Note: In this post, I discuss some previously unknown details about my father, Gary Otto Brook (Dr. Otto Bruck), and his life before and during WWII uncovered in a file I was given by a staffer at the German Embassy in connection with my German citizenship application. The staffer ordered this file from an office in Saarburg, Germany, where my father’s 1950s dossier wound up after his compensation petition was processed.
In Post 166, I related to readers my ongoing endeavor to obtain German citizenship. The process is moving apace thanks to the assistance of an extraordinarily helpful staffer at the German Embassy in Los Angeles. I recently delivered the preliminary application and only require one additional certificate to complete my submission. For reasons I will explain below obtaining citizenship could take 18 months or more. The recovery of an unexpected document is a direct result of my ongoing efforts and is the subject of this post.
Based on my vague childhood recollections of my father’s attempt to obtain some measure of recompense for the loss of his dental practice in the Free City of Danzig during the era of the National Socialists, I would have expected an application to exist supporting his petition. I was just not sure where I might find it. However, I’m now in possession of my father’s 13-page compensation file he originally submitted in the 1950s to the then-Federal Republic of Germany. (Figure 1) The file was ordered by the staffer at the German Embassy from Saarburg, Germany, from an office I did not know existed. While alone insufficient to fulfill application requirements, it bolsters my petition. I will discuss some of the contents below.
Though not particularly revelatory in a broad sense, the petition pinpoints some of the chronological events in my father’s life providing a more nuanced understanding of their timing. The events are told firsthand in a matter of fact-style chronicling when they took place. However, they mask an undercurrent of extreme loss that leaves me almost 90 years later deeply saddened. It’s not what’s written but what’s implied about how my father’s life and by extension the lives of so many other Holocaust victims were extinguished or upended that reverberates to this day. Possibly because of the fragmented nature of our ongoing political discourse this seems even more relevant.
A related issue I’ve been grappling with is the question of success versus justice. Suffice it here to say that for most Holocaust victims or their descendants no amount of financial compensation, what could be construed as a “successful” outcome, can ever make up for the loss they suffered. Ergo, they can never obtain real justice. This is an existential question that merits further consideration outside of my blog. However, it’s a question I’ve been pondering in the context of my longstanding claim against the French Ministry of Culture to obtain compensation and repatriation for paintings confiscated by the Nazis from one of my father’s first cousins in December 1940. Notwithstanding the fact that I’m the closest surviving relative to my father’s cousin, because France has a civil law legal system, I’ve been denied the opportunity to obtain justice on behalf of my family. As my petition nears resolution, this will be the subject of an upcoming post.
Back to the subject of this post. As I proceed, I’ll describe a few of the documents attached to my father’s petition which shed further light on what I know. I need to emphasize that much of the new information about my father comes from a dry recitation of events, not from any detailed discussion about what my father thought or felt about these events. Still, reading between the lines conceals disappointment and resignation to his fate. In fact, growing up, my father often used the word “kismet,” which comes from the Arabic word “qisma” which literally means “to divide” or “allot.” As a practical matter “kismet” is used to describe something that happens by chance like it was meant to be.
One document in my father’s petition is titled “Lebenslauf” (Figure 2), translated as curriculum vitae. Most often, a curriculum vitae summarizes a job applicant’s qualifications from the standpoint of work experience, education, and skills. In terms of what my father includes, it harkens back to its original Latin meaning, “the course of one’s life.” My father, born in 1907 (Figure 3), indicates his schooling involved three years in elementary school followed by nine years in a Humanistic Grammar School. He passed his so-called “Abitur,” basically his high school-leaving examination, in 1926. Then, from 1926 to 1930, he studied dentistry at the universities of Berlin, Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], and Munich. He qualified to be a dentist on the 8th of May 1930. During 1930 and 1931, my father apprenticed, assisted, and temporarily filled in for dentists in Königsbrück, Berlin, Allenstein [today: Olsztyn, Poland], and Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland].
Let me digress for a moment. As implied above, the broad outline of my father’s life was previously known to me. Still, there are a few surprises. I was aware my father studied dentistry at the University of Berlin since I have his diploma from there, but it was a complete revelation that he studied at the universities of Breslau and Munich. His link to Breslau is less surprising given that the Bruck family had longstanding ties with this city, including the fact that my father’s older brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck, received his dental degree here. However, the fact that my father studied dentistry in Breslau makes me wonder whether he apprenticed with his renowned relative, Dr Walther Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 4), dentist to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Kaiser, his family, and other royalty. This would strongly suggest my father trained with a family member who was exceptionally skilled in his craft.
Munich and Breslau are about eight hours apart today by car. There is no indication how long my father studied in Munich, although this merits further investigation.
As far as the four places where my father apprenticed in 1930 and 1931, none are surprising. I have in my possession letters of recommendation from the respective dentists in Königsbrück (Figure 5) and Allenstein (Figure 6) commending my father on his exemplary work in their absence. Furthermore, since my father attended dental school in Berlin, then later lived in the Free City of Danzig, I would have expected he would have apprenticed in these places. In the case of Danzig, I even have a picture showing him there in his dental scrubs. (Figure 7)
Let me continue. I know from a note in my father’s surviving papers that he had his own dental practice in a town in the Free City of Danzig named Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] from April 1932 through April 1937; this town is approximately 40km (25 miles) east of Danzig. While it is technically accurate to say my father maintained an independent dental practice until April 1937, as a practical matter because of the Nazi imposed boycott of Jewish businesses, he’d ceased having patients by 1936.
