Bruck (self) Birth 4 March 1872 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Walter Bruck’s personal biography
  Marriage (to Margarethe Skutsch) Unknown    
  Marriage (to Johanna Gräbsch) 22 December 1922 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 31 March 1937 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Walter Bruck’s Breslau death certificate
Margarethe Skutsch (first wife) Birth 30 March 1872 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Theresienstadt Ghetto death certificate
  Death 22 September 1942 Theresienstadt Ghetto Theresienstadt Ghetto death certificate
Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (second wife) Birth 10 April 1884 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau marriage certificate
  Death 5 March 1963 Elstree, Hertfordshire, England United Kingdom death certificate
Hermine Bruck (daughter) Birth 18 January 1924 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 10 March 1924 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
Renate Stephanie Gertrude Bruck (daughter) Birth 16 June 1926 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Marriage (to Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne) 1945   Vogelsdorff Family Tree found on ancestry.com
  Marriage (to Henry Ernest Graham) 18 October 1948 Willesden, Middlesex, England United Kingdom marriage certificate
  Marriage (to Gary Newman) October 1956 Middlesex, England England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005
  Death 3 March 2013 Ramsholt, Suffolk, England United Kingdom death certificate

 

 

VITAL STATISTICS OF JOHANNA BRUCK NÉE GRÄBSCH & SOME IMMEDIATE RELATIVES

 

 

NAME EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE
         
Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (self) Birth 10 April 1884 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau marriage certificate
  Marriage (to Dr. Alfred Renner) 6 May 1905 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau marriage certificate
  Divorce (from Dr. Alfred Renner) 8 March 1917 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Notation on 1905 Breslau marriage certificate
  Marriage (to Walter Wolfgang Bruck) 22 December 1922 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 5 March 1963 Elstree, Hertfordshire, England United Kingdom death certificate
Alfred Friedrich Karl Kurt Renner (first husband) Birth 20 June 1873 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau 1905 marriage certificate
  Marriage (to Johanna Gräbsch) 6 May 1905 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau marriage certificate
  Death Unknown    
Walter Wolfgang Bruck (second husband) Birth 4 March 1872 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Walter Bruck’s personal biography
  Marriage (to Johanna Gräbsch) 22 December 1922 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 31 March 1937 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Walter Bruck’s Breslau death certificate
Hermine Bruck (daughter) Birth 18 January 1924 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 10 March 1924 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
Renate Stephanie Gertrude Bruck (daughter) Birth 16 June 1926 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 3 March 2013 Ramsholt, Suffolk, England United Kingdom death certificate

 

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

 

Note: Beginning with this post, I embark on a series of articles about my distinguished second cousin twice removed, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), and his family. By virtue of a fortuitous contact with a German doctor, Dr. Tilo Wahl (Figure 1), I obtained copies of hundreds of images of private papers, photos, and personal effects once belonging to Dr. Bruck. These items offer insights into my relative’s remarkable life including photos of people in my ancestral tree whose likenesses I never expected to find. In this and subsequent posts, I describe the circumstances by which Dr. Wahl obtained these things and some of what I have learned from them.

 

Figure 1. Dr. Tilo Wahl, member of the Association of Phaleristics, who sent me hundreds of images of personal effects that once belonged to my renowned ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck

 

Related Posts:

POST 68: DR. JULIUS BRUCK AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERN ENDOSCOPY

POST 68, POSTSCRIPT: DR. JULIUS BRUCK, ENGINEER OF MODERN ENDOSCOPY-TRACKING SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS

POST 83: CASE STUDY USING THE UNITED KINGDOM’S “GENERAL REGISTER OFFICE” DATABASE TO FIND ANCESTORS

 

Figure 2. Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) shown wearing the medals that Dr. Wahl purchased at auction in 2013 from Walter’s grandson, Nicholas Francis David Newman (1960-2015) (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Increasingly, the inspiration for Blog posts comes from readers, typically from individuals descended from or acquainted with some of the people I have written about. This post stems from such an encounter and involves my renowned ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (Figure 2), formerly from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]. Additionally, in recent days, I was contacted by Dr. Bruck’s twin granddaughters who I had not long ago learned had immigrated to Australia in the 1990’s but knew no way of contacting. Amazingly, they stumbled upon my Blog while I was in the midst of writing this post!

Ms. Madeleine Isenberg, my friend affiliated with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles (JGSLA), once shared an article she wrote in 2012 for AVOTAYNU about helping a family decimated by the Holocaust reconstruct its history. As I was preparing this post, I recalled a quote from Madeleine’s article that seems relevant to this story on the nature of luck vs. fate: “Once I asked my cousin, the Chief Rabbi of England, Lord Jonathan Sacks, what he thinks about ‘coincidence versus beshert (predestination).’ His immediate response was, ‘There’s no such thing as coincidence, it’s all beshert.’” Another quote I have cited in previous posts by Branch Rickey, the former brainy General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, may also be apt. He used to say, “Luck is the residue of design.” Regardless of whether the ensuing tale is the result of chance or destiny, a remarkable convergence of events resulted in learning about personal items once belonging to one of my ancestors and obtaining copies of all of them.

Let me provide some context. Dr. Walter Bruck (1872-1937) and I are second cousins twice removed. Walter’s grandfather, Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (1813-1883), was my great-great-granduncle. Walter’s father was Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902), a noted dentist I wrote about in Post 68. Drs. Jonas and Julius Bruck and their respective wives, Rosalie Marle (1817-1890) and Bertha Vogelsdorff (1843-1917), are all interred in a restored tomb in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland. (Figures 3a-b)

 

Figure 3a. The headstones of Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902) and his father, Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck, and their respective wives in 2016, following restoration (photo courtesy of Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska)

 

Figure 3b. Closeup of Dr. Julius Bruck’s headstone in 2016, following restoration (photo courtesy of Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska)

 

Dr. Walter Bruck was married to a Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (Figure 4), a non-Jew. Following Walter’s death in 1937, she remained with her half-Jewish daughter Renate Bruck in Breslau for a time until it became too dangerous in the era of the National Socialists. In Post 83, I described the great lengths to which I went to discover what happened to Johanna and Renate Bruck and eventually learned they immigrated to England and died there. It is not clear whether Johanna and Renate moved directly to England or relocated elsewhere to Germany first; I have found a fleeting reference whose source I can no longer recall suggesting they may first have lived in Erfurt, Germany in the state of Thuringia at the address Dammweg 9. (Figure 5)

 

Figure 4. Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck with his wife, Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Bruck née Gräbsch (1884-1963), and daughter, Renate Bruck (1926-2013) in their Adler automobile; Johanna was an emancipated woman who owned and drove her own car (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 5. House at Dammweg 9 in Erfurt, Germany as it looks today where I found a fleeting reference that Johanna and Renate Bruck lived after they left Breslau

 

Walter Bruck’s widow never remarried but through documents I obtained from the United Kingdom’s General Register Office and elsewhere, I learned she died in 1963 (Figure 6), and that Renate Bruck married three times and died in Ramsholt, Suffolk, England in 2013. (Figure 7) According to Renate’s death certificate, her son, Nicholas Francis David Newman, an offspring of Renate’s third marriage, was present when she died. Hoping to contact him, I scoured the GRO database, and sadly discovered he killed himself in 2015. His death certificate, which I also obtained (Figure 8), gives no indication he was ever married nor had any children. The trail thus ran cold, and I naturally assumed this would be the end of things. Good fortune would dictate otherwise.

 

Figure 6. Death certificate for Johanna Margarete Elisabeth Bruck showing she died on the 5th of March 1963 in the County of Hertford, England and was the widow of Walter Wolfgang Bruck

 

Figure 7. Death certificate for “Renate Stefanie Newman,” dated the 3rd of March 2013, providing her maiden name (Bruck) and the name of her son, “Nicholas Francis David Newman”

 

Figure 8. Death certificate for Nicholas Francis David Newman (1960-2015)

 

Recently, through my Blog’s Webmail, I received an intriguing message from a German general practitioner named Dr. Tilo Wahl including several photographs. What promptly caught my attention were the attached pictures of Tilo Wahl sitting alongside Nicholas Newman (Figure 9), Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s grandson. Knowing Nicholas had committed suicide in 2015, I assumed these photos had to have been taken shortly before his death. After responding to Dr. Wahl, he would explain the circumstances of his meetup with Nicholas Newman eight years earlier.

 

Figure 9. Photo from left to right of Nicholas Newman, Tilo Wahl, and Tilo’s colleague from their meetup in 2013 following Tilo’s purchase of Dr. Walter Bruck’s medals (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Dr. Wahl is a member of the Association of Phaleristics. Unaware of what this term means, I learned it originates from the Greek mythological hero Phalerus (Greek: Phaleros) and the Latin phalera (“heroics”) and is an auxiliary science of history and numismatics which studies orders, fraternities, and award items, such as medals, ribbons, and other decorations. Tilo explained his interest in phaleristics stems from a childhood fascination with recent history and military history, which evolved into collecting Prussian decorations; later, his collecting interest expanded, and he began purchasing groups of awards belonging to individuals, which, in his words, convey a vivid personal history about the former owner.

It turns out that in around 2013, Tilo purchased at auction the medals once belonging to my distinguished ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, from Walter’s grandson, Nicholas. Following the transaction, they met in person. To help provide context for the medals he had bought, Nicholas allowed Tilo to photograph many of Dr. Bruck’s personal papers and photographs and sold him other personal effects once belonging to his grandfather.

In the case of Dr. Bruck’s medals, it was clear to whom they originally belonged as they came with documentation. Tilo would later explain to me there exist old annual periodicals (e.g., “Handbuch für den Preußischen Hof und Staat” (a printed guide of the Royal Prussian court and administration); “Ranglisten der Königlich Preußischen Armee” (rank lists of the Prussian Army)) that were once published where persons in official positions and/or of higher rank were mentioned along with the decorations they were awarded. Clearly, for personalized medal groups Tilo purchases that come without attribution, these handbooks are most useful.

Once Tilo has the name of a person connected to a medal group in his collection, he tries to find out as much as possible about them, especially the circumstances under which the individual received the decorations. A collector friend of Tilo’s, knowing of his interest in the Bruck family, informed him of my Blog, and he contacted me through Webmail. This resulted in Dr. Wahl generously sharing with me hundreds of images of medals, papers, letters, telegrams, personal items, photographs, guest registers, etc. belonging to Dr. Bruck.

Among the items shared was a 19-page biography about Dr. Bruck’s ancestors and his early years. I enlisted the assistance of a German friend, Julia Drinnenberg, who recruited her brother-in-law to translate this typed document; I want to acknowledge Julia’s relative, Max Raimann, for his generous assistance translating Walter’s memoir. Unfortunately, the biography only goes as far as around 1894-1895 but it includes some entertaining snippets. It also has fleeting references to a few of Walter’s ancestors that provide a narrow firsthand account of mutual relatives about whom I knew little or nothing. Below I quote at length from his narrative and include a few parenthetical clarifications on some of what Walter reminisces about:

 

I was born on Sunday, the 4th of March 1872. I was the fourth of my parents’ children. At the time, my father was a private lecturer at the University of Breslau, where he later became the professor Dr. med Julius Bruck.(Figure 10) My mother was born Bertha Vogelsdorff. (Figure 11) At the time, we lived at Schweidnitzerstadtgraen 9, which is now the ‘Café Kaiserkrone.’

 

 

Figure 10. Walter’s father, Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902) (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 11. Walter’s mother, Bertha Bruck née Vogelsdorff (1843-1917) (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My eldest sister Gertrud died in infancy. My next sister was Margarethe. (Figure 12) She married Dr. Wilhelm Prausnitz (Figure 13), who was private lecturer in Munich. In this position he was awarded the ‘Pettenbkopferpreis’ for his research on the ability of rivers to cleanse themselves. He later became ‘Sanitätsrat’ [roughly translatable as ‘Medical Consultant’] and Director of the Hygienic Institute at the University of Graz [Austria].

 

Figure 12. Walter’s sister Margarethe Bruck as a young lady (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 13. Walter’s brother-in-law, Wilhelm Prausnitz (1861-1933), married to Walter’s sister Margarethe Bruck (photo courtesy of Clendening Library Portrait Collection, University of Kansas Medical Center)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My parents’ third child was Friedrich Wilhelm (Figure 14), who died of pneumonia which he contracted on a school outing at the age of 17 ½ in 1883.

 

Figure 14. Walter’s older brother, Friedrich “Fritz” Bruck (1865-1883) who died of pneumonia at age 17 ½ (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

I was the youngest child and want to describe my career. But first I would like to give some more information about the Bruck family. Our family lived for more than 200 years in Silesia. I was told that my great-grandfather owned a brewery. There were no further details that I could find out about him.

A brief footnote. Based on my knowledge of the Bruck family tree, I think Walter Bruck’s great-grandfather was Jacob Nathan Bruck (1770-1832), born in Pschow, Germany [today: Pszów, Poland] who died in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. Jacob was married to Marianne Aufrecht, allegedly born in 1776, place unknown. Given my family’s connection to Ratibor and its association with the brewery and hospitality industries there, it is reasonable to assume these are Walter’s great-grandparents. Portraits of neither are known to exist.

Continuing.

However, I remember my grandfather on my father’s side [Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck] (Figure 15), though I was only eleven years old when he died. He was an excellent physician and dentist by the standard of the times. He published several scientific works, one of which was a textbook on dentistry which had already two editions. He was a leading figure in his field and was made a member of the Imperial Leopoldian-Carolingian Academy of Science in Halle (‘Kaiserlich Leopoldinisch-Carolinschen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Halle’), a special honor at the time.

 

Figure 15. The only known portrait of Walter’s grandfather, Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (1813-1883) (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Dr. Jonas Bruck’s brother, Dr. Moritz Bruck, worked as physician in Berlin and was the author of a book, ‘Über die Asiatisch Cholera’ (About the Asian Cholera).

Disappointingly, Walter Bruck makes no mention of my great-grandfather, Samuel Bruck (Figure 16), the middle brother of Dr. Moritz Bruck and Dr. Jonas Bruck. Samuel was originally a wood merchant before purchasing the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor in the mid-19th century, owned for three generations by my ancestors.

 

Figure 16. My great-grandfather, Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), middle brother of Dr. Moritz Bruck (1800-1863) and Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (1813-1883)

 

From the time of my grandfather all male members of the family turned to academic professions. This resulted through four generations in a desire for education that was a special mark of our family. With two exceptions, the female members of the family also married men with an academic education. This indicated a desire to continue living in the atmosphere in which they had been raised.

My father’s brothers should also be mentioned. Dr. Adalbert Bruck (Figure 17) was an ‘Amtsgerichsrat’ [Court Judge] and Professor Dr. jur. Felix Bruck (Figure 18) was a ‘Geheimer Justizrat’ [Privy Councilor of Justice].

 

Figure 17. One of Walter’s uncles, Dr. Adalbert Bruck (1841-1909)
Figure 18. Another of Walter’s uncles, Dr. Felix Bruck (1843-1911)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the family Vogelsdorff from which my mother is descended there is not much I can write. One of my mother’s brothers, Ludwig Vogelsdorff, acquired great wealth being a wholesaler in velvet, silks, and ribbons in Germany. As a result of inflation and the incompetence of his son and son-in-law there is not much left of the fortune.

Now to my person.

Childhood (Figure 19)

 

Figure 19. Walter Wolfgang Bruck as a young boy (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

My childhood passed like that of most children from our class. There is not much I can tell. I supposedly had a wet nurse who liked cheese and alcohol. This did not apparently have a lasting influence on me since I do not have a particular craving for cheese or alcohol. On the contrary, I have always been moderate as far as alcohol consumption.

I like to recall one episode from my earliest childhood that took place at the so-called summer camps (Sommerquartiere). We moved to the camps during the summers when it got warmer. I have two particularly vivid memories. One of them took place in the Parkstrasse that was owned by Herr Quickert. Around a yard were arranged small houses, opposite which stretched an old unkept garden. In this building, which survives today unchanged, we lived. On another occasion we lived on a plot of land close to the Fürstenbrücke (bridge) on a large plot of land. That plot belonged to the banker family Alexander who were friends of my parents. On the day of our move there, I gave my parents an unpleasant surprise by falling off a swing while they were unpacking. Being sick I had to be put to bed immediately. The Parkstrasse was connected to the town by a horse drawn tram.

There is another pleasant memory of my grandfather [Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck] I like to recall. After lunch he would visit my father Dr. Julius Bruck’s office on Schweidnitzerstrasse opposite the theater. My late brother [Friedrich Wilhelm Bruck] and I went to meet him on the esplanade. If we were on time, we were invited to the Viennese café on the corner of Taschenstrasse and Neue Gasse. It was owned by the Cloin brothers and was so far as I know the first Viennese café in Breslau.

My grandmother [Rosalie Marle] (Figure 20) came from the family Marle, a renowned family from Upper Silesia. I still vividly remember her slipping us sweet morsels to which she was also partial. My grandfather had to keep a strict diet due to his frequent and severe bouts of gout. My grandmother died suddenly at the Café Pupp in Karlsbad [then-Czechoslovakia], while there with my Uncle Felix to enjoy the waters.

