Bruck's Hotel "Prinz von Preussen" Archives - Page 2 of 3

POST 132: FATE OF THE BRUCK’S “PRINZ VON PREUßEN“ FAMILY HOTEL IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ): GEOPOLITICAL FACTORS

Note: In this post, I discuss the fate of the hotel my family owned for three generations in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland]. Largely intact following the cessation of hostilities after WWII, it appears to have been demolished for a combination of reasons, including geopolitical ones and the Soviet Union’s desire to remove historical traces of German connections to Silesia.

POST 11, POSTSCRIPT: RATIBOR & BRUCK’S “PRINZ VON PREUßEN” HOTEL

POST 11, POSTSCRIPT 2: RATIBOR & BRUCK’S “PRINZ VON PREUßEN” HOTEL

Regular readers know I periodically revisit topics or people I’ve talked about to amplify new findings. Since the process of learning rarely follows a linear path, one is often left to reevaluate previous findings or conclusions considering more recently uncovered evidence.

The family establishment in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel, was owned for what I estimate are roughly three generations, from the early 1850s to around the mid-1920s. (Figures 1-2) A historic police file found at the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz” indicates the business was sold in around 1926, and subsequently went through a series of owners. (Figure 3)

Figure 1. The Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel formerly located at the corner of Oderstraße and Bollwerkstraße

Figure 2. The former entrance to the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel

Figure 3. The cover of the historic police file on the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel found at the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”

I thought I had previously laid to rest the issue of why the building does not stand today. It would be reasonable to assume the structure was destroyed during World War II, by Allied bombing of the city prior to its capture or in the waning days of the war when the Soviets encircled and seized the city. However, a post-WWII photo given to me by a curator at the Muzeum w Raciborzu proves the structure was largely intact possibly apart from the roof; the photo, while of high resolution, is taken at too great a distance to ascertain how badly the roof was damaged. (Figure 4)

Figure 4. Post-World War II photo taken from Racibórz’s Market Square looking east towards the largely intact Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel

Realizing the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel, which oddly retained its name throughout its existence despite its Jewish origins, outlasted the cataclysmic events of WWII, I sought another explanation for why it might not have survived. This was provided, so I thought, by Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 5), my friend from Racibórz, a retired lawyer who now researches and writes extensively about the history of Silesia and Ratibor. Paul sent me a copy of a letter he found in the Racibórz Archives dated the 27^th of March 1950 from the so-called Racibórz Municipal Board to the Municipal National Council in Racibórz (Figure 6); in essence, the letter states that damaged buildings in the town had been evaluated for their “historic character” and found lacking, so that parts of or all a structure could be dismantled to provide 5,000,000 bricks needed for the reconstruction of Warsaw.

Figure 5. Racibórz historian, Paul Newerla, and me in 2018 standing by the statue of John of Nepomuk currently located in middle of a parking lot

Figure 6. Letter dated the 27th of March 1950 retrieved from the State Archives in Racibórz by Paul Newerla establishing a quota of 5,000,000 bricks to be provided by the city for the post-WWII reconstruction of Warsaw

Indicative of the method used to clear burned and destroyed houses and buildings in Racibórz, Paul found another letter dated the 12^th of January 1948 sent from the Konservator of the Voivodeship, essentially the province, to the Technical Department of Racibórz’s Municipal Department. (Figure 7) The province was reminding the Municipal Board that the use of explosives to clear these damaged structures in the vicinity of historic edifices such as the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Racibórz was prohibited. It is safe to assume that explosives were similarly used to take down the Bruck’s Hotel.

Figure 7. Letter dated the 12th of January 1948 from the Province’s Konservator to Racibórz’s Municipal Board telling them that the use of explosives to tear down damaged buildings near historic structures is prohibited

Why the city of Racibórz would have agreed to or recommended the dismantling of perfectly functional structures like the former family hotel probably requiring only minor reconstruction at a time when housing was likely in short supply seems to defy logic. Paul jumped to my assistance to explain broader geopolitical factors that apparently dictated why the former family establishment was torn down. I will attempt to explain this to readers.

The address for the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel was Oderstraße 16 (Figure 8); the hotel was located on an east-west street that terminated along the west bank of the Oder River [Polish: Odra]. (Figure 9) The historic walled city of Ratibor lay along the west side of the Oder River, as does much of the current central part of Racibórz. The location of the hotel along the west side of the Oder River is significant, as I will demonstrate. Spoiler alert. The destruction of the Bruck’s Hotel may be partially related to the anticipated location of the German-Polish frontier following the end of WWII.

Figure 8. View towards the west up Oderstraße with the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel on the right side

Figure 9. 1903 view of the Oderbrücke, the bridge crossing the Oder River, looking towards the east

The subject of Poland’s western frontier was brought up by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as early as late 1943 at the Tehrān Conference; this was a meeting between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin held in Tehrān between November 28–December 1, 1943. The chief discussion centered on the opening of a “second front” in western Europe. Stalin agreed to an eastern offensive to coincide with the forthcoming Western Front. On the Polish question, the western Allies and the Soviet Union were at sharp odds. While the Americans were not interested in discussing any border changes during the Tehrān Conference, Roosevelt agreed in principle that Poland’s western border should be extended west to the Oder River.

At the Yalta Conference, during the second of the Big Three conferences between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin held in February 1945, American and British officials agreed on the basics of Poland’s future borders. In the east, the British agreed to the Curzon line, the proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I; this line was first proposed in 1919. The British acknowledged that the Americans might push for Lwów, current-day Lviv in western Ukraine, to be included in post-war Poland. It was generally agreed that Poland should receive part of East Prussia, Danzig, the eastern part of Pomerania, and Upper Silesia; for reference Ratibor, present-day Racibórz, was in Upper Silesia.

In terms of this blog post, the following observation in Wikipedia is relevant: “With respect to Poland’s western frontiers, Stalin noted that the Polish Prime Minister in exile, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, had been pleased when Stalin had told him Poland would be granted Stettin/Szczecin and the German territories east of the Western Neisse [River]. Yalta was the first time the Soviets openly declared support for a German-Polish frontier on the Western as opposed to the Eastern Neisse. Churchill objected to the Western Neisse frontier, saying ‘it would be a pity to stuff the Polish goose so full of German food that it got indigestion.’ He added that many Germans would be shocked if such large numbers of Germans were driven out of these areas, to which Stalin responded that ‘many Germans’ had ‘already fled before the Red Army.’” The question of Poland’s western border was ultimately left to be decided at the Potsdam Conference.

Let me digress briefly to give readers a sense of geography regarding the whereabouts of the Western and Eastern Neisse Rivers in relationship to the location of Racibórz. The Neisse River, in Polish Nysa, is two rivers in present-day southwestern Poland. The better-known Nysa Łużycka, or Lusatian Neisse, is the more westerly and longer of the two rivers running 157 miles or 252 km; the Nysa Kłodzka, or Glatzer Leisse or Neisse of the city of Kłodzko (Glatz), is the shorter is 113 miles or 182 km and lies entirely within Poland. Both rivers rise in the Sudeten Mountains, flow northward, and empty into the Oder River. (Figure 10) Near the village of Ratzdorf, the Lusatian Neisse discharges into the Oder River.

Figure 10. Map showing the Western and Eastern Neisse Rivers, the Oder River, and the Bober River; Racibórz is located approximately midway between Opole (Oppeln) and Ostrava (Ostrau)

Görlitz, located on the more westerly Lusatian Neisse River, is the easternmost town in Germany (easternmost village is Zentendorf), and lies opposite the Polish town of Zgorzelec. Görlitz is slightly less than 200 miles west-northwest of Racibórz (Figure 11), while Kłodzko along the Eastern Neisse is only about 90 miles to the west-northwest of Racibórz. (Figure 12)

Figure 11. Map showing the distance between Racibórz, Poland, located on the Oder River, and Görlitz, Germany, located on the Western Neisse River (Nysa Łużycka or Lusatian Neisse)

Figure 12. Map showing the distance between Racibórz, Poland, located on the Oder River, and Kłodzko, located on the Eastern Neisse River (Nysa Kłodzka)

As readers can easily discern for themselves, the Soviet proposal to establish Poland’s western frontier along either the Western Neisse or Eastern Neisse would have resulted and did ultimately result in considerably more land being included within Poland. However, at the time of the Yalta Conference, the precise location of Poland’s western border was still an open question. The western Allies accepted in general that the Oder River into which both the eastern and western Neisse rivers emptied would be the western border of Poland in that area. Still in doubt at the time was whether the border would follow the eastern or western Neisse. The western Allies sought to place the border on the eastern Neisse closer to Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]. Suggestions of a border on the Bóbr River (Bober) were also supposedly rejected by the Soviets.

At the latitude at which Racibórz is located, the eastern and western Neisse are situated much further to the west of the Oder River. In none of the materials I’ve read have I seen any mention that the Allies were seriously considering establishing the border between Germany and Poland along the Oder at this latitude; as mentioned above, the discussion always revolved around establishing the western frontier along the Neisse rivers or conceivably along the Bober River. (see Figure 10) While this may be true, as far as the local authorities in Racibórz may have been concerned, there may have been sufficient uncertainty as to where the final frontier would be established. Thus, to hedge their bets, the Communist authorities may have decided to dismantle the Bruck’s Hotel and salvage the bricks fearing it would remain on the German side of the border.

A recent citation sent to me by Paul Newerla sheds additional light on how the Bruck’s Hotel was destroyed. On page 69 of a book entitled in Polish “Od Joannitow Do Ratownikow–Czyli Dzieje Strazakow Ziemi Raciborskiej,” translated roughly as “From the Joanites to the rescuers or the history of firefighters of the Racibórz Land,” there is an eyewitness account by a former firefighter who worked for the fire brigade in Racibórz. (Figures 13a-c)

Figure 13a. Cover of the book “From the Joanites to the rescuers or the history of firefighters of the Racibórz Land,” with an eyewitness account by a former firefighter who worked for the fire brigade in Racibórz

Figure 13b. Polish account on page 69 by Racibórz firefighter of what happened to the Bruck’s Hotel when it caught fire after WWII

Figure 13c. Polish and German accounts by Racibórz firefighter of what happened to the Bruck’s Hotel when it caught fire after WWII

Below is the translation of what he wrote:

“One day (it was 1945, without further date) the fire brigade was alerted and ordered to the fire of the Hotel Bruck on the corner of Oderstraße and Bollwerkstraße (now Reymonta-Straße). The hotel was in unusually good condition after the war. When the firefighters appeared with their firefighting trailer in front of the burning hotel, they met Russian soldiers equipped with weapons. They refused to have the hotel deleted [sic]. The Polish administration was also powerless. So the beautiful hotel burned.”

It would appear, based on this account, that perhaps an evening of drunken debauchery by occupying Russian soldiers “accidentally” led to the Bruck’s Hotel being set on fire and to the establishment’s ultimate destruction; clearly, the soldiers had no interest in seeing the fire extinguished when the firefighters showed up. Depending on the intensity of the fire, it’s likely the bricks would still have been usable and likely salvaged.

Time and again through history, we have seen foreign invaders attempting to destroy traces of earlier history and culture in places they occupy, to rewrite the past, so to speak. The Nazis sought to eradicate Jewish culture. Currently, we are witnessing in the Ukraine Russians plundering museums in places like Kherson and Mariupol, because, above all, according to Putin’s propaganda, “Ukraine as a country doesn’t exist, it’s part of Russia—so they can grab anything they want.” Thus, like today, it’s probable the orders to wipe out evidence of earlier cultures in Racibórz following WWII were coming from someone high in the Kremlin, likely Stalin himself. Later, during the Communist Era, the headstones in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor were removed and sold off because again, after all, Jews were never considered a part of the cultural fabric of the city.

In closing, let me make a few observations about the frontier between Germany and Poland, and the territorial losses that both suffered because of WWII. The Potsdam Agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union concluded on the 2^nd of August 1945, in anticipation of a final peace treaty, placed the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line under Polish administration. All Germans remaining in the old and new Poland, it was decided, should be expelled. The Oder-Neisse line marked the border between the former East Germany and Poland from 1950 to 1990. The then-two Communist governments agreed to the border in 1950, while then-West Germany, after a period of refusal, conceded with reservations in 1970. Notwithstanding West Germany’s misgivings about this frontier, with the reunification of Germany, they eventually agreed to it when the German-Polish Border Treaty was signed on the 14^th of November 1990.

Ultimately, Poland for its loss to the Soviet Union of 72,000 sq. miles (187,000 sq. km.) of lands east of the Curzon line was compensated with 43,000 sq. miles (112,000 sq. km.) of former German territory. The final borders resulted in Germany’s loss to Poland of most of Silesia, half of Pomerania, the eastern portion of Brandenburg, a small part of Saxony, and part of East Prussia. The northern part of East Prussia, including Königsberg [today: Kaliningrad, Russia], was annexed by the Soviet Union, while Memelland became part of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, today Lithuania. (Figure 14)

Figure 14. Map of the Oder-Neisse Line and Germany’s postwar territorial losses

Thus, while we may wish to believe frontiers and borders are immutable, as we’ve seen in just the past nine years since Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, they are ever-changing and much more fluid than we would expect.

REFERENCES

Dafoe, Taylor. “Before Retreating from Kherson, Russian Troops Emptied One of Ukraine’s Top Museum of Nearly 15,000 Objects.” Artnet News, 14 Nov. 2022, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/russian-troops-loot-kherson-museum-2209777

Geanous, Jacob. “Russian art curators have reportedly helped loot dozens of Ukraine museums.” New York Post, 4 Feb. 2023, https://flipboard.com/article/russian-art-curators-have-reportedly-helped-loot-dozens-of-ukraine-museums/f-1f12bf14a5%2Fnypost.com

Grutchot, Katarzyna (ed.) “Od Joannitow Do Ratownikow—Czyli Dzieje Strazakow Ziemi Raciborskiej.” (“From the Joanites to the rescuers or the history of firefighters of the Racibórz Land”). Nowiny Publishing House.