My father’s compensation file includes another informative document, an “Eidesstattliche Erklaerung” (Figures 8a-b), translated as affidavit. Here my father writes that he sold his dental equipment and instruments at less than ten percent of their market value. To compound the affront, patients whom my father had treated before the boycott went into full effect stiffed him to the tune of what today amounts to many thousands of dollars.
One particularly intriguing document included with my father’s compensation application is titled “Fuhrungszeugnis,” a “Certificate of Good Conduct.” (Figure 9) It is dated the 28th of April 1937 from Tiegenhof, and signed by “Die Polizeivertbeltung,” Tiegenhof’s “Police Bureaucracy.” It gives the precise dates my father’s dental practice was in business, from the 14th of April 1932 until the 28th of April 1937. Why my father would have wanted such a document is completely understandable, though why authorities would have felt compelled to document his service when they no longer wanted it in Germany, or the Free City of Danzig is mystifying.
Following the sale of his dental equipment in Tiegenhof, my father moved to the city of Danzig in April 1937, where, in his own words, “he took over the representation of dental colleagues until March 1938.” I presume the anonymity of this larger city, where my father had multiple professional colleagues, allowed him to continue working for a while. This is like what my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck did after he was forced to shutter his own dental practice in Liegnitz [today: Legnica, Poland] in Lower Silesia after Hitler came to power in January 1933. He moved to Berlin, working under the auspices of non-Jewish dentists until that too became impossible.
I’d always been uncertain where my father spent the period between April 1937 and March 1938. I mistakenly thought he might have joined his brother in Berlin, possibly working there. Based on photographs in his albums, however, I knew that by early March 1938 he’d permanently left Germany since photos show him transiting through Vienna, Austria following his departure. (Figure 10) He was headed to Fiesole, Italy, outside Florence, to join his sister and brother-in-law, who were then operating a bed-and-breakfast there.
What caused my father to leave Germany before Kristallnacht on 9-10 November 1938 is not entirely clear, though I have no doubt he clearly saw the handwriting on the wall. The absence of a wife and any children made his departure a relatively easy decision.
A stray sentence in the affidavit accompanying his compensation petition suggests my father may have had a plan. The two first cousins with whom my father was closest were Jeanne “Hansi” Löwenstein (Figure 11) and her brother Heinz Löwenstein. (Figure 12) Both were born in Danzig, and I strongly suspect that while doing his dental apprenticeship in Danzig in 1930-1931, he lived with his aunt, Hedwig Löwenstein, nee Bruck (Figure 13), and these two cousins. Following the death of her husband Rudolf Löwenstein in a plane crash on the 22nd of August 1930, subject of Post 71, Hedwig and the family moved to Nice, France, along France’s Côte d’Azur. The precise date of their move is unknown.
Following his departure from Germany, I don’t think my father ever permanently intended to stay in Fiesole, Italy. I think his intended destination at the time was Nice, France. My father writes in his affidavit that he was unable to obtain a work permit in France so finally enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in November 1938.
Suffice it here to say that as I learn more about France’s complicity with the Nazis during WWII, I never fail to get angry anew at France’s treatment of my father and his family before, during, and after the war. For me this still seems very relevant, particularly as France has fought for ten years since 2014 to retain paintings rendered by Fedor Löwenstein (older brother of Hansi and Heinz) confiscated by the Nazis in December 1940 in Bordeaux and stored in Paris since, the provenance of which was only uncovered in 2010. I digress.
Though of no particular interest to readers, the exact dates of my father’s engagements in the French Foreign Legion (FFL) and England’s Pioneer Corps are mentioned. My father was in the FFL (Figure 14) in Algeria from the 9th of November 1938 until the 9th of November 1943. He was in the English Army (Figure 15) from the 19th of November 1943 until the 5th of May 1946, thus for two years 224 days. I have a picture of my father in his English Army uniform with his comrades-in-arm, taken in September 1945 in Rome, Italy. (Figure 16) Appearing to be almost a farewell gathering, I mistakenly concluded that my father had been demobilized from the English Army in Rome. Contrary to my assumption, in his affidavit my father writes he was demobilized in Nice, France.
For readers interested in knowing what I’ve learned about my father’s time in Nice, I discussed this in Post 26. After his discharge from the English army, my father procured a permit to work as a dental technician but was unable to work as a dentist. Because he had no connections, he could barely make ends meet.
Other information of personal interest is the precise date my father left France, the 2nd of June 1948, and the exact date he landed in America, the 7th of June 1948. Having previously found my father’s naturalization card (Figure 17) on ancestry.com, I knew he became an American citizen through Court Order #7509013, dated the 19th of July 1955. Though both the “Bruck” and “Brook” names appear on the card, I’d never been sure if he changed his name upon landing in America in 1948 or upon becoming an American citizen. Well, as it turns out, my father changed his name to Gary Otto Brook in 1955.
