Note: I continue with a series of postscripts to earlier Blog posts to catch readers up on findings I’ve made since publishing the original stories. In this brief postscript, I discuss rare “artifacts” from my renowned great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s blumenschule, flower school, in Berlin which readers have generously sent me.
My great-aunt Franziska Bruck (Figure 1), the renowned Berlin florist (Figure 2), killed herself on the 2nd of January 1942 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, probably a few days before she was ordered to report for deportation. Likely not having access to Veronal and Scopolamin-Entodal, the most commonly used poisons of the time, she gruesomely ended her life by hanging. By committing suicide, Franziska wanted to avoid the fate of her Jewish neighbors, others of whom were soon deported.
In April 2019, I was contacted through my Blog by a Ms. Karin Sievert of the “Stolpersteininitiative Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf,” requesting information on my great-aunt Franziska and her siblings (see table at the bottom of this post for vital statistics on my great-aunt and her immediate family). To remind readers, the Stolpersteine project, initiated in 1992 by the German artist Gunter Demnig, commemorates people who were persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 (e.g., Jews, Sinti, Roma, political and religious dissidents, victims of “euthanasia,” homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, etc.). Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones,” are concrete blocks measuring 10x10cm (i.e., 3.9 in x 3.9 in) which are laid into the pavement in front of the last voluntarily chosen places of residence of the victims of the Nazis. Their names and fate are engraved into a brass plate on the top of each Stolperstein.
Like many unmarried women of the time, Franziska Bruck sublet an apartment located at Prinzregentenstraße 75 in Wilmersdorf. (Figure 3) By virtue of a Nazi law from 1939 voiding tenant protections for Jews, she’d already been forced to move from there to Waitzstraße 9. (Figure 4–“Arolsen Archives–International Center on Nazi Persercution“) This law stipulated that apartment leases could be terminated without notice and Jews had to find a new place to live within days or were quartered with other similarly displaced Jews. In the case of my great-aunt Franziska, in 2011, the Berlin Stumbling Stone Initiative Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf installed a stone in front of her last home at Prinzregentenstrasse 75. (Figure 5)
Ms. Sievert learned of my family history blog from one of her colleagues and requested my assistance in compiling a brief biography of my great-aunt. I was most happy to assist and provide family photographs. Readers can remind themselves by referring to the original post that I included a photo taken in Franziska’s flower shop showing the last Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia, Princess Cecilie, touring her Blumenschule, flower school. (Figure 6) Supplementing information I provided, Karin did her own research and purchased a postcard from a dealer of the same visit taken at a slightly different angle. (Figure 7) In addition, Karin also found an original advertisement for Franziska’s “Schule für Blumenschmuck,” taken from a “Daheim-Kalendar 1915,” home calendar from 1915. (Figures 8-9) As Franziska’s descendant and namesake, Karin graciously and generously gave me both rare family artifacts. I was enormously touched by this kind gesture.
I would be remiss in not acknowledging another magnanimous deed done by an Italian lady my wife Ann and I befriended at a bus stop in Florence, Italy, in 2014. Like me, our friend, Giuditta Melli (Figure 10), is of Jewish ancestry, and her great-uncle was murdered by the Italian Fascists during WWII in Florence. Giuditta is aware of my great-aunt’s books on flower binding and gardening (Figures 11-12), as well as her floral art featured in important art magazines of the time. (Figure 13) Franziska’s floral work was patterned on Ikebana, the Japanese art of floral arrangement. Giuditta, a potter by profession, created and sent me a replica of a Japanese vase like ones featured in my great-aunt’s floral creations. (Figure 14) This was another enormously kindhearted act that reminds me that while Franziska died under tragic circumstances, her memory and work live on. (Figure 15)
Note: In this post, I relate the forensic work I undertook to learn the fate of Franz Pincus/Pauly, husband of Lisa Pauly, one of Germany’s “silent heroes” during WWII. Franz Pincus and my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck were second cousins, and though Franz died in 1941 before my uncle was forced “underground” in 1942 by the Nazis, Franz’s widow sheltered my uncle for periods during his 30 months in hiding.
On February 3, 1947, Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, one of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s protectors in the course of his thirty months spent “underground” eluding the Nazis in Berlin during WWII, wrote a letter of reference for him. (Figure 1) In this recommendation, Lisa Pauly mentioned that her husband had died in 1941, without naming him or specifying a cause of death. By referring to the Pauly Stammbaum, family tree (Figure 2), I was able to figure out her husband was Franz Pincus, although for a very long time I was uncertain this was really Lisa Pauly’s spouse. As I explained to readers in the original post, I was only able to confirm “Franz Pincus” and “Franz Pauly” were the same person by systematically going through 1920’s and 1930’s Berlin Address Books checking both names residing at the same address. Employing this approach, as discussed in the original post, I eventually found a “Franz Pincus” living at Deidesheimer Str. 25 in Friedenau in 1928 (Figure 3), and by 1930 discovered a “Franz Pauly” residing at that same address. (Figure 4) For whatever reason Franz changed to using his mother’s maiden name, though both Pincus and Pauly were Jewish.
Having uncovered Lisa Pauly’s husband’s name from the Pauly Stammbaum, I next turned to ancestry.com to see what more I might learn. As alluded to in the previous paragraph, I found Franz Pincus/Pauly listed in multiple Berlin Address Books in the 1920’s and 1930’s. I also found a family tree on ancestry.com providing his purported place and date of birth, in Posen, Germany [today: Poznan, Poland] on the 23rd of October 1898 (Figure 5a); this same tree showed that Franz Pincus’s sister, Charlotte Lieselotte “Lilo” Pincus, had been born in Posen on the 30th of December 1895. (Figure 5b)
When I stumbled upon a picture of Franz and Lilo as children, attending the 1901 wedding of their aunt Maria Pauly to Alexander “Axel” Pohlmann [see Post 57], where Franz looks decidedly older than his sister (Figures 6a-b), I knew Franz and Lilo’s year of births were incorrect. This allows me to reiterate a point I’ve repeatedly made to readers to question vital data found in family trees on ancestry and elsewhere unless you have the original documents to corroborate dates. So, while I was able to conclude Franz and Lilo Pincus were not born, respectively, in 1898 and 1895, I had not yet resolved in what year they’d been born.
I then remembered the Pinkus Family Collection [See Post 44] archived at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York which is accessible online. Thinking this might include a chart with Franz and Lilo Pincus’s names, along with that of their parents, I scoured the online documents, and eventually stumbled on a page with all their names. (Figure 7) This page confirmed what I had suspected, namely, that their years of birth had been transposed. It turns out, Franz Pincus was born in 1895, and his sister Lilo in 1898; the family tree on ancestry.com, however, correctly noted their respective dates of birth, the 23rd of October for Franz, and the 30th of December for Lilo. This same page also noted Lisa Pauly née Krüger’s place and date of birth, in Berlin on the 20th of December 1890. With the help of Mr. Peter Hanke, affiliated with “forum.danzig.de,” I was able to track down copies of both Franz and Lilo Pincus’s original birth certificates. (Figures 8-9) So far, however, I’ve been unable to pinpoint which borough in Berlin Lisa Pauly was born so have not found her birth certificate.
Having located Franz Pincus’s birth certificate, I now set out to try and find his death certificate. From the 1947 letter of recommendation his wife Lisa had written for my Uncle Fedor, I only knew he’d died in 1941, and assumed to begin with that he had died at Maßmannstraße 11, where he and Lisa Pauly resided at the time in the Steglitz Borough of Berlin. I erroneously assumed locating his death register listing in the Landesarchiv Berlin database would be relatively straight-forward; I was sorely disappointed.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, let me explain to readers how and where I was eventually able to locate Franz Pincus’s death register listing. This requires reviewing findings I discussed in Post 48, the publication describing Dr. Ernst Neisser’s final days in September-October 1942 in Berlin after he and his cousin Luise Neisser, with whom he lived, were told to report to an old age transport. To remind readers, the elderly Ernst and Luise Neisser opted to commit suicide rather than report for deportation. Because Luise died immediately after taking poison, I easily located her death register listing under the records of Berlin-Charlottenburg, but I was unable to find Ernst’s name listed in the records of this Berlin borough. Ernst, I later learned from a letter his daughter wrote in 1947, lingered for several days before dying, so I reckoned he might have died in another borough. I eventually figured out the only place in Berlin where Jews could still receive medical attention by 1942, or where they were brought to die in case of “failed” suicide attempts, was the Jüdisches Krankenhaus Berlin, the Berlin Jewish Hospital, in the Wedding Borough of Berlin. Having worked this out, I was then able to find Ernst Neisser’s death register listing under records for 1942 in the Wedding Borough and order his death certificate from the Landesarchiv Berlin.
In trying to track down Franz Pincus’s death register listing, I decided to apply the same logic and “assume” he might also have died in the Wedding Borough of Berlin for unknown reasons. Obviously, I had no way of knowing then whether Franz Pincus’s death ultimately was from a “failed” suicide attempt, war wounds, fatal disease, or natural causes. Nonetheless, my logic turned out to be sound, and, as in the case of Ernst Neisser, I located Franz Pincus’s death register listing under 1941 in the Wedding Borough. (Figures 10a-b) Naturally, I ordered a copy of Franz’s original death certificate uncertain what new information it might include.
