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POST 109 (PART 2): JOHANNA & RENATE BRUCK’S WARTIME TAGEBUCH (“DIARY”), YEARS 1942-1944

Note: In the second part of Post 109, I discuss the broader historic context in which Johanna and Renate Bruck, wife and daughter of my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), recorded the daily happenings in their lives between January 1942 and December 1944. Regrettably, their “Tagebuch” does not encompass the final few months of the war in Berlin through the surrender of the city on May 2, 1945. Thus, the circumstances of any hardships Johanna and Renate may have suffered in this period at the hands of the Russians and the Allies are unknown to us. Like in years 1940 and 1941, Johanna and Renate’s lives are replete with social engagements (getting together with friends; attending movies, plays, and operas; dining out; shopping; clothes fittings; etc.), distractions (tap, tennis, violin lessons), Renate’s amorous liaisons, and, most remarkably, multiple trips. With a few notable exceptions, the war passes almost unnoticed. I do not dwell on Johanna and Renate’s personal lives except where it adds nuance and texture to their accounts or provides some temporal context. From a story-telling perspective, I explore developments in the war and other happenings that while not explicitly discussed in the diary must have weighed on Johanna and Renate’s minds.

POST 108: RENATE BRUCK & MATTHIAS MEHNE’S “LONG-DISTANCE MARRIAGE”

POST 109 (PART 1): JOHANNA & RENATE BRUCK’S WARTIME TAGEBUCH (“DIARY”)—YEARS 1940-1941

As discussed in Post 109(1), in November and December 1941 Johanna Bruck transacted the exchange of her apartment in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] at Oranienstrasse 4, with one in Berlin occupied by a couple named the Günthers, located at Xantener Straße 24, in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Johanna physically relocated to Berlin in February 1942, followed several weeks later by Renate. Johanna used the intervening period to have the apartment completely refurbished and upgraded.

By September 1941 Johanna understood that Renate’s application for her to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” had been or would be rejected. Given how prominent Dr. Walter Bruck (Figures 1-2) had been in Breslau during his lifetime and the certainty the Nazis knew he was “racially” Jewish and that his daughter was a mischling of the first degree may have been the impetus for Johanna to move her daughter to Berlin; after all, by 1938, Renate Bruck had already been expelled from the “Oberlyzeum von Zawadzky,” the Upper Lyceum in the Zawadskie district of Breslau, the private school for daughters from upper class families. Johanna must have felt the anonymity of a larger city afforded her daughter better protection.

Figure 1. Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch at the helm of her Adler automobile with her daughter Renate and husband, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, in a pre-war photo reflective of their upper-class lifestyle

Figure 2. Dr. Walter Bruck with his wife and daughter

My cousin Thomas Koch discovered an interesting thing when he examined the Berlin Address Books following Johanna and Renate’s move to Berlin. Johanna is not listed in the 1942 directory, though this may simply have been a function that her move occurred after the directory went to press. However, more mystifying is that she is not listed in the 1943 Berlin Address Book. There are several possible explanations: (1) sloppiness on the part of the publisher in updating the 1943 Address Book; (2) Johanna and Renate lived at Xantener Straße 24 but under the name of another person because of Renate’s racial status as a mischling. This possibility seems unlikely because it would have made obtaining ration cards very difficult and would have been contradictory to the openly, social lifestyle Johanna and Renate led. (3) Johanna unintentionally forgot to register properly; or (4) Johanna and Renate temporarily lived outside Berlin, which was in fact the case for a period in 1943-1944, which I will discuss below.

On May 4, 1942, Johanna makes one of the few entries suggesting the war may have started to impact the everyday lives of ordinary Germans, when she remarks, “Food very scarce!!!” While the scarcity of food is rarely mentioned again, the arrival of “care” packages from friends and relatives outside of Berlin is carefully noted throughout the diary suggesting Johanna and Renate depended on these.