“Neisse River.” Encylopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Neisse-River-Europe

“Oder-Neisse line.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oder%E2%80%93Neisse_line

POST 127: MY GREAT-AUNT ELSBETH BRUCK, “LA COMMUNISTE,” A DDR APPARATCHIK

Note: In this brief post, I present recently acquired information about my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck derived from an entry on German Wikipedia.

My father would refer to his aunt living in East Berlin, in the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) (German Democratic Republic), as “la Communiste,” the Communist, only ever using this sobriquet. She was an apparatchik, a member of the Communist Party apparat in the DDR. It was long after my father passed away in 1994 that I would learn that my great-aunt’s name was Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970). (Figure 1)

Figure 1. My great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck on March 15, 1967, in Berlin

While I obviously never met her, she led a comfortable life as a high-ranking Communist government official living in a sprawling apartment she boasted she would never be able to afford in then-West Berlin. As a child my second cousin, however, Margarita Vilgertshofer née Bruck, once visited Elsbeth in East Berlin circa 1968 in the company of her father, one of my father’s first cousins. I have no clear sense of Elsbeth’s life in her years living in East Berlin, though letters exist written to her by her niece, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, from Nice, France. Like many people living in post-WWII Germany, both East and West, the shortage of food and other everyday necessities was a commonly discussed topic; from time-to-time Hansi would send her aunt care packages. For this reason, I find it mildly amusing that when Margarita visited Elsbeth and she was busy touting the benefits of living in East Germany and how egalitarian society was, Margarita cheekily responded, “well, then, how come there are no bananas?!”

In any case, as mentioned in Post 126, a German lady posted separate entries on two of my renowned great-aunts, including Elsbeth Bruck, on German Wikipedia. While some of the information was drawn from what I wrote, other details were new to me so as in the case of my great-aunt Franziska Bruck, I provide in amended form here some of the discoveries about Elsbeth.

Elsbeth’s parents, my great-grandparents, were Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 2) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 3); they were the original owners of the family hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Elsbeth was born in 1874 and was the youngest of my great-grandparents’ eight children. As in the case of her sister Franziska, I know nothing about Elsbeth’s early life in Ratibor. Her father passed away in 1892 when Elsbeth was 18 years old, so it’s likely she helped run the family hotel for a period until she left in around 1902 with her sister Franziska and her mother Friederike for Berlin.

Figure 2. Elsbeth’s father Fedor Bruck (1834-1892)

Figure 3. Elsbeth’s mother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924)

Elsbeth’s life took a decidedly different path than her sister Franziska’s. She was a pacifist and peace activist for much of her life. A 1907 photo I found on the Internet suggests that her involvement in the peace movement began almost immediately after moving to Berlin. The photo shows 31 members of the German Peace Society (Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (DFG)) including an unidentified Elsbeth; the German Peace Society was founded in 1892 in Berlin but moved its headquarters to Stuttgart in 1900, and still exists today. In 1907, Elsbeth would have been only 33 years old; only six women appear in the group photo, so judging the age and appearance of these women I reckon the woman standing in the second row circled is likely Elsbeth. (Figure 4)

Figure 4. Thirty-one members of the German Peace Society shown in a photo taken in 1907 with the circled individual believed to be Elsbeth

Elsbeth later became a member of the Bund Neues Vaterland (New Fatherland League) and succeeded the German feminist and pacifist Lilli Jannasch as its managing director; this was the most important pacifist association during WWI from which the German League of Human Rights (German League for Human Rights – Wikipedia) (Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte) later emerged, an organization that included among its members Albert Einstein. Founded in 1914, the League moved more and more towards the left politically, exposing its members to persecution. As a result, both Elsbeth and Lilli Jannasch were taken into “protective custody,” and in February 1916 the League was banned by an organ of the police investigating political crimes. Despite her detention, Elsbeth remained politically active. Pacifists, however, continued to remain on the Berlin State Police’s radar, and a list of 30 well-known pacifists drawn up in January 1918 included Elsbeth’s name.

By 1920, Elsbeth had joined a short-lived German left-wing organization founded in 1919 for the promotion of proletarian culture, the Bund für proletarische Kultur, the League for Proletarian Culture. According to Wikipedia, this organization “. . . sought to wipe out the last traces of bourgeois culture from working class consciousness, seeing the disappearance of this pseudo-culture as no loss. They envisaged a new proletarian culture dormant within the working class which could be woken up and play a role in the revolutionary transformation of society.” Her association with this group makes it evident why Elsbeth became a DDR firebrand following WWII.

During the Nazi era, Elsbeth’s friends in the pacifist community helped her escape first to Prague, in then-Czechoslovakia, then to the United Kingdom. According to the 1939 census, she lived in the parish of Amersham (Buckinghamshire) northwest of London and earned a living as a teacher of voice training. (Figures 5-b) Following the war, she returned to Berlin, continued her campaign for freedom and human rights, and eventually became a high ranking, well-respected member of the East German government.

Figure 5a. Cover of the 1939 National Registration census book for the parish of Amersham in Buckinghamshire, England that includes Elsbeth’s name

Figure 5b. Page of the 1939 National Registration census book for the parish of Amersham in Buckinghamshire, England bearing Elsbeth’s name

In letters written to Elsbeth by her niece Hansi Goff, cited above, she often mentions the autobiography Elsbeth was working on. While this was never published, Elsbeth’s friend and roommate Cläre Jung (1892-1981) wrote the epilogue for this memoir entitled, Ein Leben für den Frieden (A Life for Peace); this manuscript is on file at the German Exile Archive in Frankfurt, Germany.

Elsbeth died on the 20^th of February 1970 at the age of 95. She is buried at the “Pergolenweg” grave complex (Figure 6) of the Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten (Socialist Memorial) (Figure 7) at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery) (Figure 8) in the borough of Lichtenberg in Berlin. Founded in 1881, it is the cemetery where many of Berlin’s Socialists, Communists, and anti-fascist fighters are interred.

Figure 6. Headstone of Elsbeth Bruck’s grave in the “Pergolenweg” grave complex at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery)

Figure 7. The Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten (Socialist Memorial) at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery)

Figure 8. Entrance to the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery)

REFERENCES

Bruck, Elsbeth (N.D.). Ein Leben für den Frieden [Unpublished manuscript]. Deutsche Exilarchiv, Frankfurt am Main.

“Elsbeth Bruck.” Wikipedia, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsbeth_Bruck

“League for Proletarian Culture.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_Proletarian_Culture

POST 126: MY GREAT-AUNT FRANZISKA BRUCK, FLORIST TO THE LAST GERMAN KAISER

Note: In this post, I present more information on my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (1866-1942), a well-known florist in Berlin in the first third of the twentieth century. Some of this new information is drawn from a recent entry made on German Wikipedia.

POST 15, POSTSCRIPT: BERLIN-FRANZISKA & ELSBETH BRUCK: “ARTIFACTS” FROM FRANZISKA’S BLUMENSCHULE (FLOWER SCHOOL)

Probably not unlike the ancestors of many readers, there are multiple accomplished personages in my lineage. Some can even be found in Wikipedia. Such is the case with my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (Figure 1), an innovative and renowned florist in Berlin in the first third of the twentieth century until the Nazis came to power. Recently, the author of the German Wikipedia entry asked me to review the scripts she drafted on Franziska (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franziska_Bruck) and her equally renowned sister Elsbeth Bruck, the subject of my next post. While some of the background was drawn from my publications, I learned new things on both great-aunts which I present to readers in amended form in this and the ensuing post. Because Wikipedia prefers its writers to remain anonymous, I’m not naming this German lady at her request.

Figure 1. My favorite picture of my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (1866-1942), prominent Berlin florist in the first third of the twentieth century

I’ve discussed my great-aunt Franziska Bruck in two prior publications, Post 15 and Post 15, Postscript. Let me very briefly recap. Franziska was born on December 29, 1866, in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], and was the second daughter of Fedor and Friederike Bruck, owners of the family hotel there, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Little is known of Franziska’s early years in Ratibor. Her father, Fedor Bruck, passed away in 1892 when she was 26 years old, so as one of the three oldest children, it is likely that along with her mother, and older brother and sister, they together ran the Bruck’s Hotel in Ratibor for a time. Eventually, however, Franziska, along with her mother Friederike and her youngest sister Elsbeth, left for Berlin in 1902, leaving the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor to be managed by my grandparents, Felix and Else Bruck. (Figure 2)

Figure 2. My grandparents, Felix Bruck (1864-1927) and Else Bruck née Berliner (1873-1957), who once ran the family hotel in Ratibor, Germany the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel

In Berlin she opened a flower shop on Potsdamer Straße continuing her lifelong passion for nurturing flowers. In October 1912, she opened a Schule für Blumenschmuck, a school for flower decorations catering to “Damen höherer Stände,” ladies of the upper classes who she trained to become florists and gardeners over a rigorous ten-month period. (Figure 3) As Wikipedia notes, “The fact that Bruck’s school was highly regarded was . . . demonstrated by a visit by the last German Crown Princess Cecilie, who personally informed herself on site about ‘the work of the homeworkers.’” Germany’s last Kaiser, Wilhelm II, and his wife are said to have been among my great-aunt’s customers.

Figure 3. My great-aunt Franziska Bruck (middle) overseeing the creation of floral decorations in her flower shop

Family photographs exist of Crown Princess Cecilie visiting my great-aunt’s Schule für Blumenschmuck which I have featured in previous posts. (Figures 4-5) However, unbeknownst to me is that the special event was documented by a specially produced photo postcard showing my great-aunt with the Crown Princess and her lady-in-waiting. (Figure 6) The distinguished publishing house Gustav Liersch & Co. in Berlin created the postcard; they were known for among other things producing postcards with portraits of high-ranking personalities made by well-known photographers.

Figure 4. Princess Cecilie, the last German Crown Princess (as the wife of Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, the son of Emperor Wilhelm II, Germany’s last Kaiser) visiting my great-aunt’s flower school; my aunt is standing to the left of Princess Cecilie

Figure 5. Painting of Princess Cecilie, the last German Crown Princess

Figure 6. Picture postcard produced by the distinguished publishing house Gustav Liersch & Co. in Berlin of Princess Cecilie’s visit to Franziska Bruck’s flower school believed to have been taken place in around 1916

A February 1915 article, in a German journal entitled “Die Bindekunst,” featured Franziska Bruck and mentioned she had gotten her start in Berlin 10 years earlier, so roughly in 1905. She introduced into Germany a form of Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, that was not initially taken seriously. It wasn’t until her first public show in 1907 at a special flower exhibition that her artistry and excellent taste began to be appreciated.

The author of the Wikipedia entry on Franziska notes that multi-page essays on her floral art appeared in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration and in Dekorative Kunst, the most important art magazines of the time. The art critic Paul Westheim wrote the following about Franziska in 1913:

“Franziska Bruck ist eine Dichterin. Ihre Reime sind blühende Blumen, ihre Verse duftende Sträuße. Wie ein echter Dichter schafft sie aus einem tiefen, ganz innerlichen Gefühl heraus, aus dem Erkennen der Natur, von deren unerschöpflicher Schönheit sie einen Abglanz widerzuspiegeln versucht in dem, was ihre Hände ordnen. […] Weder alte noch neue Regeln der Blumenbinderei greift sie auf. Sie ist eben da, so wie sie ist – als eine Künslerin, die auf ihre Art die Schönheit der Blumen erlebt und als rechtes Glückskind die Gabe bekommen hat, diese Erlebnisse für uns andere sinnfällig zu machen.”

Translated:

“Franziska Bruck is a poet. Her rhymes are blooming flowers, her verses fragrant bouquets. Like a true poet, she creates out of a deep, completely inner feeling, out of the recognition of nature, of whose inexhaustible beauty she tries to reflect a reflection in what her hands arrange. […] She takes up neither old nor new rules of flower arranging. She is just there, as she is – as an artist, who in her own way experiences the beauty of flowers and as a lucky child has been given the gift of making these experiences meaningful for the rest of us.”

From the Wikipedia entry, I also learned that in February 1914, Franziska and her students organized a spring show in the so-called Hohenzollern-Kunstgewerbehaus, the Hohenzollern Arts and Crafts House, on Königgrätzer Straße in Berlin. A fabulous colorful large-format poster, designed by the Austrian graphic artist Julius Klinger, advertised the event. (Figure 7) The various arrangements created for the show were widely praised and featured in Die Gartenkunst magazine along with photos of her special floral decorations.

Figure 7. Colorful large-format poster designed by the Austrian graphic artist Julius Klinger advertising the 1914 Hohenzollern Arts and Crafts House spring show that Franziska and her students organized; Franziska’s name appears at the bottom

Respectively, in 1925 and 1927, my great-aunt published two books, Blumen und Ranken (Figure 8), Flowers and Vines, and Blumenschmuck (Figure 9), Flower Decorations.

Figure 8. Cover of my great-aunt’s 1925 book “Blumen und Ranken”

Figure 9. Cover of my great-aunt’s 1927 book “Blumenschmuck”

Several days after her 75^th birthday, after being ordered to report to an “old age transport” for deportation to a concentration camp, Franziska committed suicide on the 2^nd of January 1942 by hanging herself, leaving this world on her own terms. (Figure 10)

Figure 10. A “stolperstein, or “stumbling stone,” a commemorative brass plaque honoring my great-aunt Franziska Bruck as a victim of the Holocaust placed in front of the last home she freely chose to live located at Prinzregentenstr. 75

REFERENCES

Bruck, Franziska (1925). Blumen und Ranken. München: Verlag Von F. Bruckmann A.-G.

Bruck, Franziska (1927). Blumenschmuck. Frankfurt-Oder: Verlagsanstalt Trwoitzsch & Sohn.