Franz’s typed death certificate arrived several weeks later. (Figure 11a) My cousin translated the form and it included several new pieces of information. (Figure 11b) Franz had been given the added middle name of “Israel” as was required of all Jewish-born males during the Nazi era. It confirms he died on the 2nd of August 1941 in the Berlin Jewish Hospital of a ruptured appendix. And, at the bottom of the certificate, it shows he’d gotten married on the 12th of May 1928 in Berlin’s Friedenau Borough, or so my cousin and I both read.
Armed with a new vital event to check out, I again immediately turned to the Landesarchiv Berlin database trying to locate Franz Pincus and Elisabeth Krüger’s marriage register listing. Surprisingly, I was unable to find it even though the precise date and number of the certificate, Nr. 241, were furnished. I’ve previously encountered this situation, even with exact dates and specific Berlin boroughs in hand, where it is not always possible to track down listings of vital events. The reason for this is not clear to me.
Just in the last few days, collecting and organizing newly acquired information for this post, I reexamined Franz’s typed death certificate hoping something new might reveal itself, and indeed it did. While the marriage year clearly seemed to be 1928, I began to question whether the typed “8” might not be a “3,” so checked the marriage listings under “K” (for Krüger) for 1923 and was rewarded by finding Elisabeth Krüger and Franz Pincus’s names in the Berlin-Friedenau Landesarchiv database. (Figures 12a-b) I’ve now ordered and await the actual marriage certificate but detected a notation in the register that Franz Pincus changed his surname to Pauly, a footnote obviously made some years after Franz got married.
A recent check in MyHeritage for Franz Pincus yielded a “German Minority Census, 1939” form which corroborates some of the aforementioned information, namely, Franz’s dates of birth and death, and he and his wife’s ages and residence in Berlin-Steglitz in 1939. (Figure 13) The information from MyHeritage was late in coming and might have short circuited other searches I did.
Franz Pincus’s sister, Charlotte “Lilo” Pincus, I discovered from ancestry.com rode out the war in Scotland; as a German foreigner, she was briefly interned before being released and allowed to teach. (Figure 14) She returned to Berlin after the war. A small metal sign bearing her name has been placed at the Christus-Friedhof in Mariendorf, Berlin, showing she died on the 6th of September 1995. (Figure 15)
From time to time, I stumble across a family letter or diary mentioning the people about whom I write. In writing this post, I recalled a brief mention of Franz and Lilo Pincus in a letter Suse Vogel née Neisser, daughter of the Dr. Ernst Neisser discussed above, wrote in 1972 to her first cousin, Klaus Pauly. (Figure 16) Klaus developed the Pauly Stammbaum, and he asked Suse Vogel’s assistance in identifying some of the people in the picture taken at Maria and Axel Pohlmann’s 1901 wedding. This included Franz and Lilo Pincus (Figure 17), and translated below is what Suse Vogel wrote about them:
“. . .The remaining little dwarfs bottom left: the upper one is obviously Franz Pincus-Pauly, below probably his sister Liselotte (is she calling herself Charlotte now?) I confess that I disliked her since childhood contrary to the nice ‘Blondel,’ her brother. And I was in agreement about that with bosom friend Aenne. Later, but long before Hitler-times, I declared to myself that Franz and Lilo were raised by their father strictly positivist. To my childish horror they did not ‘believe’ in anything. So, they were a priori ‘without faith, hope and love’ – sounds very presumptuous, but that’s how I felt as a young girl.”
While Suse Vogel’s words are not particularly complimentary, the mere fact I could find anything written about Franz and his sister, provides a fleeting glimpse into these long-gone ancestors and brings them to life in a small way.
Note: In this postscript, I discuss some intriguing new information that has come to light about Heinz Ludwig Berliner since publication of the original post, details of which bring me closer to determining his fate.
I can never predict when or from where further traces of ancestors I’ve written about in earlier posts may materialize. In my original publication, I explained to readers the challenges I encountered trying to uncover concrete evidence of Heinz Ludwig Berliner, one of my father’s first cousins. I first learned about him from a fleeting reference in a document written by my third cousin Larry Leyser’s grandmother detailing the fate of some of our family’s ancestors. His grandmother briefly remarked Heinz Berliner immigrated to some unspecified country in South America after WWII, where he purportedly committed suicide.
As discussed in the original post, I was able to confirm Heinz Ludwig Berliner’s appearance in South America through the cover of a playbill (Figure 1) sent to me by Tema Goetzel née Comac, the wife of Heinz’s nephew; the playbill showed that Heinz, using his stage name “Enry Berloc,” had performed at the “Teatro Municipal,” in an unspecified South American country, on the 19th of March 1948 in the accompaniment of a “Witha Herm” and the “Maestro Kurt Kohn.” More on this later.
For two reasons, I never imagined it would be so difficult to track Heinz’s movements and eventual destination. First, both of Heinz’ s siblings, Ilse (Figure 2) and Peter Berliner (Figure 3), wound up in New York and were known to me since childhood. And, second, as alluded to above, I’m in touch with descendants of Heinz’s siblings, and assumed they would have letters or documents showing where he’d wound up; initially, all they found was the playbill cover to the 1948 recital in which Enry Berloc performed.
Heinz’s siblings were born in the same town in Upper Silesia where my father had been born, Ratibor [today:Racibórz, Poland], and I was able to locate both of their birth certificates when I visited the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz”; vexingly, on two separate visits I could never find Heinz’s birth record, though it was logical to assume he too had been born in Ratibor. I even asked my Polish historian friend in Racibórz, Mr. Paul Newerla, to confirm my negative findings, and his initial efforts were similarly fruitless. As previously discussed, I began to think Heinz may have been born earlier out-of-wedlock and/or born in the town where his parents had married, Meseritz [today: Międzyrzecz, Poland]. I even contacted the archives there but was told the on-line birth records would not be available until this current year; this is on account of Poland’s legal requirement prohibiting the release of birth certificates until 110 years after a person’s birth, so in the case of Heinz possibly soon after his parents married in 1909 in Meseritz.
As readers may recall, this search became moot when I recently discovered a document in MyHeritage entitled “German Minority Census, 1939,” listing a Heinz Ludwig Berliner born on the 24th of September 1916 in Ratibor, showing he lived in the Charlottenburg District of Berlin in 1939, and indicating he had immigrated to Bolivia. (Figure 4) I had some initial doubts this was my father’s first cousin, but after transmitting this new information to Mr. Newerla, Paul was able to finally locate Heinz’s birth certificate in the State Archives in Raciborz, misfiled as it happens, confirming his parents’ names.
Researching the names and information found on the cover of the 1948 playbill, I thought the “Teatro Municipal” was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as I told readers in my original post. Hoping to locate Berliners who may have wound up there before or after WWII, I turned to family trees on JewishGen, and contacted a lady in Australia who put me in touch with a Ms. Marcia Ras from Buenos Aires with Berliners in her family tree, who turned out to be exceptionally helpful.
Following publication of my original post, I sent Marcia a link to it, and she explained that Argentina’s Ministry of Education that had supposedly sponsored the 1948 recital at the Teatro Municipal had never borne the name “Ministerio de Educacion y Bellas Artes.” (Figure 5) Quick online searches showed that in both Venezuela and República Dominicana they were called that way. I sent an email to the Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Education but never received a response. Given Venezuela’s severely dysfunctional state, I never bothered to contact them. I searched for a similarly named entity in other South American countries to no avail.
Marcia could find no evidence Heinz was ever in Buenos Aires. She told me that if he was, he did not enter the country legally. Thousands of Jewish refugees entered Argentina and other South American countries illegally, especially between 1938 and 1949, so he may well have been among them. Marcia was unable to find his name mentioned anywhere. A Ms. Silvia Glocer, an expert in Jewish musicians seeking refuge in Argentina whom Marcia consulted, confirmed she’d also never heard Heinz’s or the maestro Kurt Kohn’s names. They stressed this did not mean they’d never been in Argentina, only that no evidence could be found they’d been there.
My ongoing search might well have ended here. However, out of the blue, Tema Goetzel sent me a photo from a chatelaine (i.e., a clasp or hook for a watch, purse, or bunch of keys) (Figures 6a-b), asking if I recognized Alfred Berliner, Heinz Berliner’s father. While I know Alfred Berliner was once interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor and included a photo of his former headstone in the original post, I had no photos of him against which to compare; eventually, Tema sent two more photos, a second of Alfred Berliner (Figure 7), and a third of Alfred Berliner’s wife, Charlotte Berliner née Rothe, with their three children. (Figure 8) At long last, I’d tracked down a photo of the elusive Heinz Berliner, albeit as a young child! (Readers are reminded that in Post 18, I told the story of Heinz Berliner’s mother who perished in Auschwitz in 1943.)
In the course of our recent conversations, I told Tema the Teatro Municipal I thought was in Buenos Aires was not in fact in Argentina; I related what Marcia Ras had explained to me. Tema, the source of the original playbill, thought it indicated the country. When I told her it didn’t, she again dug out the playbill and found three additional pages (Figures 9a-c) which she hadn’t previously sent, and these sheets specifically mentioned Bolivia, the country the “German Minority Census, 1939” document identified as Heinz’s destination. Armed with a country, I now quickly found a Teatro Municipal in La Paz. (Figure 10) Another puzzle solved.