 

Figure 20. Restored headstone of Walter’s grandmother, Rosalie Bruck née Marle (photo courtesy of Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska)

 

My grandfather died in 1883. He had just turned 70. Every year he got from the warden of the esplanade the first chestnuts, an unfailing remedy against gout. He always carried them in his pocket.

After these first childhood years which passed without any remarkable events, ‘real life’ began.

School Years

I entered [school] at the then-popular ‘Wanckelsche Knabenschule’. . .The headmaster was Herr Beisenherz. It was tradition that before his birthday a collection of money was made from all the classes. The profit was used to increase the silver treasure of the family Beisenherz. In return we were treated to streusel cake and hot chocolate on his birthday.

After that period, I became a pupil at the Königliches Freidrichsgymnasium,’ founded by Frederick the Great, which was situated in the Karlstrasse and had a second access from the Schlossplatz. This access was very convenient because it shortened the trip from our flat quite considerably. Also the Schlossplatz was a favorite battle ground for fights with the pupils from the Realgymnasium. Brawls between both parties took place there.

The Friedrichsgymnasium had always been the school of choice for the family Bruck. My father and his brothers went to school there, so it was taken for granted that me and my brother Fritz were going there too. The staff there was quite a queer mixture.

The form master’s name in my first year was initially called Inowrazler, later Inow, and by the time I became his pupil he was known as Jahnow. His son was an Air Force officer who was shot down during WWI. Then we had a Professor Scharnweber, who had already survived several strokes which should in fact have disqualified him from teaching. Then we had a Professor Hirsch with a body like a flagpole and reddish hair that reached nearly to his shoulders. He greased it flat to the sides of his head. He wore glasses that sat at the tip of his nose. He had protruding lips and you would hardly call him a beauty. He wore a winter coat over his vest in summer as well as in winter. When someone had not done his exercises properly, he called out, ‘Sit down, you get a Noll!’ (he wanted to say ‘Null’ or zero). Therefore we nicknamed him ‘Papa Noll.’ He lived with his family near the school. His short, fat wife was an English woman, who often treated us to her singing.

Then there was the limping Professor Menzel and a Professor Michael who always carried a bunch of keys in his hand. During lessons he often pressed clenched fists against the first pupil’s desk. This was an invitation for us to wet the outer edge of the desk with ink. Thus his fingers were always black at the end of the lesson.

In the first years of school I was a good student which delighted my parents and teachers. That changed and my grades diminished, so I was assigned a private tutor, candidate of medicine Leo Wolf. He later became a physician in Metz and after WWI moved to Wiesbaden. He was not a particularly gifted tutor, a fact I used to my advantage. He was lame and walked with a certain rhythm with a stick. When I was in my ‘study’ on the third floor and heard him coming up the stairs, I would climb on the tile stove. When he finally arrived, I started negotiations concerning my homework. I stayed upon the stove until he had met all my demands.

Because my tutor was a romantically minded man, we would read the classics together. I was so enamored of Körner and Schiller that I decided to become a poet too. I even wrote a drama, ‘The End of the Orsini,’ unfinished, which is regrettably lost to posterity. If I obtained an acceptable grade on tests at school, I could attend a performance of a classic play at the theater. The first drama I saw was ‘Zriny’ by Körner. I was so thrilled by the performance I learned whole passages by heart. I can still recite them. My love for the German classics made me plan to study literature. Alas, that plan was never fulfilled.

I was made to dislike school because of the teachers, most of whom were old men, probably senile, who did not know how to kindle any interest in the subjects they were teaching. Thus, my grades slumped despite being gifted.

Before I continue describing my schooling, I would like to recount a little episode which happened during my fifth form in school. An eclipse was expected. Our class was to watch it from Crossen an der Oder, the town where my mathematics teacher was born. My father had given me a gold ten-mark coin. I spent some of it on several glasses of Kümmel (a caraway seed brandy) in a shop opposite the hotel. I must have arrived home in not quite a sober state. In the morning I turned up to watch the eclipse in my brand-new summer coat. Because of the overcast weather we did not get to see much of the eclipse. I was somewhat apprehensive about the reception at home because my coat had been stolen. Against all expectations my parents made light of the affair. When the garment turned up again, the good atmosphere at home was restored. A boy waiter at the hotel had stolen the coat when he noticed I was not quite sober.

Music was important in my parents’ home. My father played the organ quite masterfully. So it was destined I would play an instrument, the violin. At the time in Breslau there existed a music school, von Henschel in the Büttnerstrasse, where I was to learn the basics of playing a violin. It remained at the basics because playing the violin was just not my cup of tea. So I started to take cello lessons. My late brother had played the cello, so there was no need to buy a new instrument. Lessons were given by the then very popular cellist Heyer, with whom I took lessons until he hit me across my fingers with the cello bow. My next teacher was the first cellist of the Breslauer Ochesterverein Josel Melzer, with whom I made great progress and achieved acceptable ability.

My preference for German literature was promoted through a reading circle, where we read the classics with each person reciting a different role. We met each Sunday. The members of this circle have in large part been very successful in life. Fritz Gradenwitz became mayor in Kiel, Victor Loewe ‘archivrat’ (Keeper of the State Archive) in Breslau, Walther Freund the head physician of the Breslau Hospital for Infants, Fritz Leppman ‘medizinalrat’ (medical officer) in Berlin and Fritz Juliusburg Professor.

We would convene meetings in ‘Frey’schen Garten’ on Breiten Strasse. Participants included Christian Morganstern, Friedrich Kayseler, and occasionally Otfried Förster, the neurologist who later achieved international fame.

These glorious times ended abruptly when my grades fell through the pastimes my father characterized as ‘shenanigans.’ I was sent to live with my father’s former house tutor, Oberlehrer Bernhardt, in Striegau [32 miles west of Breslau] in 1887. I can still clearly remember my arrival in this beautifully situated town. On a sunny January Sunday it was bitterly cold, and an old-fashioned vehicle brought me and my parents to the house of the coppersmith Rückert on Jauerstrasse. The family Bernhardt lived on the first floor. With trepidation I accompanied my parents to the railway station, and I was left in a strange town.

Bernhardt was a great man, gifted as a poet, jovial, and an unparalleled educator. I followed him with all the enthusiasm of a 15-year-old, and we became the best of friends notwithstanding the large difference in age. As his wife was a high-minded person who made his life difficult, he seemed to enjoy my company. We went for long walks, made occasional detours to ‘Mutter Katzler,’ which his wife was not to know about. There we ate a big chunk of garlic sausage. Our walks usually ended at his local tavern as he was not averse to alcohol.

While I did not exactly harvest laurels in Breslau, I became quite a good student in Striegau, where the standards were not as exacting. The headmaster of the Progymnasium favored me and held me up especially in German language as a quintessential student. He was particularly taken with my ‘Lesetagebuch’ (a reading diary as a method of promoting reading) in which I entered quotations from the classics. And the poor, and in part dull, Striegauer students had to keep such a diary as well. But as they were not sure the purpose of a quotation these diaries often were unintentionally comical.

My cello playing continued in Striegau. The Kantor of the Catholic Church, a friendly old gentleman, gave me lessons. Alas, my stay in Striegau was only of a short duration. As the school was a Progymnasium, it did not have the last two years of a Gymnasium.

I next attended the Gymnasium in Jauer [39 miles west of Breslau]. My time there is not among my fondest memories though some amusing incidents took place. The headmaster was an excellent teacher though rather religious. Every day we had prayers before our lessons. Every fortnight we had to partake in a service in the beautiful old Friedenskirche. Overall he was quite a strange person. He kept a hedgehog as a pet. He still wore an upturned collar, which was kept in place by a tie, a long black frock coat, and wore his eyeglasses so he could peer over them at you.

The food was not very good, especially on Wednesdays, when ‘Bierfleisch’ (literally ‘beer meat’) was served. This was the mixed remains of the entire week, beer, beef tallow, etc. It was the fiendish invention of the Frau Direktor, the headmaster’s wife, and spread its undefinable odor in all rooms of the school. On Wednesday afternoon there were no lessons. To compensate for the dreadful meal, after lunch we headed straight for the baker von Fliegener on Marktstrasse for coffee and cakes. Near the station there was a pub where we played billiards and passed the time.

In our boarding house, it was a tradition to pilfer a bottle of ‘Haase-Exportbier’ every night. In the hall of the headmaster’s flat there was a cupboard with this noble beverage. We had a key to this cupboard, so naturally we helped ourselves.

Professor Armbuster, our Greek and German teacher, was a terrible person whose wrath I incurred. He resembled a faun [a man with a goat’s horns, legs, and tail] with a scraggly beard, who was squat of stature, had evil looking eyes and a monstrous mouth, and of course wore spectacles. He wanted to get his revenge on me for some misdemeanor I had committed during a Greek lesson.  In the sixth form we had to deliver presentations of Greek texts in German. While translating Herodutus, I had used a cheat sheet from which I delivered my translation, unaware that Professor Armbuster had the same cheat sheet on his desk. As a punishment I was compelled to deliver an essay on a book by Herder that was completely incomprehensible for a sixth form student. The first difficulty was obtaining a copy of the book. With a lot of trouble I got it through the local bookstore. Professor Armbuster probably expected me to turn to him for advice on how to proceed but I refused to give him the satisfaction. Instead I produced such an idiotic essay my fellow students were hard put not to burst out laughing during my presentation. The whole performance was such a disaster, the professor chased me from the pulpit and was so mad I thought he would strangle me.

But my time in Jauer finally came to an end. By then I had given up the idea of studying literature and turned to studying dentistry. I had been encouraged by my father and grandfather. My father qualified as a professor with the later famous anatomist Waldeyer as a physician and dentist. In 1871 he became a private lecturer in dentistry at the medical department of the University of Breslau. With his own money he founded the first dental university institute in Germany. He supported it until it was nationalized in 1890. With nationalization, the teaching was divided into three parts. Professor Carl Partsch became the head of the surgical department. Dr. Wilhelm Sachs, an exceptionally capable and well-known dentist, became head of the division for conservation. And my father became head of the division for dental prosthesis. By then he had been promoted to full professor.

My father published a series of scientific essays which quickly earned him a reputation in professional circles. He invented the stomatoscope for examining oral cavities and the urethroscope for examining the bladder. In all standard textbooks on urology he is mentioned as a pioneer in this field.

The dental institute which for economic reasons was called ‘provisional’ was housed in unbelievably primitive rooms in a flat on Feldstrasse. The furniture consisted of the equipment from my father’s private practice, by far not up to date anymore, and old stuff the university wanted to get rid of.  It stayed there from 1890 until 1901, when it was moved into the university’s former eye clinic. This is where it still is now (1936). In spite of the deficient accommodations a lot was achieved there, and I received an excellent education.

Sachs had good connections to Austria. Thus, many colleagues came to Breslau as the training of dentists in Austria left much to be desired. I got on quite well with Sachs. My undeniable manual dexterity piqued his interest, and I learned a lot from him. Later, we became good friends. For a short time I joined the ‘Akademmisch Zahnärztlichen Verein’ (Academic Dentists Club). But I did not feel comfortable there, so I resigned from the club.

Twice I took part in some academic fencing. Once I mauled a chap named Levin quite badly while I did not even get a scratch, a feat known as ‘unberücht abstehen’ (stab untouched). In another encounter with a student named Ziegel from Görlitz I was scarred on the forehead.

On the 30th of November 1892 I passed my state examination in dentistry with the grade ‘gut’ (good). While studying I did not have much fun. My father insisted strictly that I occupy myself either as observer in his surgery or work in the laboratory. This I had to do everyday after working in the clinic of Carl Partsch which took place in the morning. It got much worse after I passed my exam for which I am grateful to this day.

Following my exam I worked in my father’s clinic until I was called up for military service. This was a one-year enlistment that began on the 1st of October 1893. I joined the artillery regiment von Peucker. We lived in the barracks in a house [in Breslau] on a corner, first with the widow Zeidler and later one floor below with the widow Mischke. I quite enjoyed a soldier’s freedom of life. The first battery to which I was assigned enjoyed a great reputation. The commander, Hauptmann Braune, was a benevolent superior with a gigantic mustache. Though I would not claim special soldierly merits my equestrian abilities must have been satisfactory, as I was selected as so called ‘Teten’Reiter’ (head rider), an important position in my company. At the time, I became a private first class. On the 1st of July I was promoted to sergeant. It was with great pride that I carried the golden insignia on my collar and cuffs walking down the Schweidnitzerstrasse. My promotion to sergeant marked the end of my military career.

After my year of military service, I returned to work in my father’s practice, and diligently learned English. Because of the advances of American dentistry, my father wanted to send me to America for further education. My English tutor, Mr. Dance, equipped me with a good mastery of the English language. With the aid of a warehouse catalog, he taught me the names of all objects depicted. The ‘Baltimore College of Dental Surgery’ was the oldest institution of its kind and considered to be the best. It was decided that I would take a postgraduate course there.

 

Regrettably, Dr. Walter Bruck’s biography abruptly ends here. I have quoted at length from his memoir for several reasons. Rarely do I come across my ancestors’ firsthand accounts of their lives, so Walter can assuredly much better relate his personal story than I can. His academic grounding in literature imbue his accounts with levity and amusement, even though much is likely lost in translation. Walter comes across as a gentleman with a pleasant, waggish humor. His accomplished father and grandfather were clearly influential in Walter deciding to become a dentist rather than study literature. Finally, his encounters with renowned academicians and fellow students who would later go on to become very accomplished highlight the intellectual milieu in which he grew up and was educated.

As mentioned, Dr. Wahl sent me dozens of images of papers, news articles, and photos from Dr. Bruck’s personal effects that shed further light on his life. February 28, 1925 marked the 25th anniversary of Walter’s appointment as lecturer in dentistry at the University of Breslau and at the same time his resignation from the position as head of the department at the Dental Institute. On this occasion, a celebration took place lecture hall of the Dental Institute to mark Dr. Bruck’s tenure and many accomplishments.

 

Figure 21. Example of a contemporary news article from “Deutsche Zahnärztliche Wochenshrift,” dated the 19th of February 1925 on Dr. Walter Bruck’s 25th anniversary as lecturer at the University of Breslau (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

His photo album include dozens of telegrams, letters, and personal notes Walter received marking the “Dozenten Jubiläum,” lecturer’s anniversary. His scrap book also contains contemporary newspaper accounts of the event that provide a chronology of major events in his life. (Figure 21) Walter obtained his license to practice dentistry in 1892, enrolled in the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1895 where he obtained the degree of Doctor of Dentistry in 1896. In 1900 he succeeded his mentor Professor Wilhelm Sachs as teacher of dentistry and department head at the University of Breslau’s Dental Institute and became a member of the dental examination board. In 1908 he obtained the title “Professor” and in 1912 was awarded the silver medal by the Central Association of German dentists. During WWI, from October 1914 to August 1917, Walter headed a dental department at the fortress hospital in Breslau, and in 1917 went to Bucharest, where he worked as a consulting dentist for the Romanian military administration (Figures 22a-c) and later in the same capacity worked at the high command of the so-called von Mackensen Army Group. (Figure 23) In 1919, he became a member of the commission for the dental doctoral examination board, and in 1920 received his PhD. in medicine. In 1921, he received the lofty title of “extraordinary Professor,” then from October 1923 to October 1924 he was the Deputy Directory of the Dental Institute at Breslau University.

 

Figure 22a. Dr. Walter pointing to the entrance of his dental office when he was stationed in Bucharest, Romania during WWI (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 22b. Closeup of the sign to Dr. Bruck’s dental office (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 22c. Transcription and translation of what the sign reads

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 23. Dr. Walter Bruck riding with General field marshal August von Mackensen during WWI on the Eastern Front; Walter’s first wife, Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch (1872-1942), is thought to be seated next to him (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

As mentioned, Walter’s “Jubiläum” took place in 1925 but no newspaper accounts postdate this time than can inform us about his later life. Some materials exist from which inferences can be drawn, but, in the interest of abbreviating what is already a lengthy post, I will tell more of Walter Bruck’s personal life in future publications. However, a few other things are worth mentioning here.

During Dr. Wahl’s meetup with Nicholas Newman in 2013, he learned about and spoke to Renate’s best friend growing up, a German countess named Ina Gräfin von Schaesberg née Weinert (b. 19 Mar 1926, Breslau). Thinking I would be interested in speaking with her, Tilo called her and happily learned she is very much alive. Tilo put me in touch with Ina, and ever since we have had a very lively and productive exchange. (Figure 24) Like many Germans escaping the advancing Russians towards the end of WWII, Ina and her family were able to salvage very few mementos when they fled Breslau in 1945; however, among the items Ina managed to save are a few pictures of she and Renate Bruck as children, which Ina graciously shared with me. One was taken at Renate’s 10th birthday party on the 16th of June 1936. (Figure 25) Another, of the two of them performing in a school play, shows Ina dressed in black playing the role of a prince, and Renate dressed in white as a princess. (Figure 26)

 

Figure 24. Renate Bruck’s lifelong best friend, Ina-Marie Schaesberg (b. 19th of March 1926, Breslau) as she looks today (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

 

Figure 25. Picture of Renate Bruck’s 10th birthday party on the 16th of June 1936 in Breslau; Renate is seated fourth from the left, Ina and her younger sister are standing fourth and fifth, and all are wearing identical dresses (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

 

 

Figure 26. In a school play Renate Bruck in white dressed as a princess, and Ina garbed in black as her prince (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

 

Ina shared a particularly interesting rumor about Walter which I am inclined to believe is true. Walter died at the relatively young age of 65, and the scuttlebutt circulating at the time was that he committed suicide; he apparently did this to save his non-Jewish wife and half-Jewish daughter from being persecuted and/or murdered and having their property confiscated by the Nazis, a fate that inevitably awaited them. In future posts I will have more to say about Walter’s religious upbringing.