The final document in my father’s compensation file I’ll discuss is titled “Staatsangehorigkeitsausweis.” (Figure 18) Issued in Berlin on the 22nd of November 1927, this is my father’s German nationality card. I have the original among my father’s surviving papers, and as implied above it bolsters my claim for German citizenship.
As to the restitution my father received for the loss of his dental practice and livelihood, it amounted to a pittance, approximately $2,500. in 1966. Unlike my uncle Fedor who miraculously survived the entire war hidden in Berlin, my father never received a regular pension from the German government.
Let me return to something I alluded to above, namely the reason for the lengthy delay in processing German citizenship applications. The explanation is rich. Because of the tragic events of October 7, 2023, in Israel, Israelis of German descent are applying in droves for German citizenship.
In closing, let me be clear that I don’t expect the above to be of much interest to readers. However, it highlights that occasionally one happens upon a primary source document related to one’s ancestors that fill in some gaps in one’s understanding of their lives. In my case, the recovery of my father’s compensation petition was a fortuitous outcome of my German citizenship application.
Note: In this post I discuss a collection of family photos I obtained from my second cousins in 2016, focusing on a few of historical significance and of personal interest.
In a post I have long intended to write, I discuss another collection of family ephemera, photos in this instance, I obtained in 2016 from my German second cousin, Margarita Vilgertshofer, née Bruck. This post harkens back and tiers off two posts I wrote that year, Posts 32 and 33. I refer readers to those earlier publications for the details describing how through a serious bit of detecting I was able to track down Margarita and her brother Antonio to Bavaria, Germany (Figure 1) though both were born in Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain.
Through circumstances I’m still unclear about, a marginal insertion on Antonio’s 1946 birth certificate notes when and where he was married in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1982. (Figure 2) I’ve previously found vital certificates for ancestors where notations on where and when vital events in their lives, typically divorces, took place. What makes this notation so unique and inexplicable is that the birth certificate is from a municipal office in Spain, but the marriage took place in Germany. How and why this information was conveyed to Spain puzzles me.
In a similar vein, the most unusual case I’ve come across of vital data for an ancestor having been transmitted from one country to another is in the instance of one of my father’s first cousins, Heinz Loewenstein. I’ve written extensively about him. He was born in the Free City of Danzig in 1905, got married there in 1931, immigrated with his wife to Palestine in the 1930s, enlisted in the English Army’s Pioneer Corps, was captured during the Battle of Greece in 1941, escaped from German stalags multiple times but always recaptured, then eventually was liberated and returned to Palestine following WWII. He and his wife divorced in Palestine or Israel, and somehow this vital data was illegibly noted in the margin of his marriage certificate from a record presumably obtained by the Federal Republic of Germany (i.e., the Free State of Danzig ceased to exist following the start of WWII and Germany’s invasion of Poland and Danzig in 1939). (Figure 3) Knowing what meticulous record keepers the Germans are may explain why this information was recorded but how the Germans obtained it is the more curious question.
Returning to the subject at hand, I want to discuss several of the more unique pictures I found among my second cousin’s large collection of images. Knowing that perusing other families’ photos can be tedious, I will merely highlight a few of historic significance plus several of personal interest.
The most historically significant photo is one taken in Doorn, Netherlands showing Germany’s last Kaiser, Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Figure 4) The circumstances that resulted in the Kaiser being in Doorn is that following Germany’s defeat during WWI, he abdicated the German throne and went into exile in the Netherlands. The picture includes the Kaiser’s second wife, Empress Hermine of Germany (née Reuß zu Greiz), her daughter by her first marriage, and his retinue in exile. In the center of this group is an unidentified Bruck family member. This photograph was the subject of Post 65, and at the time I wrote that post I had no idea who the family member was.
I only learned the identity of the ancestor by marriage when I obtained a captioned copy of the identical photo from an altogether different source. I discussed this in Post 100. (Figure 5) Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (1884-1963), the second wife of my accomplished Bruck relative from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland], Dr. Walther Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), is standing amidst Kaiser Wilhelm II and his entourage. Dr. Bruck was the Kaiser’s wife’s dentist and likely also the Kaiser’s dentist. How precisely this worked with the Kaiser being in Berlin, later in Doorn, and Dr. Bruck being in Breslau is unclear.
Another historically noteworthy photo shows the Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Figure 6) in the flower school of my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (1866-1942) (Figure 7) in Berlin when she visited it on the 15th of October 1915. The Duchess was the last German Crown Princess and Crown Princess of Prussia as the wife of Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, the son of Wilhelm II. My great aunt Franziska wrote two books featuring the elegant Ikebana-style floral wreaths and bouquets she specialized in, and, according to family lore, is reputed to have put together floral arrangements for the royal family.
Another photo among my cousin’s photo array, which crosses the line between historically noteworthy and personally interesting, shows Margarita’s mother working in Franziska’s flower school and shop in Berlin. (Figure 8) While I knew from her wedding certificate that my beloved Aunt Susanne, later murdered in Auschwitz, had been a managing director in Franziska’s flower shop, I’d never known any other family members who’d worked there.
In any case, the photos discussed above document my family’s personal relationship with Germany’s last royal family.