Having confirmed from two independent sources Heinz’s connection to Bolivia, I again contacted the Bolivian affiliate of the World Jewish Congress, Circulo Israelita De La Paz, asking if they could check on Jewish musicians who may have sought refuge in Bolivia between roughly 1938 and 1949. This office has been gracious and helpful beyond measure but, to date, they too have been unable to confirm Heinz’s presence there. I think what is true of Jewish refugees entering Argentina illegally is also true of Bolivia. It may well be I’m unable to ever confirm whether or when Heinz died in Bolivia.
Marcia Ras discovered one other final intriguing thing. In the original post, I told readers that the Witha Herm mentioned in the 1948 playbill was a stage name for a woman known as Herma Wittmann, who died in 1992 in Los Angeles and is interred there. Similarly, the other musician mentioned in the playbill, Kurt Kohn, used an artistic name, Ray Martin (Raymond Stuart Martin). (Figure 11) A quick online search revealed Ray was born Kurt Kohn in Vienna, Austria on the 11th of October 1918, and came to live and work in England in 1937. He was noted for his light music compositions, and created a legacy for himself in British popular music through his work with his orchestra in the 1950’s. I even located a descriptive catalog of his musical recordings, and tried to contact the compiler, Alan Bunting, but learned he’d died in 2016. Fortunately, the discography was created in collaboration with a Nigel Burlinson, whom I was able to reach. Mr. Burlinson sent a very gracious reply telling me he did not think the “Kurt Kohn” who performed at the Teatro Municipal in 1948 was the popular music conductor “Ray Martin” because at the time he was in England conducting orchestras. What to make of this is unclear? Possibly, the musical recital in which Witha Herm and Enry Berloc performed in 1948 in Bolivia merely used one or more of Kurt Kohn’s musical scores as accompaniment?
So, as often happens in my forensic investigations, I take two steps forward, one step back. I now know what Heinz Berliner looked like as a child, and confirmed he indeed immigrated to Bolivia after 1939, but am still left to ponder how and when exactly he died and whether he passed away in Bolivia.
Note: In this second postscript to Blog Post 34, I relate to readers additional information that has come to my attention about my great-aunt, Margareth “Grete” Brauer née Berliner, and her family, largely the result of a member of the Brauer family having come across my family history blog and having contacted me.
One of my expressed desires when I launched my Bruck family history blog in April 2017 is that not only would I relate to readers forensic discoveries I’d made about my father’s family, friends and acquaintances, but perhaps from time to time readers would come across my blog, contact me, and tell me how we are related or share additional information or tales about people that have been the subject of my posts. My expectations have been met, in some cases exceeded, on multiple occasions. This is particularly satisfying when the people or family I’ve written about met a tragic end at the hands of the Nazis and their henchmen. The opportunity to relate even a small part of these people’s lives ensures they will not have passed through this world completely unnoticed.
For readers who’ve not followed the previous posts about my great-aunt Margareth Auguste Brauer née Berliner, let me briefly review. In early 2018, while visiting my German first cousin’s son who is in possession of some of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s surviving pictures and papers, I asked if I could peruse these documents. Surprisingly, included among the pictures was a single photo captioned partly in my uncle’s handwriting, identifying my grandmother’s sister, Grete Brauer, a great-aunt. (Figures 1a-b) I’d never heard about her growing up, though had discovered a record of her birth on March 19, 1872 (Figure 2), in the Jewish microfilm records available online for Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] from the Church of Latter Day Saints; having previously never found any evidence she survived into adulthood, I’d erroneously assumed she’d died at birth or in childhood. While I knew my grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner (Figure 3), growing up, I was only six years of age when she passed away in New York City, so it’s not unexpected my grandmother would never have spoken to me about her older sister. Readers may well wonder why my father never told me about her, and I can merely respond by saying that, apart from his beloved sister Susanne, murdered in Auschwitz in September 1942, he had scant interest in family. Regardless, the picture from my uncle’s estate dated 1933 proved that Margareth Brauer née Berliner had indeed lived well into adulthood. What happened to her after 1933 was initially a mystery.
While learning about my great-aunt Margareth Brauer was a new development, I had previously come across the surname “Brauer.” In 2014, when examining the personal papers of two renowned great-aunts, Franziska and Elsbeth Bruck, archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, a suburb of Berlin, I’d come across multiple letters penned to Elsbeth Bruck by Ernst Hanns Brauer and his wife Herta Brauer from Calvia, Mallorca, Spain; just to be clear, Franziska and Elsbeth were sisters of my father’s father, as opposed to Margareth, who was a sister of my father’s mother. At the time, I’d not yet worked out that my Bruck relatives were related to the Brauers through my great-aunt Margareth Berliner’s marriage to a man named Siegfried Brauer, and that Ernst Hanns Brauer (1902-1971) (Figure 4) was their son and my father’s first cousin. (Interested readers will find a table at the end of this post with vital statistics of my great-aunt Margareth Brauer and her immediate family.)
Regular readers may recall I was eventually able to track Ernst and Herta Brauer’s descendants to Puerto Rico. (Figure 5a-b) I discussed this in the first postscript to Post 34. In the earlier postscript I also explained to readers that my great-aunt Margareth Brauer had been murdered in Theresienstadt, a fact I uncovered in the Yad Vashem “Shoah Names Database,” a directory I’d neglected to check before publishing my original post.
Margareth Brauer’s husband, Siegfried Brauer, died in 1926 in Cosel, Germany [today: Koźle, Poland]. (Figures 6a-b) His death was reported to authorities by a Hildegard Brauer, whom I confused with Herta Brauer, Siegfried’s daughter-in-law, Ernst Brauer’s wife. I hadn’t yet discovered that Margareth and Siegfried Brauer had had a daughter named Hildegard. Once I found Hildegard’s birth certificate (Figures 7a-b) and checked her name in the “Shoah Names Database,” I realized she too had been a Holocaust victim, like her mother. (Figure 8)
This current postscript was originally intended to merely update readers on Hildegard Brauer’s fate until I was contacted through my blog’s webmail by a delightful gentleman from Los Angeles named Eri Heller. Like other individuals researching their ancestors, he accidentally discovered my family history blog, specifically the posts about my great-aunt Margareth Brauer. He learned about some of his ancestors and family history he’d previously been unaware of; he also graciously shared with me high-quality pictures of Margareth and Siegfried Brauer (Figures 9-10), as well as their daughter Hildegard (Figure 11), and explained our familial connection. Unbeknownst to me, Siegfried Brauer (~1859-1926) had an older brother, Adolf Brauer (1857-1933) (Figures 12-14), that’s to say Margareth Brauer’s brother-in-law and Eri Heller’s grandfather. So, while Eri and I are not blood relatives, we are second cousins by marriage. Using MyHeritage, I was able to reconstruct much of Eri Heller’s ancestry and find additional photos of his family, although it is not my intention to elaborate on that here.
I’ve previously mentioned to readers I’ve come across a Jewish Silesian family tree on ancestry.com with in excess of 60,000 names; my tree has slightly more than 750 names, and I use it mostly to orient myself when writing about various forebearers and figuring out ancestral connections. One of the greatest pleasures I derive is attaching photos to people in my tree. Without my blog, it’s unlikely I would ever have obtained pictures of my great-aunt and-uncle, Margareth and Siegfried Brauer, and their daughter, Hildegard Brauer, two of whom were victims of the Holocaust. As I implied at the outset, having pictures of individuals and researching and writing their stories makes these otherwise spectral beings in my tree come to life. And, likewise, this is the reason I liberally pepper my blog posts with documents and photos to “prove” these individuals once walked among us.
MARGARETH BRAUER NÉE BERLINER & HER IMMEDIATE FAMILY
Note: In this short post, I take a whimsical look at the cars my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, Theodore Brook in America, owned in Germany and later in New York. The opportunity for whimsy rarely presents itself when telling stories about my father’s Jewish family, so I’m relieved to take a brief pause from these to relate a lighthearted tale.
One of my English teachers once cited a writer, whose name is lost to me, talking about coming up with short story ideas who’d quipped these can be found on every street corner. As I near the three-year anniversary of writing stories on my father’s Jewish family, this is a sentiment with which I most heartily concur. The inspiration for this current post came from a gentleman, Raymond “Ray” Fellows, who contacted me through my blog after discovering several posts I’ve written on my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982), known in America as Theodore “Teddy” Brook. (Figures 1-2)
It turns out Ray’s mother rented a room with kitchen privileges to my uncle in Yonkers, New York before he got married in 1958, a period in my uncle’s life I’m unfamiliar with. Ray, born in 1941, met my uncle when he was a teenager and my uncle was working as a toll collector on the New York State Thruway; at the time, he commuted to work in an AMC Rambler, manufactured by the American Motors Corporation between 1958 and 1969. Ray clearly remembers this car. He also has fond memories of my charismatic uncle because he treated him as a member of his family, vividly remembers my uncle effusively complimenting him on how nicely he’d decorated his “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree, and even amusingly recalls my uncle making him one of his “delicacies,” cow brains, something Ray has never again eaten! Years later, Ray visited my aunt and uncle in Yonkers, at which time my uncle drove a sporty Plymouth Barracuda, manufactured by Plymouth from 1964 to 1974.
In any case, in my photo archive, I discovered photos of my uncle standing by his AMC Rambler as well as his Barracuda. I also found images of him standing as an obviously much younger man by two cars he owned when he was a dentist in Liegnitz, Germany [today: Legnica, Poland] before the war. One of these cars even has a brief anecdote attached to it from a story my two, now-deceased, German first cousins once shared.