Towards the outset of this post, I mentioned to readers the coincidental email I received only this week from Nicholas Newman’s twin sisters after they stumbled on my Blog. I knew of their existence solely because Ina had mentioned them to me but had no expectation of finding them because they had immigrated to Australia in the 1990’s leaving no trace I could find. Ina could only recall their first names, Francesca and Michele. Regardless, as we speak, I am in the process of learning more about them as well as their grandfather from some of his memorabilia and dental equipment they retain; these may overlap with what Tilo already sent, assuming the twin girls inherited Nicholas’s belongings after he died. Almost immediately after hearing from Francesca and Michele Newman, I sent Ina an email letting her know. Like me, she was thrilled. She went to her photo album and retrieved some endearing images from October 1966 when Ina went with her two boys, Friedrich and Philipp, to visit Renate and her three children in Elstree, outside London. (Figure 25) Stay tuned for further developments!

 

Figure 27. Picture taken in October 1966 in Elstree, northwest of central London, of Ina’s two boys, Friedrich and Philipp (baby), and Renate’s three children, Nicolas, Francesca, and Michele (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

 

 

REFERENCE

 

Isenberg, Madeleine. “The Rotter Relic.” AVOTAYNU, vol. XXVIII, no. 4, winter 2012, pp. 27-31. www.avotaynu.com

POST 98, PART 2 (DOCUMENTS): THE WOINOWITZ ZUCKERFABRIK (SUGAR FACTORY) OUTSIDE RATIBOR (PART V-CHILEAN DESCENDANTS)

 

Note: In the second installment of Post 98, I will briefly tell readers about some of the historic vital event documents I found related to Roberto Hirsch’s ancestors, focusing on ones from the mid-to-early 19th century that allowed me to trace Roberto’s ancestry seven generations back to the mid 18th century. As readers will see, some of these records are challenging to decipher.

Related Post:

Post 98, Part 1 (Stories): The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part V-Chilean Descendants)

 

Figure 1. Roberto Hirsch with his father Fritz Hirsch (1908-2006) in Santiago, Chile in 1998 (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Roberto Hirsch (Figure 1), to remind readers, is the great grandnephew of Sigmund Hirsch (Figure 2), former co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. As I discussed in part 1 of this post, Roberto contacted me through Webmail and filled in details on a few of his ancestors I have previously written about. He gave me enough details to uncover vital event documents on some, which I supplemented by finding records on others Roberto did not know about.

 

Figure 2. Sigmund Hirsch (1848-1920)

 

As discussed in part 1, Roberto’s grandparents, Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943) and Ida Hirsch née Sollinger (1874-1944) (Figure 3), were murdered in Theresienstadt during the Holocaust. Roberto thought his grandfather had only two siblings, Sofie Hirsch (b. 1875) (Figure 4) and Karl Hirsch (b. 1879) (Figure 5) and knew Karl like his parents had been murdered in the Shoah; according to Yad Vashem, tragically, Sofie was also killed during the Holocaust. (Figure 6) Additionally, it turns out Hermann Hirsch had yet another sibling Roberto was unaware of, Bernhard Hirsch (b. 1877). (Figure 7) I suspect this sibling may have died at a young age but have not found proof of this.

 

Figure 3. Roberto’s grandparents, Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943) and Ida Hirsch née Sollinger (1874-1944) in 1935 in Bonn, Germany; both later died in Theresienstadt (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Figure 4. Roberto’s great aunt Sophie Hirsch (1875~1944) in 1918 in Bonn (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)
Figure 5. Roberto’s great uncle Karl Hirsch (1879-1944) in Colmar, Alsace in 1906 when Colmar was still a part of Germany

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6. “Page of Testimony” about Sophie Hirsch from Yad Vashem Victims’ Database
Figure 7. Screenshot with birth information on Bernhard Hirsch, born to Jakob & Auguste Hirsch on the 7th of December 1877 in Karlsruhe, the great uncle Roberto was unaware of; his fate remains unknown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roberto obviously knew of his great-grandfather Jakob Hirsch (1842-1905) (Figure 8) and great granduncle Sigmund Hirsch (1848-1920). Again, Jakob and Sigmund had a third sibling Roberto did not know of, also named Bernhard Hirsch (1836-1888). (Figure 9)

 

Figure 8. Jakob Hirsch (1842-1905) (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)
Figure 9. Screenshot with death information on an earlier generation Bernhard Hirsch, born to Emanuel & Henriette Hirsch in Karlsruhe 1836 who died there in 1888; this is another ancestor Roberto was unaware of

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was able to establish a connection between Roberto’s ancestors and the city of Karlsruhe in the German state of Baden-Württemberg through records I initially found for Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] rather than for Karlsruhe. Let me explain.

 

Prior to being contacted by Roberto Hirsch, I knew when Sigmund Hirsch had died and even have a picture of his headstone from the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor. (Figure 10) One of the Ratibor microfilms available through familysearch.org, the Mormon Library’s online database, Family History Library (FHL) microfilm 1184448 records his date of death as the 15th of October 1920. (Figure 11) It took me a while to realize the death register is organized according to the Hebrew calendar. Thus, the page with Sigmund Hirsch’s name is entitled “Marcheschwan,” which is “Heshvan,” covering the months of October-November. This comports with Sigmund’s known death inscribed on his headstone as the 14th of October 1920. Similarly, for Sigmund’s wife, Selma Hirsch née Braun, who I knew from the same headstone died on the 11th of July 1916, I found her name under the Jewish month of “Tamus” or “Tammuz” (Figure 12), encompassing the months of June-July. Below, I discuss another surprising discovery I made on FHL microfilm 1184448.

 

Figure 10. Selma & Sigmund Hirsch’s headstone from the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

 

 

Figure 11. Sigmund Hirsch’s death register listing from Ratibor FHL microfilm 1184448 under the Jewish month of “Marcheschwan” (October-November) showing he died on the 15th of October 1920
Figure 12. Selma Hirsch née Braun’s death register listing from Ratibor FHL microfilm 1184448 under the Jewish month of “Tamus” (June-July) showing she died on the 11th of July 1916

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The key to unraveling Roberto Hirsch’s lineage was discovering his great-grandparents’ marriage certificate on ancestry.com. Jakob Hirsch (Sigmund’s brother) and his wife, Auguste Hirsch née Hirsch from a different branch of the Hirsch family, were married in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany on the 30th of July 1874. (Figure 13) German marriage certificates typically provide a wealth of information, including the age and the date and place of birth of the espoused, along with the names of the parents, including the maiden names of the mothers. While I cannot read or speak German, the handwriting is crisp enough that I could make out the key vital information.

 

Figure 13. Jakob Hirsch & Auguste Hirsch’s 1874 marriage certificate that was the key to unraveling Roberto Hirsch’s ancestry; though written in German most of the vital data is decipherable

 

 

Jakob Hirsch, I learned, was 31 years of age at the time of his marriage, was born in Carlsruhe (former spelling of Karlsruhe), and his parents were Emanuel Hirsch and Jette (short for Henriette) née Ettlinger. Jakob’s wife, Auguste, was 25 when she married, was born in Ilvesheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and her parents were Löb Hirsch II and Johanna née Herz. Armed with this new information, I quickly found Emanuel Hirsch’s death certificate showing he died on the 25th of March 1880 in Karlsruhe.

Jakob’s 1874 marriage certificate was the first solid evidence I found for his father’s full name, Emanuel Hirsch. As a related aside, Roberto shared an 1879 letter written in the old German script “Sütterlin,” signed by “E. Hirsch,” with separate sections addressed to his other son Sigmund and daughter-in-law Selma Hirsch née Braun. What makes this letter so quaint is that Sigmund married Selma without introducing her to his parents. This meant he did not have permission to marry her, in those days a big affront in Jewish families. Regardless, Emanuel Hirsch’s 1879 letter graciously welcomed Selma to the family.

Initially uncertain what might have happened to Sigmund and Jakob’s parents, Emanuel Hirsch and Henriette Hirsch née Ettlinger, I re-examined FHL microfilm 1184448, thinking they might have died in Ratibor. What I discovered surprised me. Under the Jewish month of “Nissan” or “Nisan,” covering March-April, I found both their names in Ratibor’s death register. (Figure 14) Under the column titled “Beerdigungsort,” or burial place, they are both shown however to have been buried in Karlsruhe. In Emanuel’s case, his listing under March comports with the month of his death; however, in the case of Emanuel’s wife Henriette, from her death certificate which I also found, she is known to have died in August. Why both names are listed in the Ratibor death register when they are known to have died in Karlsruhe is a bit of a mystery; I assume it is because their son Sigmund was connected to Ratibor. These towns are more than 575 miles apart.

 

 

Figure 14. Emanuel and Henriette Hirsch’s death register listings from Ratibor FHL microfilm 1184448 under the Jewish month of “Nissan” (March-April), showing they were buried in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg; Emanuel died in March, making his listing accurate, but his wife died in August making her listing here puzzling

 

Regardless, the findings discussed firmly established a link to Karlsruhe and Ilvesheim in Baden-Württemberg, Germany for Roberto Hirsch’s family. I returned to familysearch.org, hoping to find Jewish microfilm for one town or the other, and was rewarded in both instances. Finding these records was the ultimate step to documenting Roberto’s lineage.

As previously mentioned, Emanuel and Henriette Hirsch’s three sons, Bernhard, Jakob, and Sigmund were born, respectively, in 1836, 1842, and 1848. These dates narrowed the “window” to search for birth records in Karlsruhe. From their death records, I knew Bernhard and Jakob were born in Karlsruhe, and assumed Sigmund had also been born there.

Bernhard (Figures 15a-b), Jakob (Figures 16a-b), and Sigmund’s (Figures 17a-b) birth register listings are all found on FHL microfilm 1256447 for Karlsruhe. Without knowing beforehand their actual or approximate years of birth, it is quite unlikely I would have located their listings. Given how indecipherable the text is, as readers can see for themselves, knowing what to search for was the key to finding the listings. At a minimum, birth registers give the name and date of birth of the newborn and the names of the parents. 

 

Figure 15a. Bernhard Hirsch’s (1836-1888) birth register listing from Karlsruhe FHL microfilm 1256447 showing he was born on the 26th of August 1836

 

Figure 15b. Transcription & translation of Bernhard Hirsch’s birth register listing

 

Figure 16a. Jakob Hirsch’s (1842-1905) birth register listing from Karlsruhe FHL microfilm 1256447 showing he was born on the 8th of November 1842

 

Figure 16b. Transcription & translation of Jakob Hirsch’s birth register listing

 

Figure 17a. Sigmund Hirsch’s (1848-1920) birth register listing from Karlsruhe FHL microfilm 1256447 showing he was born on the 18th of November 1848

 

Figure 17b. Transcription & translation of Sigmund Hirsch’s birth register listing

 

The most challenging listing to read was that of Bernhard Hirsch. Literally, I thought I could read four words out of five lines, namely, “Mutter Jette geb. Ettlinger” (circled) translated as “Mother Jette née Ettlinger.” The surname “Hirsch” written in the margin (circled), though now recognizable to me, was initially indiscernible. My go-to German friend, Peter Hanke, transcribed and translated all three birth register listings for me, along with the other documents illustrated and discussed below.

Having confirmed Bernhard was born in 1836, I turned my attention to finding his parents’ marriage register listing in Karlsruhe. While they might possibly have gotten married after Bernhard’s birth, I assumed they would have married before 1836. Again, after much hunting, I eventually found Emanuel Hirsch and Jette Ettlinger got married on the 27th of May 1834. (Figures 18a-b) Both Emanuel and Jette’s parents were named on this document, information that allowed me to track Roberto’s maternal ancestors yet another two generations as the table below illustrates.

 

Figure 18a. Emanuel Hirsch and Jette Ettlinger’s marriage register listing from Karlsruhe FHL microfilm 1256447 showing they married on the 27th of May 1834

 

Figure 18b. Transcription & translation of Emanuel Hirsch and Jette Ettlinger’s marriage register listing

 

Having gleaned what I could from the birth and marriage register listings for Karlsruhe, I next turned my attention to FHL microfilm 1271220 containing Jewish records for Ilvesheim, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Located approximately 39 miles north of Karlsruhe, this is where Roberto’s great-grandmother Auguste Hirsch née Hirsch was born around 1849 according to her 1874 marriage certificate (discussed above). Again, after much scrutiny, I found her birth register listing showing “Gustel,” short form for Auguste, was born on the 14th of January 1849. (Figures 19a-b) As readers can see from the translation, Auguste’s parents are identified, Löw Hirsch and Jeannette née Herz, which gave me further names to check out.

 

Figure 19a. Auguste “Gustel” Hirsch’s birth register listing from Ilvesheim FHL microfilm 1271220 showing she was born on the 14th of January 1849

 

Figure 19b. Transcription & translation of Auguste “Gustel” Hirsch’s birth register listing

 

As mentioned in the first installment of Post 98, Roberto Hirsch, while born in 1944 in Santiago, Chile has lived in Bonn, Germany for the last 50 years. Prior to WWII, his grandfather Hermann Hirsch owned a well-known department store in Bonn shown in part 1 of this post. When Roberto reached out to me, he told me he thought Hermann had been born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about 85 miles south-southeast of Karlsruhe. From Hermann’s birth certificate, I ascertained he was actually born in Karlsruhe. (Figure 20)

 

Figure 20. Screenshot with birth information on Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943), Roberto’s grandfather who committed suicide in Theresienstadt, showing he was born in Karlsruhe rather than Freiburg im Breisgau

 

 

Roberto confirmed his family’s association with both cities. He accessed and sent me address books for Karlsruhe from 1840 (Figure 21), 1855 (Figure 22), and 1874 (Figure 23), and one from Freiburg from 1887 (Figure 24) with listings for his family. The 1840 and 1855 Karlsruhe address books identify his great-great-grandfather Emanuel Hirsch as a “schneider,” a tailor. The 1874 Karlsruhe address book by then lists Emanuel as a “partikulier,” a ship owner who works for larger shipping companies, and his son Sigmund as a “kaufman,” a tradesman; clearly, at some point, Sigmund Hirsch moved to Ratibor and became co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik there. The 1887 Freiburg address book lists Roberto’s great-grandfather Jakob Hirsch also as a “kaufman.”

 

Figure 21. Page from 1840 Karlsruhe Address Book listing Roberto’s great-great-grandfather Emanuel Hirsch as a “schneider,” a tailor
Figure 22. Page from 1855 Karlsruhe Address Book again listing Emanuel Hirsch as a “schneider,” a tailor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 23. Page from 1874 Karlsruhe Address Book now listing Emanuel Hirsch as a “partikulier,” a ship owner who works for larger shipping companies, and his son Sigmund as a “kaufman,” a tradesman
Figure 24. Page from 1887 Freiburg Address Book listing Roberto’s great-grandfather Jakob Hirsch as a “kaufman,” a tradesman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As regular readers may have noticed, I have started including a table of vital statistics for the people discussed in my posts sourcing the vital data. This may seem unimportant, but I consider it relevant given all the erroneous data found on ancestral trees. As an example, in the case of Roberto Hirsch’s great-grandfather, I found a family tree stating Jakob Hirsch was born around 1843. I located the birth register listing for this Jakob, and it is clear to me this was a different person with the same name. While generally dismissive of trees with basic errors, after studying the inscrutable vital records for Karlsruhe and Ilvesheim, I can easily understand how genealogists might make honest mistakes. Naturally, this assumes researchers have tried to track down primary source documents, my benchmark for accuracy.