“Franziska Bruck.” Wikipedia, Franziska Bruck – Wikipedia

POST 120: FAMILY PHOTOS, DISCOVERING & DECODING THEM

Note: In this post, I discuss “stashes” of family photos I’ve uncovered, and the efforts I’ve undertaken with the help of near and distant relatives to identify people in some of those images even absent captions. In a few instances the photos are significant because they illustrate individuals renowned or notorious in history. In other cases, a good deal of sleuthing was required, including comparing the pictures of people in captioned versus uncaptioned images. On other occasions, I recognized portrayals of family members I knew growing up. And, in rare instances, I was able to determine a photographed person based on an educated guess.

POST 17: SURVIVING IN BERLIN IN THE TIME OF HITLER: MY UNCLE FEDOR’S STORY

POST 31: WITNESS TO HISTORY, “PROOF” OF HITLER’S DEATH IN MY UNCLE FEDOR’S OWN WORDS

POST 33: FINDING GREAT-UNCLE WILLY’S GRANDCHILDREN

POST 34: MARGARETH BERLINER, WRAITH OR BEING?

POST 41: DR. OTTO BERGER & OTHER “SILENT HEROES” WHO HELPED MY UNCLE DR. FEDOR BRUCK SURVIVE THE NAZI REGIME

POST 45: HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE: RECALLING MY PAULY ANCESTORS

POST 56: REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND FAMILY BY THE PATERFAMILIAS, DR. JOSEF PAULY

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

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

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

The antisemitic and racist laws enacted by the Nazis short-circuited my father’s career as a dentist. Pursuant to his formal training at the University of Berlin, followed by an apprenticeship in Danzig (today: Gdansk, Poland), my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (Figure 1), opened his own dental practice in Tiegenhof in the Free City of Danzig (today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland) in April 1932; by April 1937, my father was forced to flee Tiegenhof, and by March 1938 he had left Germany altogether, clearly seeing the handwriting on the wall. As an unmarried man with few family ties, this was an option open to him. My father would never again legally practice dentistry.

Figure 1. My father Dr. Otto Bruck as a dental apprentice in Danzig in 1931

My father considered the five years he spent in Tiegenhof to be the halcyon days of his life. Judging from the numerous photos of his days spent there, including those illustrating his active social life, his professional acquaintances, and recreational pursuits, I would be hard-pressed to argue otherwise.

I originally intended in this post to briefly discuss with readers the history of Polish Mennonites because Tiegenhof, the town where my father had his dental practice, was largely Mennonite when my father lived there. The Mennonites arrived in the Żuławy Wiślane region (i.e. “the Vistula fens,” plural from “żuława”), the alluvial delta area of the Vistula in the northern part of Poland, in the 17^th century. They came to escape religious persecution in the Netherlands and Flanders. I have instead decided to devote the subsequent Blog post to discussing the history of Polish Mennonites, and briefly explore how the Mennonites, who are committed to pacifism, inexplicably, became strong adherents of Hitler. I intend in the following post to use photos from my father’s collection to focus on one Mennonite family, the Epp family, with whom my father was acquainted and friends with. They have a dark history related to their connection to the Nazi regime.

Getting back on track. Curious whether the office building where my father had both his dental practice and residence still existed (Figure 2), in 2013 my wife Ann Finan and I visited Nowy Dwór Gdański. We quickly oriented ourselves to the layout of the town, and promptly determined that his office and residential building no longer stands. I would later learn that the structure had been destroyed by Russian bombers when Nazi partisans shot at them from this location.

Figure 2. The office building in Tiegenhof in the Free City of Danzig in October 1934 where my father had his dental practice and residence, which no longer exists. Note the swastikas festooning the building

During our initial visit to Nowy Dwór Gdański, we were directed to the local museum, the Muzeum Żuławskie. The museum docent the day we visited spoke English, so I was able to communicate to her that my Jewish father had once been a dentist in the town and had taken many pictures when living there of Tiegenhof and the Żuławy Wiślane region. I offered to make the photos available, which I in fact did upon my return to the States.

In 2014, my wife Ann and I were invited to Nowy Dwór Gdański for an in-depth tour and a translated talk. Naturally, during my presentation, I used many of my father’s photos. There was a question-and-answer period following my talk, and one Polish gentleman of Jewish descent commented on how fortunate I am to have so many photographs of my father, family, and friends. I agreed. In the case of this gentleman, he remarked he has only seven family pictures, which I think is often true for descendants of Holocaust survivors. In my instance, my father’s seven albums of surviving photos, covering from the 1910’s until 1948 when my father came to America, are the reason I started researching and writing about my family.

Given the importance pictures have played in the stories I research and write about, and the development of this Blog, I thought I would highlight a few of the more interesting and historically significant pictures in my father’s collection, as well as discuss other “stashes” of photos I’ve uncovered. Obviously, it’s impossible and would be of scant interest to readers to discuss all the photos.

My father was a witness to the rise of National Socialism from the window of his dental office in Tiegenhof. On May 1, 1933, my father photographed a regiment of “SA Sturmabteilung,” literally “Storm Detachment,” known also as “Brownshirts” or “Storm Troopers,” marching down the nearby Schlosserstrasse, carrying Nazi flags, framed by the “Kreishaus” (courthouse) on one side. (Figure 3)

Figure 3. Father’s photograph of Nazis marching down Schlosserstrasse in Tiegenhof on May 1, 1933, taken from his dental office

Again, a year later to the day, on May 1, 1934, my father documented a parade of veterans and Brownshirts following the same path down Schlosserstrasse led by members of the Stahlhelm (“Steel Helmet”), a veterans’ organization that arose after the German defeat of WWI. (Figures 4a-b) In 1934, the Stahlhelme were incorporated into the SA Sturmabteilung, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.

Figure 4a. A year later May 1, 1934, Nazi Storm Troopers and WWI veterans again marching down Schlosserstrasse in Tiegenhof

Figure 4b. WWI veterans, “Stahlhelme,” at the head of the Nazi parade on May 1, 1934, in Tiegenhof

Then again, the following year, on April 5, 1935, there was another Nazi parade. On this occasion Field Marshall Hermann Göring visited and participated in the march through Tiegenhof. The day prior, on April 4, 1935, Hermann Göring had visited the Free City of Danzig to influence the upcoming April 7^th parliamentary elections in favor of Nazi candidates. The visit to Tiegenhof the next day was merely an extension of this campaign to influence the Free City’s parliamentary elections. In the photos that my father took on April 5^th there can be seen a banner which in German reads “Danzig ist Deutsch wenn es nationalsozialistisch ist,” translated as “Danzig is German when it is National Socialist.” (Figures 5a-b) It appears that along with everyday citizens of Tiegenhof and surrounding communities, members of the Hitler Youth, known in German as Hitlerjugend, also lined the street in large number.

Figure 5a. Nazi Field Marshall Hermann Göring standing in his open-air limousine on March 5, 1935, as he parades through Tiegenhof

Figure 5b. A Nazi banner reading “Danzig ist Deutsch wenn es nationalsozialistisch ist” (translated as “Danzig is German when it is National Socialist”) hung across the street that Field Marshall Hermann Göring traveled down on March 5, 1935, as he paraded through Tiegenhof

Students of history know about Hermann Göring but for those who are unfamiliar with him, let me say a few words. He would evolve to become the second-highest ranking Nazi after the Führer. Unlike many of Hitler’s sycophants and lieutenants, Göring was a veteran of WWI, having been an ace fighter pilot, a recipient of the prestigious Blue Max award, and a commander of the Jagdgeschwader a fighter group that had previously been led by the renowned Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen. Göring was drawn to Hitler for his oratorical skills and became an early member of the Nazi Party. He participated with Hitler in the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, during which he was wounded in the groin. During his recovery he was regularly given morphine to which he became addicted for the remainder of his life.

Göring oversaw the creation of the Gestapo, an organization he later let Heinrich Himmler run. He was best known as the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, although after the Nazi victory over France, he was made Reichsmarschall, head of all the German armed forces. He amassed great wealth for himself by stealing paintings, sculptures, jewelry, cash, and valuable artifacts not only from Jews and people whom Nazis had murdered but also by looting museums of defeated nations.

Towards the end of the war, following an awkward attempt to have Hitler appoint him head of the Third Reich and thereby drawing Hitler’s ire, he turned himself in to the Americans rather than risk being captured by the Russians. He eventually was indicted and stood trial at Nuremberg. The once obese Göring, who’d once weighed more than three hundred pounds, was a shadow of his former self at his trial. Expectedly, he was convicted on all counts, and sentenced to death by hanging. His request to be executed by firing squad was denied, but he was able to avoid the hangman’s noose by committing suicide using a potassium cyanide pill that had inexplicably been smuggled to him by an American soldier.

My uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck, has been the subject of multiple previous posts (i.e., Post 17, Post 31, Post 41). My uncle, like my father was a dentist. He was educated at the University of Breslau (today: Wrocław, Poland) and had his dental practice in Liegnitz, Germany (today: Legnica, Poland) until around 1933 when he was forced to give it up due to the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” passed by the Nazi regime on the 7^th April 1933, two months after Adolf Hitler had attained power. My uncle’s life is of interest because he miraculously survived the entire war hidden in Berlin by friends and non-Jewish family members. His story has also been of interest because he counted among his friends a woman named Käthe Heusermann-Reiss, who had been his dental assistant in Liegnitz.

Following the loss of his business my uncle relocated to Berlin hoping the anonymity of the larger city would afford him the possibility to continue working under the auspices of another dentist, which it did for a time. Käthe Heusermann also moved to Berlin and opportunistically landed herself a job as a dental assistant to Hitler’s American-trained dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke. In this capacity, she was always present when Dr. Blaschke treated Hitler. Following the end of the war, she was interrogated by the Russians and asked to identify dental remains which had been recovered in a burn pit outside the Reichstag. The bridgework performed by Dr. Blaschke on Hitler was outmoded so Käthe was easily able to recognize Blaschke’s work and Hitler’s teeth, a fact Stalin kept hidden from the world. Following Russia’s capture of Berlin at the end of the war, my uncle who’d temporarily been hiding in Käthe’s apartment learned from her that Hitler had committed suicide. This dangerous information resulted in Käthe being imprisoned in the USSR for many years, and my uncle barely escaping the same fate. Surviving among my father’s photographs is a noteworthy picture taken in Liegnitz of my uncle and Käthe Heusermann. Though uncaptioned, I have been able to compare it to known pictures of Käthe to confirm it is her. (Figure 6)

Figure 6. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck in his dental office in Liegnitz, Germany with his dental assistant Käthe Heusermann-Reiss who would later go on to become the dental assistant for Dr. Hugo Blaschke, Hitler’s dentist. Following the war, she would identify Hitler’s dental remains, a fact the Russians hid for many years

As I have told readers in multiple earlier posts my father was an active sportsman, and an excellent amateur tennis player. Among my father’s belongings I retain multiple of the prizes he was awarded for his achievements, including many newspaper clippings documenting his results. In August 1936, my father attended an International Tennis Tournament in Zoppot, Germany (today: Sopot, Poland), located a mere 32 miles from Tiegenhof. During his attendance there, he photographed the great German tennis player, Heinrich Ernst Otto “Henner” Henkel (Figure 7), whose biggest success was his singles title at the 1937 French Championships. Interestingly, Henkel learned to play tennis at the “Rot-Weiss” Tennis Club in Berlin. My father was a member of the “Schwarz-Weiss” Tennis Club in Berlin, so perhaps my father and Henner played one another and were acquainted. Henner Henkel was killed in action during WWII on the Eastern Front at Voronezh during the Battle of Stalingrad while serving in the Wehrmacht, the German Army.

Figure 7. The famous German tennis player, Henner Henkel, in August 1936 at the International Tennis Tournament in Zoppot, Germany

As I mentioned above, my father left Germany for good in March 1938. He was headed to stay with his sister Susanne and brother-in-law, then living in Fiesole, a small Tuscan town outside Florence, Italy. During his sojourn in Italy, before eventually joining the French Foreign Legion later in 1938, my father visited some of the tourist attractions in Italy, including the Colosseum in Rome. One of the images that my father took there has always stood out to me because of the paucity of people around what is today a very crowded and visited venue. (Figure 8)

Figure 8. The Colosseum in Rome in August 1938

My father’s collection of photos number in the hundreds but I’ve chosen to highlight only certain ones because they illustrate a few personages or places that may be known to readers. My father’s collection is merely one among several caches of images I was able to track down through family and acquaintances. I want to call attention to a few pictures of family members that grabbed my attention from these other hoards.

In Post 33, I explained to readers how I tracked down the grandchildren of my grandfather’s brother, Wilhelm “Willy” Bruck (1872-1952). Based on family correspondence, I knew my great-uncle Willy wound up in Barcelona after escaping Germany in the 1930’s and theorized his children and grandchildren may have continued to live there. Official vital documents I procured during a visit there convinced me otherwise, that at least his son returned to Germany after WWII. I was eventually able to track down both of my great-uncle’s grandchildren, that’s to say my second cousins Margarita and Antonio Bruck, to outside of Munich, Germany. (Figure 9) I have met both, and they’ve shared their family pictures, which again number in the hundreds.

Figure 9. My second cousins Margarita and Antonio Bruck from near Munich, Germany in May 2022, source of many family photos

The cache included many images of family members, but there are two pictures I was particularly thrilled to obtain copies of. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982), previously discussed, fought in WWI on the Eastern Front. (Figure 10) Among the family memorabilia I retain is a postcard he sent to his aunt Franziska Bruck on the 3^rd of September 1916 coincidentally from the Ukraine announcing his promotion to Sergeant. (Figures 11a-b) The ongoing conflict between the Ukraine and Russia makes me realize how long the Ukraine has been a staging area for wars.