Clearly, having his picture taken alongside his latest set of wheels was a tradition my uncle shared with many other car owners. Following his tour of duty in WWI, my uncle obtained his dental license from the University of Breslau in 1921; then, between November 1924 and April 1936, he had his own practice in Liegnitz until he was forced to shutter it by the Nazis. Likely, my uncle’s first car purchase was a DKW (Dampf-Kraft-Wagen), judging from the picture, the DKW “Typ P” convertible model (Figures 3a-b), also referred to as a “DKW P15” (Figure 4), which rolled off the production lines beginning in May 1928. This was the first motor car made by DKW. It was a light-weight design with a unit body made of wood and imitation leather, that was powered by a two-stroke inline twin engine. DKW was one of the four companies that formed Auto Union in 1932 and is hence an ancestor of the modern-day Audi company. (Figure 5)
Subsequently, my uncle appears to have owned another DKW, the slightly larger DKW Cabrio. (Figures 6-7) While this is mere conjecture on my part, my uncle’s acquisition of a larger car may have been prompted by his “inadvertent” family. In earlier posts, I told readers my uncle carried on a long-term affair with a married woman, Irmgard Lutze (Figure 8), by whom he had two children, my first cousins Wera Thilo née Lutze (1927-2017) and Wolfgang Lutze (1928-2014) (Figure 9); Irmgard never divorced her husband, with whom she raised the children, which afforded my half-Jewish cousins considerable protection when the Nazis later ascended to power; for this reason, my cousins retained the Lutze surname, though my uncle had ardently hoped they would adopt the Bruck surname.
My two first cousins, Wera and Wolfgang, whom I initially met in the mid-1990’s, clearly remember riding in the DKW Cabrio with my uncle and his paramour on Sunday drives through the Silesian countryside, although it would be years later before my uncle announced himself as their “real” father. What made these drives so memorable to my cousins as children was being seated in the rumble seat in the rear of the DKW in the freezing cold. (Figure 10)
Next, one must fast-forward to see my uncle standing by his first American car, the AMC Rambler (Figure 11), which Ray Fellows so clearly remembers. And, judging from my photo archive, my uncle Fedor’s last American car was his Plymouth Barracuda. (Figure 12) However, there is one other car alongside which my uncle can be seen, a Plymouth Savoy, produced between 1951 and 1964. It’s an advertisement for a 1964 Savoy, and, as readers can see for themselves, my uncle is standing in a toll-collection booth, dressed in his work uniform, reaching towards the driver to collect the toll; this photograph was likely staged on the New York State Thruway where my uncle in fact worked as a toll-collector. (Figure 13) How my uncle came to be featured in a magazine advertisement for Plymouth is unknown, but perhaps when buying his Barracuda, the dealer decided my uncle fit an older demographic towards which the Savoy was targeted, even though he ultimately wound up buying the sportier car?
Note: In this post I describe the chain of events that led me to learn about a Dr. Erich Bruck, a man with whom I share a surname. His picture was given to me more than five years ago with the question of whether we’re related. I didn’t know then and still don’t, although I know much more about the doctor and his family today as I will relate.
In my previous post, I told readers about the very distinctive picture I was handed in 2014 by Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska, Branch Manager, Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Cemetery, Branch of the City Museum of Wrocław), of a man named Dr. Erich Bruck, telling me he is buried there and asking whether I know anything about him or am related to him. The picture is memorable because, as readers can see for themselves, he is dressed in his German military uniform and is wearing an Iron Cross. (Figure 1) This is not a picture one forgets.
Fast forward. Recently, my 92-year old third cousin, Agnes Stieda née Vogel, mentioned my name and Blog to her 95-year old German friend with whom she communicates by “snail” mail. This friend originally hails from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] and mentioned in passing to Agnes, that as a child living there, she was friends with the daughter of her dentist, a Dr. Bruck as it happens; the daughter’s name was “Putzi.” This Dr. Bruck taught at the University of Breslau until he was summarily dismissed in 1933 by the Nazi Regime, and eventually committed suicide around 1938. Agnes’s friend wondered whether I might be related to this Dr. Bruck, no forename provided. Knowing that multiple of my Bruck ancestors were doctors or dentists in Breslau or had trained there, including my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, I Googled and checked MyHeritage for any Bruck relatives who might have been in the medical profession there. Imagine my surprise when multiple images of the identical photo I’d been given five years ago of Dr. Erich Bruck popped up on MyHeritage.
From MyHeritage, I was able to determine some vital events in Dr. Erich Bruck’s life, recreate three generations of his family tree, learn the fate of some of Erich’s immediate family, and even uncover photographs of his parents (Figure 2), wife, and three children. (Figures 3-4) (Interested readers will find a table at the end of this post with vital statistics of Dr. Erich Bruck’s immediate family.) As too often happens with Jewish families, I also discovered Erich’s wife, Adelheid Bruck née Oppe (Figure 5), as well as his sister, Liesebeth “Lilly” Bruck née Goldschmidt were both murdered in the Shoah. As for Dr. Erich Bruck, he was born on the 5th of April 1880 in Waldenburg, Germany (Figure 6) [today: Wałbrzych, Poland], and died on the 28th of April 1915 in France during WWI.
Having found new information and documents I thought Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska might be unaware of, I contacted her. We’d lost touch in the intervening years, but Renata remembered me. A few of the documents I uncovered were new but because she regularly conducts walking tours of the Old Jewish Cemetery, Renata naturally has made it her mission to acquaint herself with the Jews interred there and search out historic documents; additionally, much as I’ve done in researching some of my father’s family, friends, and acquaintances, Renata has sought and in some cases met descendants of these people. While much of our recent communications have centered on Dr. Erich Bruck, as I explained to readers in Post 68, I’ve helped track down where Dr. Julius Bruck’s daughter-in-law, Johanna M.S. Bruck née Graebsch, and granddaughter, Renate Bruck, alit in England after WWII; prior to my recent forensic work, neither Renata nor I had known whether either survived the war. Given the murderous rampage of the Nazis, it provides some comfort to know that some family ancestors somehow managed to survive the onslaught.
Not only have I been able to provide some new documents to Renata on Dr. Erich Bruck, but she has reciprocated with finds of her own. From MyHeritage, I was able to unearth a German WWI Casualty list showing Dr. Erich Bruck perished on the 28th of April 1915 (Figure 7), as well as a death announcement from a Breslau newspaper confirming this. (Figure 8) Renata explained that Dr. Erich Bruck had been a member of the medical section of the “Schlesische Gesellschaft für Vaterländische Cultur.” In the membership’s journal, “Jahres-Bericht der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Vaterländische Cultur, Bd. 93-94,” covering years 1915-1916, Renata was able to locate Erich’s obituary explaining the circumstances of the doctor’s death. (Figures 9a-c) Contrary to my assumption that Dr. Bruck had been killed in combat, such was not the case. Instead, while riding a horse, Erich got caught on a telegraph wire resulting in an open wound that became infected and ultimately resulted in his death. Renate tracked down and gave me a copy of Dr. Bruck’s death certificate showing he perished at Château Parcien in France. (Figure 10)
On her walking tours, Renata almost always stops by the tombstone of Dr. Erich Bruck (Figure 11), using this as an opportunity to talk about the role of Jewish soldiers in WWI. As an interesting aside, Renata mentioned in passing another Jewish WWI victim interred in the Old Jewish Cemetery, a Lieutenant Georg Sternberg (Figure 12), whose tombstone is topped with a helmet (Figures 13a-b); he was killed in the Battle of Lens in 1917. (Figure 14) Renata said she’d been unable to find a photo or learn much about him. Curious whether I might be able to contribute something, I searched in MyHeritage and ancestry.com.
While I was unable to find a photo of Lt. Sternberg, I was able to find his name on a German WWI Casualty list (Figure 15) as I’d done for Dr. Erich Bruck. He was born on the 26th of March 1889 in Ostrowo, Germany [today: Ostrów Wielkopolski, Poland], and died on the 27th of August 1917 in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France. Curiously, I discovered two different places where he was supposedly interred, the Langemark German Military Cemetery in West Flanders, Belgium (Figure 16), approximately 68 miles north of where he was killed, and, as expected, in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław. (Figure 17) Uncertain what to make of this discrepancy, I asked Renata what she thought. She provided a very reasonable and simple explanation. Since Lieutenant Sternberg was only 28 years of age when he was killed and his parents were still living at the time, it’s likely they requested that his remains be returned to Breslau for internment in the Jewish Cemetery.
As mentioned above, Erich’s wife and sister were both killed in the Holocaust. Renata was able to establish that Erich’s wife, Adelheid “Ada” Bruck, was deported on the 13th of April 1942 to the Izbica Ghetto. In 2018, on the 76th anniversary of Jew deportations from Breslau and Silesia, the City Museum of Wrocław, in collaboration with the “Schlesisches Museum zu Görlitz” and the Jewish community in Wrocław, unveiled a plaque marking the event. In the presence of descendants of the deportees, the ceremony took place at the Odertor Bahnhof, the railway station in Breslau from which transports to the concentration and death camps departed.
Renate has been able to locate and establish contact with surviving friends of at least one of Dr. Erich Bruck’s daughters, Erika Bruck (Figure 18), who emigrated to America in 1939 and passed away in New Hampshire on October 13, 2011 at 103! Following Erika’s death, her friends and former colleagues wrote a booklet of remembrances; Renata was able to obtain a copy of this document, which she generously shared with me. Erika’s two younger sisters, Elisabeth (Figure 19) and Gertrude (Figure 20) also survived the Holocaust.