Further evidence of the Kaiser’s wife’s connection to my Bruck family can be found in Dr. Bruck’s Breslau house guest book, a scan of which I have, which she signed when she visited him in Breslau on the 23rd of April 1923 (Figures 9a-b), presumably to have her teeth worked on. Yet more evidence of the two families’ bond can be found in a signed children’s book that Princess Hermine Reuß gave to Dr. Bruck and his wife upon the birth of their second daughter Renate (Figures 10a-b). Their first daughter Hermine, named after the Princess, unfortunately died shortly after her birth.
My cousin Margarita’s photo collection includes some unique photos of family members. One of the most unusual is of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) in his WWI military attire. (Figure 11) My uncle Fedor has been the subject of a few posts (see Posts 17 & 31) for several reasons. Firstly, he was one of around only 5,000 Jews who survived in Germany during WWII. Secondly, he was assigned to Hitler’s dentist’s surviving dental office following the war. Thirdly, because of his pre-war friendship with one of Hitler’s dentist’s dental assistants, he had knowledge of Hitler’s fate at the end of the war. Warned by the Americans this knowledge could get him kidnapped by the Russians, he fled Berlin. For their part, the Russians were anxious to uphold the specter of Hitler as a surviving “boogeyman” who could return at any moment to again terrorize the world. The photo of my uncle in his military uniform was taken in a studio, though I know from a surviving postcard that during WWI my uncle was based on the Eastern Front in what is today the Ukraine which was then part of Russia.
A brief related anecdote. My uncle’s wife, Verena Brook, née Dick (1920-2007), was 25 years his junior. Upon my uncle’s death in 1982, my aunt offered me some of my uncle’s memorabilia. One of the more unusual items she offered, which in retrospect I should have accepted, was the section of my uncle’s WWI uniform he’d cut out where a bullet had penetrated and he’d been wounded. I suspect I could have used this for DNA analysis.
Moving on to other unique family photos.
One photo I particularly fancy shows Margarita and Antonio’s grandfather, my great uncle Wilhelm Bruck (1872-1952) in 1889. He is standing alongside a so-called Penny-farthing, an early type of bicycle. (Figure 12) It was popular during the 1870s and 1880s, with its large front wheel that provided for high speeds on account of it traveling a large distance for every rotation of the wheel. Because the bicycle had solid rubber tires the only shock absorption was in the saddle.
In multiple earlier posts, I’ve discussed the hotel, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, my family owned in Ratibor [today: Raciborz, Poland] for three generations, from roughly 1850 to around 1925. Several historic photos showing a partial view of the hotel, then located on Oderstrasse, exist. However, among my cousin’s collection is the only known photo of the front entrance of the family establishment. (Figure 13)
The Bruck’s hotel was originally purchased by Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), my great-great grandfather. The second-generation owner of the hotel was Fedor Bruck, my great-grandfather after whom my uncle Fedor Bruck was named. Though I previously had a picture of my great-grandfather, two additional photos of him survive in Margarita’s albums, including one in which he is most fashionably dressed in the finest attire of the day. (Figure 14)
Many years ago before I started doing ancestral research I visited the Mormon Church’s FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. Archived in the library’s stacks was a pretentiously titled book on my family, entitled “A Thousand Year History of the Bruck Family.” I’ve subsequently obtained a more mundanely named copy, “The Bruck Family: A Historical Sketch.” The book was written by Alfred Julius Bruck, who’d anglicized his name to “Brook” upon his arrival in England. Included in Margarita’s photos is one of Alfred Bruck and his wife, Rosie. (Figure 15) Other pictures confirm they visited Margarita and her family in Munich.
Expectedly there are many pictures of Margarita’s family within her collection, many of them very endearing. (Figure 16) The circumstances that led Margarita and her brother Antonio to having been born in Spain is because her grandfather, Wilhelm Bruck, worked in Spain in the early 20th century on the installation of the first electric lines in Barcelona. While he would return to Germany following the completion of his contractual obligations, following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, his connections in Spain permitted him to immigrate there. Additionally, both of Wilhelm & Antonie Bruck’s two children, Edgar and Eva (Figure 17), were born there so retained Spanish citizenship.
There is an intriguing picture that speaks to the aristocratic lifestyle my great aunt and uncle led in Spain showing Edgar being fed by a wetnurse. (Figure 18) During their residence in Barcelona, Wilhelm and Antonie appear to have lived in Tibidabo, the highest neighborhood in the city. (Figure 19)
Intriguingly there are a few pictures of my immediate family among Margarita’s photos I was previously aware of. One is a cabinet card of my uncle Fedor, my aunt Susanne, and my father Otto as children. (Figure 20) Another is my aunt Susanne and her two cousins, Edgar and Eva, along with a group of other actors who performed together. (Figure 21)
A riveting picture in the collection, reflective of the horrific toll of WWI, was presumably taken at a recuperative center after the war. (Figure 22) Besides medical staff, it presumably shows wounded soldiers who had one of their limbs amputated. Since I recognize no one in the photo I’m uncertain why this picture is in Margarita’s collection.
Note: In this post, I 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.
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.
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 17th 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.
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)
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 SASturmabteilung, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.
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 7th 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 5th 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.
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 7th 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)
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.
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)
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.
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 3rd 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.
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)
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)
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.