Figure 10. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck in his WWI uniform

Figure 11a. The front side of a postcard my uncle Fedor mailed to his aunt Franziska Bruck during WWI from the Eastern Front in Ukraine on the 3rd of September 1916

Figure 11b. The backside of the postcard my uncle mailed from the Ukraine on the 3rd of September 1916

Regular readers may recall that my father was born in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland), in Upper Silesia. The family hotel there, owned through three generations between roughly 1850 and the early 1920’s, was known as the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Among my second cousins’ photos is a rare image of the entrance to this hotel, which no longer stands. (Figure 12)

Figure 12. The entrance to the family hotel in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland), Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel circa. 1914. The hotel is no longer standing

I introduced readers to two of my grandfather’s renowned sisters, my great-aunts Franziska and Elsbeth Bruck, way back in Post 15. Their surviving personal papers are archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, the westernmost of the twelve boroughs of Berlin; these files have been another source of family photographs. Franziska Bruck was an eminent florist, and it is reputed that one of her clients was the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm II (1859-1941). One undated photograph taken in my great-aunt’s flower shop shows Duchess Cecilie Auguste Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1886-1954), the last Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia, who was married to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s son, Wilhelm, the German Crown Prince. (Figure 13)

Figure 13. Duchess Cecilie Auguste Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1886-1954), the last Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia, married to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s son, visiting my great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s flower school in Berlin

My second cousins Margarita and Antonio Bruck introduced me to one of my third cousins, Andreas “Andi” Pauly, also living part-time in Munich, Germany. (Figure 14) The Pauly branch of my extended family, which originally hailed from Posen, Germany (today: Poznan, Poland) has been the subject of multiple blog posts, including Post 45 on Pauly family Holocaust victims and reflections in Post 56 by the paterfamilias, Dr. Josef Pauly (1843-1916), Andi Pauly’s great-grandfather. Josef Pauly and his wife Rosalie Pauly née Mockrauer (1844-1927) had eight daughters and one son born between 1870 and 1885; thanks to photos provided by Andi Pauly, not only was I able to obtain images of all nine children but also some of Pauly cousins I knew of by name.

Figure 14. My third cousin Andreas “Andi” Pauly, source of many family photos

Again, it is not my intention to boggle readers’ minds by showing all these photos but I want to focus on one particular picture I originally obtained from Andi Pauly that was the subject of Post 65. The photo was taken in Doorn, Netherlands on the 28^th of May 1926, and shows a then-unknown Bruck family member standing amidst a group that includes the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, his second wife, Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (1887-1947), and her youngest daughter by her first marriage, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath (1918-1972), and the Royal Family’s entourage. (Figure 15) At the time I wrote Post 65, I was unable to determine who the Bruck family member was, nor whom the initials “W.B.” stood for.

Figure 15. Postcard of the last German Emperor Wilhelm II, his second wife Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (1887-1947), and her youngest daughter by her first marriage, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath (1918-1972), taken in 1926 in Doorn, the Netherlands. A then-unknown member of the Bruck family is surrounded by the Royal Family’s entourage

Fast forward. In early 2021, I was astonished to receive an email from a Dr. Tilo Wahl, a doctor from Köpenick in Berlin, who stumbled upon my Blog and contacted me. He shared copies of the extensive collection of personal papers and photographs he had copied from the grandson of one of my esteemed ancestors, Dr. Walter Bruck (1872-1937), from Breslau, Germany (today: Wrocław, Poland) Again, this relative and my findings related to Dr. Walter Bruck have been chronicled in multiple earlier posts. The very same image discussed in the previous paragraph I had obtained from Andi Pauly was included among Dr. Bruck’s images. It was then I realized the unidentified Bruck family member standing with Kaiser Wilhelm II, his family, and his entourage was none other than Dr. Bruck’s second wife, Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (1884-1963). (Figure 16) I discussed these findings in Post 100.

Figure 16. Same photograph as Figure 15 that Dr. Walter Bruck took of his wife Johanna and the Kaiser’s entourage in September 1925 with identifications (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

Dr. Walter Bruck’s collection of papers and photos yielded images of multiple family members about whom I was aware, including one of Dr. Walter Bruck’s three siblings. However, one that stands out amongst all these photos was the one of Dr. Walter Bruck’s grandfather Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (1813-1883). (Figure 17) Dr. Jonas Bruck is buried along with his son, Dr. Julius Bruck, in the restored tombs at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland. (Figure 18) Dr. Jonas Bruck was a brother of my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), the original owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) I previously discussed.

Figure 17. Dr. Walter Bruck’s grandfather, Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (1813-1883)

Figure 18. The restored gravestones of Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck, his son Dr. Julius Bruck, and their respective wives interred in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland

In various places, I found fleeting references that Dr. Walter Bruck and Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch had both previously been married. I eventually found historic documents, my gold standard, confirming this. Using educating guesses based on incomplete captions and estimating the timeframe a few pictures in Dr. Walter Bruck’s collection were taken, that’s to say during WWI and before, I was even able to find pictures of both of their previous spouses among his photos.

Dr. Walter Bruck’s album also contain multiple pictures of his daughter, Renate Bruck (1926-2013). She was married three times, with images of two of her husbands included. Thanks to Post 99 Renate’s twin daughters, whom I knew about but had no expectation of ever finding since they’d left England years ago, instead found me. From this, I learned that Walter Bruck’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren live in Sydney, Australia.

I suspect the story I’m about to relate may resonate with some readers, the topic of missing or incomplete captions on pictures of one’s ancestors. Let me provide some context. During the time that my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck was a dentist in Liegnitz, Germany he carried on an illicit affair with a married non-Jewish woman, Irmgard Lutze (Figure 19), with whom he had two children, my first cousins Wolfgang (Figure 20) and Wera Lutze. During the Nazi era time when it was prohibited and dangerous for an Aryan to have an affair with a Jew, the cuckolded husband nonetheless raised the children as his own. Therefore, they had the Lutze rather than the Bruck surname.

I knew both first cousins well, though both are now deceased. In any case, included among my cousin’s photographs was one that left me perplexed. It showed three generations, the eldest of whom was identified as “Tante Grete Brauer (mother’s sister).” (Figures 21a-b) The “Brauer” surname reverberated only because when perusing my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck’s papers at the Stadtmuseum I discovered multiple letters written by Brauers. At the time I had no idea this represented another branch of my extended family.

Figure 19. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck standing next to Irmgard Lutze, the married Aryan woman with whom he fathered two children

Figure 20. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s now-deceased son and my first cousin, Wolfgang Lutze (1928-2014), in Hurghada, Egypt in October 2005

Figure 21a. Photo found among my first cousin’s pictures of my grandmother’s sister, Margarethe Brauer née Berliner (1872-1942) who was murdered in the Holocaust

Figure 21b. Caption on backside of Figure 21a.

As I discussed in Post 34, I would eventually work out that “Tante Grete Brauer” was my grandmother Else Bruck née Berliner’s sister, Margarethe Brauer née Berliner (1872-1942) who was murdered in the Holocaust. Prior to finding this isolated picture of my great-aunt, I was completely unaware of her existence. I’ve repeatedly told readers that my father had scant interest in family and rarely spoke of them to me growing up, so I was not surprised by this discovery.

I will give readers one last example of caches of family photos I’ve been able to recover by mentioning my third cousin once-removed, Larry Leyser (Figure 22), who very sadly passed away in 2021 due to complications from Covid. Over the years, Larry and I often shared family documents and photos. Several years ago, he borrowed and scanned a large collection of photos from one of his cousins named Michael Maleckar which he shared with me. As with any such trove, I found a few gems, including one of my own parents at a party they attended in Manhattan the early 1950’s. My father literally “robbed the cradle” when he married my mother as she was 22 years younger than him. This age difference is particularly pronounced in the one picture I show here. (Figure 23)

Figure 22. My third cousin once-removed, Larry Leyser, another source of many family photos

Figure 23. From left to right, my father (Dr. Otto Bruck), my mother (Paulette Bruck), my uncle (Dr. Fedor Bruck), and one of father’s cousins (Franz Kayser) at a party in Manhattan in the early 1950’s

I will merely say, in closing, that I am aware of other caches of family photos that unfortunately I have been unable to lay my hands on. I completely understand that some of my cousins are busy leading their lives and don’t share my passion for family history, so they are excused. One other thought. The longer I work on my family’s history, the more I realize how much I regret not talking with my relatives when they were alive about some of our ancestors as my stories would be broader and would then be grounded in truths rather veiled in so much conjecture.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sussman, Jeffrey. Holocaust Fighters: Boxers, Resisters, and Avengers. Roman & Littlefield, 2021.

POST 113: CHIUNE SUGIHARA, JAPANESE IMPERIAL CONSUL IN LITHUANIA DURING WWII, “RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS”

Note: In this brief post, I discuss how while researching the fate of my great-granduncle’s 14 or 15 children I learned about a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, who saved the lives of upwards of 6,000 Polish and Lithuanian Jews following the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of WWII.

Figure 1. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892)

Figure 2. My great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924)

Figure 3. Entrance to the family hotel in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel

My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 1) and his wife Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 2), were the second-generation owners of the family hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. (Figure 3) Fedor Bruck and his eight known siblings, born between 1831 and 1849, were the children of Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 4) and Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861) (Figure 5), seven of them believed to have lived into adulthood.

Figure 4. My great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863)

Figure 5. My great-great-grandmother Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861)

The oldest child was Oskar Bruck (1831-1892) married to Mathilde Bruck née Preiss (1839-1922) with whom she had, by my last count, 14 or 15 children born between 1859 and 1877. The sources of this information are two family trees (Figure 6); the Jewish birth register listings from the Church of Latter-day Saints Microfilm No. 1184449 for Ratibor, where most of the children are known to have been born; and ancestral information on MyHeritage. (The names of the children, their birth and death dates, and the sources of the data are summarized on a table at the end of this post). Aware that several of their children were born during the Kulturkampf, the conflict from 1872 to 1878 between the government of Prussia and the Roman Catholic Church, I even asked Paul Newerla, my historian friend from Racibórz, to check the civil birth records at the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”) for their children born during this period, to no avail.

Figure 6. The Oskar Bruck-Mathilde Preiss family page from the “Pinkus Family Collection 1500s-1994, 1725-1994,” archived at the Leo Baeck Institute showing the names and some vital data on 12 “kinder” (children) out of 14 or 15 thought to have existed

Realizing that any of Oskar and Mathilde’s surviving great-grandchildren would be my third cousins, I recently tried to determine whether any of their children have living descendants to whom I would be related by blood. Surprisingly, after having conducted a thorough search, I have been unable to find a single living third cousin (i.e., my generation), second cousin once removed (i.e., previous generation), or third cousin once removed (younger generation) descended from any of those 14 or 15 children. I did not include any of Oskar and Mathilde’s children’s spouses where the divorced or surviving spouse remarried and had children who would not be blood relatives. I have tentatively been able to track one of their children, Dr. Erich Bruck (b. 1865) to, of all places, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, and am currently scrounging more information to hopefully bring an intriguing future post to regular readers. The youngest daughter Emma Naumann née Bruck (1877-1942) and her husband Ernst Naumann (1877-1942) were both murdered in Theresienstadt, but otherwise all their other children are believed to have died of natural causes.

What is surprising to me given the enormous collection of family photos I own or that have been shared with me by different branches of my family is that I have not a single photo of my great-granduncle or great-grandaunt nor any of their children. I’m hoping that a reader of this post may recognize an ancestral connection and contact me so I may learn more about this offshoot of my family.

Continuing. As often happens when I embark on searches of remote ancestors is that I make unexpected discoveries, such as the one which forms the basis for this brief Blog post. And truth be told this fortuitous finding is much more significant than unearthing another distant cousin. As an aside, I would never pretend that my ancestors are any more interesting or accomplished than those of readers. In writing about my predecessors, I am more interested in describing the too often tragic social and historic context in which they led their lives to see what lessons and modern-day parallels can be drawn. As Shakespeare wrote in “The Tempest,” “what’s past is prologue.” In other words, history sets the context for the present.

As mentioned above, the table below summarizes the birth and death dates, where known, of Oskar and Mathilde’s children. One of their daughters, Charlotte Bruck (1866-1909) married a man named Rudolf Falk (1857-1912) with whom she had one daughter, Käthe Falk. This is the only one of Oskar and Mathilde’s descendants I’ll directly discuss, one of their granddaughters.

Through the documents I found on ancestry.com, Käthe Falk had already caught my attention. Her first husband was Wilhelm Sinasohn (b. 1880-d. unknown), and her second husband was Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn (1888-1967); I assumed her husbands were related to one another. A January 1925 notation in the upper righthand corner of Käthe and Wilhelm’s 1911 marriage certificate (Figures 7a-c) indicates they were divorced on the 29^th of November 1924; Käthe got remarried on the 11^th of February 1926 (Figures 8a-c) to Erhard Sinasohn, who I would later learn was her first husband’s cousin. Inasmuch as I can determine, Käthe had two sons, Robert Nast and Werner Rudolf Nast (in America, Warren Roger Nast) with her first husband, and none by her second; Nast was the maiden name of their paternal grandmother.

Figure 7a. Cover page of Käthe Falk and Wilhelm Sinasohn’s 1911 marriage certificate

Figure 7b. Page 1 of Käthe Falk and Wilhelm Sinasohn’s 1911 marriage certificate containing a notation in the upper righthand corner stating their divorce became final on the 29th of November 1924

Figure 7c. Page 2 of Käthe Falk and Wilhelm Sinasohn’s 1911 marriage certificate

Figure 8a. Cover page of Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s 1926 marriage certificate

Figure 8b. Page 1 of Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s 1926 marriage certificate

Figure 8c. Page 2 of Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s 1926 marriage certificate

A continuing search on ancestry.com yielded an astonishing document for both Käthe (Figure 9) and her husband (Figure 10), simply a cover sheet entitled “in the Lithuania, Jews Saved by Passports from the Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara, 1940”; the page showed both were Luxembourgers, and that each had been issued a visa dated the 31^st of July 1940 signed by a Japanese consul. Having never heard of Chiune Sugihara, I scurried to learn about him.