 

 

 

ROBERTO HIRSCH’S SIMPLIFIED FAMILY “TREE” BACK SEVEN GENERATIONS

 

GENERATION PATERNAL LINE PATERNAL LINE SPOUSE MATERNAL LINE MATERNAL LINE SPOUSE
GEN. 0 Roberto Hirsch (self) (b. 1944)      
GEN. 1 Fritz Hirsch (father) (1908-2006)   Margarete Janzen (mother)

(1914-1992)

 
GEN. 2 Hermann Hirsch (grandfather) (1876-1943)   Ida Sollinger (grandmother)

(1874-1944)

 
GEN. 3 Jakob Hirsch (g-grandfather)

(1842-1905)

  Auguste Hirsch (g-grandmother)

(1849-1935)

 
GEN. 4 Emanuel “Nathan” Hirsch g-g-grandfather) (1805-1880)   Henriette “Jette” Ettlinger (g-g-grandmother) (1808-1882)  
GEN. 5 Nathan Hirsch (g-g-g-grandfather) Sara Mandel (g-g-g-grandmother) (1763-1839) Bernard Ettlinger (g-g-g-grandfather) (1777-1847) Therese Levi (g-g-g-grandmother)
GEN. 6     Seligmann Ettlinger (g-g-g-g-grandfather)

(unk.-1805)

Rachel Weinheimer (g-g-g-g-grandmother) (1739-1817)
GEN. 7     UNKNOWN ETTLINGER Malka (unk. maiden name) (g-g-g-g-g-grandmother (unk.-1770)

 

 

Post 98, Part 1 (Stories): The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part V-Chilean Descendants)

 

Note: In this post I relate the story about a German gentleman born in Santiago, Chile in 1944 and now living in Bonn, Germany, Mr. Roberto Hirsch, who is the great grandnephew of Sigmund Hirsch, the co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik outside Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. Roberto contacted me through my Blog and filled in gaps in my understanding of the fate of some of his ancestors, adding nuance, color, and some fascinating context to a horrific period in history. I will not pretend to readers I can do justice to Roberto’s family story, nor tell a comprehensive story. Rather, I will highlight aspects that augment the story of some people I have previously written about or examine lesser-known facts of my extended family’s survival during WWII.

 

Related Posts:

Post 27: Jewish Deportations from Gurs, France in 1942

Post 36: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part I-Background)

Post 36, Postscript: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part I-Maps)

Post 55: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part II-Restitution for Forced Sale by The Nazis)

Post 59: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part III—Heirs)

Post 61: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part IV-Grundbuch (Land Register))

 

Figure 1a. A postcard of the Woinowitz sugar factory as it looked in the early 1900’s

 

 

Figure 1b. The still-standing Woinowitz sugar factory in 2014

 

In multiple earlier posts, I have spoken at length about the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (sugar factory) (Figures 1a-b), located outside Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the town where my father was born in 1907. Prior to the forced sale of the plant during the Nazi era, the business was co-owned by Adolph Schück (1840-1916) (Figure 2) and his brother-in-law Sigmund Hirsch (1848-1920). (Figure 3) Adolph and Sigmund were married to sisters, and they and their wives died in Ratibor and were interred there in the former Jewish Cemetery.

 

Figure 2. Adolph Schück (1840-1916), co-owner with Sigmund Hirsch of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik
Figure 3. Sigmund Hirsch (1848-1920)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Given the general inaccessibility of records from Jewish ancestors who wound up in South America, it is always gratifying when surviving descendants with connections there send me messages. Such was the case when I was contacted by Roberto Hirsch, born in Santiago, Chile in 1944 but living in Bonn, Germany for the past 50 years. For context, he explained that his great-grandfather, Jakob Hirsch (1842-1905) (Figure 4), was one of Sigmund’s older brothers, and that he was married to Auguste Hirsch née Hirsch (1849-1935). (Figure 5)

 

Figure 4. Sigmund Hirsch’s older brother, Jakob Hirsch (1842-1905) (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)
Figure 5. Jakob Hirsch’s wife, Auguste Hirsch née Hirsch (1849-1935) (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roberto told me ample stories and gave me enough enticing clues about some of his ancestors that it sent me down one of the deepest rabbit holes I have ever climbed into seeking primary source documents, my gold standard for accuracy. As readers will learn in the second part of this two-part Blog post, I accessed historic records on Roberto’s ancestors that were practically indecipherable. Fortunately, my German friend, Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsburg,” confirmed they were pertinent and translated them. Including Roberto’s generation, I have incredibly now found seven generations of his family, going all the way back to 1739!! For Jewish families, this covers a long span.

 

Figure 6. Sigmund & Selma Hirsch in Ratibor with their three children from left to right: Henrietta (Frieda), Robert, and Helene (Lene)

 

Sigmund Hirsch was married to Selma Braun (1856-1916), one of 14 children the Ratibor brewery owner Markus Braun (1817-1870) had with two wives. Sigmund and Selma had three children, Helene “Lene” Goldenring née Hirsch (1880-1968), Robert Hirsch (1881-1943), and Henrietta “Frieda” Mamlok née Hirsch (1883-1955). (Figure 6) Prior to being contacted by Roberto Hirsch, I had already learned the fate of all three children. From Lene Goldenring’s (Figure 7) post-WWII German compensation file, I knew she had died in 1968 in Newark, New Jersey, that her brother Robert perished in Valparaiso, Chile in 1943, and that her sister Frieda had passed away in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1955. (Figure 8)

 

Figure 7. Sigmund Hirsch’s daughter, Helene “Lene” Goldenring, in New York at Christmas 1950
Figure 8. Sigmund Hirsch’s daughter, Henrietta “Frieda” Mamlok née Hirsch, with her husband Dr. Alfred Mamlok on their wedding day in the early 1900’s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Among the relatives Roberto first told me about was his namesake, Robert Hirsch, Sigmund’s middle child. Robert had studied electrical engineering in Berlin but had unspecified problems there, so his parents arranged to send him to Spain to work for AEG, “Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft.” The company was founded in 1883 in Berlin by Emil Rathenau, and according to Roberto, the Rathenau had ties to the Hirsch family from Ratibor. Possibly a business relationship existed between the families connected to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik and maybe this facilitated Robert Hirsch obtaining a position as general manager for AEG in Bilbao, Spain? So far, I have been unable to find the thread.

Robert Hirsch was not the only member of the Hirsch family to find refuge in Spain before or during WWII. In Post 27, I talked at length about Robert’s niece, Eva Zernik née Goldenring (1906-1969) (Figure 9), who made her way to Madrid after walking away or escaping from the French detention center in Gurs, France. As I pointed out in Post 27, security at Gurs was lax, and because Eva spoke impeccable French, she likely managed to cross the nearby Spanish border illegally using money she had squirreled away to bribe human smugglers. She remained in Madrid until 1947 when she emigrated to America.

 

Figure 9. Sigmund Hirsch’s granddaughter, Eva Zernik née Goldenring (1906-1969), in Florence, Italy in June 1938 standing alongside my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, with whom she partnered in tennis

 

 

Roberto Hirsch’s parents, Fritz Hirsch (1908-2006) and Margarete Hirsch née Janzen (1914-1992), also made their way to Spain. Prior to the ascendancy of the Nazis, it had been envisioned that Fritz would take over the family fashion business in Bonn, established by his father Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943) (Figures 10-11) at the turn of the 20th Century; named “Wittgensteiner,” this store was famous throughout Germany for its fine apparel from England, France, and elsewhere. (Figures 12a-d) After it quickly became apparent the store would be expropriated by the Nazis, Fritz escaped to France to join his older brother Kurt Hirsch (1905-1993) (Figures 13-14) who had tried to establish a new life in Paris after his PhD. was revoked by the Nazis in 1933. Like my own father, Kurt joined the French Foreign Legion, but unlike my father who was shipped to Algeria, Kurt remained hidden in the south of France until 1945, eluding the German occupiers for five years and experiencing innumerable adventures.

 

Figure 10. Roberto’s father and grandfather, Fritz Hirsch (1908-2006) and Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943), in 1928 (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)
Figure 11. Roberto’s grandfather, Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943) with his two sons, Kurt Hirsch (1905-1993) and Fritz Hirsch (1908-2006), in 1932 in Colmar, now a part of Alsace, France but formerly belonging to Germany (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 12a. Hermann Hirsch’s fashion store in Bonn, “Wittgensteiner” (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)
Figure 12b. Hermann Hirsch’s fashion store in Bonn, “Wittgensteiner” (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 12c. Hermann Hirsch’s fashion store in Bonn, “Wittgensteiner” (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)
Figure 12d. Hermann Hirsch’s fashion store in Bonn, “Wittgensteiner” (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 13. Roberto Hirsch’s uncle Kurt Hirsch (center) (1905-1993) at his bar mitzvah in 1918, amidst his family, many of whom were murdered in the Holocaust including veterans of WWI (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

 

Figure 14. Roberto’s uncle Kurt Hirsch (1905-1993) in Paris in 1984 (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Because Fritz’s residence permit in France only allowed for a three-month stay, he tried to get to Spain. There he knew some people with whom he had studied in Bonn that had good connections to Spanish Government officials. Through this channel, Fritz obtained an unlimited residence permit for Spain. Several months later Roberto’s mother, only 21 at the time, left Germany by train and joined her future husband there. Roberto’s mother, incidentally, was Protestant, and, on account of her relationship with Fritz Hirsch, was considered by the National Socialists as a “Judenliebchen,” a Jew’s lover, strictly forbidden under Nazi law.

Roberto tells a few fascinating stories about his parents’ time in Spain.

Roberto’s parents lived mostly in small towns in the northern part of the country. In the mid-1930’s, Spain was a cultural and social backwater with limited outside contacts. Arriving speaking not a word of Spanish and having no money Fritz still managed to land himself a job as a traveling salesman selling office supplies. Armed with only a small dictionary, he traveled around his sales district, speaking his broken Spanish to comical delight and endless derision. Nonetheless, the Spaniards, a joyful people by nature, were so amused by the situation, they bought more supplies than they needed. Thus, Fritz was able to provide for himself and his wife.

Roberto’s parents were in touch with Robert Hirsch during their four-year stay in Spain between 1935 and 1939. By virtue of Robert’s position as general manager for AEG, he had more freedom of movement, which allowed all to meet periodically. Based on Roberto’s aunt’s surviving address book, Fritz Hirsch lived for a time in Bilbao. (Figure 15) Given that Robert, Fritz, and Margarete’s stays in Spain overlapped with almost the entirety of the Spanish Civil War, which began on the 17th of July 1936 and ended on the 1st of April 1939, I was particularly curious how the conflict might have affected their lives.

 

Figure 15. Page from Margarete “Gretel” Hirsch’s address book showing her brother Frederico (Fritz), Roberto’s father, lived in Bilbao (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Roberto relates one amusing story about an unnerving encounter his mother had towards the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. At the time, at least in northern Spain, the conflict was a low-key affair. Young men from opposing sides would gather in an open field and start shooting at one another with their ancient and off target rifles; neither side could afford more accurate arms, so damage and injury was limited. One day Roberto’s mother was returning from shopping and came upon this scene. Suddenly, a voice shouted, “stop shooting, the lady wants to pass.” And the boys did precisely this, allowing her to walk through with trembling knees, whereafter the same voice shouted, “now we can continue!”

According to Roberto’s parents, the conflict became more gruesome when the Germans, Italians, and Soviets began to send troops and more sophisticated arms. At the time, Fritz and Margarete lived in a small town not far from Guernica. Students of history know this town was the scene of an infamous April 26, 1937 bombing, the first aerial bombing by the German Luftwaffe carried out at the behest of Francisco Franco’s Nationalist faction; the number of casualties ranged from about 150 to more than 1600, depending on which faction was reporting.  This incident was the inspiration for Pablo Picasso’s famous painting “Guernica.”

At some point, Roberto’s father had to renew his German passport and was forced to visit the German consulate in Bilbao, which was evidently staffed by Nazis. While Fritz’s passport was eventually renewed, it did not happen before anti-Semitic epithets were hurled at him and he was told that Berlin would be informed of his whereabouts. I have on occasion uncovered vital documents for some Jewish ancestors with their location outside of Germany noted. Roberto’s story is independent confirmation that this in fact took place, ostensibly because the Nazis expected one day to invade these yet unoccupied countries and round up Jews living there. No doubt, Fritz and other Jews living in Spain were worried about this eventuality.

As the Spanish Civil War intensified and Franco’s forces captured larger cities, Roberto’s parents moved further west towards Portugal. Approaching the end of their stay in Spain in 1939, Roberto’s parents lived in La Coruna, the capital of Galicia in the northwest of Spain by the sea, in a zone already captured by Franco. (Figure 16) Each morning, they could hear shooting on the nearby beach as Franco’s forces executed Republican prisoners.

 

Figure 16. Page from Margarete Hirsch’s address book showing her brother Frederico (Fritz) later lived in La Coruna (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

It was at this moment that Roberto’s parents decided to flee Spain. One day they told their neighbors they were traveling to Portugal for the weekend and took with them only two suitcases. Using $3,000 they had saved over the years, they left for Lisbon. Upon their arrival, they started visiting the various consulates trying like thousands of other Jewish refugees there to obtain an exit visa. Everywhere, they were turned down until they visited the Chilean Embassy. Upon their arrival, the Ambassador was out, so a young staffer received them and started flirting with Roberto’s attractive mother; she reciprocated, and this miraculously resulted in Roberto’s parents being granted a visa for Chili. Within a week, by April 1939, they had boarded a ship bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina, a transit point. (Figures 17a-f)

 

Figure 17a. The cover of Fritz Hirsch’s 1936 German passport (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Figure 17b. The inside page of Fritz Hirsch’s German passport with a big red “J” and “Israel” added to his name, both indicating he was Jewish (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Figure 17c. Page from Fritz Hirsch’s German passport with visas dated the 3rd of October 1936 and the 7th of October 1936 from La Coruna, Spain authorizing his stay there until the situation normalizes in Bilbao (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Figure 17d. Pages from Fritz Hirsch’s passport with March 1939 passport stamps for entrance into Portugal and Lisbon (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Figure 17e. On the left page is the entrance visa for Chile, and on the right side the transit visa for Argentina (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Figure 17f. On these pages are various passport stamps showing Fritz Hirsch left Portugal on the 14th of April 1939 aboard the ship “Asturias” headed for Buenos Aires, Argentina; left Buenos Aires the 26th of May 1939; and arrived in Chile on the 1st of June 1939 (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Upon Fritz and Margaret Hirsch’s arrival in Santiago, Chile in June 1939, they were met by Robert Hirsch. (Figure 18) Roberto knows nothing about Robert’s departure from Spain and eventual emigration to Chile. Robert was apparently living with a Spanish woman named Carmen to whom he left a large sum of money upon his departure. Robert’s sister, Helene Goldenring née Hirsch, would eventually also go to Chile via an unknown route from Germany. While I already knew that Robert had died in Valparaiso, Chile on the 7th of October 1943, Roberto explained that his namesake had committed suicide because of a severe persecution complex. This resolved yet another unanswered question I had.

 

Figure 18. Roberto’s mother Margarete Hirsch née Janzen (1914-1992) and Robert Hirsch (1881-1943) in Chile in 1942 with Roberto’s sister in the pram (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Helene Goldenring lived not with her brother Robert in Valparaiso but with Roberto’s parents (Figures 19-20) in Santiago until she left for America on the 3rd of July 1947 (Figure 21), never having learned to speak any Spanish. Oddly, after her departure, Roberto’s parents never again heard from her.

 

Figure 19. Roberto’s parents, Fritz Hirsch (1908-2006) and Margarete Hirsch née Janzen (1914-1992) in Santiago, Chile in 1975 (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)
Figure 20. Roberto Hirsch with his father in Santiago, Chile in 1998 (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 21. Passenger list showing Helene Goldenring née Hirsch’s departure from Valparaiso, Chile on the 3rd of July 1947 headed to New York

 

As to some of Roberto’s relatives who did not escape from Europe, I will briefly relate the heartbreaking story of Roberto’s grandparents, Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943) and Ida Hirsch née Sollinger (1874-1944). (Figures 22-23) Erroneously concluding the Nazis would have no interest in them because of their age, like many other elderly Jews, they consciously decided to stay in Germany. However, by 1939, Hermann and Ida were forced to move to a special house for Jews in Bonn where they paid high prices for water, electricity, and gas. Most of their money had been confiscated, and only a small sum remained from which paltry monthly withdrawals could be made. Around this time their son Fritz began corresponding with his parents from Santiago, Chile, retaining carbon copies of his letters. By 1941, Roberto’s grandparents were again forced to move, this time to a convent in Bonn where the nuns had been evicted. The posts came to a stop in June 1942, when his grandparents were deported to Theresienstadt.

 

Figure 22. Roberto’s grandfather Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943) ca. 1902 (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)
Figure 23. Roberto’s grandparents, Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943) and Ida Hirsch née Sollinger (1874-1944) in 1935 in Bonn, Germany; both later died in Theresienstadt (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roberto graciously shared with me the last correspondence the family ever received from his grandmother. (Figure 24 a-c) It is an exceptional document, a typed postcard written on the 20th of December 1943 from Theresienstadt to Roberto’s family in Geneva. Dictated by Ida Hirsch who was already nearly blind, she wrote that her husband had died of cardiac arrest; the family would later learn from survivors his real cause of death had been suicide, which it was forbidden to write. Preposterously, Ida’s postcard was first sent by the Nazis to Berlin to the “Oberkommando der Wehrmacht” to be censored before being forwarded to Geneva, as though an elderly blind woman could divulge military secrets. It is astonishing the Nazis would allow Jewish internees of the concentration camps any communication with the outside world.