It is not my intention to discuss the very rich and fulfilling life Erika led, but I want to highlight a little known, often overlooked, chapter in Holocaust history. By 1933, when the Nazis ascended to power, it quickly became apparent to many Jews, including Erika’s parents, it would no longer be safe for Jews in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Quoting from the booklet about Erika on what was happening then: “At the time, the government of Turkey under the visionary leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk invited many German and Austrian Jews to come to Turkey to help build the scientific, medical, and intellectual infrastructure of the new Turkish Republic. With her family’s urgent encouragement, Erika left Germany and resettled in Turkey in 1933, along with about 1000 other Jews. Before leaving her homeland, she was forced by German authorities to sign a declaration that she would never practice medicine in Germany because her Jewish heritage was unacceptable to the Nazi regime. Erika finally received her medical degree in 1935 in Istanbul. While in Istanbul, she worked at the Haseki Hospital, a government-run hospital which was primitive in most respects when Erika arrived.” Slowly, Erika brought the Haseki Hospital into the modern era.
After immigrating to America, Erika eventually became a pediatrician. She retained a very warm place in her heart for Turkey. Quoting from the booklet about her life: “Erika made regular visits to Turkey to visit old friends. For years after she settled in the U.S., Erika sponsored and trained medical residents from Turkey to repay the good turns done to her by the Turkish government. She retained a love of Turkey and a resolute devotion to the memory of Atatürk throughout her life.”
There is one interesting convergence I want to touch on. As previously mentioned, multiple members of my Bruck family were either doctors or dentists in Breslau or trained there. It just so happens that the subject of Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska’s PhD. dissertation, which she is currently writing, will be about Jewish professors from the second half of the 19th Century and early 20th Century who contributed to the development of the renowned medical and dental disciplines in Breslau in those years. Naturally, some of my Bruck relatives will be discussed, notably, Dr. Julius Bruck, Dr. Jonas Bruck, and Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck.
Finally, while I’ve not yet been able to determine how or whether Dr. Erich Bruck and I are related, there are two possible lineages to examine, obviously the Bruck patronymic, but also the Berliner matronymic, the maiden name of my grandmother, which is also the maiden name of Dr. Bruck’s mother, Clara Berliner.
REFERENCE
Jablonski, Nina. “Remembering Erika Bruck: April 5, 1908-October 13, 2011.”
Note: In this post, I talk about Dr. Julius Bruck, my first cousin three times removed, who laid the technical foundations for the development of modern endoscopy through his inventions of the stomatoscope and urethroscope.
I first heard about my distant and renowned ancestor, the dentist Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902) (Figure 1), from one of my German first cousins, probably in the 1990’s, when we initially met. I also learned he was buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] (Figure 2), and that his grave still exists. At the time, I was unaware of any surviving tombs of Bruck ancestors, although in the years since I’ve discovered others. For reference, two quick points. First, Dr. Julius Bruck’s father was Dr. Jonas Bruck (Figure 3), himself a dentist, whom I introduced to readers in Post 60 as the precocious lad who attended Ratibor’s Gymnasium, high school, in 1819 in its inaugural year. Second, Dr. Julius Bruck was my first cousin thrice removed.
My wife Ann Finan can attest to the numerous cemeteries we’ve visited across Europe seeking discernible proof of my ancestors’ connections to different places. In 2014, during a lengthy 13-week trip exploring cities and towns between Poland and Spain associated with my family, we stopped in Wrocław, Poland and visited Dr. Julius Bruck’s tomb. A photo of the very distinguished dentist is featured on a panel at the entrance to the Old Jewish Cemetery, pinpointing his tomb, alongside other prominent Jews interred there. (Figures 4a-b) Upon touring Julius’ grave, my wife and I discovered he is interred alongside his father Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883), and their respective wives, Rosalie Bruck née Marle (1817-1890) and Bertha Bruck née Vogelsdorff (1843-1917). (Figures 5a-b) At the time, the headstones had fallen into disrepair, although have subsequently been beautifully restored. As an aside, on ancestry.com, I even found Bertha Bruck’s death announcement. (Figure 6)
Seeking to learn more about Dr. Julius Bruck, beyond what is easily retrievable from a web search, I inquired with cemetery personnel and was introduced to the on-site Branch Manager, Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Museum), Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska. (Figure 7) I learned the Old Jewish Cemetery is a branch of the City Museum of Wrocław, and that Jews, obviously, are no longer interred there. Archivists and museum personnel are naturally curious and intrigued when some foreigner shows up asserting an ancestral connection to someone from their area, particularly when that individual was Jewish. Such was the case in this instance. While obtaining little new information about Dr. Julius Bruck, I’ve learned and explained to readers the value of developing local contacts, so I resolved to stay in touch with Renata. Before parting ways, Renata asked me whether I knew or was related to a Dr. Erich Bruck (Figure 8), also buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery, whose very distinctive picture she gave me a copy of. Beyond having a common surname, I conceded I had no knowledge of this individual. That was five years ago, but in the subsequent post, I will tell readers how I recently stumbled across information about this previously unknown Bruck.
Dr. Julius Bruck was born in Breslau on October 6, 1840 and died there on April 20, 1902. He studied dentistry and medicine at the universities of Breslau, Berlin, Bonn and Paris, and received his diploma as dentist from Berlin in 1858 and as Doctor of Medicine from Breslau University in 1866. In 1859, he became assistant to his father Dr. Jonas Bruck, and eventually succeeded him in his practice. In 1871 he was admitted to the faculty of Breslau University as privatdozent, university lecturer, receiving the honorary title of professor in 1891.
Not only was Dr. Julius Bruck one of the most famous dentists of his time, but he was also a fighter for dentists’ education and a very successful inventor. He gained prominence in the mid-1860’s for his inventions of the stomatoscope (i.e., an apparatus for illuminating the interior of the mouth to facilitate examination) (Figure 9) and the urethroscope (i.e., an instrument for viewing the interior of the urethra), both of which laid the technical foundations for the development of modern endoscopy. Through development of the stomatoscope, Julius applied the same successes that had been achieved for treatments of eye, ear, and larynx diseases to oral and dental diseases using better illumination. (Lutze 2017)
Julius Bruck produced light by using an exposed electrically heated platinum loop, which at the time was the most powerful light source known. He imagined the possibility of placing the source of light in the distal end of an instrument and invented a double glass tube with a water-cooling compartment. This water-cooled apparatus, or diaphanoscope (i.e., an instrument for illuminating the interior of a cavity to determine the translucency of its walls), could transilluminate the bladder by being inserted into the rectum or vagina. (Zajaczkowski & Zamann 2004)
Julius focused on the research of his father in the area of Galvanokaustik, electroplating. In layman’s terms, suffice it to say that, in medicine, electroplating is an operating method that uses galvanic current-generated annealing heat for surgical purposes which is particularly suited for operations in the mouth and rectum. For the first time, Julius used the platinum glow wire, 0.3 to 1 mm in thickness. Julius himself described this method as resulting in the teeth being full illuminated so they were almost translucent; this meant that dental decay and diseases of the mouth could be detected that were invisible to the naked eye. The urethroscope essentially allowed a similar method to be used to illuminate and detect diseases of the bladder.
As previously mentioned, following my and my wife’s visit to Wrocław in 2014, I stayed in periodic contact with Ms. Wilkoszewska-Krakowska. Then, in 2016, Renata sent several photos of the meticulous restoration the City Museum of Wrocław had recently completed of Dr. Julius Bruck and family’s headstones. (Figures 10a-b)
Renata and I have recently re-established contact following a lengthy hiatus. While the subject of our more recent communications has been mostly about Dr. Erich Bruck, who as mentioned will be the focus of the ensuing Blog post, we’ve also discussed the fate of Dr. Julius Bruck’s two granddaughters and daughter-in-law. Since Breslau’s Old Jewish Cemetery is a branch of Wrocław’s City Museum, Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska regularly conducts walking tours telling visitors what she’s learned about the Jews interred there and contacts she’s in some cases made with their descendants. (Figure 11)
Julius’s two granddaughters were named Hermine Bruck (1924-1924), who died in infancy, and Renate Bruck, born on the 16th of June 1926. A clue provided by one of my fourth cousins, more closely related to Julius and his son, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 12), suggests Renate may have emigrated to England during or after WWII; I discovered a Renate Bruck listed in a Willesden, Middlesex, England marriage register, showing she had gotten married there to a man named Harry E. Graham in October, 1948. Uncertain whether this was Dr. Julius Bruck’s granddaughter, I ordered a copy of the marriage certificate from England’s General Register Office. It arrived only days ago, and the certificate confirms this is indeed the granddaughter of Dr. Julius Bruck and the surviving daughter of Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck. (Figure 13)
The marriage certificate provides additional names that has enabled me to partially work out vital events in Renate’s life. Renate’s full name was “Renate Stephanie Gertrude Bruck.” Not only is Renate’s husband’s full name shown, Henry Ernst Graham, but her future father-in-law’s name is also provided, Hermann Gradenwitz (1876-1940) (Figure 14); this confirms that Renate’s husband anglicized his name upon his arrival in England to “Graham.” Both Renate and her husband had previously been married, Renate to a man named Eugen Walter Mehne, and Harry to a woman named Ruth Philipsborn (1914-2003); Henry and his first wife Ruth, I later discovered, married in 1935 in London indicating Henry had already emigrated from Germany by this time. Renate and Henry were married in the presence of a Marie Luise Gradenwitz (1881-1955), whom I later confirmed was Henry’s mother, née Mugdan. Curiously, Hermann Gradenwitz is buried with a Leo Mugdan, possibly his brother-in-law, as readers may be able to detect from their headstone.