Figure 9. Page from ancestry.com for Käthe Sinasohn titled “in the Lithuania, Jews Saved by Passports from the Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara, 1940” showing she was a Luxembourger and was issued a Visa dated the 31st of July 1940 by Chiune Sugihara

Figure 10. Page from ancestry.com for Käthe’s husband, Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn, showing he too was issued a Visa dated the 31st of July 1940 by Chiune Sugihara

Chiune Sugihara (Figure 11), I would find out, was a Japanese diplomat who during WWII helped Jews living in Lithuania leave, including Jews who had made their way there after the war began. Let me provide some brief historic context. WWII began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. This caused hundreds of thousands of Jews and other Polish citizens to flee eastward ahead of the advancing German troops; many displaced persons found at least temporary safety in Lithuania. Once there, however, their options for escape were limited and required diplomatic visas to cross international borders. One route involved traveling through Asia, but it required a combination of permits issued by acquiescent foreign envoys trying to address the refugee crisis. However, it required declaring a final destination, with the Dutch Caribbean Island of Curaçao being suggested.

One diplomat willing to help Jews was the Japanese Imperial Consul Chiune Sugihara, the first Japanese diplomat posted to Lithuania. Absent any clear instructions from his government, Sugihara took it upon himself to issue 10-day transit visas to Japan to hundreds of Jewish refugees supposedly possessing destination visas for Curaçao. By the time he received a reply from his own government, he’d already issued 1800 visas. The Foreign Ministry in Japan told him then that individuals to whom he’d issued these visas were really headed to Canada and the United States but had arrived in Japan without money or final destination visas.

Sugihara acknowledged to his superiors he’d issued visas to people who’d not completed all the necessary arrangements for destination visas but explained that Japan was the only transit country available for people going in the direction of the United States and Canada, and that Japanese visas were required to leave the Soviet Union. Despite orders from his government to desist, Sugihara continued issuing visas, even going so far as to sign his name on blank stamped sheets, hoping the rest could be filled in; he was apparently still passing out the visas as he boarded the train for Berlin where he’d been reassigned. At the end of August 1940, the Soviets shuttered all diplomatic consulates, including the Japanese mission, but by then, Sugihara had managed to save thousands of Jews in just a few weeks. For his humanitarian efforts in 1984 Yad Vashem awarded him the title of “Righteous Among the Nations.”

Many of the Jews who managed to escape through Lithuania were either Jewish residents from there or Jews from Poland. Sugihara is estimated to have helped more than 6,000 Jewish refugees escape to Japanese territory. And among those to whom Sugihara issued visas are the granddaughter of Oskar and Mathilde Bruck and her husband. Among the pertinent documents I found on ancestry.com was a “Manifest of Alien Passengers” for the “SS President Taft” with Käthe and Erhard Sinasohn’s names showing they arrived with one of her sons, Werner Rudolf Nast, in San Francisco from Kobe, Japan on the 8^th of February 1941 (Figures 12a-b), slightly more than six months after receiving their visas signed by Chiune Sugihara. Coincidentally, following their escape from Europe and their arrival in the United States, Käthe and Erhard settled in Forest Hills, Queens, the neighborhood adjacent Kew Gardens, Queens, where I was raised.

Figure 12a. Page 1 of the passenger manifest bearing Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s names, as well as the name of Werner Rudolf Nast, her second son, showing they departed Kobe, Japan on January 25, 1941

Figure 12b. Page 2 of the passenger manifest with Käthe Falk, Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn, and Werner Rudolf Nast’s names showing they arrived in San Francisco on February 8, 1941 and were met by Robert Nast, Käthe’s first son with Wilhelm Sinasohn-Nast

One final fitting note about this valorous Japanese diplomat. On his tombstone is engraved his first name, “Chiune,” the Japanese word which just so happens to translate into “a thousand new lives.”

VITAL STATISTICS FOR OSKAR & MATHILDE BRUCK AND THEIR CHILDREN

NAME (relationship)	VITAL EVENT	DATE	PLACE	SOURCE OF DATA

Oskar Bruck (self)	Birth	8 October 1831	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Marriage	29 October 1858	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (marriages)
	Death	6 April 1892	Berlin, Germany	Berlin, Germany death certificate
Mathilde Preiss (wife)	Birth	20 October 1839	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Marriage	29 October 1858	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (marriages)
	Death	23 February 1922	Berlin, Germany	Standesamt Berlin XI, Berlin, Germany death certificate
Richard Bruck (son)	Birth	17 August 1859	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Richard Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Georg Bruck (son)	Birth	21 July 1860	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Georg Bruck (son)	Death	2 April 1937	Berlin, Germany	Berlin, Germany death certificate
Carl Bruck (son)	Birth	10 May 1862	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Carl Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Samuel Bruck (son)	Birth	17 July 1863	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Samuel Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Franz Samuel Bruck (son)	Birth	28 September 1864	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Franz Samuel Bruck (son)	Death	19 February 1924	Berlin, Germany	Landesarchiv Berlin, Standesamt Charlottenburg I, Sterberegister, 1921-1931
Erich Bruck (son)	Birth	31 August 1865	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Erich Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown	Argentina ??
Charlotte Bruck (daughter)	Birth	18 September 1866	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Charlotte Bruck (daughter)	Death	7 December 1909	Berlin, Germany	Charlottenburg I, Berlin, Germany death certificate
Margaretha Bruck (daughter)	Birth	19 October 1868	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Margaretha Bruck (daughter)	Death	18 February 1900	Frankfurt am Main, Germany	Frankfurt, Germany death certificate
Gertrud Bruck (daughter)	Birth	9 June 1870	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Gertrud Bruck (daughter)	Death	26 July 1871	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)-notation of death on birth register
Anna Bruck (daughter)	Birth	4 July 1870	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Anna Bruck (daughter)	Death	8 September 1895	Neustadt, Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Prudnik, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Oskar Bruck & Mathilde Preiss)
Martin Bruck (son)	Birth	22 July 1873	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Martin Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Marie Bruck (daughter)	Birth	29 June 1874	Plania, Kreiss Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Death	20 February 1913	Leipzig, Germany	Borchardt-Pincus-Peiser Family Website (MyHeritage)
Bertha Bruck (daughter)	Birth	5 November 1876	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Oskar Bruck & Mathilde Preiss)
Bertha Bruck (daughter)	Death	July 1949	Santiago, Chile	MyHeritage Family Tree
Emma Bruck (daughter)	Birth	20 October 1877	Berlin, Germany	Standesamt Berlin VI, Berlin, Germany birth certificate
Emma Bruck (daughter)	Death	15 October 1942	Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czech Republic	Theresienstadt death certificate (holocaust.cz)
Selma Bruck (daughter)	Birth	Unknown		Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Oskar Bruck & Mathilde Preiss)
Selma Bruck (daughter)	Death	Unknown

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

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

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

Figure 2. My great-great-grandmother Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861)

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

Figure 3. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892), second generation owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel

Figure 4. Front entrance to the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel around 1920-1930

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

Figure 6. Baroness Margarethe “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr (1860-1946)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Figure 11b. Page 2 of Charlotte Bruck and Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s May 3rd, 1906 marriage certificate with Charlotte and Walter’s original signatures

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

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

Figure 13b. Translation of Han’s Joachim Stavenhagen’s birth certificate (document courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

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

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

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

Figure 16. Charlotte Stavenhagen née Bruck’s grandmother, Amalie von Koschembahr née Mockrauer, around 1904 at age 70

GERMAN ENTRY

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

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

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Figure 22. Frederick Lorenzen as a teenager (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

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

Figure 24. Hans Joachim Lorenzen, known in America as John Jay Lorenzen, on his wedding day on the 26th of September 1940 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

Figure 25. Zimba Kola bottle from the cola company John Jay Lorenzen established

Figure 26. Jay Dunn as a three-year-old child holding a bottle of Zimba Kola (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

Figure 27. John Jay Lorenzen in his Navy uniform at age 33 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

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

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

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

VITAL STATISTICS FOR CHARLOTTE BRUCK & HER IMMEDIATE FAMILY

NAME	EVENT	DATE	PLACE	SOURCE

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

POST 75: THE CURIOUS TALE OF A BIEDERMEIER-STYLE FAMILY PORTRAIT FROM THE EARLY 1830’S

Note: In this post, I relate the story of uncovering multiple copies of a family portrait rendered in the Biedermeier style in what I estimate was the early 1830’s.

Figure 1. My 92-year old third cousin, Agnes Stieda née Vogel, in Vancouver, Canada in August 2019

During a recent email exchange with my 92-year old third cousin, Agnes Stieda née Vogel (Figure 1), subject of several earlier posts, I casually mentioned other topics I want to eventually write about on my Blog. This includes one illustrious branch of my Bruck family, the von Koschembahrs, about which more is said below. This prompted Agnes to tell me in passing she has a family portrait of them hanging in her apartment in Victoria, Canada. A short while later she sent me several photos. (Figure 2) They show a touching depiction of two children, one holding a rabbit, painted in what I would learn was the Biedermeier style. Agnes quickly added this is a revered painting within her family.

Figure 2. Photo of the ca. 1830’s Biedermeier-style portrait that Agnes has hanging in her apartment in Victoria, Canada

Other than knowing it portrayed two von Koschembahr children, no doubt from the period when the Biedermeier style was in vogue in Germany between 1815 and 1848, Agnes had no further information as to the painter, the subjects, nor the exact year it was painted. Obviously curious whether the painting or the boy and girl might be known to other members of my extended family, I decided to send a copy of the photo to another of my German third cousins, Kurt Polborn. (Figure 3) He is a close descendant of the von Koschembahrs, and I thought he might recognize the artwork. And, indeed he did. He promptly told me they depict Leopold von Koschembahr (1829-1874) (Figure 4), and his slightly older sister, Mary von Koschembahr. Judging from the approximate age of the children, and Leopold’s year of birth, 1829, I estimate it was done in the early 1830’s, well within the timeframe the Biedermeier style was popular.

Figure 3. Another of my third cousins, Kurt Polborn, in Koenigsbrunn, Germany in October 2016

Figure 4. As a grown man, Leopold von Koschembahr (1829-1874), one of the two subjects in the Biedermeier-style portrait of the 1830’s

Let me briefly explain to readers how my Bruck family is related to the von Koschembahrs. The first-generation owner of the family hotel, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the town where my father was born in 1907, was Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 5), my great-great-grandfather. Ownership of the hotel was acquired by his son, Fedor Bruck (1834-1892), my great-grandfather. (Figure 6) Fedor’s youngest brother was my great-great-uncle Wilhelm Bruck (1849-1907), (Figure 7) who married a baroness, Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr (1860-1946) (Figure 8), sometime before 1885; Leopold and Mary von Koschembahr were, respectively, Grete’s father and aunt. The term “von” is used in German language surnames “either as a nobiliary particle indicating a noble patrilineality, or as a simple preposition used by commoners that means of or from.” On account of his wife’s noble patrilineality, Wilhelm Bruck added her surname to his upon marriage. Thus, in Germany, this branch of the family was known as “Bruck-von Koschembahr,” but upon their arrival in America they completely dropped the Bruck surname. Suffice it to say, this complicates the family tree.

Figure 5. Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), my great-great-grandfather, original owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor

Figure 6. My great-grandfather, Fedor Bruck (1834-1892), son of Samuel Bruck, and older brother of Wilhelm Bruck (1849-1907)

Figure 7. My great-great-uncle Wilhelm Bruck who married the baroness Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr (1860-1946), and added her surname to his becoming “Wilhelm Bruck-von Koschembahr”

Figure 8. The baroness Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr (1860-1946) in 1891

During my conversation with my third cousin Kurt Polborn who’d identified the von Koschembahr children, he mentioned in passing the painting belongs to his aging von Koschembahr uncle, Clemens von Koschembahr, living in Ohio. Clemens is about to turn 94 and is the grandson of Wilhelm Bruck-von Koschembahr and the sole surviving child of Gerhard von Koschembahr (1885-1961) (Figure 9) and Hilda Alexandra von Zeidlitz und Neukirch (1891-1954), who immigrated to America in 1938 with their 13 children. (Figures 10a-b, 11) Kurt’s claim that the family portrait of the von Koschembahr children is still in the family, while entirely reasonable, left me puzzled. (Figure 12) What then is the version owned by Agnes, an original or a copy? I would add that Clemens, being told that another version of this family portrait exists, was quite surprised.

Figure 9. One of Wilhelm Bruck’s sons Gerhard von Koschembahr (1885-1961), as he was known in America after dropping the “Bruck” surname

Figure 10a. Gerhard von Koschembahr and Hilda Alexandra von Zeidlitz und Neukirch (1891-1954) and their 13 children, with Clemens von Koschembahr’s head circled

Figure 10b. Gerhard and Hilda von Koschembahr and their 13 children identified

Figure 11. New York Times article dated the 2nd of October 1938 reporting on the arrival in the United States of Gerhard and Hilda von Koschembahr and 10 of their 13 children

Figure 12. Photo of the ca. 1830’s Biedermeier-style portrait of Leopold and Mary von Koschembahr as children, owned by Clemens von Koschembahr

Things got even more puzzling when I probed into this more. Agnes remembered having visited her cousin Klaus Pauly (Figure 13) in Germany and hanging in his house was yet another copy of this same painting! Curious as to how many copies of this painting might exist, I immediately sent an email to Klaus’s son, Andi Pauly (Figure 14), whose name I’ve often mentioned. The existence of this copy, at least, could be explained. During one of Klaus’s visits to see Agnes, he’d greatly admired the painting and tried to talk her out of it. Agnes, naturally, was unwilling to part with this family heirloom, but, Klaus, undeterred, photographed the “original,” and upon his return home turned it into a full-size photo which he framed. Problem solved!