 

Figure 24a. Front of 1943 typed postcard written by Roberto’s grandmother, Ida Hirsch née Sollinger (1874-1944) from Theresienstadt (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Figure 24b. Text of last postcard ever written by Roberto’s grandmother, Ida Hirsch née Sollinger (1874-1944), from Theresienstadt (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

Figure 24c. Translation of text of December 1943 postcard from Ida Hirsch née Sollinger

 

I am profoundly grateful to Roberto for sharing some of his family’s stories, pictures, and documents. I like to think this has been a mutually beneficial exchange since I have uncovered additional ancestors of which he was unaware including their fates. Roberto’s grandfather had three siblings, only two of which he knew about; the three he knew about were all murdered in the Holocaust, and the fate of the fourth has yet to be worked out.

In the second installment of Post 98, I will describe and illustrate some of the historic documents I recovered from various sources related to Roberto Hirsch’s family that have allowed me to track a few of his relatives to the 18th Century.

 

_________________________________________

VITAL STATISTICS OF SIEGMUND HIRSCH AND HIS RELATIVES

 

NAME EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE
         
Sigmund Hirsch (self) Birth 18 November 1848 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Family History Library Karlsruhe Microfilm Roll 1256447 (p. 441 of 748)
  Death 14 October 1920 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] Headstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]; Family History Library Ratibor Microfilm Roll 1184448
Selma Hirsch née Braun (wife) Birth 11 July 1856 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] Headstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]; Family History Library Ratibor Microfilm Roll 1184449
  Death 11 July 1916 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] Headstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Helene Goldenring née Hirsch (daughter) Birth 25 March 1880 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] Helene Goldenring’s Hesse, Germany Post-War Compensation File
  Death 12 January 1968 Newark, New Jersey Helene Goldenring’s Hesse, Germany Post-War Compensation File
Robert Hirsch (son) Birth 31 October 1881 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] Ratibor birth certificate: Mittweida, Germany 1904 Residence Register
  Death (suicide) 7 October 1943 Valparaiso, Chile Roberto Hirsch (personal communication)
Henrietta “Frieda” Mamlok née Hirsch (daughter) Birth 8 February 1883 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]  
  Death 29 July 1955 Montevideo, Uruguay Roberto Hirsch Family Papers
Emanuel Hirsch (father) Birth About 1805 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate
  Marriage 27 May 1834 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Family History Library Karlsruhe Microfilm Roll 1256447 (p. 251 of 748)
  Death 25 March 1880 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate
Henriette “Jette” Hirsch née Ettlinger (mother) Birth 1808 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate; Germany Find a Grave Index
  Marriage 27 May 1834 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Family History Library Karlsruhe Microfilm Roll 1256447 (p. 251 of 748)
  Death 2 August 1882 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate
Bernhard Hirsch (aka Leonhard Hirsch) (brother) Birth 26 August 1836 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Family History Library Karlsruhe Microfilm Roll 1256447 (p. 272 of 748); Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate
  Marriage (to Sofie Reutlinger) 17 August 1871 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany marriage certificate
  Death 7 December 1888 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate
Jakob Hirsch (brother) Birth 8 November 1842 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Family History Library Karlsruhe Microfilm Roll 1256447 (p. 357 of 748)
  Marriage 30 July 1874 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany marriage certificate
  Death 1905 Neuwied, Germany (buried in Bonn, Germany Jewish Cemetery) Roberto Hirsch (personal communication)
Auguste Hirsch née Hirsch (sister-in-law) Birth 14 January 1849 Ilvesheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Family History Library Ilvesheim Microfilm Roll 1271220 (p. 260 of 403); Karlsruhe, Germany marriage certificate
  Marriage 30 July 1874 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany marriage certificate
  Death 1935 Bonn, Germany Roberto Hirsch (personal communication)
Hermann Hirsch (nephew) Birth 19 August 1876 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany birth certificate
  Deportation (to Theresienstadt) 27 July 1942 Trier-Köln, Germany Jewish Victims of Nazi Persecution, 1933-1945
  Death (suicide) 16 February 1943 Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia Roberto Hirsch (personal communication); Ida Hirsch’s 1943 postcard sent from Theresienstadt
Ida Hirsch née Sollinger (wife of nephew) Birth 1874 Einbeck, Germany Roberto Hirsch (personal communication)
  Death 1944 Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia Yad Vashem Shoah Victims
Sophie Hirsch (niece) Birth 3 April 1875 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Yad Vashem Page of Testimony
  Death UNKNOWN UNKNOWN Yad Vashem Shoah Victims
Bernhard Hirsch (nephew) Birth 7 December 1877 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany birth certificate
  Death UNKNOWN UNKNOWN  
Karl Hirsch (nephew) Birth 15 February 1879 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Karlsruhe, Germany birth certificate
  Deportation (to Auschwitz-Birkenau) 10 September 1944 Auschwitz-Birkenau Yad Vashem Shoah Victims
Fritz Hirsch (great-nephew) Birth 20 January 1908 Bonn, North Rhine-Wesphalia, Germany Hirsch Janzen family tree; Roberto Hirsch (personal communication)
  Death 11 January 2006 Santiago, Chile Hirsch Janzen family tree; Roberto Hirsch (personal communication)
Margaret Hirsch née Janzen (wife of great-nephew) Birth 12 January 1914 Elbing, Germany [today: Elbląg, Poland] Hirsch Janzen family tree
  Death 29 February 1992 Santiago, Chile Hirsch Janzen family tree
Roberto Hirsch (great-great-nephew) Birth 3 September 1944 Santiago, Chile Roberto Hirsch (personal communication)
         
         
         

 

 

Post 97: Proving to My Uruguayan Cousin the Existence of His Great-Aunt and -Uncle’s Daughter

Note: In this post I relate the story of retracing my steps to prove to my distant Uruguayan cousin the existence of his great-aunt and -uncle’s daughter whom he knew nothing about. His great-uncle was a noted art historian Curt Glaser in Berlin who like many Jews in the Nazi era suffered the loss of his profession and more.

Related Post:

Post 90: The Long & Winding Road Leading to Jewish Relatives from Brazil

 

The last several months have been among the most prolific periods learning new things about my extended family, primarily from people searching for their ancestors and stumbling upon my Blog. By having more than 400 categories by which my post could potentially turn up in an Internet search, an approach incidentally not recommended by web designers, many people have come upon my writings. In coming weeks, I will relate some of the mysteries I have been able to unlock because of recent reader emails, including an extraordinary communication I received from one individual which resulted in obtaining hundreds of photographs and documents about one of my renowned Bruck relatives who was born and raised in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]. But this is a story for another day. 

The current post stems from a note I received from a delightful Uruguayan man, Eduardo Castro (Figure 1) and an ensuing discovery I made about his family. This gentleman is a fourth cousin once removed as it happens, and he learned about my blog from his aunt and another mutual cousin, Danny Alejandro Sandler. (Figure 2) Eduardo’s aunt, Bettina Basanow née Meyer, was born in Vacaria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil but has lived in Denver, Colorado for more than 50 years. In Post 90, I related the story of trying to locate Bettina and her siblings in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where her parents had emigrated to escape the Holocaust. Thinking Bettina and her family still lived in Brazil, I spent many fruitless months trying to track them down there. My much more social media savvy cousin Danny Sandler eventually located Bettina in Denver and put us in touch.

 

Figure 1. My fourth cousin once removed Eduardo Castro from Punta del Diablo, Uruguay with his wife Carolina Mester and their three children from left to right, Rafael, Guillermo, and Juana
Figure 2. My third cousin once removed Danny Alejandro Sandler who first put me in touch with Eduardo’s aunt, Bettina Basanow née Meyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have periodically told readers about the difficulty of finding evidence of one’s Jewish ancestors who emigrated to South America to escape certain death in Europe during WWII. While I have been assured that certain South America countries are notorious record keepers, not unlike the Germans, most of these records have not yet been automated making online searches for documentary evidence from there difficult. For this reason, it is always immensely gratifying when descendants of people who emigrated to South America find me through my Blog, as in Eduardo’s case. I often learn the fate of some of their ancestors as well as the indirect route some may have taken to get to South America. In a subsequent post, I will relate the story of one such venture. But, again, this is a story for another day.

Shortly after Eduardo and I began our exchanges, I invited him as a “guest” on my family tree. After catching several errors and sending me images of his immediate family, he became curious about a daughter his great-aunt Maria Johanna Dorothea Clara Glaser née Milch (Figure 3) had with her renowned husband Curt Glaser (Figure 4) named Eva Glaser that I include in my tree. Eduardo had never heard about this daughter so asked me for the source of my information.

 

Figure 3. Poor quality Xerox photo of Eduardo’s great-aunt, Maria Johanna Dorothea Clara Glaser née Milch (1901-1981), taken in 1924 in Cortina, Italy
Figure 4. Curt Glaser (1879-1943) whose second wife was Maria Milch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Periodically I find myself in the awkward position of being asked to substantiate the existence of a previously unknown ancestor to a member of the family more closely akin to them than I am. I understand this situation. Had someone ever told me that my father had an older brother born in 1900, as he in fact did, that I knew nothing about, I would have scoffed. Obviously, why would my father never have told me this? In the case of this uncle, I only learned of his existence when I visited the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu” (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz”) and found verification of his birth in 1900 and of his death less than a year later.

In any case, Eduardo Castro would certainly have better knowledge of Eva Glaser as they would have been first cousins once removed. Because I had failed to make a note of where I had found the place and date of her birth I was forced to try and retrace my steps, making new discoveries along the way.

Fortunately, I quickly rediscovered Maria and Curt Glaser’s respective “Declaration of Intention” dated the 16th of October 1941 in New York (Figures 5-6) stating their aim to become citizens of the United States and reside permanently herein. Asked on this form to indicate the number of living children, and their name, sex, date and place of birth, place of residence, both had written “Eva(f) July 22, 1935 born at (sic) Switzerland resides at (sic) Switzerland.” This was confirmation that Eva had indeed existed even though nowhere on this form did it state that Eva was born in Ascona, Switzerland, as I had written on my family tree.

 

Figure 5. Maria Glaser née Milch’s “Declaration of Intention” to become a citizen of the United States dated the 16th of October 1941 in New York naming her daughter Eva and providing her vital statistics and place of residence, Switzerland
Figure 6. Curt Glaser’s “Declaration of Intention” to become a citizen of the United States dated the 16th of October 1941 in New York also naming his daughter Eva

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thinking I had perhaps come across Eva’s place of place in an article about her famous father, I did a Google query on him, and found a fleeting reference to her.

First, let me briefly tell readers about Eva’s father Curt Glaser (1879-1943) as his was an interesting story reflective of the fate of many Jews living in Germany during the 1930’s. Curt was born on May 29, 1879 in Leipzig, Germany, the son of a Jewish family. Almost immediately after receiving his M.D. in 1902, he began a second degree in art history, a topic that had always interested him. At the same time, he also became active as an art critic and began to write reviews on the Berlin art scene, an activity that lasted over 30 years. On the 12th of August 1903, he married Elsa Kolker (1878-1932) (Figures 7a-b), daughter of the Ambassador Hugo Kolker, converted to Protestantism, and received considerable income from the family properties.

 

Figure 7a. Page 1 of Curt Glaser’s marriage certificate to his first wife Elsa Kolker showing they got married on the 12th of August 1903 in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]
Figure 7b. Page 2 of Curt Glaser’s marriage certificate to his first wife Elsa Kolker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Curt received his Ph.D. in 1907 writing his dissertation on Hans Holbein the Elder. By 1909, Curt’s museum career had begun when he was appointed curator of the prints and drawings division (Kupferstichkabinett) at the Berlin Museum (Staatliche Museen Berlin) where he significantly expanded its collection of modern and contemporary art. In parallel to his professional acquisitions on behalf of the Kupferstichkabinett, starting around 1910, with the support of his father-in-law, Hugo Kolker, Elsa and Curt began to build a significant art collection that included, among others, the works of Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse (Figures 8a-c), and Pablo Picasso, as well as valuable prints by artists like Honoré Daumier and Adolph von Menzel.

 

Figure 8a. Letter Henri Matisse wrote to Curt Glaser on the 28th of September 1912

 

Figure 8b. Transcript of letter Henri Matisse wrote to Curt Glaser

 

Figure 8c. Translation of letter Henri Matisse wrote to Curt Glaser

 

The Glasers placed a significant emphasis on acquiring the works of Edvard Munch, a lifelong friend whom Glaser had supported. (Figures 9a-b) A special friendship existed between the Glasers and Munch, who painted portraits of Elsa alone as well as of the couple. (Figure 10) The Glasers had the most extensive collection of his works in Berlin.

 

Figure 9a. Cover of book Curt Glaser wrote about his personal friend, the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, whose best-known work was “The Scream”
Figure 9b. Frontispiece of Curt Glaser’s book about Edvard Munch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 10. Edvard Munch painting of Curt Glaser and his first wife Elsa Glaser née Kolker (1878-1932)

 

 

Curt Glaser clearly supported other artists as evidenced by at least two paintings he commissioned from the German artist Max Beckmann (1884-1950). (Figures 11-12) In addition, Henri Matisse painted Elsa Glaser on several occasions.

 

Figure 11. 1929 portrait of Curt Glaser he commissioned from the German painter Max Beckmann now owned by the Saint Louis Art Museum
Figure 12. Another portrait of Curt Glaser commissioned from Max Beckmann

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In October 1924, Glaser became the Director of the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek (State Art Library) in Berlin, whereupon he recast the library as an art historical research library. By July of the following year, the Glasers had moved into a civil service apartment where their art collection was also displayed and where they held important art salons throughout the late 1920’s. (Figures 13-17)

 

Figure 13. Contemporary news article about Curt & Elsa Glaser’s “Berliner Salon”

 

Figure 14. Curt & Elsa Glaser’s art library in their Berlin apartment

 

Figure 15. Curt Glaser seated in his Berlin apartment

 

Figure 16. The Edvard Munch Room in Curt & Elsa Glaser’s apartment

 

Figure 17. Some of the artworks in Curt & Elsa Glaser’s Berlin apartment

 

Elsa Glaser passed away at the age of 54 in 1932, a loss that deeply affected Curt and that he expressed in personal letters to Edvard Munch. After the National Socialists rose to power, in the spring of 1933, Glaser was placed on leave from the Kunstbibliothek because of his Jewish ancestry, his prominence, and no doubt because of his approach to collecting art deemed degenerate by the Nazis. At the same time, Glaser was compelled to relinquish his apartment. Around this time, he found happiness anew with Eduardo Castro’s great-aunt Maria Milch, whom he married on the 30th of May 1933. (Figures 18a-b) Even before he was forced to retire in September 1933, he had auctioned off large parts of his collection, home furnishings, and art library, much of it at depressed prices.

 

Figure 18a. Page 1 of Curt Glaser and Maria Milch’s marriage certificate showing they got married on the 30th of May 1933 in Wilmersdorf, Berlin
Figure 18b. Page 2 of Curt Glaser and Maria Milch’s marriage certificate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Curt and Maria went into exile in June 1933, going first to Paris, then to Ascona, Switzerland, making the birth of their daughter Eva there plausible. In a reference I happened upon entitled “Curt Glaser Report: III. Summary of the Historical Facts,” the unnamed author writes: “Between 1936 and 1938/1939, the Glasers stayed repeatedly in Florence with their daughter, who was born in 1936,” known, however, to have been born in July 1935. At the time, Curt was likely researching the history of the Renaissance in Florence, a topic he later published a manuscript about.

It is an interesting coincidence that my own uncle and aunt Dr. Franz Müller and Suzanne Müller née Bruck’s stay on the outskirts of Florence almost exactly coincided with that of the Glasers. I like to imagine they may have met. Regardless, as the unnamed author previously quoted wrote: “In 1941, the Glasers emigrated to New York without their daughter and moved in 1943 to Lake Placid. . . He died on November 23, 1943.” (Figures 19-21)

 

Figure 19. Maria Glaser’s 1941 Swiss Emigration Form shown then living in Ascona and transiting in Havana, Cuba
Figure 20. Curt Glaser’s 1941 Swiss Emigration Form containing the same information

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 21. Curt Glaser’s obituary notice from a Lake Placid, New York paper dated the 26th of November 1943

 

The reason the Glasers left their daughter behind nagged at me. Trying to determine why this might have been, I turned to Geni.com. Here I found mention of her, indicating she had died in 1943, thus, at 7 or 8 years of age. I contacted the Profile Manager of the tree and asked where he uncovered this information. He sent a very gracious reply with a link to an article dated the 20th of March 2020 from “Basellandschaftliche Zeitung” (English: Basellandschaftliche Newspaper), or “bz,” a Swiss Standard German language daily newspaper. The article entitled “Curt Glaser case: The squaring of the cultural circle: an agreement has been reached in the Glaser case” (Mensch) discussed the restitution agreement that had been reached between Curt Glaser’s heirs and the Art Commission of the Basel Art Museum, which was one of the primary beneficiaries of the depressed prices Curt received for his art collection auctioned off in 1933.

Buried within this article was the following paragraph: “Glaser had no direct descendants. His first marriage to Elsa [née Kolker (1878-1932)], with which he had built up his collection, remained childless. His only daughter Eva, who had been born with a trisomy-21 impairment, also died as an eight-year-old child in Arlesheim, when Curt Glaser and his second wife Maria were already in exile in the USA.” Trisomy-21 is the most common form of Down syndrome, caused by an extra copy of chromosome number 21.