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 28th 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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Note: A query from a reader about my ancestor Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s first marriage led me to obtaining Walter’s marriage certificate to his first wife, which in turn guided me to several Polish databases readers may find useful when researching their own Prussian ancestors. It is worth noting the data from some BUT not all these sources may also pop up when using ancestry.com. In the interest of thoroughness, readers may also want to check the ones cited in this post. I explain some of the challenges of using these sources.
In January of this year, I received an email through my Blog’s Webmail from a gentleman named Stephen Falk from Point Roberts, Washington. Mr. Falk contacted me after reading Blog Post 99 about my accomplished relative from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland], Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, subject of multiple earlier posts, wondering whether I was aware of Walter’s first wife, Margarethe “Grete” Skutsch (1872-1942). I confirmed that I knew about her. Stephen, it so happens, has the same relationship to Margarethe Skutsch, second cousin twice removed, as I do to Walter. In passing, Stephen mentioned that he was unaware that Walter had remarried and had fathered two children with his second wife.
Regular readers may recall that in Post 100 I discussed how I discovered Dr. Bruck had previously been married. Quoting what I wrote earlier:
“In researching when and where Walter’s older sister, Margarethe Prausnitz née Bruck, was born and died, I found an ancestral tree showing Walter had been married before he married Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch, the mother of his two children. This came as quite a surprise to me. According to this source, the name of Walter’s first wife was purportedly Margarethe STUTSCH.
I have repeatedly told readers that unless I can locate primary source documents, I am hesitant to believe what I find in other people’s trees. Case in point. While I was eventually able to confirm Walter had indeed previously been married, I learned his first wife’s maiden name was SKUTSCH not Stutsch, complicating my search. Sadly, I found that Margarethe Skutsch, born the same month and year as Walter, March 1872, was murdered in Theresienstadt in 1942.
I unearthed two primary source documents confirming Margarethe’s connection to Walter Bruck. The first was her Theresienstadt death certificate, very rarely completed post-mortem for Jews who died there, giving her married name. The second was the 1907 death certificate for Margarethe’s mother, Berta Skutsch née Grosser, at which Walter was a witness. A picture from around 1917 shows Margarethe and Walter seated at an outside picnic table with the Grand Duke of Oldenburg and his wife, indicating they were still married at the time. Walter’s biography which abruptly ends around 1894-95 gives no indication he was married before he left for America to attend the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, so the duration of his first marriage is unknown.”
In Part I of Post 109, I also made mention of a seemingly ongoing connection between Walter Bruck’s first and second wives following Walter’s death in 1937. Again quoting:
“Personally intriguing is the mention made on March 30, 1940, that Renate [Dr. Bruck’s surviving child by his second wife] went to visit ‘Tante Margarethe’ to wish her a happy birthday. The quotation marks indicate that while she was not a relative, she was still referred to as an aunt. There is no doubt this is Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s first wife who was Jewish, Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch. She was born on March 30, 1872, in Breslau [Wrocław, Poland], and murdered in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on the 22nd of September 1942. It is surprising that Johanna and Renate were in touch with Walter’s first wife, although, as this was certainly the case, it’s astonishing that Johanna made no mention in the diary when Margarethe was deported. Perhaps Johanna had already distanced herself from this Jewish ‘aunt’ by then?”
Soon after establishing contact with Stephen Falk, he informed me that he has a copy of Walter Bruck and Margarethe Skutsch’s marriage certificate (Figures 1a-d), which he graciously shared. From the certificate, which my good German friend Peter Hanke transcribed and translated for me, I learned several interesting things. (Figures 2a-b)
As I correctly surmised from Walter’s biography which I discussed in Post 100, he was not yet married to his first wife when he departed for America in around 1894-95 to attend the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. According to his marriage document Walter and Margarethe married on the 20th of October 1896 in Breslau, Germany. The certificate confirmed that by the time of their marriage in 1896, Walter had already converted to the Protestant religion. For a long time, I thought his conversion might have coincided with the death of Walter’s mother in around 1917, but clearly Walter anticipated the benefits professionally of being Protestant. As he and other Jews who converted would later learn, according to Nazi ideology he would always be considered “racially” Jewish. Walter died in 1937, perhaps by his own hand, so did not live long enough to have “Israel” added to his name, but as readers can see, Margarethe had the name “Sara” added to hers identifying her as Jewish (Figure 1c); sadly, as previously mentioned, she was deported to and murdered in Theresienstadt in 1942.
It is not uncommon for German marriage certificates to include the date of a divorce decree should a marriage be dissolved. As readers will note, a handwritten entry was added to Walter and Margarethe’s 1896 marriage document on the 8th of January 1924 affirming they had been divorced since the 21st of December 1923. (Figure 1a) The timing of the divorce is intriguing. In Post 102, I included a copy of Dr. Walter Bruck and Johanna Graebsch’s wedding announcement dated the 13th of December 1923 (Figure 3), thus, eight days before Walter’s first marriage officially ended.
Judging from the entry to Johanna and Renate Bruck’s Tagebuch cited above, it appears that Walter’s second wife had a cordial relationship with his first wife at least until it became too dangerous for Johanna and Renate to associate with the Jewish-born Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch during the Nazi era. While the reasons for the dissolution of Walter and Margarethe’s marriage will likely never be known, perhaps their inability to have children may have been the cause? To date, I have found no evidence they ever had any together.