Figure 13. Klaus Pauly, owner of the enlarged framed photograph of the von Koschembahr portrait, thought to no longer exist

Figure 14. Andi Pauly, Klaus Pauly’s son, in 2018 in Munich, Germany

Still, the existence of two seemingly high-quality versions of the Biedermeier-style portrait is intriguing. It seems unlikely the von Koschembahrs would have allowed the original to leave the family, so I’d argue that version is the one owned by Clemens von Koschembahr. Admittedly, while I can only gauge this from low resolution images, it would seem the older looking of the two copies is also that one. Unfortunately, neither copy of the paintings is signed; Kurt explained this was not uncommon in paintings done of royals and aristocrats of the time, where the “star,” so to speak, was the king, queen, or noble. The creates an obvious problem where originals can easily be forged and claimed as authentic. Absent a professional side-by-side comparison, the question of which is the original portrait will remain an open one. Things, though, could get even more confusing should yet more high-quality versions of this portrait emerge from other members of the family! This may not be as implausible as it sounds given the endearing quality the von Koschembahr artwork possesses and the possible desire by others to have had their own copies.

POST 61: THE WOINOWITZ ZUCKERFABRIK (SUGAR FACTORY) OUTSIDE RATIBOR (PART IV-GRUNDBUCH (LAND REGISTER))

Note: In this post, I explore some of the information Mr. Paul Newerla, the Racibórz historian, was able to find related to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) in what is called the “Grundbuch,” or land register, discuss where this information currently resides, and how it rounds out my understanding of the history and ownership of the sugar plant over the years. I also explain to readers that even had I been able to access the land register and backup files on my own, I would have been hard-pressed to make much sense of the materials without the intercession of a lawyer familiar with German real estate law. Mr. Newerla happens to be a retired Polish lawyer who, by virtue of his profession and current study of Silesian history, is well versed in such matters.

Mr. Paul Newerla, my friend from Racibórz, Poland, is a retired lawyer who now specializes in studying and writing about the history of Silesia. Regular readers will recognize his name as I’ve mentioned him in numerous posts related to Ratibor, Germany, the town in Upper Silesia where my father was born in 1907. Perhaps, one of the biggest unintended benefits of having a family history Blog is that Paul stumbled upon it in the course of doing research and reached out to me through Webmail to offer supplementary historical information on the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel which I’d written about. This family establishment was owned through what I’ve determined to be three generations, from roughly the mid-19th Century through the early 1920’s. Our initial exchanges involved the Bruck’s Hotel but have far transcended this subject.

Figure 1. Silesian historian, Paul Newerla, and me in 2018 standing by the historic statue of John of Nepomuk, located in the middle of a parking lot in Racibórz

I had the pleasure of personally meeting Paul in 2018 on a visit to Racibórz. (Figure 1) As an aside, I realize many fellow genealogists may never have the opportunity nor resources to visit the places one’s ancestors hail from, but I can’t emphasize enough the value of “having boots on the ground,” so to speak, to further one’s ancestral investigations, as this post will illustrate. It’s worth mentioning that Paul does not speak English, nor do I speak German, so we are compelled to use a few on-line translators to communicate, which presents its own challenges but is far better than nothing.

Figure 2. The Woinowitz sugar factory as it looked in the early 1900’s

As I began to research the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Figure 2), I naturally turned to Paul to ask him about the sugar plant’s history. He sent me numerous maps and visuals and provided valuable context for understanding the extent of the sugar industry in Silesia and its influence on the development of railroads; I’ve discussed these topics in earlier posts on the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. I was specifically interested in what Paul might be able to tell me about the sale by or confiscation of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik from its Jewish owners, the timing, the names of the sellers, and the price for which the business was sold. While he knew little about these matters, coincidentally, during his lawyering days, Paul had handled the legal sale of the former Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik between Polish parties. For this reason, he knew that while the sale of the sugar plant may well have been compelled by the Nazis, the later Polish owners had valid legal rights. Likely, the Nazi overlords wanted to handle the forced sale with a veneer of “legality” by paying the Jewish owners something for their business, even if that payment was vastly below fair market value.

Figure 3. Entrance to the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu”

By virtue of Paul’s previous involvement with the sale of the former Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, he knew that the “Grundbuch,” that is the land register, is archived in the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”). (Figure 3) The Grundbuch in Germany, including former parts of Germany that are now within Poland, shows the names of the current and previous owners, third party rights in rem (e.g., mortgages), and the description of the property. Land registers were kept for real estate or land, and included, as will be discussed below, the buildings and structures found on the land.

The land registry is a special division of the local German district court (i.e., Grundbuchamt beim Amtsgericht), and land registers are kept in Poland’s counterpart courts even today. Changes of rights to land do not go into effect until they have been recorded in the land register, although some exceptions apply (e.g. an heir becomes owner of a property even if he or she is not registered in the land register). Unless proven otherwise, the correctness of all titles recorded in the Grundbuch is assumed and a buyer can rely on its accuracy.

The old German land registers have been continued by the Polish court, naturally in Polish, and slightly modified in concept. The basic German land register was a thick book with sections for: I. Directory of Properties, II. Owner(s), III. Rights of other persons (e.g., rights of use, real burdens), and IV. Mortgages. The land registers were kept in court in case they were needed there. The documents justifying the individual entries in the land register were in the so-called “files to the land register,” and were held in the archives of the court; notes were made in the files but in the event of a discrepancy between the land register and the files, the former took precedence. In the 1960’s, Polish land registers were introduced that were organized differently; sections I-IV above were retained except they were kept in individual volumes, and in the back of each volume, the documents justifying the entries were maintained. As a result, files to the land registers in the court archives were no longer needed there so were turned over to the State Archives after several years.

There is one other distinction Paul brought to my attention I need to mention. There is also a “Handelregister,” or commercial register, that is maintained by what are called “Registergerichten,” Commercial Register Courts, that’s to say, regional courts above district courts. The Handelregister records “legal persons” of a company, including Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH), a limited liability company, or LLC. The name of the GmbH emphasizes the fact that the owners (Gesellschafter, also known as members) of the entity are not personally liable or responsible for the company’s debts. GmbHs are considered legal persons. The Handelregister for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik is not available today for reasons that are unclear.

All the above is just background information that will understandably be of scant interest to most readers. Let me continue.

Prior to my queries, Paul had tried for some time to access the land register for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. He was aware that German land registers, Grundbucher, are archived at the State Archives in Racibórz. The status of these registers is they have not yet been catalogued and therefore are not available to researchers. My interest in the sugar plant renewed Paul’s attempt to gain access to the plant’s Grundbuch, and, as Paul characterizes it, he finally “was allowed into the camp” to search for it; this was only possible because of his longstanding relationship with the State Archives in Racibórz. Paul found it under the number “Woinowitz Sheet 161.” (Figure 4) Fortunately, the land register includes the supporting files or documentation turned over by the Polish court.

Figure 4. Cover of the Woinowitz Grundbuch Paul Newerla found at the State Archives in Racibórz

Paul photographed and sent me copies of the documents he deemed of greatest value and spent a good deal of time explaining their content and significance. I want to believe that in describing some of what Paul found in the Grundbuch and the auxiliary files, I’ve mostly done justice conveying this to readers, although I welcome readers’ input if I’ve failed in this regard.

Figure 5 shows the size of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik under the column “Größe.” It was 5.44.10 hectares in size, or 13.44 acres.

Figure 5. The size of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik shown under the column “Größe, as 5.44.10 hectares, or 13.44 acres

As alluded to earlier, a Grundbuch is kept for land and shows the structural components located on the property. In the case of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, the extent of the property and the current value of the structural components is shown on Figure 6. The left-hand column of the table below is a German transcription of the structures listed and the right-hand column provides a rough translation and in a few instances some explanation in brackets:

Figure 6. Page from the Woinowitz Grundbuch listing the structural components of the sugar plant corresponding to the table below

GERMAN	ENGLISH
1. Acker, Weide, Graben, Weg, sowie Hofraum“ – was vom Grundbuch “Polnisch Woinowitz” [der früher Ortsnamen] Blatt 60 abgezweigt wurde. Dieses Blatt 60 umfasste Grundstücke des “Dominiums Woinowitz.”	1. Field, willow, ditch, path/way, courtyard space—which were diverted from the land register “Polish Woinowitz” [the former place name] Sheet 60. [Sheet 60 included plots of land of the “Dominium Woinowitz”]
a. Zuckerfabrik mit Maschinen und Kesselhaus	a. Sugar factory with machine and boiler house
b. Gasanstalt	b. Gasworks
c. Eisenbahnwaagehaus	c. Railway scale house
d. Comptoir (Büro) mit Waagehaus	d. Office with scale house [another scale house where incoming sugar beets and outgoing processed sugar were weighed]
e. Rohproduktionshaus mit Wohnung	e. Raw production house with apartment
f. Rohproduktionshaus	f. Raw production house
g. Stall mit Remise und Werkstätten	g. Stable with drawer and workshops

The table below corresponds to the text on Figure 7, and shows the various names for the sugar factory over time, the owners, and the reason for the acquisition or name change:

Figure 7. Page from the Woinowitz Grundbuch showing the name changes of the sugar plant over time corresponding to the table below

GERMAN	ENGLISH
1. Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Comp. zu Woinowitz — Auf Grund der Auflassung vom 24-ten eingetragen am 30-ten Mai 1881 Der Name der Firma ist geändert und lautet jetzt „Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolf Schück & Co. Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung zu Woinowitz bei Ratibor O/S.“ [O/S = Oberschlesien] — Eingetragen am 21. Oktober 1910 Nr. 2 statt Nr. 1 nach dem Rezess vom 29. Dezember 1923 eingetragen am 20. Februar 1925. Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik, Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung Weihendorf Kreis Ratibor — Auf Grund der Firmenänderung eingetragen am 13. August 1938.	1.Woinowitz’er Sugar Factory Adolph Schück & Comp. to Woinowitz — On the basis of the 24th injunction on 30th May 1881 The name of the company has been changed and is now “Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolf Schück & Co. Gesellschaft with limited liability to Woinowitz near Ratibor O/S.” [O/S = Upper Silesia] — Registered on 21st October 1910 [FIGURE 8] No. 2 instead of No. 1 registered on 20th February 1925 after the recess of 29th December 1923. Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik, limited liability company Weihendorf district Ratibor — Due to the change in the company registered on 13th August 1938.
2. Die Ratiborer Zuckerfabrik, Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung in Ratibor — Aufgelassen am 26. Februar 1942 und eingetragen am 25. Februar 1943.	2.The Ratibor Sugar Factory, limited liability company in Ratibor — Abandoned on 26th February 1942 and registered on 25th February 1943.
3. Die Landwirtschaftliche Warenzentrale Oberschlesien /Raiffeisen) eGmbH in Oppeln — Aufgelassen am 11 Dezember 1942 und eingetragen am 25. Februar 1943.	3. The Agricultural Goods Centre Upper Silesia /Raiffeisen) eGmbH in Opole — Abandoned on 11th December 1942 and registered on 25th February 1943.

Figure 8. Letterhead from the time the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik was known as the “Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolf Schück & Co. GmbH”

Paul provided some additional explanation about the land register and the auxiliary files. He’d hoped to find documents there about the possible expropriation of the sugar plant from the Schück family. However, Paul discovered the files relate only to the actual entries in the land register, and because no mention of the forced sale of the plant by the Nazis is found in the original land register, therefore, no documentation exists in the land register’s backup files.

The land register recorded changes of ownership; in the case of private sales, the purchase contract would be found in the files of the land register. However, because the Zuckerfabrik was a GmbH or an LLC, changes in ownership were recorded in the Handelregister, the commercial register, and the courts notified of such changes via a letter. The change in the name of the LLC could result from new ownership or possibly new shareholders that came into a company. Regardless, a change in the company’s name in the commercial register of the GmbH (LLC) also caused a change in the name of the company in the land register.

Let me provide an example as this may be confusing to readers. If Adolph Schück individually owned a plot of land, it was recorded in the land register under his name. If, on the other hand, Mr. Schück formed a GmbH, which he eventually did and could do even as a single person, he could transfer that property as a non-cash deposit into the GmbH which would then be recorded in the Handelregister. Adolph Schück’s name was also then deleted from the Grundbuch and the GmbH registered in place of his name as the owner of the property. The obvious advantage, as previously mentioned, was that Mr. Schück was no longer personally liable or responsible for the company’s debts.

From earlier posts on the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, readers may recall that Sigmund Hirsch was Adolph Schück’s partner in the sugar plant. I was even able to read his name on several pages Paul sent from the State Archives in Racibórz, so asked whether he was an equal partner. Paul reminded me this information and the size of Sigmund’s investment would be found in the commercial register, which we don’t have access to. However, Paul drew my attention to a four-page document he found at the State Archives, dated the 15th of January 1908, which indirectly answers my question. (Figures 9a-d) Initially, the capital shares owned by Schück and Hirsch were unequal. According to this document, Sigmund Hirsch was obliged to use his annual dividends, which exceeded 27,000 Reichmarks (RM), to increase his capital share of the business until they were equal partners. Additionally, because there was such a large difference in the number of shares owned by the two men, Sigmund Hirsch obtained a security mortgage in the amount of 400,000 RM payable to Adolph Schück.

Figure 9a. First page of four-page document last dated January 15, 1908 spelling out the terms of payments to bring Sigmund Hirsch’s shares in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik equal to those of Adolph Schück

Figure 9b. Second page of four-page document last dated January 15, 1908 spelling out the terms of payments to bring Sigmund Hirsch’s shares in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik equal to those of Adolph Schück

Figure 9c. Third page of four-page document last dated January 15, 1908 spelling out the terms of payments to bring Sigmund Hirsch’s shares in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik equal to those of Adolph Schück

Figure 9d. Last page of four-page document last dated January 15, 1908 spelling out the terms of payments to bring Sigmund Hirsch’s shares in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik equal to those of Adolph Schück

In addition to official partners, Paul explained there were also “silent” partners. They invested their money, presumably reaped a portion of the sugar plant’s profits, but were not recorded in the commercial register. Often, these silent partners were members of the Board of Directors or agents of the company.