In Post 109(1), I mentioned to readers that upon Renate’s arrival in Berlin, she attended the “Kunstgewerbeschule,” the School of Arts and Crafts. However, neither Johanna nor Renate ever takes her compulsory schooling seriously; numerous instances of Renate missing school are noted. According to Renate’s lifelong friend, Ina Schaesberg, Renate acquired a special skill in arts and crafts that enabled her to make “very pretty and practical things from felt that sold well and brought in money.”

Renate departed Breslau accompanied by her mother on March 19, 1942, though Renate makes a point of noting that two days prior she had visited Matthias Mehne, her future first husband, at his luthier shop to say her goodbyes. (Figure 3) There was already a clear fondness between the two of them. It seems likely Renate and Matthias met at his shop while she was taking violin lessons there. According to Bettina Mehne, Matthias’s daughter by his second marriage, lessons were given not by Matthias himself but by his good friend, a man named “Kulenkampf.”

Figure 3. Renate Bruck’s first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne, at his luthier shop in Berlin in a post-war photo

Regardless, immediately after Matthias’s arrival in Berlin in February 1943, he called Renate and they become inseparable until he was forced to enlist in the Wehrmacht towards the latter part of April 1943. Readers may recall from Post 108 that Matthias was found to have helped a Jewish detainee and friend, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, escape a Sammellager in Breslau, a collection camp for Jewish deportees, with his rucksack in hand. As punishment, the judge, a friend, forced him to join the army rather than let the Gestapo kill him as they had wanted to, figuring he would be killed anyway. Clearly, Matthias’s departure from Breslau, did not prevent the Wehrmacht from finding him there, so his relocation to Berlin was more likely related to his blossoming relationship with Renate than an attempt to avoid military conscription.

By around the 22^nd of April 1943, Matthias was forced to present himself in Paris for induction into the German Army, but not without first talking to Johanna about his future with Renate according to an entry before his departure. It took me a while to work out that Renate and her mother referred to Matthias as “boy” throughout much of the diary, possibly because of his youthful demeanor or for some other unknown reason. He was clearly Renate’s primary love interest (Figure 4), though a man named “Gerhard” (surname unknown) was also vying for her affection at the time, a man her twin daughters claim was a love interest for years after the war following her marriage and divorce from Matthias.

Figure 4. Renate Bruck and her first husband Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne in Berlin in 1947-48 following his release form British captivity

Before backtracking and telling readers about some historic events of WWII I would have expected to be discussed in the Tagebuch, let me briefly tell followers what happened to Matthias following his enlistment. Renate received news of Matthias’s capture on October 12, 1943. He was evidently assigned to the Italian theater-of-war. The Allies landed in Sicily in around July 1943, and by September 1943 had invaded the Italian mainland. Matthias was captured by the Americans in Italy, but quickly turned over to the British and interned as a prisoner of war near Nottingham, England. Renate received her first letter from him dated the 27^th of February 1944 about a month later, on the 26^th of March 1944. I want to emphatically emphasize that Matthias was not a Nazi but was forced as punishment to enlist in the Wehrmacht because of the courage he had shown trying to help a Jew escape an internment camp in Breslau.

On her 17^th birthday on the 16^th of June 1943, Renate received a diamond ring. While there is no reason to think this was connected to Matthias, who was by then in the German Army, the day after receiving his first letter in March 1944 following his British internment, Renate celebrated what Johanna referred to as Renate’s “engagement day.” Might Matthias have proposed in his letter? Possibly.

At the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces including Germany’s 6^th Army and its foreign allies surrendered in Stalingrad following a brutal battle that had lasted five months, one week, and three days. There is nary any mention of this development during the war in Johanna’s diary. Nor is there any mention of the “Rosenstrasse Protest” that took place in Berlin during February and March 1943, which fundamentally affected Renate and other mischlinge. This demonstration was initiated and sustained by the non-Jewish wives and relatives of Jewish men and mischlinge who had been arrested and targeted for deportation, based on the racial policy of Nazi Germany. What started out with dozens, then hundreds of women protesting, eventually turned into thousands of women demonstrating in icy winter weather over seven days, until 1,700 Berlin Jews herded together into the Jewish community house on Rosenstrasse near Alexanderplatz were freed. The Rosenstrasse protest is considered a significant event in German history as it was the only mass public demonstration by Germans in the Third Reich against the deportation of Jews. One can only imagine how much horror and misery might have been avoided had such protestations by Germans occurred much earlier. To my cousin Thomas Koch this is very personal since his grandmother and future mother were among the Rosenstrasse protestors, and his Jewish grandfather among those freed.