The marriage certificate contains additional ancestral information about Walter and Margarethe’s parents, information previously known to me, though for readers in a similar situation, such documents can often yield new ancestral data.
Stephen gave me a direct link to Walter and Margarethe’s 1896 wedding document. The source is the “Archiwum Państwowe we Wrocławiu,” the State Archives in Wrocław, which has free, online genealogy collections as well as onsite family history collections. Prior to being contacted by Stephen, I had never accessed the Breslau online records, so will spend a little time broadly explaining to interested followers how to navigate the database. Readers should be forewarned that based on my limited exploration of the website I find it extremely user-unfriendly. Beyond the obvious challenge of negotiating a Polish website, even with the translator automatically turned on, there appear to be specific sequential steps to be followed to access the desired files.
Relatedly, my good friend Peter Hanke provided a link to a website entitled “Ahnenforschung in Schlesien—Liegnitz, Breslau, Lauban, Hirschberg,” Genealogy in Silesia—Liegnitz, Wroclaw, Lauban, Hirschberg that includes a portal page for specifically accessing the documents of the State Archives in Wroclaw (the Standesamt or the German civil registration offices for Breslau I, II, III, IV which were responsible for recording births, marriages, and deaths). (Figure 4) For ease, it helps to begin with the link to “Genealogy in Silesia” just mentioned.
Before briefly explaining how to access the Wroclaw records, some background about the city of Breslau is helpful. By the end of the Middle Ages in around 1500, the city had already more than 25,000 inhabitants, something few of the more than 4,000 places in Silesia had reached by the end of WWII. By 1840, 100,000 people were already living in Breslau. From then on, a tremendous growth spurt ensued because of the construction of the railway and the beginning of industrialization. In 1900 the population had quadrupled to 400,000 as outlying areas were incorporated into the city. By 1939 there were 630,000 inhabitants in Breslau. Most readers with an ancestral link to Prussia likely have relatives with a connection to Breslau simply because it was the largest city in Silesia.
I was able to track down a map of Breslau as it looked in 1863 hoping I could locate the streets where Walter and Margarethe lived before they got married 33 years later. The marriage certificate tells us Walter resided at Schweidnitzerstraße 27 (Figure 5), and Margarethe at Zwingerplatz 2. Both locales are found on the 1863 map (Figure 6) although Hindenburgplatz, where Walter later owned a sumptuous home, was then an outlying area known only as “nach Kleinburg.” Peter Hanke also gave me a link to a website containing many high-resolution historic maps of Breslau, including Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse which bisected Hindenburgplatz (Figure 7); for readers interested in understanding the city’s layout through time, I include the link: http://igrek.amzp.pl/result.php?cmd=pt&locsys=1&uni=-706307&box=0.0001&hideempty=on
Moving on, let me describe how to access Breslau’s birth, marriage, and death records from the “Ahnenforschung in Schlesien—Liegnitz, Breslau, Lauban, Hirschberg” website. As previously mentioned, Breslau had four Standesämter, or civil registration offices, referred to as “Standesamt BRESLAU I-IV” on the site’s portal page. The responsible registry office was based on one’s street address. Determining the responsible Breslau Standesamt for one’s ancestors without an address and address book is nigh near impossible.
That said, I like a challenge, and attempted to determine the civil registry office for Dr. Walter Bruck for the last year he was alive, specifically, 1937. Living on a street that was in the late 19th century and early 20th century known as Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse, during the Nazi era it was called “Straße der S.A.” “S.A.” stands for Sturmabteilung (SA) which was the paramilitary combat organization of the Nazi Party. The precise address of Dr. Bruck’s residence in 1937 was Hindenburgplatz 17 (Figure 8), bisected initially by Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse, and later by the renamed Straße der S.A. (Figure 9)
The next step in determining the responsible civil registry office requires having an address book for the year in question, in this example, 1937. The following website (Category:Wroclaw Address Book – GenWiki (genealogy.net) has 104 Breslau Address Books intermittently spanning parts of two centuries and includes the year 1937. The fourth part of this Address Book shows the all-important street directory, which lists the relevant civil registry office under one of the columns. In the case of Hindenburgplatz 17 the responsible Standesamt was “4,” the responsible Evangelical parish was “10,” and the responsible Catholic parish under the column titled “parochia,” was “III.” (Figures 10a-b)
Readers will rightly wonder which Evangelical and Catholic churches the parish numbers relate to. This information is also found in the fourth part of the address books, in subsection five entitled “V. Abschnitt. Kirchen und Friedhöfe,” Section V. Churches and Cemeteries. (Figure 11) So, in the above example, the Evangelical parish 10 refers to St. John’s Church, while the Catholic parish III would have been St. Carolus-Kapelle. Knowing that Dr. Bruck was a Protestant, I searched for the surviving church registers for the St. John’s Church, none of which are known to have survived WWII.
Later, I will briefly discuss one Breslau parish record of personal interest I surprisingly found amongst surviving records for a different Evangelical parish, the church of St. Elisabeth’s.