Naturally, I was curious whether the land register and/or the backup files indicated in which year the Nazis forced the sale of the Zuckerfabrik and was reminded this information would also be found in the Handelregister. Yet again, however, one document from the State Archives gives an indirect clue; it shows that on the 26th of September 1938, the company name changed to “Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik GmbH” without “Adolf Schück & Co.” (Figure 10), likely corresponding to the end of the Schück family’s stake in the sugar plant. To remind readers, less than three months later December 18, 1938, Erich Schück, Adolph’s son and probable managing director of the sugar plant, killed himself in Berlin. I don’t think the timing is coincidental.

Figure 10. Letterhead from the time the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik was known as the “Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik GmbH” without the name “Adolf Schück & Co.”

As to the value of the sugar plant in 1938, I remarked to Paul that its value of 189,800 RM seemed low. (Figure 11) He pointed out that while a 1943 letter from the tax office used roughly this same value for that plot of land, it also showed “assets and working capital” of 2,269,351 RM minus unspecified “deductions” of 1,247,223 RM. (Figures 12a-b) To remind readers, in January 2017, a 1937 Reichsmark would have been worth approximately $4.30. Clearly, the income generated by the Zuckerfabrik was significant, and it’s very likely the Jewish owners sold at a significant loss and the heirs never adequately compensated.

Figure 11. Letter dated 30th of August 1938 indicating the “unit value” of the then-named “Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik” as 189,800 Reichmarks

Figure 12a. First page of letter from the “Finanzamt Ratibor,” Ratibor Tax Office, dated the 22nd of January 1943

Figure 12b. Second page of letter from the “Finanzamt Ratibor,” Ratibor Tax Office, dated the 22nd of January 1943, showing the value of the sugar factory, as well as its “assets and working capital” (i.e., 2,269,351 RM) minus unspecified “deductions” (i.e., 1,247,223 RM)

Suffice it to say, at the risk of presenting information that would be of no interest to most readers, there are many more documents in the files to the land register that seemingly relate to contracts and financial matters.

I’ve previously alluded to the fact that knowing someone who is familiar with the “landscape” of archival and documentary resources available for an area one’s ancestors originated from can significantly expand one’s understanding of things. I erroneously assumed the land register for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik from the State Archives in Racibórz was the extent of documentary information available; what I initially failed to comprehend is that the original land register for the sugar plant still exists and is retained by the local district court in Poland.

Paul accessed the original Grundbuch and was able to glean additional information not available from the copy of the land register and files in the State Archives. He confirmed that Adolph Schück originally purchased in 1881 only arable land and meadows where the sugar plant, gas station, etc. would eventually be built. (Figure 13) The ownership titled was recorded in the land register on the 27th of March 1881 as “Woinowitzer Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Comp. in Woinowitz.” (Figure 14) At the time, the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik was not yet a GmbH or LLC. On the 21st of October 1910, the name of the company changed to “Woinowitzer Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Co. Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung [Gmbh] zu Woinowitz” (Figure 14), at which time the company became an LLC. Then, on the 13th of August 1938, the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik underwent an ownership change becoming the “Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik, Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung Weihendorf Kreis Ratibor.” (Figure 14) Presumably, this corresponded to the time the Schück and Hirsch heirs were forced to sell the sugar plant.

Figure 13. Page from the original land register at the District court confirming that Adolph Schück originally purchased arable land and meadows where the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik would eventually be built

Figure 14. Page from the original land register at the District court showing the ownership title was recorded on the 27th of May 1881 as the “Woinowitzer Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Comp. in Woinowitz”; subsequent name changes are also shown

Subsequent changes are also noted in the Grundbuch. On the 26th of February 1942, the factory was taken over by the “Ratiborer Zuckerfabrik GmbH in Ratibor,” and later that year, on the 11th of December 1942, the factory named changed to “Raiffeisen.” (Figure 14)

Thus, the original land register for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik clarifies a few things: we learn the year Adolph Schück purchased the land (1881); the fact that he purchased land and meadows with no structures on them; the year the firm became a GmbH or LLC (1910); and the date the Schück family ceased to be owners (1938).

Paul was unable to find the Grundbuch for the Woinowitz estate (i.e., “Polnisch Woinowitz“) from which Adolph Schück purchased the land in 1881, so no conclusions can be drawn about the previous property owners. Just to be crystal clear about this, Figure 6 above, the page from the files of the Woinowitz Grundbuch, indicates that Adolph Schück purchased a “field, willow, ditch, path/way, courtyard space” which was “detached” from what was referred to as the Polnisch Woinowitz and this sale was noted in the land register for that estate. Paul was unable to find the Grundbuch for this estate at the District court, although possibly it may eventually turn up at the State Archives in Racibórz.

Let me apologize to readers for the ponderous nature of this post. I’ve gone to such lengths to understand and explain the source of the data related to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik and the timeline for the benefit of a select audience. As explained, because the Grundbuch’s auxiliary files are not catalogued, they are basically inaccessible to the average individual. However, even if they were generally available, it would still require comprehension of German and an understanding of German land law to make sense of their contents and its significance. This said, for the few readers whose Jewish ancestors may have held property in Germany they were compelled to sell during the Nazi era, there may be a few tendrils of useful information in this post.

POST 44: A TROVE OF FAMILY HISTORY FROM THE “PINKUS COLLECTION” AT THE LEO BAECK INSTITUTE

Note: In this Blog post, I discuss how I inadvertently uncovered vital records information for several people in my family tree and talk about leaving open the possibility of discovering evidence of ancestors whose traces appear negligible.

Post 40: Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, One of Germany’s Silent Heroes

In the prologue to my family history blog, which I initiated in April 2017, I conceded there are some ancestral searches which are bound to end up unresolved during my lifetime. While I never actually close the book on these forensic investigations, I place them on a back-burner in the unlikely event I discover something new or make a new connection. This Blog post delves into one recent find that opened the door to learning more about several close ancestors whom I’d essentially given up hope of unearthing anything new.

Given my single-minded focus over the last two years on writing stories for my family history blog, I’ve woefully neglected updating my family tree which resides on ancestry.com. An opportunity recently presented itself to piggy-back on a friend’s membership to ancestry and review the hundreds of “leaves” associated with the roughly 500+ people in my tree. Typically, at the top of the list of ancestry clues are links to other family trees that may include the same people as found in one’s own tree. While I systematically review these member trees, I only “import” new ancestral information if source documents are attached to the member trees and I can confirm the reliability of the details; I may occasionally make exceptions if trees or tree managers have been trusted sources of information in the past, and/or I otherwise can confirm the origins of the data. Over the years I’ve seen multiple trees replicate the same erroneous information, and this is a path I choose to avoid.

The family ancestral information I happened upon came from a family tree I discussed in Blog Post 39, entitled “Schlesische Jüdische Familien,” “Silesian Jewish Families.” Regular readers may recall this tree has an astronomical 52,000+ names in it, so it should come as no surprise that it is often the source of overlapping or new information for individuals found in my own modest-sized tree. That said, I still apply the same rigorous principles in assessing the information found in this larger tree. I rarely take anything at face-value when it comes to vital records (e.g., births, baptisms, marriages, deaths) given the multiple reasons, often inadvertent or negligent, why data may be incorrect or divergent (e.g., illegible or unintelligible writing on source documents; transcription errors). With these caveats in mind, however, I came across some vital record information on the Silesian Families tree that seemed credible given the specificity of birth and death dates for a few individuals in my tree. The information related to my great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer’s first wife, Esther Ernestine Lißner, and their son, Gerhard Mockrauer; while I’d previously found Gerhard’s birth certificate mentioning his parents, I had never found precise birth and death dates for Ernestine or Gerhard, so this was particularly intriguing.

Having previously established contact with the manager of the “Schlesische Jüdische Familien” family tree, a very helpful German lady by the name of Ms. Elke Kehrmann, I again reached out to her. I acknowledged that remembering the source of data for 52,000+ people is unrealistic but thought I should still ask. Initially, Ms. Kehrmann could only recall the information came from a manuscript prepared by an American Holocaust survivor who’d wanted to memorialize his lineage; with numerous computer upgrades over the years, Elke expressed the likelihood the document was digitally irretrievable. Disappointed, but not surprised, I was prepared to accept the vital records information at face-value.

Figure 1. Screen shot of the “Pinkus Family Collection 1500s-1994, (bulk 1725-1994),” archived at the Leo Baeck Institute—New York/Berlin (LBI), highlighting Series VII where my family’s ancestral materials were found

Then, much to my delight, a day later Elke told me she’d located the source document from a larger collection entitled the “Pinkus Family Collection 1500s-1994, (bulk 1725-1994).” (Figure 1) It was too large to email, but she opined I might be able to locate it on the Internet, and, sure enough, I immediately learned the collection is archived at The Leo Baeck Institute—New York/Berlin (LBI) and can be downloaded for free. For readers unfamiliar with this institute, according to their website, “LBI is devoted to the history of German-speaking Jews. Its 80,000-volume library and extensive archival and art collections represent the most significant repository of primary source material and scholarship on the Jewish communities of Central Europe over the past five centuries.”

The Pinkus Family Collection is enormous. From the “Biographical Note” to the collection, I learned the Pinkus family were textile manufacturers. Their factory, located in Neustadt, Upper Silesia [today: Prudnik, Poland], was one of the largest producers of fine linens in the world. Joseph Pinkus became a partner in the firm S. Fränkel when he married Auguste Fränkel, the daughter of the owner. Their son Max Pinkus (1857-1934) was director until 1926. Subsequently, Max Pinkus’s son Hans Pinkus (1891-1977) managed the family company from 1926-1938 until he was forced out after the company’s total aryanization in the wake of Kristallnacht. Both Max and Hans Pinkus were very active in civic and cultural affairs and interested in local history; they amassed a large library of books by Silesian authors. In their spare time, they devoted themselves to genealogical research, the basis of the family collection archived at LBI. Hans Pinkus left Germany at the end of 1938, emigrated to the United Kingdom with his family in 1939, and died in Britain in 1977.

In reviewing the index to the collection, I had no idea where to begin. Fortunately, Elke came to my rescue and pointed me to “Series VII” (Figure 1), described as encompassing not just close Pinkus family relations but the broader array of families in Upper Silesia. Within this series I located pages related to my family, although, unlike other portions of the collection, ancestral information is recorded in longhand, in Sütterlin, no less. Even so, I was able to decipher most of the numerical data, and enlisted one of my German cousins to translate the longhand.

Here is where I discovered the source of the birth and death dates for my great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer’s first wife, Esther Ernestine Lißner, and their son, Gerhard Mockrauer. A summary of vital information for Josef Mockrauer, his two wives, and their children follows:

Figure 2. My great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer (1845-1895)

Figure 3a. First page of Josef Mockrauer’s 1895 death certificate

Figure 3b. Second page of Josef Mockrauer’s 1895 death certificate

Figure 4a. Plan map of the Jüdischer Friedhof in Berlin Weißensee (East Berlin) showing section Q1, where Josef Mockrauer is interred

Figure 4b. Headstone of Josef Mockrauer’s grave

NAME	EVENT	DATE	PLACE
Josef Mockrauer (Figures 2, 3a-b, 4a-b)	Birth	18 June 1845	Leschnitz, Oberschlesien, Germany [today: Leśnica, Poland]
Josef Mockrauer (Figures 2, 3a-b, 4a-b)	Death	9 February 1895	Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany
Esther Ernestine Mockrauer, née Lißner (Josef’s first wife)	Birth	30 October 1854	Dresden, Saxony, Germany
	Death	24 May 1934	Berlin, Germany
	Marriage	Unknown	Unknown
Elly Landsberg, née Mockrauer (Figure 5)	Birth	14 August 1873	Berlin, Germany
Elly Landsberg, née Mockrauer (Figure 5)	Death	15 May 1944	Auschwitz, Poland
Gerhard Mockrauer (Figure 6)	Birth	25 January 1875	Berlin, Germany
Gerhard Mockrauer (Figure 6)	Death	21 September 1886	Freienwalde, Märkisch-Oderland district, Brandenburg, Germany
George Mockrauer (Ernestine’s out-of-wedlock child) (Figure 7)	Birth	16 April 1884	Dresden, Saxony, Germany
	Death	Unknown	Unknown
Charlotte Mockrauer, née Bruck (Josef’s second wife) (Figure 8)	Birth	8 December 1865	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
	Death	1965	Stockholm, Sweden
	Marriage	18 March 1888	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Franz Josef Mockrauer (Figure 9)	Birth	10 August 1889	Berlin, Germany
Franz Josef Mockrauer (Figure 9)	Death	7 July 1962	Stockholm, Sweden

Figure 5. Josef Mockrauer and Esther Ernestine Mockrauer née Lißner’s daughter, Elly Landsberg née Mockrauer, in 1902

Figure 6. Birth certificate for Josef and Ernestine Mockrauer’s son, Gerhard Mockrauer, indicating he was born on January 25, 1875

Figure 7. Birth certificate for Georg Mockrauer, Ernestine Mockrauer’s out-of-wedlock son, who carried the “Mockrauer” surname even though he was not Josef Mockrauer’s son

Figure 8. Josef Mockrauer’s second wife, my great-aunt Charlotte Mockrauer née Bruck

Figure 9. Josef and Charlotte Mockrauer’s son, Franz Josef Mockrauer

Figure 10. My great-great-grandfather Fedor Bruck

Figure 11. My great-great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer

I made other surprising discoveries in the Pinkus Collection. Briefly, some context. The second-generation owners of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel in Ratibor were my great-grandparents, Fedor Bruck (Figure 10) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer. (Figure 11) As the table below shows, Fedor and Friederike Bruck had eight children, only six of whom I’d previously been able to track from birth to death; Elise and Robert remained wraiths whose existence I knew about but assumed had died at birth, a not uncommon fate in the 19^th century. This was not, in fact, what happened. Elise lived to almost age 4, and Robert to age 16. While Elise expectedly died in Ratibor, mystifyingly, Robert died on December 30, 1887 in Braunschweig, Germany, more than 450 miles from Ratibor. Why here is unclear. Their causes of death are a mystery, though childhood diseases a real possibility.