Let me turn now to an entry made by Renate on the 11^th of May 1943, in which she noted that she would not be accepted in the Reich Labor Service, the Reichsarbeitsdienst or RAD. The Reich Labor Service was a major organization established in Nazi Germany to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarize the workforce, and indoctrinate it with Nazi ideology. It was the official state labor service, divided into separate sections for men and women. So called “half-breeds,” mischlinge, were not excluded from labor service. The mother of my cousin Thomas, like Renate also a mischling, was in the Reichsarbeitsdienst in 1940. Thus, it is a source of irritation to Thomas that Renate was somehow able to avoid the labor service. Were the conditions “tightened” for Renate through contacts Johanna had that “prevented” her from being accepted? Or was Renate’s non-acceptance intended to protect her from something or exclude her from something contrary to the rules? We may never know the answers to these questions.

Years ago, when I was still working with Thomas Koch trying to discover where Johanna and Renate Bruck had gone after they left Breslau, which we now know to have been in February-March 1942, Thomas shared with me an application that had been submitted by a woman named Ms. Edith Czeczatka to the Tracing Service of the German Red Cross in 1948. Ms. Czeczatka requested information on the whereabouts of Johanna and Renate and gave as their residential address in the town of Erfurt, Germany, Dammweg 9. (Figures 5a-b) I mentioned this in Post 83, even including a picture of the residential building where they lived. (Figure 6) Johanna and Renate’s association with Erfurt was a mystery until the discovery of their Tagebuch.

Figure 5a. 2019 letter to my cousin Dr. Thomas Koch from the “Deutsches Rotes Kreuz Generalsekretariat Suchdienst,” the German Red Cross’s Tracing Service, responding to his request for information about Renate Bruck; this letter cites a 1948 request for information on Johanna and Renate from a former neighbor when they lived at Dammweg 9

Figure 5b. Translation of 2019 letter from the German Red Cross’s Tracing Service to my cousin Dr. Thomas Koch

Figure 6. The apartment building at Dammweg 9 in Erfurt, Germany where Johanna and Renate Bruck lived after Renate was employed by the MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH as a draftswoman

An entry on the 22^nd of May 1943 explains why Renate accompanied by Johanna temporarily moved to Erfurt that year. That day, Renate was told to come for an interview at the employment office of “MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH”; she’d apparently applied for and been hired as a technical draftswoman beginning on June 1^st. More on this company below. The company had offices in both Berlin and Erfurt, but Renate was required to report to Erfurt beginning on the 17^th of June 1943 for training. Almost immediately, the girls that had been hired were given two months of paid vacation until the drawing rooms were readied. It is clear from the diary that Renate was permanently assigned to work in Erfurt.

Towards the beginning of September 1943, prior to moving to Erfurt, Johanna and Renate went to visit family and friends in Breslau, then spent a few days vacationing in Jannowitz, Silesia [today: Janowice Wielkie, Poland], before returning to Breslau, then leaving for Erfurt on September 12, 1943. For the period of her employment, Renate and her mother lived in Erfurt on weekdays, then returned to Berlin on weekends.

It appears that for at least a year until September 24, 1944, Johanna and Renate lived with a family called the “Hallers.” Then, on September 25, 1944, they moved within Erfurt into the house at Dammweg 9, previously mentioned, where the “Maulhardt” family also lived. Presumably, this was a boarding house the family owned.