For readers in fact interested in tracking down the responsible civil registry office as well as the parish for ancestors listed in the various Breslau address books, the following link provides a “how-to” guide on doing so: http://www.christoph-www.de/breslau%201.html; this how-to guide is entitled “Breslau für Familienforscher,” “Wrocław for Genealogists.” (Figure 12) Bear in mind that not all Breslau directories include a table in the fourth part of the book cross-referencing street addresses with civil registry offices and responsible parishes. In this case, readers should examine directories a year or more before or after the target year.
Continuing. I will use “Standesamt BRESLAU IV” to illustrate how to access the Breslau birth, marriage, and death records. Once you’ve selected a specific civil registry office, you’ll be taken to another page where readers will find the following listings in Polish on the left side (Figure 13): Zespół1428-0 – Urząd Stanu Cywilnego (Zespół1428-0 – Registry Office); Seria1 – Księgi urodzeń (Birth records) (Figure 14); Seria2 – Księgi małżeństw (Marriage registers); and Seria3 – Księgi zgonów (Death books). You can either select birth, marriage, or death records, or “Show All the Listings” in the center part of the screen (i.e., at the time of this writing, there were “233 Results” available). Next, scroll down and select the specific year and records you’re interested in which will take you to another page; scroll down on this page, and select the hyperlinked URL. Images of the vital documents will show up which you can then scroll through systematically; if you know the specific month and/or day you’re looking for you can short-circuit the process. If you attempt to access the vital records from a place other than “Show All the Listings,” which it is possible to do, the hyperlinked URL won’t appear.
I want to draw readers attention to another source of information that will take you to maps and plans of the city of Breslau. By selecting “Standesamt Breslau I,” you’ll come to a page entitled “Team 1425-0—Civil Registry Office in Wrocław I” (Figure 15) Click where it says “430 Results,” and on the center of the next page select the box “Civil Registry Office in Wrocław.” (Figure 16) The next page yields “5504 Results” (Figure 17); on the left side you can select “Files of the city of Wrocław” which takes you to a different page with “489 Results” with the icons of Breslau maps through time. (Figure 18)
Suffice it to say with all the digital information available through the “Archiwum Państwowe we Wrocławiu,” one could spend many days studying the offerings; I’ve barely touched on what can be accessed but for interested genealogists the more narrowly you can focus your research with vital dates and addresses of one’s ancestors, obviously the easier things will go.
Before personally acquainting myself with the digital records available at the Wrocław Archives, I asked Stephen to check on specific vital documents where I knew the approximate date or year of the event. Initially, I had hoped to obtain the birth certificates for Walter and Johanna Bruck’s two daughters, Hermine born in 1924, who lived only a few months, and Renate born in 1926. Unfortunately, in Poland as in Germany there is a “protection period” before vital documents can be released to the general public. While the births of both Hermine and Renate took place when Breslau was part of Germany, the protection period is governed by Poland; Poland won’t release Hermine and Renate’s birth certificates, respectively, until 2024 and 2026, so 100 years after their births. In Germany, the protection period for birth certificates is 110 years. In the case of death records, Germany releases them after 30 years but in Poland one must wait 80 years.
Having learned that the protection period for marriage records in both Germany and Poland is 80 years, I had hoped I could uncover Walter Bruck and Johanna Gräbsch’s 1923 or 1924 marriage certificate, to no avail. Perplexingly, the marriage records for this period are not yet digitized. I’ll return to my search for information on Walter and Johanna’s marriage momentarily in discussing another Polish database readers can search for information on Prussian ancestors.
To remind readers, Walter and Johanna’s daughter Renate was married three times. Her first husband, whom I’ve previously wrote about in Post 101 was Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne; according to his daughter Bettina Mehne he was born in 1908 in Breslau. While many birth records from this year exist in the Wrocław Archives, Stephen could not find M.E.W. Mehne’s birth certificate so one can only assume it was among those destroyed during WWII.
Matthias Mehne’s address, Tauenzienplatz 1, means the responsible Standesamt was 4. The responsible Evangelical parish for this address was “2,” while the responsible Catholic parish was “VI.” In the case of the address associated with Matthias Mehne, the Evangelical parish would have been St. Mary Magdalene, while the corresponding Catholic parish would have been St. Dorothea (=Minoritenkirche). It’s unknown to me whether Matthias was an Evangelical or a Catholic, and while church records survive for both parishes, I was unable to find a baptismal or birth record for him amongst these records.
In the aforementioned how-to guide “Wrocław for Genealogists,” the surviving Evangelical and Catholic parish records are identified, and a hyperlink provided to some of them. Uncertain whether any would have relevant records for my ancestors, I started by examining the Evangelical records for the first Evangelical church, St. Elisabeth parish church (Elisabeth-Kirche zu Breslau | Breslau/Wroclaw, Staatsarchiv | Polen | Matricula Online (matricula-online.eu). Miraculously, I stumbled upon the marriage register listing for Johanna Gräbsch to her first husband, Dr. Alfred Renner, confirming they were married on the 6th of May 1905. (Figure 19) While I had previously located their marriage certificate in ancestry.com, it fails to indicate they were married in St. Elisabeth’s Evangelical Church. Armed with this new information, I naively hoped that Johanna Gräbsch’s marriage to Walter Bruck in late 1923 or early 1924 might also have taken place in the same Evangelical Church, so I carefully scrolled through the rest of marriage register for St. Elisabeth’s, to no avail.