With new names in hand, I turned to ancestry.com and MyHeritage hoping to learn more about Renate and her family. Renate’s first husband, Eugen Walter Mehne, is initially listed in a 1908 Breslau Address Book showing he was an instrumentenmacher, an instrument maker (Figure 15); he is listed in a Breslau Address Book as late as 1939, and by then is a geigenbauer, violin maker. While I was unable to learn when or where Eugen was born or died, the fact that he was already in business in 1908, 18 years before Renate was even born, proves she married an older man. Similarly, her second husband, Harry Graham (aka Heinrich Gradenwitz), was significantly older when they married in 1948, he was 43 and she only 22. Harry, I discovered, was born on the 8th of November 1904 in Berlin, and died on the 7th of March 1959 in London.
I refer readers to Blog Post 101 in which I discuss in much more detail the Mehnes listed in the Breslau address books between 1908 and 1939. Suffice it to say, the Eugen Mehne listed as either an instrumentenmacher, an instrument maker, or geigenbauer, violin maker, between 1908 and 1934 is Albert Eugen Mehne, the father of Eugen Walter Mehne listed in 1935, 1936, and 1939 address books, identified as a geigenbauer or geigenbaumeister, master violin maker.
I found evidence of Renate’s third marriage in 1956 to a man named Gary Newman, thus before her second husband passed away in 1959. (Figure 16) A single reference indicates Renate died as Renate Newman on the 3rd of March 2013 in the United Kingdom.
To date, I’ve found no evidence that Renate ever had any children to continue Dr. Julius Bruck’s lineage. However, in the course of writing this Blog post, on MyHeritage, I just discovered that Renate’s mother, Johanna M. E. Bruck née Graebsch, whose fate was previously unknown to me, may also have emigrated to England. I last found evidence of her existence in a “1939 German Minority Census,” showing that she and Renate were registered as living in Breslau in May 1939 (Figure 17), a most dangerous time. I can find no indication she was murdered in the Holocaust, but the fleeting reference I just stumbled upon suggests she too emigrated to England and died there. As we speak, I’ve ordered the death certificate from the General Register Office for this Johanna Bruck to confirm my suspicion. Watch this space for an update.
REFERENCES
Lutze, Kay. “Und im Mund ward Licht!” Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen, Vol . 107, No. 18. 2017.
Zajaczkowski, Thaddaeus and Andreas Paul Zamann. “Julius Bruck (1840-1902) and his influence on the endoscopy of today.” World Journal of Urology, Vol. 22, Issue 4, August 2004: 293-303.
Note: This post is about two of my father’s former friends, non-Jews, from his time living in the Free State of Danzig in the 1930’s, and information I recently uncovered about their peculiar deaths.
My father, Dr, Otto Bruck, received his dental accreditation from the University of Berlin’s Zahnheilkunde Institut, Dentistry Institute, on the 31st of May 1930. This was followed by two brief dental apprenticeships, first in Königsbrück, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, then in Allenstein, Germany [today: Olsztyn, Poland]. These lasted until about mid-August 1930 according to letters of recommendation written by the two respective dentists. My father did not open his own dental practice in Tiegenhof, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] until April 1932, so inasmuch as I can surmise from surviving letters and photos, my father spent the intervening period apprenticing in the Free City of Danzig. (Figures 1-2) He may have been mentored by a Dr. Fritz Bertram, a dentist whom he took pictures of (Figure 3) and who is identified by name in his surviving pocket calendar (Figure 4), the subject of Post 6.
As a brief aside, my father’s decision to relocate to Danzig from Berlin may have been prompted by the fact he had an aunt and uncle who lived there, and that he was close to at least two of their three children (Figures 5-6), who interestingly I met when I was a young boy.
In any case, a gentleman whom my father befriended in Danzig was named Gerhard Hoppe. (Figure 7) As I discussed in Post 6, I learned from a 1934 Danzig Address Book that, like my father, he too was a dentist, in the adjacent town of Neuteich, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Staw, Poland] (Figure 8), 8.8 miles southwest of Tiegenhof. Possibly, Gerhard, who appears from pictures to have been about the same age as my father, may also have been a dental apprentice when he and my father became friends. (Figure 9)
Gerhard and his girlfriend Ilse (Figure 10) are among a group of my father’s former friends whose fates I’ve so far been unable to determine; pictures exist of all of them in my father’s surviving photo albums. These friends were non-Jewish, and I refer to them as “former” friends since during the Nazi era they would have been under enormous pressure to disassociate themselves from any Jews and any businesses they might have run. So, in the case of my father, I know that while he still had a few non-Jewish friends who whom he socialized, he no longer had any dental clients by the time he shuttered his practice and left Tiegenhof for good in 1937. The relationship he had with these erstwhile friends may have been more nuanced, but I don’t know this for a fact. Judging from the dates on my father’s pictures, after mid-1936, his circle of friends had narrowed considerably.
I’ve told readers that I periodically recheck these one-time friends’ names in ancestry.com and other ancestral databases. I recently did this again with Gerhard and Ilse, and, astoundingly, uncovered historic documents related to both. I tell myself I should perhaps be less surprised I discover new documents, and more bewildered I did not find them during earlier searches. Regardless, my recent finds have allowed me to sadly put to rest the fate of Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe. But, like most of the mysteries I seemingly resolve, they are like the mythological hydra, lop off one head and two grow in its place.
The search parameters I entered in ancestry.com were simply Gerhard’s first and last name, a place he might have lived, Danzig in this case, and the year I estimated he was born, so 1907, the same year my father was born. I immediately discovered his marriage certificate (Figures 11a-c), and the marriage register with he and his wife’s names, and their respective parents’ names. (Figure 12a-b)
The two-page marriage certificate, among other things, provides Gerhard’s complete name: “Gerhard Ludwig Rudolf Otto Hoppe”; his date of birth: 18th of February 1908; the date and place he was married: 30th of July 1932, Marienburg [today: Malbork, Poland] (Figure 13); his wife’s complete birth name: “Frida Charlotte Ilse Grabowsky” (also ending in “i” in some documents); his wife’s date of birth: 3rd of August 1907; and Gerhard’s profession: “Zahnarzt,” dentist. Three things instantly confirmed I had found the “right” Gerhard Hoppe: his date of birth off by one day from the date listed in my father’s pocket calendar (Figure 14), his wife’s name, Ilse, and his profession, dentist. Very likely, my father would have attended Gerhard and Ilse’s 1932 wedding. The second page of German marriage certificates typically list witnesses, but unfortunately my father’s name is not among them.
I would eventually locate documents for three generations of Gerhard and Ilse’s ancestors.
Now, here’s where things began to seriously stray from my preconceived notion of Gerhard and Ilse’s fates. With Ilse’s maiden name in hand, “Grabowsky,” I was now able to search entries for her. The first document I found for her was her death certificate showing she’d died on the 15th of April 1940 in the Langfuhr borough of Danzig (Figures 15a-b), known today as Gdansk-Wrzeszcz, the most upscale of Danzig’s boroughs, then and now. This document shows she died at less than 33 years of age, somewhat surprising but perhaps not so unusual given wartime realities. Shortly after discovering Ilse’s death certificate, I found Gerhard’s death record, showing he’d died on the 27th of July 1941 (Figures 16a-b), a little more than a year after his wife, also in Danzig-Langfuhr; at the time of his death he was 33, only slightly older than his wife had been. To say I was stupefied learning Ilse and Gerhard Hoppe had died so young, so soon after one another, and outside the theater of war would be an understatement.
Immediately curious as to whether the death certificates listed their causes of death, I turned to Mr. Peter Hanke. He is a German gentleman from “forum.danzig.de” with whom I’m in touch and who’d recently offered to ask the Polish archive in Malbork, Poland for death certificates for some of my father’s former friends, including Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe. I wanted to let him know I’d found their death certificates and ask if the records stated how they died. The answer left both of us horrified and saddened.
Ilse Hoppe’s cause of death was listed as:
“Todesursache: Durchschneiden der Halsschlagader (Selbstmord)” (Figure 15b)
Cause of death: cutting through the carotid artery (suicide)
And, Gerhard Hoppe’s death was caused by:
“Todesursache: Schädelbruch und komplizierter Oberschenkelbruch links- und rechtsseitig” (Figure 16b)
Cause of death: skull fracture and complicated thigh fracture on the left and right sides
Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe’s deaths leave us with more questions than answers given their extreme violence; they seem more like murders than suicides or health-related deaths.
According to Peter Hanke, an implausible but not impossible explanation as to the cause of Gerhard’s death may relate to the location of his apartment. I mentioned above that a 1934 Danzig Address Book indicates Gerhard was a dentist in Neuteich, Free State of Danzig, although by 1940-1941, a Danzig Address Book shows he’d relocated to Danzig proper and lived at Karrenwall 5 (Figure 17); he is not listed in the 1939 Address Book (Figure 18), suggesting he moved to Danzig in 1940 before Ilse’s death (i.e., Ilse commits suicide in Danzig, not Neuteich). Old German Address Books list people alphabetically as well as by street address and occupation, and, interestingly, in 1940-1941, Karrenwall 5 shows that not only did Gerhard Hoppe reside there but so too did numerous bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP (Figure 19), a trend that continues into 1942. (Figure 20) Could it be that the Nazi Party wanted Gerhard’s apartment, and was not squeamish about asserting its interests? We may never know. Unfortunately, contemporary Danzig newspapers have not yet been digitized, although by 1941 the news outlets were most assuredly controlled by the Nazis and are not likely to provide an accurate portrayal of what might have happened to Gerhard.