Figure 13. My great-aunt Franziska Bruck

NAME	EVENT	DATE	PLACE
Felix Bruck (Figure 12)	Birth	28 March 1864	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Felix Bruck (Figure 12)	Death	23 June 1927	Berlin, Germany
Charlotte Mockrauer, née Bruck (Figure 8)	Birth	8 December 1865	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Charlotte Mockrauer, née Bruck (Figure 8)	Death	1965	Stockholm, Sweden
Franziska Bruck (Figure 13)	Birth	29 December 1866	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Franziska Bruck (Figure 13)	Death	2 January 1942	Berlin, Germany
Elise Bruck	Birth	20 August 1868	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Elise Bruck	Death	19 June 1872	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck (Figure 14)	Birth	22 March 1870	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck (Figure 14)	Death	15 January 1949	Nice, France
Robert Bruck	Birth	1 December 1871	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Robert Bruck	Death	30 December 1887	Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany
Wilhelm Bruck (Figure 15)	Birth	24 October 1872	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Wilhelm Bruck (Figure 15)	Death	29 April 1952	Barcelona, Spain
Elsbeth Bruck (Figure 16)	Birth	17 November 1874	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Elsbeth Bruck (Figure 16)	Death	20 February 1970	Berlin, Germany

Figure 14. Another great-aunt, Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck

Figure 16. Yet another great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck

With respect to the tables above, I don’t expect readers to do anything more than glance at them; for me, they’re a quick reference as to what I know and where it came from, a form of metadata, if you will. The italicized information in the tables was new to me and originated from the Pinkus Collection.

As a related aside, Friederike Mockrauer and Josef Mockrauer were siblings. Interestingly, Josef Mockrauer would go on to eventually marry one of his sister’s daughters, his niece, my great-aunt Charlotte Bruck. Incestuous, I would agree.

Figure 17. Page from the Pinkus Family Collection showing Fedor and Friederike Bruck’s eight children, including birth and death dates for my great-aunt Elise and my great-uncle Robert, both of whom died as children. Towards the bottom right my father’s name is shown (Otto Bruck). [Citation: Series VII: Genealogical and historical materials on the Fraenkel family and others, undated, 1600s-1971; Pinkus Family Collection; AR 7030; Box 20; Folder 3; Page 293; Leo Baeck Institute]

Remarkably, on the very same page where I discovered Elise and Robert’s dates and places of death, I found my father and his three siblings listed! (Figure 17) Inasmuch as I can tell, the detailed family information was recorded by either Max (Max died in 1934) or Hans Pinkus around the early- to mid-1930’s, at which time my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, would have been a dentist in Tiegenhof in the Free State of Danzig, and this is precisely what is noted: “Zahnarzt im Tiegenhof (Freistaat Danzig)”; “Freistaat Danzig” was the official name of this former part of the Deutsches Reich after World War I.

Figure 18. Page from the Pinkus Family Collection identifying Oscar Pincus and Paula Pincus née Pauly’s two children (“kinder” in German), Franz Pincus and Lisselotte “Lilo” Pauly. Here can also be seen that Franz Pincus married Lisa Krüger. [Citation: Series VII: Genealogical and historical materials on the Fraenkel family and others, undated, 1600s-1971; Pinkus Family Collection; AR 7030; Box 20; Folder 3; Page 307; Leo Baeck Institute]

Finally, from the Pinkus Collection, I was also able to confirm that Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, discussed in Blog Post 40, one of the “silent heroes” who hid my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck during his 30-months “underground” in Berlin during WWII, was indeed married to Franz Pincus (Figure 18); Franz Pincus, readers may recall, died in 1941 as Franz Pauly, having taken his mother’s maiden name as his own surname. While the Pinkus Collection shed no additional light on exactly how Franz Pincus/Pauly died, I discovered Franz was the older rather than the younger of two siblings, contrary to what was in my family tree. This comports with a photo, attached here, showing Franz and his sister, Charlotte “Lisselotte or Lilo” Pauly, as children, found since I published Post 40; readers can clearly see Franz is the older of the two children. (Figure 19)

Figure 19. Franz and Lilo Pauly as children in 1902

Tracking down the Pinkus Collection with its relevant family history is admittedly noteworthy, but the real service was rendered by Max and Hans Pinkus. Their detailed compilation of ancestral data from related Silesian families was gathered while running a full-time business and in the days before genealogical information was digitized, when most of the painstaking work had to be undertaken manually through time-consuming letter-writing, and perhaps occasional phone calls and family gatherings. So, while I take obvious pleasure in having discovered the Pinkus Collection, I acknowledge the true forensic genealogists for amassing this valuable trove of family history.

Let me conclude by emphasizing that well-done family trees to which ancestry.com leads genealogists can often be the source of valuable forensic clues but should be closely scrutinized and delved into to before accepting the data prima facie. And, finally, I have no idea how many “cold cases” I can eventually solve but the challenge is what motivates me.

CITATION

Series VII: Genealogical and historical materials on the Fraenkel family and others, undated, 1600s-1971; Pinkus Family Collection; AR 7030; Box 20; Folder 3; Leo Baeck Institute

POST 43: HELPING A JEWISH FRIEND UNCOVER HIS GERMAN ROOTS

Note: In this Blog post, I talk about some ancestral research I undertook at the request of a childhood friend from New York of almost 60 years, and some interesting findings we made along the way.

Post 12: “State Branch of Katowice Archives Branch in Racibórz (Ratibor)”

Post 13: The Former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor (Racibórz)

Figure 1. My and my wife’s English-speaking Polish friend, Malgosia Ploszaj, from Rybnik, Poland, 16 miles east of Racibórz

First, let me set the stage.

In 2014, my wife and I spent 13 weeks in Europe driving everywhere from Gdansk, a Polish city on the Baltic coast, all the way to Valencia and Barcelona, along Spain’s eastern coast, visiting places my father and his family had once lived. Prior to our departure, we attended a lecture in Los Angeles given by Mr. Roger Lustig, sponsored by the Los Angeles Jewish Genealogical Society, on researching Jewish families of Prussian Poland, a place where many of my Hebraic ancestors come from. Knowing we would be passing through Poland, I contacted Mr. Lustig about extant Jewish records for Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], formerly part of Upper Silesia in Prussia, where my father and many of his immediate family were born. Roger took an immediate interest in helping since a branch of his own family came from there. He graciously introduced me to an English-speaking Polish lady, Ms. Malgosia Ploszaj (Figure 1), from nearby Rybnik, Poland [formerly: Rybnick, Germany], who is actively involved in researching what she calls “her Rybnik Jews” and who was enormously helpful when we met. In Blog Post 12, I discussed how Malgosia helped me navigate the civil records at the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz.” (Figure 2) Archived here, we discovered an administrative file of historic police documents from the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figure 3), a family-owned establishment through three generations (see Blog Post 11), as well as vital records for family members.

Figure 2. Entrance to “Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu,” the State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz

Figure 3. Cover of the administrative police file with historic documents dealing with the Bruck’s family “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, found at the State Archives in Racibórz

Figure 4. Entrance to the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, which was dismantled during Poland’s Communist Era and converted into Community Gardens

In February 2015, many months after our visit to Racibórz, Malgosia sent me a link to an hour-long BBC video done by an English journalist, Mr. Adrian Goldberg, to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945. In this video, Mr. Goldberg told his family story through home recordings he’d done with his now-deceased father who, like my own father, was Jewish and born in Ratibor. Adrian’s father survived because his parents were able to secure a place for him on a Kindertransport (German for “children’s transport”) to the United Kingdom, although Adrian’s grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz, same as my beloved Aunt Susanne. Malgosia provided local support to Adrian during the production of his video, which was filmed in the now-destroyed former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor (Figure 4), subject of my Blog Post 13, a place where many of my and Adrian’s relatives were once interred.

Following the release of Adrian’s video in 2015, we had occasion to exchange a few emails to bemoan the woeful condition of the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor, and what might be done about this. Within just the last two months, I was contacted by Adrian’s staff in connection with an article he was working on related to obtaining a German passport, which, as the son of a German refugee, he is entitled to. Adrian’s article on the calculation that went into deciding to do so, given his father’s refugee status and the negative reaction his father likely would have had were he still alive, has since appeared in print on BBC.com on December 24, 2018. Adrian makes clear his decision to apply for a German passport stems not from any political or philosophical standpoint, stressing he deeply loves England. It is more a reflection of post-Brexit realities and the greater flexibility that being an EU citizen with the right to work and travel freely across 27 countries without any visa requirements provides; that said, the idea of adopting the nationality of a country that murdered many family members was not an easy one.

Adrian Goldberg’s deliberations about applying for a German passport happened to coincide with a request from my childhood friend Harold from New York, whom I’ve known for almost 60 years (Figure 5), for help documenting his German roots. He has a similar goal, obtaining German passports for he and his immediate family; as the child of Jewish refugees who fled Germany in the 1930’s, like Adrian, my friend is entitled to a German passport. My friend’s interest in securing dual nationality is different than Adrian’s, however. It has little to do with wanting to become an EU member but relates to the increasingly divisive political environment in our country. My friend wants the option of legally moving himself and his family to Germany should the political landscape in America continue to deteriorate and becomes far worse than that in Germany, and not find himself in the same circumstances as many German Jews did in the 1930’s, unable to find a safe port. Contemplating returning to a country that perpetrated the Holocaust and killed some of Harold’s ancestors is an irony not lost on either of us.

Documenting my friend’s German lineage was a straight-forward task. However, as ancestral searches are often wont to do, it morphed into searching for my friend’s family who may have wound up in the United States or South America after they left Germany, as well as a hunt for older ancestors who were born and died in Prussia. I’m happy to report that the forensic genealogical work has now been taken over in exceptional fashion by my friend’s daughter.

Briefly, I want to devote the remainder of this post to talking about a few discoveries and connections my friend’s daughter and I have made, along with a mystery that remains unsolved.

My friend’s uncle Paul, his father’s brother, was born in 1900 in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, lived and worked in Berlin for a time, then emigrated from Germany in 1937 or 1938, arriving in New York in October 1938; this was merely a transit point, by choice or design, and he eventually alit in South America, Chile by all accounts. My friend remembers an annual conversation that took place between his father and his uncle Paul, perhaps around one of their birthdays, but cannot otherwise recall what happened to him. From my own personal experience, I can attest to the difficulty in finding evidence of Jewish ancestors who immigrated to South America before or after WWII; as we speak, I am trying to discover the fate of one of my father’s first cousins who lived and perhaps died in Buenos Aires, Argentina around 1948, so far to no avail. As to Harold’s uncle, his daughter and I have so far hit a brick wall in determining his destiny.

As previously mentioned, Harold and I have known one another for almost 60 years. Like my father, I was an active tennis player growing up. So, in the course of discussing my friend’s family with him, we both clearly recalled one of his distant relatives who was a highly regarded tennis player when we were growing up. My friend remembered her name, Marilyn, and because she was a ranked player for a time, we had no trouble finding information on her and even getting her phone number. Several days later, I placed a “cold” call to Marilyn, left a message explaining who I was and that I was calling on behalf of my friend, who I thought might be related to her. Later that day, Harold’s tennis-playing kin returned my call, and we had an eminently delightful conversation.

While I quickly receded into the background, I learned when Marilyn had been born, but equally importantly that her mother, Gisela, is still alive and of sound mind. I passed this information along to Harold, uncertain exactly where it would lead, although excited on his behalf that he could converse with an older member of his family.

Figure 6. Photo of Gisela from her Immigration Card when she and her husband Ernest traveled to South America

Figure 7. Ernest’s Immigration Card photo when he traveled to South America with his wife

Prior to contacting Marilyn, I had already found Immigration Cards for both her parents, Gisela and Ernest, her father now deceased, with attached photos showing what they looked like when they traveled to South America. (Figures 6-7) I forwarded these to Harold, at which point he had an “aha!” moment. He dug out his bar mitzvah album photos and began comparing Gisela and Ernest’s immigration card pictures to them. Triumphantly, Harold discovered a picture of himself with his parents and Gisela and Ernest altogether! (Figure 8)

Figure 8. Photo from Harold’s bar mitzvah showing Gisela and Ernest on the far left

Harold eventually spoke by phone with Gisela in December 2018 and sent her pictures he thought were of her and her husband at his bar mitzvah; she confirmed the pictures were them. Gisela explained that Ernest and Harold’s father had been second cousins, and that Marilyn and Harold are therefore third cousins; it’s not clear Harold ever met his third cousin growing up in New York. Gisela and Ernest would from time to time socialize with Harold’s parents when all lived in New York but drifted apart when they became “snowbirds” in different parts of Florida. Gisela graciously provided a family tree to Harold that has allowed Harold’s daughter to broaden her ancestral investigations. What Gisela was unable to provide, however, were clues as to where Harold’s uncle Paul wound up.

Tangentially, Harold’s daughter and I have discovered no fewer than three Upper Silesian towns where members of our respective families once lived, Ratibor, Beuthen [today: Bytom, Poland], and Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]; there are likely many more. Given that some of these towns were modest in size, and the Jewish communities relatively small, it’s highly likely Harold’s family and my family intermarried, making us distant cousins.

In conclusion, let me remark on one thing. Regular readers know my Blog is not political. Yet, one cannot talk about Jews who were victims of National Socialism without being political and recognizing and condemning modern-day parallels. Today’s populists who demonize and discriminate against Jews and other minorities are no different than the fascists of old. It’s the canary in the coal mine when Americans of all stripes begin to consider moving elsewhere in the unlikely event that the political divisions in our country worsen. It’s imperative we speak out against falsifiers and admirers of tyrants and dictators wherever and whenever they crawl out of the woodwork.