Let me digress now and briefly discuss the MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH that Renate worked for. MAKO was a company network owned by Max Kotzan, and the name was a combination of letters from his first and last name. The 1943 Berlin Address Book identified the various components of the business which included chemical-technical and metallurgical development; machine factories; and apparatus engineering and construction. Curious to get a better handle on what the company actually produced, I came upon an obscure reference which I found intriguing because it shed light on Germany’s efforts to develop solid fuel rockets, which might well have changed the trajectory of the war. Quoting briefly from a publication entitled “The V2 and the Russian and American Rocket Program” by Claus Reuter:

“More and more information is now surfacing telling of the launch of a ballistic missile powered by solid propellant near Arnstadt just before the war ended. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Arnstadt is a town in Thuringia, Germany, about 20 kilometers south of Erfurt. During the Second World War, it was the site of a prisoner-of-war camp, mainly for Poles and Russians.]. Many believe it was this missile which was to carry a nuclear payload. The missile was developed in the top-secret think-tank installation at the Skoda factory under the control of the SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler. . . .

. . . Most historians and experts say that because of the shortage of solid propellants the missile was never produced and that no nuclear program existed.

More and more eyewitness accounts surface telling us a different story, accounts which say the missile was launched successfully. Also, a photo surfaced showing a large missile being built at the MAKO factory in Rudesleben, Thuringia. It shows the Sonderrakete A-4 (Special Rocket A-4) for solid fuel. The launch took place nearby at one of the top-secret factories in Thuringia the Polte 2 plant. The plant was controlled by SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler.

The MAKO plant specialized in the construction of pressure tanks and also produced equipment for the Luftwaffe, like drop tank, for the rocket program oxygen tanks for the V-1 and also mobile liquid oxygen transport tanks for the V-2 rocket batteries. The MAKO was owned by Maz Kotzan. Kotzan as a WWI flyer had close connections to Hermann Goering and Ernst Udet, both WWI pilots. The MAKO received the contracts from the RLM [EDITOR’S NOTE: Nazi Germany’s Ministry of Aviation, “Reichsluftfahrtministerium,” abbreviated RLM]. Behind the Polte 2 plant Kotzan had erected two aircraft hangers and a landing strip.

Here personalities like SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler or Wernher von Braun arrived to visit some of the installations. In the MAKO and Polte 2 plants some of the top-secret developments were tested. It was here that the Americans found the top-secret radar-absorbing aircraft paint. The paint was immediately shipped to the U.S.”

I am obviously no rocket scientist, pardon the pun, so suffice it to say the advantage of a solid motor is that it can provide huge amounts of thrust, and is therefore used as a booster to make satellite launching rockets gain high initial velocity before using higher-efficient liquid motors to gain horizontal velocity above the densest part of the atmosphere. There seems little doubt that had the Nazis been able to master this technology and place fissile material atop a missile powered by solid fuel, at a minimum, the war would have dragged on and more misery and death occurred.

I will readily acknowledge to readers that I have veered quite a distance from Johanna and Renate’s diary, but this was primarily in the interest of drawing attention to the company for which Renate worked, which was obviously deeply involved in Germany’s arms development. There is virtually no mention in their diary of Johanna and Renate’s time in Erfurt, except for their continuing active social lives. However, it is safe to assume that part of their reticence to talk about Erfurt could be connected to statements of secrecy they were sworn to. Clearly, as a mischling Renate wanted to draw as little attention to herself as possible, and it’s somewhat surprising the company even hired her given her status.

Evidently, by virtue of Renate’s amorous relationship with Matthias Mehne, her future first husband, she and Johanna had gotten to know Matthias’s parents, referred to as “Ma and Pa” in the diary and his sister “Lu,” short for Luzie. Matthias’s parents were Albert Eugen Mehne (b. 1883, Dresden) and Hedwig Gertrud Marie Göbel. Johanna and Renate regularly visited, received packages, and stayed in touch with them during Matthias’s wartime absence. While a reference I found states Albert Eugen Mehne moved to Gelsenkirchen, Germany around 1922 (Figure 7), which is about 500 miles due west of Breslau, Johanna and Renate always visited them in Breslau during the war, suggesting Matthias’s parents had returned there at some point.