There exists a database of displaced Germans refugees from the former province of Danzig-Westpreußen, Germany, now Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz provinces in Poland, referred to as “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” that include images of a civil register (handwritten and printed works); more than 20 million persons are included in these card files arranged by the town of origin. I discussed this database in Post 38. Peter Hanke checked the name “Hoppe” for Danzig, and, incredibly found HOK cards for Gerhard and Ilse’s daughter, Gisela Hoppe, born on the 24th of November 1939 in Danzig (Figure 21), and for Gerhard Hoppe’s parents, Otto Hoppe and Anna Hoppe née Birkholz (Figures 22a-b), who raised Gisela after her parents’ deaths. The timing of Ilse Hoppe’s supposed suicide less than a year after her daughter’s birth makes the cause of her death even more suspicious.
Gisela is shown living in Bad Harzburg, Germany in May 1958. As I prepare to publish this post, just this morning I learned that Gisela, who is about to turn 80 years of age towards the end of November, is still alive. As we speak, I’m trying to establish contact with her and share the multiple images I have of her parents. (Figures 23-24) Watch this space for Part II of the story!
Note: In this post I discuss the internment of Dr. Walter Rothholz, my second cousin once removed, in Nazi-occupied Norway focusing primarily on the historic events surrounding this occupation.
Dr. Walter Rothholz (1893-1978) who I first introduced to readers in the previous post (Post 65) was a lawyer with a Dr. jur. (Doctor juris). (Figure 1) He is my second cousin once removed. Even was I positioned to present a complete biography of Dr. Rothholz that is not my aim, nor would that be of any interest to readers. Where I delve into specific ancestors, my goal is to show how their lives intersected with major historic events of their time, so in the case of Dr. Rothholz, how his life was upended by the Nazi occupation of Norway starting in 1940 and how he barely survived that ordeal.
Dr. Rothholz was born in Stettin, Germany [Szczecin, Poland] in 1893, a place previously discussed where various of my ancestors come from. Rothholz was decorated with the German Iron Cross for his heroism during WWI. Between the first and second World Wars, he was an international law expert who worked for the German Foreign Ministry. In 1936, he married Else Marie “Elsemai” Bølling (1915-1976) (Figure 2), a Norwegian woman, a move that allowed him to emigrate to Norway in 1939 and seemingly escape the Nazi scourge. Students of history will realize this was not to be Dr. Rothholz’s fate.
Briefly, some history. Operation Weserübung (German: Unternehmen Weserübung) was the code name for Germany’s assault on Denmark and Norway during WWII and the opening operation of the Norwegian Campaign. The name comes from the German for “Operation Weser-Exercise,” the Weser being a German river. The German occupation of Norway began on the 9th of April 1940 after German forces invaded neutral Norway. Conventional armed resistance to the Germans ended on the 10th of June 1940. Germany occupied Denmark and invaded Norway, ostensibly as a preventive maneuver against a planned, and openly discussed, Franco-British occupation of Norway.
German occupation of Norway lasted until the 8-9th of May 1945 following the capitulation of the German forces in Europe. Throughout this period, Norway was continuously occupied by the Wehrmacht (i.e., the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945). Civil rule was effectively assumed by the Reichskommissariat Norwegen, which acted in collaboration with Norway’s pro-German puppet government, Vidkun Quisling’s regime, giving us the origin of the word “quisling,” collaborator or traitor. During the “occupation period,” the Norwegian King Haakon VII and the prewar government escaped to London, where they acted as a government in exile.
Dr. Rothholz was interned in Berg prison on October 26, 1942. Berg interneringsleir (Berg internment camp) was a concentration camp near Tønsberg, Norway that served as an internment and transit center for Jews and later political prisoners during the Nazi occupation of Norway; it is located approximately 102km (63 mile) south-southwest of Oslo. Berg was the only prison camp in Norway that had only Norwegian prison guards, whose treatment of prisoners was particularly harsh, so much so that three of them were sentenced after the war to life-long forced labor. What precipitated Rothholz’s internment on October 26th was a message from Berlin received the previous day ordering the arrest of all Norwegian male Jews. Already by the 26th of October, 60 of the first Jews arrested had been gathered in Berg, where they were set up to build the camp.
The Jewish round ups involved both Norwegian police authorities and German Geheime Staatspolizei (abbreviated Gestapo, the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe); Sicherheitsdienst (SD, the intelligence agency of the SS and Nazi party in Nazi Germany); and Schutzstaffel (SS, the German “protective echelon” founded in 1925 as Hitler’s personal guards). By November 26th, women and children were also arrested for deportation. That same day, the male prisoners were divided into two groups: those who were married to Norwegian women, and those who were unmarried or married to non-Aryan women. The last group was sent to the extermination camps. A total of 227 Jewish men were deported from Berg to the extermination camp of Auschwitz in Oświęcim, Poland. Only seven of these men survived. The few Jews who were married to “Aryans” remained in Berg, as in Dr. Rothholz’s case.
There is a humiliating side story about the Berg internment camp. It was referred to as “Quisling’s chicken farm” because some Jews and other Nazi opponents wore metallic poultry leg bands on their fingers as protest markers against the Nazi authorities and the German Occupation; the pro-Nazi government decided to create a “hen farm” for these “chickens” at Berg. In a speech delivered to the National Assembly on Pentecost 1942, President Vidkun Quisling said, “. . .some people walk around with chicken rings on their fingers. . .we’re going to create chicken farms for them. Here near Tønsberg we will thus be able to get a large hen farm.”
In the Jewish campaigns in Norway, 767 of the approximately 1,800 Jews living there were sent to the German concentration camps in Poland. Only 32 of these survived.
On December 2, 1942 Dr. Rothholz was moved from the Berg internment camp to Grini (Norwegian: Grini fangeleir; German: Polizeihäftlingslager Grini), the Nazi concentration camp in Bærum, Norway, which operated between around June 1941 and May 1945. Bærum is a suburb of Oslo and is located on the west coast of the city. The camp was run by SS and Gestapo personnel. Dr. Rothholz had a good understanding of the geography of Germany so as the noose was slowly closing and the war was ending, he was able to keep his fellow prisoners informed of what the messages from the front meant.
Other than guards, the German occupiers devoted few personnel to the camp. Since many politicians, academics and cultural personalities were detained at Grini, a certain level of internal organization was established by the prisoners. They toiled in manufacturing, agriculture and other manual labor, with much of this work taking place outside the camp. Grini was liberated on the 7th of May 1945, although Dr. Rothholz had apparently already been evacuated to Sweden on the 2nd of May. Walter’s son, also named Walter Rothholz, was born while he was interned. (Figures 3-4)
Dr. Rothholz was granted Norwegian citizenship after the war and returned to Germany for a period. He became involved in the refugee situation and other international law issues.
Consequentially, Rothholz testified in 1967, along with other of his fellow prisoners, against Hellmuth Reinhard. Reinhard was the head of the Gestapo in Norway between 1942 and 1945. His ability to largely avoid being punished for his crimes against humanity is a sad commentary and worth a short sidebar.
Hellmuth Reinhard was born Hermann Gustav Hellmuth Patzschke in Unterwerschen, Germany, but changed his name in April 1939 to the more Germanic-sounding “Reinhard.” He joined the SS in March 1933, and soon became a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (German: NSDAP), the Nazi Party. He had a law office at the Reichsführer-SS Sicherheitsdienst in Leipzig from 1935; later served at the SD headquarters of the Reichsicherheitshaumptamt (RHSA, the Reich Main Security Office, an organization subordinate to Heinrich Himmler); then in 1939, transferred to the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo). From August 1940, he worked in Amsterdam at the central office for Jewish emigration from the Netherlands. Eventually, he came to Norway in January 1942 as head of the Gestapo.
Hellmuth Reinhard was second in command to Heinrich Fehlis in Norway. He had the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer, corresponding to captain, then became SS-Sturmbannführer, equivalent to major. According to historians, Reinhard had primary responsibility for the deportation of Jews from Norway. Whether Adolf Eichmann gave direct orders to deport Jews from Norway, or whether Reinhard took the initiative based on Hitler’s overall plans for Jews is not clear. Regardless, Reinhard was the individual responsible for notifying the Gestapo in Stettin that 532 Jews were on their way aboard the SS Donau (Danube) on November 26, 1942.
At the end of the war, Reinhard was in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, where, using his birth name Patzschke, he was released by British occupation authorities, obviously unaware of his SS background. Incredibly, Reinhard reverted to his birth name, resumed contact with his wife and children, then, in 1951 after “Reinhard” was declared dead, remarried his wife who was then officially a widow. It was only later that the German War Crimes Office in Ludwigsburg, investigating the Gestapo commander in Norway, discovered that the “widow” had married a man of the same birth name as Reinhard. He was arrested in December 1964 and brought up on charges in 1967. The charges involved murder and complicity in murder.