In conclusion, the chance to track down why Curt and Maria Glaser may have left their daughter behind when they moved to America in 1941 was only possible because of the prominence of Curt Glaser and the multiple articles written about him. Eva’s impairment is the likely explanation for why her parents chose to leave her in Switzerland, perhaps thinking she would receive better care there. Leaving Eva behind must have been a bitter pill to swallow for Curt and Maria. Interestingly, both Curt and his daughter died the same year, 1943. (Figure 22)

 

Figure 22. Curt Glaser’s modest headstone in the North Elba Cemetery in Lake Placid, New York

 

 

REFERENCES

 

Dictionary of Art Historians. “Glaser, Curt.” arthistorians.info/glaserc

 

Kunstmuseum Basel (translated Brailovsky). “Curt Glaser Report: III. Summary of Historical Facts.” 

Kunstmuseum Basel. “The Curt Glaser Case: Research and Settlement.”

Mensch, Christian. “Curt Glaser Case; The Squaring of The Cultural Circle: In the Case of Glaser, An Agreement Has Been Reached.” Basellandschaftliche Zeitung [Basel], 27 March 2020. Fall Curt Glaser: Die Quadratur des Kulturzirkels: Im Fall Glaser wurde eine Vereinbarung getroffen | bz Basel

 

Parzinger, Hermann. “Remembrances of Curt Glaser: A cosmopolitan, forced into exile.” 5 September 2016.

 

 

VITAL STATISTICS FOR CURT GLASER & HIS IMMEDIATE FAMILY

 

NAME EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE
         
Curt Glaser (self) Birth 29 May 1879 Leipzig, Germany Breslau Marriage Certificate
  Marriage (to Else Kolker) 12 August 1903 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau Marriage Certificate
  Marriage (to Maria Milch) 30 May 1933 Wilmersdorf, Berlin, Germany Berlin Marriage Certificate
  Death 23 November 1943 Lake Placid, New York Article “Curt Glaser Report: III. Summary of the Historical Facts”
Elsa Kolker (first wife) Birth 7 May 1878 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau Marriage Certificate; NYC arrival Passenger List (23 March 1932)
  Marriage (to Curt Glaser) 12 August 1903 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau Marriage Certificate
  Death 1932   Article “Curt Glaser Report: III. Summary of the Historical Facts”
Maria Johanna Dorothea Clara Milch (second wife) Birth 27 January 1901 Berlin, Germany Berlin Birth Certificate
  Marriage (to Curt Glaser) 30 May 1933 Wilmersdorf, Berlin, Germany Berlin Marriage Certificate
  Marriage (to Ernst Eduard Asch (Ash)) 1 August 1956 Long Beach, New York New York State Marriage Index, 1881-1967
  Death August 1981 New York, New York Social Security Death Index
Eva Glaser (daughter) Birth 22 July 1935 Switzerland Maria & Curt Glaser’s “Declaration of Intention” to become US citizens, (16 October 1941)
  Death (from Down syndrome) 1943 Arlesheim, Switzerland Basellandschaftliche Zeitung” article (20 March 2020)

POST 96: DISCOVERING THE FATE OF CHARLOTTE BRUCK’S FIRST HUSBAND, WALTER EDWARD STAVENHAGEN

 

CORRECTIONS & AMENDMENTS MADE ON 8TH MAY 2023 BASED ON COMMENTS PROVIDED BY A READER, FRANK WEBSTER-SMITH

 

Note: This post is a follow-up to Post 95 in which I discussed the sad fate of my great-grandfather’s niece, Charlotte Bruck, my first cousin twice removed. In this post, I talk about her first husband, Walter Edward Stavenhagen, to whom she was married for only four years (1906-1910) and with whom she had her only two children. Thanks to my German genealogist friend, Peter Hanke, I was finally able to determine when and where Walter died; Peter put me in touch with a Swiss gentleman, Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen, whose deceased wife was the granddaughter of Walter’s youngest brother, Herbert Frederick Stavenhagen. While only related to my family by marriage, the scope and breadth of the Stavenhagen family primary source documents I obtained from Mr. Bucher make the telling of this story compelling.

 

Related Post:

Post 95: Discovering the Fate of My Great-Grandfather’s Niece, Charlotte Bruck

 

When writing Blog posts, I often begin by reviewing primary source documents relevant to the people or topic I am writing about. These are mostly written in German, and in the interest of accuracy and completeness, I sometimes ask my German friends or relatives to transcribe and/or translate original certificates, hoping for additional clues. I followed this process in writing the current post, and inadvertently wound up solving the mystery of what happened to Walter Edward Stavenhagen, first husband of Charlotte Bruck (Figure 1), my first cousin twice removed. While doing this, I obtained a trove of primary source documents, many of which are only tangentially relevant to the story I am about to relate.

 

Figure 1. Charlotte Bruck (1886-1974) in 1914 or 1915 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

 

Before my recent discoveries, the date and place of birth of Charlotte Bruck’s first husband, Walter Edward Stavenhagen, were already known to me from the Mecklenburg-Schwerin or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (i.e., Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania), Germany 1900 census I found on ancestry.com (Figure 2a); the Stavenhagens originally hailed from Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a territory in Northern Germany. The 1900 census states Walter was born on the 1st of September 1876 in Calais, France.

 

Figure 2a. The 1900 census from Wittenburg in Quassel, the region of Mecklenburg-Schwerin where Walter Edward Stavenhagen lived, bearing his name and date and place of birth, the 1st of September 1876 in Calais, France

 

As discussed in Post 95, on ancestry, I also found Walter Stavenhagen and Charlotte Bruck’s marriage certificate, showing Walter lived in Eichwerder [today: Dąbrowa, Poland] near Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland] (Figure 3) and stating they were married in Berlin on the 3rd of May 1906. Following their marriage, the couple lived on Walter’s estate in Eichwerder, where their two sons, Frederick Wilhelm and Hans Joachim (Figure 4), were born. A notation on their marriage certificate indicates Walter and Charlotte were divorced on the 19th of May 1910 (Figure 5); according to family accounts, the cause of Walter and Charlotte’s divorce stems from Charlotte’s postpartum depression or bi-polar disorder after the birth of her second son and Walter’s suspected spousal abuse. Charlotte obtained custody of her two boys, who never again saw their father, and eventually decamped to America where she sadly spent much of the remainder of her life in mental institutions because of schizophrenia.

 

Figure 3. 1:25,000 scale German map from 1934 showing the location of Eichwerder in relation to the nearby town of Soldin

 

Figure 4. Birth certificate of Hans Joachim Stavenhagen showing he was born on the 13th of February 1909 in Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland] (document courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)
Figure 5. German notation in the upper right-hand corner of Charlotte and Walter Stavenhagen’s marriage certificate noting they got divorced on the 19th of May 1910

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jay Dunn née Lorenzen, Walter and Charlotte Stavenhagen’s granddaughter, sent me primary source documents suggesting Walter stayed in Eichwerder following his divorce. Jay obtained these documents from a German archivist showing that, respectively, in 1911 (Figure 6a), 1919 (Figure 6b), and 1923 (Figure 6c), Walter was the best man for three weddings that took place on his estate in Eichwerder.

 

Figure 6a. 1911 document from the “Standesamt” (Registry Office) in Soldin stating that the “Gutsbesitzer” (estate owner) Walter Stavenhagen was a “trauzeuge” (best man) at a wedding on his estate in Eichwerder near Soldin

 

Figure 6b. 1919 document from the “Standesamt” (Registry Office) in Soldin stating that the “Gutsbesitzer” (estate owner) Walter Stavenhagen was a “trauzeuge” (best man) at a wedding on his estate in Eichwerder near Soldin

 

Figure 6c. 1923 document from the “Standesamt” (Registry Office) in Soldin stating that the “Gutsbesitzer” (estate owner) Walter Stavenhagen was a “trauzeuge” (best man) at a wedding on his estate in Eichwerder near Soldin

 

On ancestry I was able to locate a list of passengers including Walter’s name showing he travelled from Hamburg, Germany to Grimsby, England on the 22nd of May 1924 (Figure 7), presumably to visit family or conduct family business; this document states his German occupation as “gutsbesitzer,” estate owner, logically. Prior to my recent discoveries, the last physical evidence I could find of Walter’s whereabouts was another passenger list showing he again left from Hamburg, this time headed to Leith, England, on the 20th of August 1929 (Figure 8); then he is listed as farmer, for all intents and purposes the same occupation. Both the 1924 and 1929 Hamburg passenger lists confirm Walter’s date of birth as the 1st of September 1876

 

Figure 7. May 22, 1924 Hamburg passenger list with Walter Stavenhagen’s name identifying him as a “gutsbesitzer” (estate owner), born on the 1st of September 1876 in Calais travelling to Grimsby, England
Figure 8. August 20, 1929 Hamburg passenger list with Walter Stavenhagen’s name identifying him as a farmer, born on the 1st of September 1876 in Calais travelling to Leith, England

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having found nothing further on Walter Stavenhagen in ancestry in my general search, I next turned to a collection accessible there, namely, “Germany and Surrounding Areas, Address Books, 1815-1974” (“Adressbücher aus Deutschland und Umgebung, 1815-1974).” Two old address books exist for Soldin, one for 1925, another for 1931. Neither includes a listing for Walter Stavenhagen even though both directories would logically have covered the period when he could still have been living near Soldin. Unfortunately, neither address book specifically includes the community of Eichwerder where Walter owned his estate even though Eichwerder and Soldin are only a few miles apart.

Knowing of Walter’s association with Soldin, Germany, today Myślibórz, Poland, I next contacted the “Archiwum Państwowe w Gorzowie Wielkopolskim” in Gorzow, Poland, where I was told German records from Soldin, Germany are archived. They graciously informed me their office only contains vital records covering the period between 1874 and 1917, obviously preceding Walter’s death; for land and property records, they referred me to the “Archiwum Państwowe w Szczecinie” in Szczecin, Poland, located 55 miles north of Eichwerder or Dąbrowa. I was hoping the old German “Grundbuch,” in which titles and actions related to land and property were registered, might still exist for Walter’s estate but they claimed not to have it. My previous experience trying to obtain the “Grundbuch” for a family-owned business outside Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] suggests these may be stored in courthouses rather than archives but are definitively not available online.

I was curious whether the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (i.e., Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania), Germany 1900 census with Walter Stavenhagen’s date and place of birth might yield additional clues. (see Figures 2a-c) Thus, I asked my German genealogist friend, Peter Hanke, whether he could transcribe this document. I humorously dub Peter who has made some miraculous ancestral finds on my behalf and on the behalf of others the “Wizard of Wolfsburg” because he hails from Wolfsburg, Germany where Volkswagen is headquartered.

 

Figure 2a. The 1900 census from Wittenburg in Quassel, the region of Mecklenburg-Schwerin where Walter Edward Stavenhagen lived, bearing his name and date and place of birth, the 1st of September 1876 in Calais, France

 

Figure 2b. German transcription of the 1900 census from Wittenburg in Quassel bearing Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s name and date and place of birth

 

 

Figure 2c. English translation of the 1900 census from Wittenburg in Quassel bearing Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s name and date and place of birth

 

In sending this transcription, Peter casually mentioned that he might have chanced upon when and where Walter died and promised to get back to me. I was stunned given all the effort I have expended over the years trying to uncover Walter Stavenhagen’s fate. I waited in excited anticipation, and by the following day Peter put me in contact with a Swiss gentleman, Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen, whose deceased wife, Silke Stavenhagen, it turns out was the granddaughter of Walter’s youngest brother, Herbert Frederick Stavenhagen (1885-1960).

Peter located Achim through the GEDBAS database of the “Verein für Computergenealogie,” Association for Computer Genealogy (https://gedbas.genealogy.net/), a database I have never consulted. Entering the search fields and beginning the search sometimes yields results as happened in the case of Walter Edward Stavenhagen along with the name of a contact.

In contrast to Walter Stavenhagen, prior to my introduction to Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen, I had come across quite a bit of information related to Walter’s parents and four siblings (see vital statistics table below), including their dates and places of birth. I learned that Walter was the third of five siblings, though none of these sources indicated when and where he died. Much of this information originates from a family tree found on ancestry, a source I have often told readers I view with circumspection and wariness because of the erroneous data often incorporated into even the best of trees. With access to Achim, I soon learned he has done in-depth ancestral investigations on his wife’s Stavenhagen ancestors that make my own ancestral endeavors pale by comparison. He answered many of my questions and sent me dozens of primary source documents and photos of the Stavenhagen family, some of which I include in this post. Let me first summarize some of what I learned below about Walter.

According to Achim, Walter was schooled in Wittenberg, Germany, trained in Hamburg, Germany before eventually buying his estate in Eichwerder using family money amassed from trading in lace and tulle. The estate was about 414 hectares or 1023 acres, about 1.25 miles by 1.25 miles, in size. Contrary to my situation, by travelling to Szczecin, Poland, Achim was able to acquire a copy of the Grundbuch from the Szczecin archive for Walter’s estate, from which he sent only a few pages. (Figures 9a-b)

 

Figure 9a. Cover page of the Soldin “Grundbuch” containing information on Stavenhagen’s Eichwerder estate
Figure 9b. Page from the Soldin “Grundbuch” listing 1903 estate transactions on Stavenhagen’s Eichwerder property

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 10. Page from the Soldin “Grundbuch” listing 1928 through 1933 estate transactions by Hermann Bodzanowski, the Jewish gentleman to whom Walter Stavenhagen sold his Eichwerder property

 

Walter sold the property in 1926 to a Jewish banker Hermann Bodzanowski but stayed on as the foreman of the estate. (Figure 10) Apparently, Walter’s youngest brother, Herbert Frederick Stavenhagen, was eventually intended to obtain ownership of the property. Germany’s hyperinflation in the early 1920’s affected the family’s fortunes requiring the sale of the landholding, although it was sold with an option to repurchase it. Regardless, given the Stavenhagen family’s Jewish origins, the estate might well have been confiscated by the Nazis as it was from Hermann Bodzanowski later.

Walter developed stomach cancer in the 1930’s and, while still living in Eichwerder, went to Heilbronn, Germany for treatments as his condition worsened where he died on the 9th of February 1937. According to Walter’s youngest sister, Emilie Fanny Stavenhagen, who kept daily notes between 1912 and 1960 (except during WWII), he was cremated on the 11th of February 1937 and buried in Soldin, Germany on the 15th of February. (Figure 11) 

 

Figure 11. Page from Emilie Stavenhagen’s journal noting her brother Walter’s 1937 date of death, cremation, and burial

 

Finally, after several years trying to find out what happened to Walter, I uncovered the truth. Achim and Peter Hanke both sent me Walter’s death certificate from Heilbronn, Germany (Figure 12a), transcribed and translated below. (Figures 12b-c)

 

Figure 12a. Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s death certificate from Heilbronn, Germany confirming he died there on the 9th of February 1937

 

 

Figure 12b. German transcription of Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s death certificate from Heilbronn, Germany

 

Figure 12c. English translation of Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s death certificate from Heilbronn, Germany

 

One of the first items Achim shared with me was a 1931 photo taken in Nottingham, England of Walter and his four siblings lined up from oldest to youngest. (Figure 13)

 

Figure 13. Walter and his four siblings in Nottingham, England in 1931, from oldest (left) to youngest, Margarethe (“Maggi”), Paul, Walter, Emilie (“Sunny”), and Herbert (photo courtesy of Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen)

 

Achim sent me the birth certificates for Walter and his four siblings; all were born in Calais, France, thus are written in French which I read passably. I thought I might have difficulties deciphering the French handwriting, but in fact it is very legible. Walter’s birth certificate confirmed he was born on the 1st of September 1876. (Figure 14a) Below readers will find a French transcription and English translation of Walter’s birth certificate done for me by my second French cousin. (Figures 14b-c)

 

Figure 14a. Walter Stavenhagen’s Calais birth certificate

 

Figure 14b. French transcription of Walter Stavenhagen’s birth certificate

 

Figure 14c. English translation of Walter Stavenhagen’s birth certificate

 

Walter Stavenhagen’s parents are named on his 1906 marriage certificate, Moritz Paul Stavenhagen and Fanny Ann Stevenson. (Figures 15a-b) Prior to connecting with Achim, I had already found Moritz and Fanny Ann’s marriage certificate showing they wed on the 19th of April 1873 in Saint Mary Abbots Church in Kensington, Middlesex, London, when he was supposedly 21 and she was 19. (Figure 16) I already knew Moritz had supposedly died on the 8th of January 1905 in Calais, France from the “England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administration), 1858-1966, 1973-1995,” showing his will was administered on the 15th of June 1905 in London, leaving his effects to his wife. (Figure 17) As though to prove my point that family trees on ancestry are often unreliable, I found two trees with different years of birth for Moritz, 1842 and 1852, a discrepancy I was eventually able to sort out with primary source documents given to me by Achim.