Figure 7. Obscure reference from “Amati Auctions” mentioning that Renate’s future father-in-law, Eugen Mehne, worked in Gelsenkirchen, Germany after 1922

Surprisingly, Johanna and Renate traveled quite extensively during the years 1942 through 1944. While there were periodic disruptions and delays on account of the war, amazingly the trains continued to run on a predictable schedule though often with significant delays. Among the places they stayed besides Berlin, Breslau, and Erfurt were the widely scattered towns of Friedrichroda (small town and health resort in Thuringia), Babelsberg, Potsdam, Jannowitz, Neuendorf and Kantreck in Pomerania bordering the Baltic Sea, and Hamburg. They clearly knew people in many of these places, but others were seemingly vacation destinations.

Not surprisingly, the war had an impact on the lives of Johanna and Renate, although this fact is rarely manifested in the diary. However, on the night of February 16, 1944, the Allies launched a major bomb attack against Berlin, and the following day Johanna was notified by teletype that “our apartment had suffered greatly.” Then, on February 18^th, Johanna remarks “Our apartment—a field of rubble, quite terrible.” It does not become clear until an entry in the early part of May 1944 that Johanna and Renate’s apartment was still habitable.

It goes without saying there are dozens and dozens more entries in Johanna and Renate’s Tagebuch reflecting on the weather, taking umbrage in air raid shelters, Johanna being hospitalized, and much more. Readers should realize I’ve been very selective in the entries I’ve chosen to highlight to make this post engaging and more reflective of the wartime events that had to have impacted Johanna and Renate’s lives. My intent is merely to give followers a glimpse into the lives that my ancestors Johanna and Renate Bruck lived during WWII (Figure 8), and how surprisingly “normal” their existence seems to have been given the enormity of death and destruction that surrounded them.

Figure 8. Post-WWII photo of Renate and Johanna Bruck in England

REFERENCE

Reuter, Claus (2000). The V2, and the Russian and American Rocket Program. (2^nd ed.). Repentigny, Quebec (Canada): S.R. Research & Publishing.

POST 108: RENATE BRUCK & MATTHIAS MEHNE’S “LONG-DISTANCE MARRIAGE”

Note: This post is about Renate Bruck, my third cousin once removed, and her long-distance marriage to her first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne. In my years of doing ancestral research, I have only ever once come across such an arrangement in the case of good friends of my father. Given the uncommonness of such marriage covenants, I became curious about them. I learned as with many social and cultural “protocols” involving the Nazis, there were very specific provisions in law that governed not only long-distance marriages, but also posthumous marriages (i.e., “marriages of convenience”), and even post-mortem divorces.

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

Figure 1. Renate Bruck’s lifelong best friend, Ina Gräfin von Schaesberg née Weinert (b. 19 March 1926, Breslau) as she looks today (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

The inspiration for this post came from my 95-year-old friend, Ms. Ina Gräfin von Schaesberg née Weinert (b. 19 March 1926, Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]). (Figure 1) Ms. Schaesberg, whom I’ve mentioned to readers in previous posts, was best friends with my third cousin once removed, Renate Bruck (1926-2013), their entire lives. (Figure 2) Over the course of many email exchanges, Ina, with whom I’ve now become friends, mentioned in passing that she had attended Renate’s wedding to her first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne (1908-1991) (Figure 3), hereafter Matthias Mehne, in around 1943 in Wiesbaden, Germany. Ina emphasized that Matthias had not physically been present at his own wedding, so I became quite curious about this situation.

Figure 2. In a school play in around 1936 Renate Bruck in white dressed as a princess, and Ina Schaesberg garbed in black as her “prince” (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

Figure 3. Renate Bruck and her first husband, Matthias Mehne, in Berlin in around 1947 or 1948 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

As I alluded to in the introduction to this post, I have only once previously come across such an arrangement involving two of my father’s very close and staunchly anti-Nazi friends, Peter and Lolo Lau. (Figure 4) In their instance, however, Peter’s brother, Rudi Lau, had been his stand-in when he got married to Lolo. While Peter would eventually be captured and held for several years as a prisoner-of-war in Virginia, at the time of his marriage he was still an active German soldier in the Wehrmacht stationed in then-Yugoslavia. Rudi Lau himself would never marry as he later died of injuries sustained during WWII.