The charge against Reinhard that Walter Rothholz and other former Jewish prisoners testified to related to the deportation of the Norwegian Jews. The various witnesses claimed the internment and deportation of the Norwegian Jews could not have happened without Reinhard’s knowledge. Despite the substantial body of evidence supporting Reinhard’s involvement in the Jewish deportations and several murders, on June 30, 1967, he was sentenced to a mere five years for complicity in the murders during a counter-resistance action dubbed “Operation Blumenpflücken.” While Reinhard was also found guilty of deporting Jews, he supposedly could not be sentenced for this crime because the statute of limitations of 15 years for deportations had run out. Unbelievably, Reinhard was released in 1970 having served barely three years.
The trail was followed closely in Norway, and the verdict, once rendered, was characterized by the Norwegian newspapers as “scandalously mild.”
Let me end on a personal note. My father, a German-trained dentist, was never able to convince the American authorities to recognize his German credentials following his arrival here in 1948; they wanted him to redo his dental studies, something he felt he was too old to contemplate. Still, hoping to resume his dental profession in Germany, he travelled there in the mid-1950’s. For reasons that remain unclear and which we obviously never discussed, my father’s return to Germany never happened. I’ve often wondered whether this might have been related to the “hostile” environment he found in Germany where “low-level” German supporters of the Nazi regime had comfortably resumed their lives and reoccupied positions of power, and protected their former co-conspirators? Perhaps, it’s a rhetorical question to which there is no answer. Or, maybe, the mild judgement meted out to the mass murderer Hellmuth Reinhard was a manifestation of Germans disregarding the past. My father was a man with strong moral principles and would have been deeply offended by this dismissal of past sins, particularly since his beloved sister Susanne was murdered in Auschwitz. During our own McCarthy Era, I remember my father abruptly cancelling his subscription to the former “Long Island Press” for their unbridled support of Senator Joe McCarthy, so it would not surprise me that my father could not abide returning to post-war Germany under the prevailing circumstances of the time.
Note: In this post, I discuss a postcard given to me showing the last German Emperor, Wilhelm II, taken in Doorn in the Netherlands in May 1926, following Wilhelm’s abdication from the throne after Germany’s defeat in WWI, with an unknown member of my extended family standing amidst the Royal family.
Among my father Dr. Otto Bruck’s surviving collection of pre-WWII photos are several unique ones of historic interest. These include a small number replicated in Post 8 showing Field Marshall Hermann Wilhelm Göring, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, taken in 1935 in Tiegenhof, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland]; at the time, Göring was participating in a campaign event in support of the slate of Nazi candidates running for office there, and an election parade passed just below the office building in which my father had his dental practice.
An equally fascinating photo, illustrated in Post 17, shows a young Käthe Heusermann, who at the time was working as a dental assistant for my uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck, in Liegnitz, Germany [today: Legnica, Poland]. In 1933, after my uncle was forced by the Nazi overlords to shutter his dental practice, Käthe relocated to Berlin and was hired by Hitler’s dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke, as his dental assistant. Following the end of the war, Käthe Heusermann, was instrumental in helping the Russians identify Hitler’s dental remains, although, as discussed in Post 31, it would be many years before this fact was publicly acknowledged by the Russians. Because Käthe had always attended Hitler’s dental treatments, she was well-positioned to recognize Blaschke’s distinct and outdated periodontal work.
And, apropos of this post with a photo of the last German Emperor Wilhelm II, in Post 15 one of my father’s surviving photos illustrates the Kaiser’s daughter-in-law, the last Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia, Princess Cecilie. (Figures 1-2) She is touring my renowned great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s flower school and shop in Berlin. Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Cecilie Auguste Marie; 20 September 1886 – 6 May 1954) was the last German Crown Princess and Crown Princess of Prussia as the wife of German Crown Prince Wilhelm, the son of German Emperor Wilhelm II.
The current post is about an intriguing, captioned family photo that was given to me by one of my third cousins (Figures 3a-b), Andreas “Andi” Pauly, whom regular readers will recognize from earlier posts. The photo was part of a collection of family pictures I obtained, so I only came to realize its significance after I had the message translated. (Figure 4) The photo was turned into a postcard, and obviously mailed in a stamped envelope because the postcard has no stamp and address on the flip side, but unfortunately the envelope has not survived so the sender is unknown.
I didn’t comprehend who the people in the photo were until I did an Internet query on “Doorn.” I discovered this is in the Netherlands and is where Germany’s former Emperor, Wilhelm II, went into exile after he abdicated the throne following Germany’s defeat in WWI. I had no reason to recognize Wilhelm II but mention of Royalty led me to ask one of my German cousins who is a historian whether he recognized anyone in the photo, and he confirmed it was Germany’s last Kaiser. My cousin was quite excited by this discovery because it reinforced his belief in our family’s connection to the upper echelons of Prussian society.
The message on the card pinpoints only a young princess, “Carolath,” and the postcard-sender’s wife standing behind her without a hat, with no name given. (Figure 5) Comparing the postcard to known photos of the Royal family, we can identify in the front row, the German Emperor’s second wife, Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (1887-1947); her youngest daughter by her first marriage, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath (1918-1972); and the former German Emperor, Wilhelm II. The writer tells us among the rest of the entourage are some of Princess Hermine’s older daughters, as well as some of the Emperor’s former generals. I’ve not positively been able to identify by name any of Princess Hermine’s other children, nor any of the Kaiser’s generals, although I was able to find a picture on the Internet with only Princess Hermine, Wilhelm II, and Princess Henriette (Carolath) taken at Doorn at about the same time. (Figure 6)
What I’ve also been able to learn is that after Princess Henriette’s father died in 1920, her mother, Princess Hermine, remarried in 1922 the former German Emperor, Wilhelm II. Hermine had five young children, but it was decided that only the youngest, Princess Henriette, would come with her mother to live at Doorn. Wilhelm II generally kept out of his stepchildren’s affairs apart from Henriette. He had a genuine affection for her, and when she got engaged to the Emperor’s own grandson, Prince Karl Franz of Prussia, on the 6th of August 1940 at Doorn, Wilhelm II made the official announcement.
The message on the postcard provides clues as to who mailed it and to whom it was mailed and was an obvious starting point for trying to unravel the sender and receiver of the card. Faintly visible at the bottom is the date the postcard was written, the 28th of May 1926. My intimate familiarity with my extended family tree and the fact the photo was given to me by a member of the Pauly family clearly led both Andi and me to conclude the card had been sent to my great-great-aunt, Rosalie “Salchen” Pauly née Mockrauer (1844-1927). (Figures 7-8) Rosalie Pauly was the only one of her Pauly generation still alive in 1926, although she would die the following year.
Having rather quickly satisfied myself as to the receiver of the postcard, I then tackled the much more challenging task of trying to resolve who sent the card to Rosalie Pauly. Readers will immediately notice the sender only signed his initials, “W.B.,” who, at first, I thought might be a member of my Bruck family; I quickly discarded this theory because the writer tells us that on the 28th of May 1926 his wife is due to give birth in about eight days, thus in early June 1926, and I know of no Bruck offspring related to Rosalie Pauly born in that timeframe.
We know the postcard-writer was male because, as previously mentioned, he identifies his wife in the picture standing behind Wilhelm II’s stepdaughter, Carolath, as he refers to her. It’s not clear whether “Carolath” was a diminutive intended as an affectionate nickname to be used only by close family and friends, or how she was known publicly. It seems odd that a member of my extended family would be photographed amidst the former Royal family in a seemingly intimate setting if they were not readily acquainted in some way. More on this later.
The writer of the postcard tells my great-great-aunt Rosalie that the visit of her grandson reminded him to send her the photograph of the Royal couple; Walter Rothholz senior (1893-1978) (Figure 9), mentioned by name a few lines further down, was Rosalie’s eldest grandson and would have been 33 years of age at the time the card was written.
I have a theory as to the sender of the postcard, so far unprovable but conceivable. Walter Rothholz senior was married to a Norwegian woman, Else Marie “Elsemai” Bølling (1915-1976). (Figure 10) Initially, I considered the possibility that one of Else Marie’s brothers had a prename beginning with the initial “W.” I located a Bølling family tree on Geni.com naming Else Marie’s siblings but none begin with this letter. However, I discovered on this family tree that Else Marie’s father had a brother born in Kristiania (Oslo, Norway) named Wilhelm Henning Bølling (1891-1930), that’s to say her uncle, who would have been the right age to have a young family in 1926; he would have been only two years older than Walter Rothholz. If Wilhelm Bølling was the writer of the postcard, his wife is the one pictured. Her prename was “Ingrid,” although no surname is provided. While the Bølling family tree includes multiple photos of family members, including one of Wilhelm Bølling (Figure 11), none of Ingrid are included making it impossible to compare against the woman on the postcard.
According to the Bølling family trees on Geni, Wilhelm and Ingrid had a daughter named Wivi Aase Bølling, but no vital data is provided nor is any photo included.
Wilhelm Bølling is known to Walter Rothholz’s living son, also named Walter; Wilhelm was a very wealthy shipowner who transported coal. According to Walter, he committed suicide. (Figure 12) Given Wilhelm’s connection to the coal trade and its importance to Germany at the time, it’s imaginable he may have been a business associate of and socialized with the German Emperor during and after his rule. Pending the discovery of a photo of Wilhelm Bølling’s wife or a date for the birth of his daughter Wivi Aase, the question of which family member stands amidst Germany’s last Royal family remains a mystery.