 

Figure 15a. Page 1 of Charlotte Bruck and Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s May 3rd, 1906 marriage certificate indicating they were married in Berlin and were Protestant
Figure 15b. Page 2 of Charlotte Bruck and Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s May 3rd, 1906 marriage certificate with Charlotte, Walter, and Paul Stavenhagen’s original signatures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 16. Marriage certificate for Walter Stavenhagen’s parents, Moritz Paul Stavenhagen and Fanny Ann Stevenson, showing they wed in Saint Mary Abbots Kensington on the 19th of April in 1873 when he was allegedly 21 and she was 19
Figure 17. Page from “England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administration), 1858-1966, 1973-1995” showing Moritz Stavenhagen died in Calais allegedly on the 8th of January 1905

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, let me briefly review what I have pieced together about Moritz (Figure 18) and Fanny Ann Stavenhagen (Figure 19), Walter’s parents.

 

Figure 18. Walter Stavenhagen’s father, Moritz Paul Stavenhagen (1842-1905), between 1890 and 1895 in Calais (photo courtesy of Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen)
Figure 19. Walter Stavenhagen’s mother, Fanny Ann Stevenson (1853-1939), in 1872 in Calais (photo courtesy of Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moritz Paul Stavenhagen (1842-1905) was actively involved in trading lace with a financier originally from Nottingham, England by the name of William Henry Stevenson (1807-1886). Moritz wound up marrying William’s adopted daughter, Fanny Ann Roche, whose mother Margarite Roche née Smith had married William in around 1872. William moved permanently to Calais, France after 1828 and became a naturalized citizen in 1831. (Figure 20)

 

Figure 20. Documentation showing that Fanny Ann Stavenhagen née Stevenson’s adopted father William Henry Stevenson became a naturalized French citizen on the 30th of April 1831

 

Two 1907 French Phone Directory listings indicate that “Stevenson et Stavenhagen” were in business together in Calais (Figure 21), a collaboration they likely began in around 1872 (Figures 37a-b). Following William’s death in 1886, Moritz’s continued collaboration was with William’s stepson, Frederick, born in 1855 who could have been his natural son.

 

Figure 21. Summary page in ancestry.com for a 1907 French Phone Directory from Calais showing that “Stevenson et Stavenhagen” were in business together as “negociant,” traders. Address “Rue Neuve 24, 26” matches the address on the 1905 England & Wales, National Probate Calendar showing where Moritz died

 

Figure 37a. French extract from “L’Efficacite Des Commissionaires En Tulle et Dentelle de Calais” referring to Fanny [Ann Roche] Stevenson and her stepfather William Henry Stevenson
Figure 37b. Translation of French extract from “L’Efficacite Des Commissionaires En Tulle et Dentelle de Calais”

 

I initially theorized that Moritz might have apprenticed with William or his father, John Stevenson, in Nottingham, England, but Frank Webster-Smith, the reader who provided corrections and additions for this post, pointed out that John was dead before Moritz was born and William was already living in Calais. According to the information in Figures 37a-b, in 1870 Moritz still lived in Nottingham, though he eventually moved to Calais from there. Frank theorizes rather that Moritz may well have acted as an agent for William in Nottingham in the early 1870s and picked up knowledge of lace business there.

Interestingly, John Stevenson together with his partner Richard Skipworth appear to have provided financing to a John Leaver, a reclusive genius from Nottinghamshire, recognized today as the “father” of modern lace making, who developed the prototype for machine-made lace. Suffice it to say, the history of lace making is fascinating, and partially explains the connection between England and France in this endeavor in the early-to-mid 1800’s.

According to the directories, it seems the trading company was in Calais proper, while the “succursale,” branch office or fabrication site, was in Caudry, 105 miles to the southeast of Calais. (Figure 22)

 

Figure 22. Summary page in ancestry.com for a 1907 French Phone Directory from Caudry, showing that “Stevenson et Stavenhagen” had another business located about 105 miles to the southeast of Calais where they fabricated “tulles et dentelles,” tulle and lace

 

 

Achim sent me two death notices for Moritz Paul Stavenhagen from “Le Petit Calaisian” published after his death on the 8th of January 1905. He was identified as “négociant en matières premières, commissionnaire en tulles, vice consul d’allemagne à Calais,” commodities trader, tulles commission agent, and German vice consul in Calais. (Tulles is a sheer often stiffened silk, rayon, or nylon net used chiefly for veils or ballet costumes that was exported from England.) The death notice remarked that Moritz had been the German vice consul in Calais for 35 years. (Figure 23)

 

Figure 23. Death notice for Moritz Paul Stavenhagen from “Le Petit Calaisian” dated the 10th of January 1905 stating he had been the Vice Consul for Germany in Calais for 35 years

 

Achim also sent me Moritz’s Calais death certificate (Figure 24), which served to further muddy the waters because the vital data for Moritz, his wife, and his son Paul differs from dates in other primary source documents, specifically, birth and marriage records. Moritz’s death certificate says he died on the 9th of January, rather than the 8th of January 1905 cited elsewhere, at the age of 62 years and 3 months; this would mean he was born in 1842 contradicting what is written on his 1873 marriage certificate saying he was 21 at the time, meaning he would have been born in 1852. Moritz’s wife Fanny Ann Stevenson is said to be 49 years old at the time of his death when she was known to have been born in 1853 and would have been 51; similarly, Moritz’s son, Paul Stavenhagen, is said to have been 27 years in 1905 when he was in fact 29. What to make of all these discrepancies is unclear. I mention this because I often harp about tying vital events to primary source documents, but this is proof there can be discrepancies among even well-sourced certificates.

 

Figure 24. Moritz Paul Stavenhagen’s Calais death certificate indicating he died on the 9th rather than the 8th of January 1905 and containing other inconsistences with primary source data recorded elsewhere

 

Another fascinating document Achim shared with me was a letter dated the 23rd of May 1872 appointing Moritz Stavenhagen as German vice consul in Calais. (Figures 25a-b) This would seem to confirm that Moritz was born in 1842 since he would have been only 20 years old in 1872 had he been born in 1852, rather young in my opinion to be appointed vice consul. Another 1907 French Phone Directory lists “Stavenhagen” as the German vice consul. (Figure 26)

 

Figure 25a. Page 1 of letter from the “Ministère des Affaires Etrangères,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Paris dated the 23rd of May 1872 naming Moritz Paul Stavenhagen the vice consul of Germany in Calais
Figure 25b. Page 2 of letter from the “Ministère des Affaires Etrangères,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Paris dated the 23rd of May 1872 naming Moritz Paul Stavenhagen the vice consul of Germany in Calais

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 26. Summary page in ancestry.com for a 1907 French Phone Directory from Calais identifying “Stavenhagen” as “Vice-cons. d’allem,” German Vice Consul

 

A brief digression to recount some of what Achim related. By any measure, the Stavenhagen family were cosmopolitan with ties to Germany, England, and France. At the start of WWI in 1914, the French determined the Stavenhagens to be Germans, and liquidated their businesses. The French newspapers of the day apparently took great delight in the fact German bombs destroyed Stavenhagen’s house during the WWI. Later, during the Nazi era, the family was judged to be Jewish with a predictable outcome. Members of the family who were Anglicans escaped to England, mixed marriages fell apart, and others were murdered in the Holocaust.

We know from Moritz and Fanny Ann’s 1873 marriage certificate they were married in the Anglican Church in Kensington. I naturally assumed that Moritz had converted from Judaism, but such was not the case, according to Achim. His death notice from the “Le Petit Calaisian” dated the 12th of January 1905 states that he was Jewish and that his funeral was presided over by a rabbi from Boulogne-sur-mer, France. (Figure 27) It seems odd Moritz was married in the Anglican Church as a Jew, but then again, neither Moritz nor Fanny’s religion is denoted on the certificate.

 

Figure 27. Death notice for Moritz Paul Stavenhage from “Le Petit Calaisian” dated the 12th of January 1905 stating that Moritz was Jewish and that his burial had been presided over by a Rabbi from Boulogne-sur-mer

 

As previously mentioned, Moritz’s wife, Fanny Ann Stevenson, was the adopted daughter of William Henry Stevenson; she was born in 1853 in Campagne-Les-Guines, France. Remarkably, Achim was able to track down census records from Campagne-les-Guines, respectively, from 1856 (Figure 28a), 1861 (Figure 28b), and 1866 (Figures 28c-d) with Fanny Ann’s name on it. It’s not entirely clear when or if Fanny’s mother, Margarite (Margueritte in French) Roche née Smith, married William Henry Stevenson, but at some point Fanny and her brother or half-brother, Frederick, took the Stevenson surname. There is no question William deemed these children to be his own because in his 1886 will, they each inherited one-third of his estate, with the last third left to other heirs. (Figure 29)

 

Figure 28a. Page from an 1856 census from Campagne-les-Guines, France showing William Stevenson living with his son “Henri,” his future wife “Margueritte Roche” and her two children from earlier marriages or liaisons, “Fanny Ann Roche” and “Frederick Smith”

 

Figure 28b. Page from an 1861 census from Campagne-les-Guines, France showing William “Henri” Stevenson shown then living with “Margueritte Roche,” her two children, Fanny Ann and Frederick, and a domestic

 

 

Figure 28c. Page 1 from the 1866 census from Campagne-les-Guines, France showing William “Henri” Stevenson shown then living with “Margueritte Roche,” only one of her children, Fanny Ann, plus a domestic and a cook

 

Figure 28d. Page 2 from the 1866 census from Campagne-les-Guines, France showing William “Henri” Stevenson shown then living with “Margueritte Roche,” only one of her children, Fanny Ann, plus a domestic and a cook

 

Figure 29. First page of William Henry Stevenson’s 1886 will showing he provided for both of his wife’s children from earlier marriages or liaisons, Fanny Ann Roche and Frederick Smith

 

 

In closing what I realize is an involved and overly lengthy post on Walter Stavenhagen and his family (Figures 30-36), I want to end on a touching note. While researching his wife’s ancestry in her final months, Achim related how he would give Silke daily updates on his newest genealogical finds, including the day he discovered the fate of Walter’s two sons, revelations that brought her great joy and calm towards the end of her life.

 

Figure 30. Walter Stavenhagen on his estate in Eichwerder in 1932 with (from left to right) niece Bertha, sister Maggie Just née Stavenhagen, and grandniece Anneliese (photo courtesy of Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen)

 

Figure 31. Four generations of Walter Stavenhagen’s relatives in 1929 in Nottingham, England (from left to right), sister Maggie, niece Bertha, mother Fanny Ann, and grandniece Anneliese (photo courtesy of Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen)
Figure 32. Walter’s sister and brother-in-law, Maggie and Albert Just, between 1897 and 1900 in Hamburg (photo courtesy of Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 33. Walter’s brother-in-law Dr. Albert Just (photo courtesy of Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen)
Figure 34. Walter Stavenhagen’s niece and grandniece, Bertha and Anneliese Just (photo courtesy of Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 35. Cemetery in Halam, Nottinghamshire where Walter Stavenhagen’s mother Fanny Ann Roche Stavenhagen is buried (photo courtesy of Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen)
Figure 36. Fanny Ann Roche Stavenhagen’s grave in Halam, Nottinghamshire (photo courtesy of Achim Bucher-Stavenhagen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 __________________________________________

Regular readers know that I am a stickler for accuracy. In recent posts, I have begun to include a table of vital statistics of the people I write about and their closest relatives, citing the source of the vital data. I expect this to be of zero interest to most readers, and I do this primarily for my own benefit so I can recollect where names, dates, places, etc. originate from. That said, I would emphasize to readers that compiling and documenting the source of vital data is a laborious task as the following table illustrates.

 

 

 

VITAL STATISTICS FOR WALTER EDWARD STAVENHAGEN & HIS IMMEDIATE FAMILY

 

NAME EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE
         
Walter Edward Stavenhagen (self) Birth 1 September 1876 Calais, France Birth Certificate
  Marriage (to Charlotte Bruck) 3 May 1906 Berlin, Germany Marriage Certificate
  Divorce (from Charlotte Bruck) 19 May 1910 Berlin, Germany Notation on Marriage Certificate
  Death 9 February 1937 Heilbronn, Germany Death Certificate
  Cremation 11 February 1937   Emilie Fanny Stavenhagen’s diary
  Burial 15 February 1937 Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland] Emilie Fanny Stavenhagen’s diary
Charlotte Stavenhagen née Bruck (wife) Birth 17 August 1886 Berlin, Germany Marriage Certificate
  Marriage (to Walter Edward Stavenhagen) 3 May 1906 Berlin, Germany Marriage Certificate
  Divorce (from Walter Edward Stavenhagen) 19 May 1910 Berlin, Germany Notation on Marriage Certificate
  Death 5 June 1974 Stamford, Connecticut Connecticut Death Index
Moritz Paul Stavenhagen (father) Birth 3 October 1842 Neubrandenburg, Germany Paul Moses Stavenhagen Facts & Events (from Achim Bucher); Marriage Certificate; Death Certificate; Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s Birth Certificate
  Marriage (to Fanny Ann Stevenson) 19 April 1873 Kensington, London, England London and Surrey, England, Marriage Bonds and Allegations, 1597-1921
  Death 9 January 1905 Calais, France Death Certificate
  Probate 15 June 1905 London, England England & Wales, National Probate Calendar, 1858-1966, 1973-1995
Fanny Ann Stavenhagen née

Roche adopted Stevenson (mother)

Birth 10 June 1853 Campagne-Les-Guines, France Birth Certificate; William Henry Stevenson’s 24 February 1884 Last Will
  Marriage 19 April 1873 Kensington, London, England London and Surrey, England, Marriage Bonds and Allegations, 1597-1921
  Death (buried in Nottingham, England) 8 September 1939 Nottingham, England England & Wales, National Probate Calendar, 1858-1966, 1973-1995
Margarethe Marianne Just née Stavenhagen (sister) Birth 14 February 1874 Calais, France Birth Certificate; 1939 England & Wales Register
  Marriage (to Aron Albert Just) 23 August 1897 Calais, France Marriage Certificate
  Death (buried in Nottingham, England) 1 July 1945 Nottingham, England UK, Burial and Cremation Index, 1576-2014
Paul Henry Stavenhagen (brother) Birth 22 May 1875 Calais, France Birth Certificate; German Minority Census, 1939
  Marriage (to Alice Violet Willmott) 17 January 1906 Leytonstone, Essex, England

 

Essex, England, Church of England Marriages, 1754-1935
  Death 30 December 1946 Hamburg, Germany England, Andrews Newspaper Index Cards, 1790-1976
  Probate 27 August 1952 London, England England & Wales, National Probate Calendar, 1858-1995
Emilie Fanny Stavenhagen (sister) Birth 8 June 1881 Calais, France Birth Certificate; 1939 England & Wales Register
  Death (buried in Nottingham, England) 11 November 1973 Newark, England Death Certificate
Herbert Frederick Stavenhagen (brother) Birth 11 August 1885 Calais, France Birth Certificate; 1911 England & Wales Census
  Marriage (to Anneliese Scheidt) 5 March 1932 Cologne, Germany Marriage Certificate
  Death 23 March 1960 Cologne, Germany Death Certificate

 

 

 

POST 95: DISCOVERING THE FATE OF MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S NIECE, CHARLOTTE BRUCK

Note:  In this post, I discuss the sad fate of Charlotte Bruck, my great-grandfather Fedor Bruck’s niece, a victim in this case not of the Holocaust but of a psychiatric disorder.

Related Post:

Post 11: Ratibor & Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen“ Hotel

 

Figure 1. My great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), first generation owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Figure 2. My great-great-grandmother Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My great-grandfather, Fedor Bruck (1834-1892), was one of at least nine offspring of Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 1) and Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861). (Figure 2) For context, Samuel Bruck and Fedor Bruck (Figure 3) were, respectively the first- and second-generation owners of the Bruck family hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. (Figure 4) The youngest of Samuel and Charlotte Bruck’s children and Fedor Bruck’s youngest sibling was Wilhelm Bruck (1849-1907). (Figure 5)

 

Figure 3. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892), second generation owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel
Figure 4. Front entrance to the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel around 1920-1930

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 5. My great-granduncle Wilhelm Bruck (1849-1907), youngest sibling of Fedor Bruck, married to the baroness Margarethe “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr (1860-1946) whose surname he took
Figure 6. Baroness Margarethe “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr (1860-1946)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wilhelm married a baroness named Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr (Figure 6), and because of the prestige the von Koschembahr name endowed, he adopted her surname, initially in hyphenated manner as Bruck-von Koschembahr; eventually upon some family members arrival in America the Bruck surname was dropped. Wilhelm Bruck and Margarete von Koschembahr had five children, including Charlotte “Lotte” Bruck (Figure 7), niece of my great-grandfather Fedor Bruck and subject of this post.

 

Figure 7. Charlotte Bruck (1886-1974), daughter of Wilhelm Bruck and Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr, in 1914 or 1915 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

 

As a brief aside, Charlotte’s older brother and the oldest of Wilhelm and Margarete’s children was Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr (1885-1961) (Figure 8), who emigrated to America in October 1938 with his wife and ten of their thirteen children (Figure 9), one of whom is still living. While I am in contact with descendants of virtually all other branches of my family whom I have written about in my family history blog, I have not yet established contact with this wing of my extended family. If precedent is any indication, descendants of the von Koschembahrs may in time stumble upon my blog and contact me.