Figure 4. My father’s lifelong friends Lolo & Peter Lau in Oberhausen, Germany in 2012 who were married in the Free State of Danzig in Peter’s absence while he was deployed in the Wehrmacht and his brother Rudi was his “stand-in”

To the best of Ms. Schaesberg’s recollection, in the case of Renate and Matthias’ marriage, Matthias had no stand-in.

As I began to contemplate the circumstances of Renate and Matthias’s marriage, I surmised that as Germany’s fortunes changed as the war progressed, it was not inconceivable that Matthias had been drafted in 1943 into the German Army even though he would have been 35 at the time.

Let me briefly digress. Anticipating what will be the subject of an upcoming Blog post, I am in possession of a copy of Renate and her mother Johanna Bruck’s five-year wartime Tagebuch, in essence a diary. (Figure 5) In early 1943, Renate and Johanna Bruck had relocated to Berlin from Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], likely as a precautionary measure; since Renate was a mischling of the first degree according to the Nuremberg Race Laws (i.e., her father’s parents were Jewish making her half-Jewish), and in danger of being deported and murdered, the anonymity of a larger city may have afforded her more protection. Suffice it for now to say Renate’s diary entries make numerous mention of her future first husband Matthias during the months of March through April 1943, thereafter which he is rarely mentioned. As a brief aside, Renate and Matthias were both originally from Breslau and likely knew one another from there, but only became involved romantically after they separately moved to Berlin. Matthias was not Jewish so the reason why he moved to Berlin is unknown.

Figure 5. The frontispiece of Johanna and Renate Bruck’s 5-year wartime “Tagebuch,” diary, covering the period from January 1940 through December 1944

I already knew from the German newspaper article I had found among Renate’s father’s personal papers that Matthias was a prisoner-of-war in England in the latter stages of WWII. (Figures 6a-c) Curious as to how and when he was captured by the British, I turned to Ms. Bettina Mehne (Figure 7), Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage. I presented my theory to Bettina that Germany’s declining fortunes during the war caused them to draft older men. The actual story is more involved.

Figure 6a. Undated German newspaper article post-dating WWII about Renate Bruck’s first husband, Matthias Mehne mentioning he was a British POW

Figure 6b. Transcription of newspaper article about Matthias Mehne

Figure 6c. Translation of newspaper article about Matthias Mehne

Figure 7. Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage, Bettina Mehne, who related the story behind her father’s forced deployment during WWII

I refer readers to Post 101 in which I discussed at length Matthias Mehne’s courage on Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938, and the role he played protecting a Jewish man named Alfons Lasker that night. The fearlessness Matthias showed that night extended throughout the war, and has, to this day, connected the Mehne and Lasker families. Alfons Lasker’s daughter, Ms. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, was arrested in Breslau, shipped to Auschwitz, and miraculously survived. Anita, who is a world-renowned cellist, wrote a biography in 2000 entitled “Inherit the Truth,” detailing her wartime experiences. In this book she documents Matthias Mehne’s role in protecting her father on Kristallnacht, the passage of which is quoted in Post 101.

According to Bettina Mehne, there is one story Anita does not relate in her biography which explains why Matthias Mehne was forced to join the German Army. After Anita Lasker and her sister were arrested in Breslau and held there in a Sammellager, a collection camp for Jewish deportees, they attempted to escape with Matthias Mehne’s rucksack in hand; why this came to be in their possession is not clear. After they were recaptured, the Nazis found Matthias’s name in the rucksack, and he too was arrested and brought before a judge. Already subject to weekly questioning by the Gestapo because Matthias and his father refused to fly the swastika outside their luthier business on various “flag days” and hang a photo of Hitler inside their shop, they wanted him sentenced to death. The judge, however, was a friend of Matthias from the riding stables, and instead forced him to join the army as punishment, telling the Gestapo to let the Italians do their dirty work and kill him. So Matthias was soon sent off to war, though he made prompt work of being captured by the Americans, thereafter which he was handed off to the British.

With the benefit of Bettina Mehne’s firsthand account, I now understand the circumstances that lead to her father’s incarceration as a prisoner-of-war. Given Matthias’s status as a POW, I was curious how his marriage could be arranged across enemy lines, so to speak. I turned to Ms. Regina Stein (Figure 8), a provenance researcher, who’d previously and graciously researched at no cost to me address information for Matthias for the years 1943-1990. Regina sent me an interesting article from German Wikipedia on so-called “Ferntrauungen,” long-distance marriages (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Eherecht_im_Zweiten_Weltkrieg#Ferntrauung_im_Zweiten_Weltkrieg). Let me highlight some relevant information.

Figure 8. Dr. Regina Stein, provenance researcher in Berlin, who provided a source for background information on distance marriages, marriages of convenience, and post-mortem divorces in Nazi Germany post-1939

It is clear from this article that German marriages during WWII with an absent groom were not uncommon. Beginning in 1939, various special regulations were enacted by the German Reich. This made it possible for distance marriages, posthumous marriages (“marriages of convenience”), and even death divorces. Post-mortem marriages had already taken place in France during the First World War.

Beginning with the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws on the 15^th of September 1935, marriages between “Deutschblütigen,” German-blooded people, and Jews was prohibited, and “extramarital sexual intercourse” between Jews and other Germans barred. Different regulations applied to mischlinge, a pejorative term often applied to Jews meaning “hybrid, mongrel or half-breed.” From 1942 onward, however, their applications for marriage permits were no longer processed for the duration of the war. I’ll briefly return to this below, specifically as it relates to Matthias and Renate.

The possibility of a remote marriage existed according to “§§ 13 ff. der Dritten Verordnung zur Ausführung des Personenstandsgesetzes (Personenstandsverordnung der Wehrmacht) vom 4. November 1939,” (Third Ordinance for the Implementation of the Personal Status Act (Personal Status Ordinance of the Wehrmacht) of November 4, 1939. Such marriages were possible for Wehrmacht members (i.e., the Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945) who “took part in a war, a war-like enterprise or a special mission” and left their location, presumably were deployed. For such a remote marriage to take place, the Wehrmacht soldier had to declare his intent to the battalion commander who recorded it; had to provide an affidavit documenting “Aryan descent”; and the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the High Command of the Armed forces, had to submit a marriage license to the bride’s registry office. According to Ina Schaesberg, Matthias Mehne and Renate Bruck‘s remote marriage took place in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1943 or 1944.

As I’ve discussed, we know that at the time of Matthias and Renate’s marriage, he was already a POW in England, likely in late 1943 or possibly early 1944. The German regulations accounted for such an eventuality. For POWs, the battalion commander to whom a Wehrmacht soldier declared his intent to marry was replaced by a steward appointed according to the agreement of the treatment of POWs or by the most senior captured officer of the highest rank. The marriage ceremony in the local registry office, as in Renate and Matthias‘ case, had to take place within two months, though this timeline changed at various times during the war.

Colloquially, the long-distance marraige was referred to as a “Stahlhelmtrauung,” a “steel helmet wedding,” or as a “Trauung mit dem Stahlhelm,” or “steel helmet wedding ceremony,” because a steel helmet was positioned in the place where the groom would otherwise have stood during the ceremony in the Standesamt, the registry office. The marriage took effect when the woman declared her intent to marry before the registrar, even if the groom had already died by this time. In the latter event, the marriage was deemed to have taken place on the day when the groom had declared his intent to marry. While the free copy of the marriage certificate sent to the Wehrmacht soldier did not indicate it had been a long-distance marriage, the marriage register in the registrar’s office showed the marriage had been concluded in the absence of the husband.