 

Figure 8. Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr (1885-1961) & his wife Hilda née von Zeidlitz and Neukirch (1891-1954) with their thirteen children in Lugano, Switzerland in the 1930’s; Gerhard was the oldest of Charlotte Bruck’s siblings who dropped the “Bruck” portion of his surname prior to arriving in America

 

Figure 9. New York Times article dated October 2, 1938 mentioning Gerhard von Koschembahr’s arrival in America with his wife and ten of their thirteen children

 

With upwards of 900 people in my family tree, which I use primarily to orient myself to the people whom I discuss in my Blog, I have never previously written about Wilhelm Bruck (von Koschembahr). Still, because Charlotte Bruck is in my tree, one genealogist stumbled upon her name and contacted me asking whether I know the fate of Charlotte’s first husband, Walter Edward Stavenhagen. The inquiry, it so happens, came from Charlotte’s granddaughter, Brenda Jay Dunn née Lorenzen (Figure 10), and I explained I have been unable to discover Walter’s fate. Not unexpectedly, Jay told me much more about Charlotte’s family than I could tell her and provided family photographs, which is always immensely satisfying.

 

Figure 10. Jay Dunn née Lorenzen, Charlotte Bruck and her first husband Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s granddaughter, in 2018 in La Jolla, California

 

 

Prior to being contacted by Jay Dunn through ancestry on June 24, 2018, I had already uncovered multiple documents related to Charlotte Bruck, although my understanding of her three marriages and life was rather disjointed. Rather than try and inaccurately reconstruct what I already knew at the time, let me briefly highlight major events in her life.

Charlotte (Lottchen, Lotte, Lottel) Bruck got married for the first time on the 3rd of May 1906 in Berlin to the Protestant landowner Walter Edward Stavenhagen (Figures 11a-b) who owned an estate in Eichwerder in the district of Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland]. Though both of Charlotte’s parents were of Jewish descent, on her wedding certificate, Charlotte is identified as Protestant, indicating she and/or her parents had converted. Following her marriage to Walter at age 19, they moved to Soldin, and Charlotte gave birth to two sons there: Frederick Wilhelm Stavenhagen (1907-1997) and Hans Joachim Stavenhagen (1909-1947). (Figures 12-13a-b)

Figure 11a. Page 1 of Charlotte Bruck and Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s May 3rd, 1906 marriage certificate indicating they were married in Berlin and were Protestant
Figure 11b. Page 2 of Charlotte Bruck and Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s May 3rd, 1906 marriage certificate with Charlotte and Walter’s original signatures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 12. Charlotte and Walter’s two young sons, Frederick Wilhelm Stavenhagen (1907-1997) and Hans Joachim Stavenhagen (1909-1947) (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

 

Figure 13a. Birth certificate of Hans Joachim Stavenhagen, Jay Dunn née Lorenzen’s father, showing he was born on the 13th of February 1909 in Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland] (document courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)
Figure 13b. Translation of Han’s Joachim Stavenhagen’s birth certificate (document courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charlotte first became ill following the birth of her second son, possibly the result of postpartum depression or a bi-polar disorder. Charlotte’s mother, Margarethe von Koschembahr Bruck (Figure 14), came and removed her from Walter Stavenhagen’s estate in 1909, whereupon she was briefly hospitalized in Schierke, located in the Harz Mountains of northern Germany. In a diary entry dated the 19th of November 1909, Charlotte’s maternal grandmother, Amalie Mockrauer von Koschembahr (1834-1918) (Figures 15-16), describes her granddaughter’s circumstances at the time:

 

Figure 14. Charlotte Stavenhagen née Bruck’s mother, Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr, in 1938 at age 78

 

Figure 15. Charlotte Stavenhagen née Bruck’s grandmother, Amalie von Koschembahr née Mockrauer, with Charlotte’s mother, Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr, in 1863
Figure 16. Charlotte Stavenhagen née Bruck’s grandmother, Amalie von Koschembahr née Mockrauer, around 1904 at age 70

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GERMAN ENTRY

“Ich bin furchtbar traurig über das Fehlschlagen von Lottchens Friedensversuch. Nachdem sie in Eichwerder (nördlich Mysliborz) mit den besten Vorsätzen und mit festem Muthe eintraf, sich in ihr Schicksal und ihre Pflichten zu fügen, benahm sich Walter abermals unglaublich lieblos, rücksichtslos und roh, so, daß es nach kurzer Zeit für Lotte unmöglich war Stand zu halten. Soweit mir berichtet wurde, ist alles geschehen, um es dem Mann leicht zu machen in Frieden zu leben, allein es war vergeblich. Krank und gebrochen mußte meine arme Lottel ihre Heimath für immer verlassen, nur begleitet von ihrem kleinen Fritzchen, den armen kleinen Hans gab der Mann nicht heraus. Mein armes Gretchen holte ihr Kind, Marianne und Kurt, die von großer Liebe und Treue sind, begleiteten sie. Lotte flüchtete nach Schierke (Ort im Harz), wohin ihr Gretchen nachfolgen mußte, da Lotte sehr krank ist. Welcher Schmerz ist es doch schon wegen der kleinen mutterbedürftigen Kinder! Welche große Sünde hat der bösartige Mann auf sich geladen! Mein lieber allmächtiger Gott hilf uns in dieser Noth!

Das alles muß ich so still für mich mittragen, denn mit Tilla kann ich mich nicht aussprechen – sie hat eine andere Anschauung vom Unglück der Menschen – sie kann froh darüber sein, während ich zwar ergeben aus Gottes Hand alles nehme, aber tief traurig an meine unglücklichen Kinder denke. Seitdem Martha von Schmidt der Tod von uns genommen hat, habe ich Niemanden, mit dem ich ein tröstliches Wort austauschen kann. Ach, wieviel Schwaches giebt es auf der Welt – der Kampf hört hier nicht auf und so sehnt man sich nach der ewigen Reise. –Mit Tilchen kann ich mich darüber deshalb nicht verstehen, weil sie glaubt das Unglück, welches der Herr schickt, soll die Menschen bessern und seine Gnade und Liebe erkennen lassen.”

 

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

 

“I am terribly saddened by the failure of Lottchen’s attempt at peace. After she arrived in Eichwerder (today north of Myślibórz, Poland) with the best of intentions and with firm courage to submit to her fate and duties, Walter again behaved in an unbelievably unloving, inconsiderate, and crude manner, so that after a short time it was impossible for Lotte to stand firm. As far as I was told, everything was done to make it easy for the man to live in peace, but it was in vain. Sick and broken, my poor Lottel had to leave her home forever, accompanied only by her little Fritzchen (Note: Charlotte’s older son Frederick); poor little Hans was not released by the man. My poor Gretchen (Note: Charlotte’s mother, Margarethe von Koschembahr) fetched her child, and Marianne and Kurt (Note: Charlotte’s younger sister and brother-in-law, Marianne & Kurt Polborn), who are of great love and loyalty, accompanied her. Lotte fled to Schierke (a place in the Harz Mountains in northern Germany), where Gretchen had to follow her, since Lotte was very ill. What a pain it is already because of the little children in need of a mother! What a great sin the wicked man has brought upon himself! My dear Almighty God help us in this distress!

 

I have to bear all this so quietly for myself, because I cannot talk to Tilla (Note: Tilla, Tilchen, was Margarethe von Koschembahr’s sister, Mathilde von Koschembahr) – she has a different view of people’s misfortune – she can be happy about it, while I humbly take everything from God’s hand, but think deeply sad about my unhappy children. Since death took Martha von Schmidt (Note: a friend of Amalie von Koschembahr, Charlotte’s grandmother) from us, I have no one with whom I can exchange a comforting word. Oh, how much weakness there is in the world – the struggle does not end here and so one longs for the eternal journey. I can’t get along with Tilchen because she believes that the misfortune the Lord sends should make people better and recognize His grace and love.”

 

Walter and Charlotte’s marriage certificate has a notation in the upper right-hand corner confirming they were divorced in Berlin on the 19th of May 1910. (Figure 17) Atypical of the time, Charlotte was granted custody of both of her boys because spousal abuse was suspected, as the diary entry above suggests.

Figure 17. German notation in the upper right-hand corner of Charlotte and Walter Stavenhagen’s marriage certificate noting they got divorced on the 19th of May 1910

 

According to family history, following her hospitalization in the Harz Mountains, Charlotte lived with her mother in Dresden, Germany until she remarried Karl Eduard Michaelis in 1913, a marriage which lasted only two years. At around this time, Charlotte again showed signs of mental illness, so her family sent her to America in 1915, to a hospital located in Minnesota; her two sons accompanied her to America. Her stay there was relatively brief because she soon moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where she met her third husband, Ernest Gustav Lorenzen (1876-1951), through the German Society there, whom she married around 1916. Ernest Lorenzen was a law professor at Yale University; he would eventually adopt both of Charlotte’s sons by Walter Stavenhagen, and they would take the Lorenzen surname. The 1920 U.S. Federal Census indicates Ernest and Charlotte living with her two sons in New Haven, Connecticut, (Figures 18-19) although by 1930, only Ernest and Charlotte’s older son Frederick lived together. (Figure 20) By 1940, Frederick was married with two daughters and his younger brother was living with them. (Figure 21)

 

Figure 18. 1920 U.S. Federal Census showing Ernest Gustav Lorenzen living in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife Charlotte and his two adopted sons, Frederick and Hans

 

Figure 19. Charlotte Bruck with her two sons, Frederick and Hans (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

 

Figure 20. By 1930 the U.S. Federal Census shows Ernest Gustav Lorenzen living only with his older adopted son, Frederick

 

Figure 21. The 1940 U.S. Federal Census indicates that Frederick Lorenzen has established his own household in Stamford, Connecticut with his wife and two daughters, and that his younger brother Hans (John) is living with them

 

Jay Dunn shared a remarkable letter with me dated 1940 written by the Superintendent of the Fairfield State Hospital in Connecticut where Charlotte Lorenzen née Bruck was permanently institutionalized as of around April 1939 until her death in June 1974. To me, this letter is noteworthy for two reasons. One, it is incredibly detailed as to Charlotte’s mental condition and institutionalization over the years, information I would assume would be confidential. And two, the letter was written at the request of Charlotte’s younger son, Hans Joachim Lorenzen, known in America as John Jay Lorenzen; it seems that John’s future father-in-law, William Sweet, sought a medical opinion as to the possibility of Charlotte’s mental condition being hereditary prior to his daughter Brenda’s marriage to John.

According to the 1940 letter, following Charlotte’s treatment in Minnesota and her relocation to New Haven, she appears to have been well until around 1921, then suffered another relapse from which she again improved by 1922; after 1925, however, she was institutionalized through the remainder of her life. While originally diagnosed with Manic Depressive Psychosis by 1928 she had become delusional. Over time, Charlotte’s original diagnosis was altered to Dementia Praecox, Paranoid Type, whose prognosis was not as good. Today, Dementia Praecox would more generally be referred to as schizophrenia. The Superintendent from the Fairfield State Hospital concluded as follows in his response to John Jay Lorenzen: 

“Summing it up then in another manner I might say that if you consider yourself a normal individual in good physical health with no emotional problems which cannot be readily solved, I would not hesitate to contemplate marriage and would not entertain any undue fears that my children might inherit the illness of my parent. Unless one can definitely assure oneself that his heredity is too heavily tainted, I think one would do himself an injustice if he did not make every reasonable effort to live the kind of normal life to which everyone of us is certainly entitled.”

 

Ernst Lorenzen divorced Charlotte sometime after she was permanently institutionalized, and eventually got remarried. Charlotte’s older son Frederick (Figure 22-23) became a successful lawyer in New York and paid for his mother’s care throughout her life. Jay Dunn’s father, John Jay Lorenzen (Figure 24), obtained an MBA from Harvard around 1933, worked for a time as a stock broker for Smith Barney, then started a cola company called Zimba Kola (Figures 25-26) with a college friend. He was drafted in 1943, became an officer in the Navy (Figure 27), and was sent to the Pacific where he fought valiantly alongside General MacArthur in the battles of Okinawa and Leyte Gulf. He survived the war, only to commit suicide in 1947, likely from depression caused by PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Though Charlotte Bruck and her sons came to America well before Hitler rose to power, her fate and that of her younger son were indeed sad tales.

Figure 22. Frederick Lorenzen as a teenager (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)
Figure 23. Frederick Lorenzen at his brother’s wedding on the 26th of September 1940 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 24. Hans Joachim Lorenzen, known in America as John Jay Lorenzen, on his wedding day on the 26th of September 1940 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)
Figure 25. Zimba Kola bottle from the cola company John Jay Lorenzen established

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 26. Jay Dunn as a three-year-old child holding a bottle of Zimba Kola (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)
Figure 27. John Jay Lorenzen in his Navy uniform at age 33 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One final fascinating anecdote. Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr, Charlotte’s oldest brother mentioned above, like his father, also married a baroness, Hilda Alexandra von Zeidlitz and Neukirch (1891-1954). (Figures 28-29) Hilda’s mother, Cornelia Carnochan Roosevelt, married on the 3rd of February 1889 to Baron Clement Zeidlitz, was a distant relative of President Theodore Roosevelt. (see Figure 9) It is likely that Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr was able to “disguise” his Jewish ancestry by dropping the Bruck surname. Thus, because of Gerhard’s wife’s connection to the Roosevelts, they sponsored Gerhard’s entrance into America in 1938 with his family at a time when many Jewish families trying to reach America by ship were turned away. The most notorious ship turned away from landing in the United States in the lead up to WWII was the German liner St. Louis carrying 937 passengers, almost all Jewish; the ship was forced to return to Europe, and more than a quarter of the refuges died in the Holocaust.

Figure 28. Wedding photo of Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr and Hilda Alexandra von Zeidlitz, married on the 21st of March 1914 (photo courtesy of Kurt Polborn)

 

Figure 29. Headstone of William C. Roosevelt, alongside which Gerhard (Bruck) von Koschembahr and his wife Hilda Roosevelt von Koschembahr are interred

 

VITAL STATISTICS FOR CHARLOTTE BRUCK & HER IMMEDIATE FAMILY

 

 

NAME EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE
         
Charlotte Bruck (self) Birth 17 August 1886 Berlin, Germany Marriage Certificate
Marriage to Walter Edward Stavenhagen 3 May 1906 Berlin, Germany Marriage Certificate
Divorce from Walter Edward Stavenhagen 19 May 1910 Berlin, Germany Notation on marriage certificate
Marriage to Karl Eduard Michaelis 20 August 1913 Dresden, Germany Marriage Certificate
Divorce from Karl Eduard Michaelis ~1915 Dresden, Germany “Stavenhagen-Bruck-Von Koschembahr Family History” (Jay Dunn)
Marriage to Ernest Gustav Lorenzen ~1916   1940 letter from Fairfield State Hospital in Connecticut describing Charlotte’s mental history
Death 5 June 1974 Stamford, Connecticut Connecticut Death Index
Wilhelm Bruck (father) Birth 23 February 1949 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] Berlin marriage certificate
Marriage 14 September 1884 Berlin, Germany Berlin marriage certificate
Death 15 February 1907 Berlin, Germany Berlin death certificate
Margarethe Mathilde von Koschembahr (mother) Birth 28 November 1860 Lissa, Posen, Germany [today: Poznan, Poland] von Koschembahr family tree
Marriage 14 September 1884 Berlin, Germany Berlin marriage certificate
Death 19 October 1946 Boston, Massachusetts von Koschembahr family tree
Amalie Mockrauer (grandmother) Birth 9 September 1834 Leschnitz, Germany [today: Leśnica, Poland] 15 April 1855 Baptism Certificate
Marriage (to Leopold von Koschembahr) 26 September 1855 London, England England & Wales Civil Registration Marriage Index
Death 5 August 1918 Dresden, Germany Dresden death certificate
Walter Edward Stavenhagen (first husband) Birth 1 September 1876 Calais, France 1900 Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany Census
Marriage 3 May 1906 Berlin, Germany Marriage Certificate
Karl Eduard Michaelis (second husband) Birth 4 January 1884 Berlin, Germany Birth Certificate
Marriage 20 August 1913 Dresden, Germany Marriage Certificate
Death (died as Carl Edward Midgard) 12 October 1953 Seattle, Washington Washington Death Certificate
Ernest Gustav Lorenzen (third husband) Birth 21 April 1876 Kiel, Germany US Passport Application
Marriage ~1916   1940 letter from Fairfield State Hospital in Connecticut describing Charlotte’s mental history
Death 12 February 1951 San Francisco, California California Death Index
Frederick Wilhelm Stavenhagen (son) Birth 28 February 1907 Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland] US Social Security Death Index
Marriage (to Dorothy P. Walker) 30 June 1931 Portland, Maine Maine Marriage Index
Death (died as Frederick W. Lorenzen) 30 December 1997 Stamford, Connecticut US Social Security Death Index
Hans Joachim Stavenhagen (son) Birth 13 February 1909 Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland] Soldin, Germany Birth Certificate
Marriage (to Brenda Sweet) 17 September 1940 Staten Island, New York New York Marriage License Index
Death (died as John Jay Lorenzen) 24 Jun 1947 Greenwich, Connecticut Connecticut Death Record