The possibility of long-distance marriage excluded those soldiers who had not written down their intent to marry, but in whom it could be proved that they had been willing to marry. However, it seems that on November 6, 1941, Adolf Hitler had signed a secret decree together with Hans Heinrich Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery, and Wilhelm Keitel, the head of the Wehrmacht High Command, in which the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick was empowered to “order the subsequent marriage of women to soldiers who have fallen or died in the field, if it can be proven that there was a serious intention to marry and there are no indications that the intention was given up before death.” For professional soldiers, the approval of the High Command of the Wehrmacht had to be obtained. It was only on the 15^th of June 1943 that the Reich Minister of the Interior notified the registry offices “confidentially” of Hitler’s decree and established guidelines for processing posthumous marriage applications.

In the case of such “Leichentrauung,” “funeral marriage,” or “Totenehe,” or “death marriage,” it was up to the woman alone to testify to the authorities of the last will of the dead person. The woman who entered such a marriage with a dead man did not become a wife through marriage, but rather a widow. As a war widow, she was eligible to obtain financial benefits and claim an inheritance, and any common children were not considered out-of-wedlock. Parents often objected since they were typically excluded from the inheritance, and claimed the bride was only concerned with obtaining economic advantages, sometimes justifiably. The possibility of abuse, such as legitimizing children conceived by men other than the deceased husband, was another issue. Because of well-founded concerns, in around 1944, the right to inheritance was limited to the children conceived by the fallen bridegroom. In total, there were about 25,000 such marriages with fallen soldiers.

In connection with the discussion about entering into marriage with a deceased, the Reich Ministry of Justice discussed whether a marriage that had had already been dissolved due to death could still be divorced. This is referred to as a “Totenscheidung,” “divorce from a deceased.” The impetus here was that supposed “hero widows” were free to lead “dishonorable, carefree lives” and get involved with other men following the deaths of their fallen bridegrooms. To address this concern, the Reich Ministry of Justice issued confidential guidelines which made “war adultery” punishable; the possibility of a “death divorce” was created for women who broke their marriage vows while their husbands were on the front lines or acted “offensively” following their husband’s deaths. Legal proceedings could be initiated, and, if “proven” the wife committed adultery, the divorce was effective retroactive from the day before the husband’s death. A wife culpably divorced lost the right of inheritance and the survivor’s pension.

Considering Renate and Matthias’s distance marriage, I became curious whether I could obtain a copy of their marriage certificate from the civil registry office in Wiesbaden where their marriage had supposedly taken place; I wanted to know whether the certificate made any mention of the distance marriage, and who might have been a witness to the ceremony besides Ina Schaesberg. I contacted the Rathaus, City Hall, but they responded I was not closely enough related to obtain the document in question.

As an aside, Germany has a period of “privacy” for vital records. Unless you are immediate family, you cannot access birth records until 110 years following the birth of the individual, marriage records for 80 years, and death records for 30 years. Assuming Renate and Matthias married in 1943, their marriage record will not publicly be available until 2023. Consequently, I asked Renate’s twin daughters by her third marriage, Francesca and Michele Newman (Figure 9), to inquire about their mother’s marriage license. The Wiesbaden Rathaus checked marriage records between 1941 and 1946 but regrettably could not find any trace of Renate and Matthias’s wedding certificate. What to make of this is unclear.

Figure 9. Renate Bruck’s twin daughters by her third marriage, Francesca and Michele Newman, my “movie star” cousins

One final point I would like to make about Renate and Matthias’ distance wedding. As previously mentioned, according to the Nuremberg Laws, Renate was a mischling of the first degree because she was half Jewish. By 1943, the presumed year of her marriage, the Nazi regulations prohibited marriages between German-blooded people and mischlinge. While Matthias could clearly prove he was of “Aryan descent,” is it possible Renate did not have to submit such documentation to the registry office? If so, this seems highly unusual given the Nazis penchant for strictly enforcing discriminatory measures against Jews and mischlinge. Without a copy of Renate and Matthias’ marriage certificate the question remains unanswered.

REFERENCE

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

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.

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 18^th 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 9^th 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 9^th of November 2013, marking the 75^th 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.