Given Dr. Bruck’s prominence in the city of Breslau during his lifetime, Stephen Falk made an excellent recommendation. He suggested I try and track down a contemporary newspaper that might have included an announcement of Dr. Bruck’s second marriage. I was quickly able to determine the largest Breslau newspaper of the time was the “Breslauer Zeitung” (i.e., “zeitung”=newspaper) but was uncertain whether historic copies of the tabloid can be found online. Consequently, I contacted my friend from Wrocław, Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska, Branch Manager, Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Cemetery), Branch of the City Museum of Wrocław. Renata graciously provided a link to another Polish database (https://www.dbc.wroc.pl/dlibra?language=en), the Lower Silesian Digital Library. (Figure 20)
The site includes some back issues of the Breslauer Zeitung, although none for the year Dr. Bruck remarried in either 1923 or 1924. As readers can see, in the very center of the Lower Silesian Digital Library portal page there is a search bar. Beyond looking for old Breslau newspapers, out of curiosity I also searched my family surname, and happened upon references related to three other eminent Bruck ancestors from Breslau, Dr. Julius Bruck (Dr. Walter Bruck’s father), Dr. Eberhard Bruck, and Dr. Felix Bruck. Readers with ancestral connections to Breslau can do similar searches. Occasionally, genealogists may even be rewarded by finding historic pictures of one’s predecessors.
I can’t conclude this Blog post without conceding the obstacles and challenges genealogists face in searching and finding information for ancestors who may hail from Silesia. The language barrier turns out to be the easiest to overcome. Readers should be able to figure out how to access the civil records from the Wrocław Archives, although the process of scrolling through all of them can be tedious, particularly when one does not have dates for any vital events in an ancestor’s life. Figuring out which Protestant or Catholic parish relatives may have lived in, and then hoping the church records for that parish still exist can also be exasperating. Knowing that the protection period for vital events has expired, and then being unable to find digitized copies of those records can be vexing. The list of challenges goes on, but my advice to genealogists is to persist. Experimenting by following some of the steps I’ve outlined should be helpful. Bear in mind that doing ancestral searches can at times involve a steep learning curve.
Note: In this Blog post, I introduce readers to the visitors and clients who signed one of two guestbooks maintained by my ancestor Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, an array of nobiliary and accomplished patrons representing many duchies and disciplines.
Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 1), acclaimed dentist and distant relative of mine from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland], has been the subject of multiple Blog posts. Thanks to a German doctor from Köpenick, Berlin, Dr. Tilo Wahl, who photographed or purchased at auction many personal letters, photos, medals, and memorabilia belonging to my esteemed ancestor and generously shared scans of them with me, I have had a trove of materials to mine for Blog stories. The current post is another result of a closer examination of Dr. Bruck’s private papers.
During the late 1920’s and the early 1930’s Dr. Bruck and his family lived in Breslau, Germany in a luxurious home at Reichspräsidentenplatz 17, also called Kaiser Wilhelm-Platz (Figure 2), with the owner of record at the time being Walter Bruck. Following the death of Paul von Hindenburg, the German general and statesman who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and later became President of Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934, Reichspräsidentenplatz was renamed by the Nazis to Hindenburgplatz. The renaming of the square was reflected in Breslau address books from 1935 onwards. By 1937, however, Walter’s wife Johanna Bruck was now shown as the owner of record even though Walter continued to live there until he died on the 31st of March 1937. The change in ownership from Walter to Johanna Bruck was a measure to avoid expropriation of the estate by the Nazis as Walter was considered “Jewish,” whereas his wife was deemed to be “Aryan.”
From surviving pictures and two guestbooks belonging to Dr. Bruck that Dr. Wahl physically acquired we know that Dr. Bruck and his wife Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch often entertained and had overnight guests. The visitors seemingly were expected to sign the larger of the guestbooks upon their departure. (Figures 3a-b) This register is 35 pages long with the first guest signature written on the 13th of July 1900 and the last one on the 14th of January 1934. Though the visitors included known family members the bulk of the autographs and entries appear to have been recorded by friends, acquaintances, and colleagues, many of whom were renowned and accomplished individuals. Possibly later I will write a post about this first guestbook and tell readers about some of the names I recognize or have been able to uncover information about.
However, this Blog post will deal with the much shorter second guestbook, what I’ll characterize as the register for “special” guests. I presume that most of the people who signed this register were clients of Dr. Walter Bruck rather than guests of my ancestor, although one cannot preclude the possibility that some of these acclaimed individuals were provided with accommodations. Names and several business cards are found on seven pages of this guestbook. (Figures 4a-g) My friend Peter Hanke graciously deciphered the names, and, astonishingly, found web links to most of the people. There are 42 separate entries representing 40 different individuals. In the case of a few individuals the written name was insufficient to positively identify the person; only one signature could not be construed. The earliest signature is recorded in January-February of 1923, and the last one on the 7th of October 1932, making the time span this guestbook covered much shorter than the first one.
Given the illustrious cadre of clients Dr. Bruck treated, it is impossible in a few words to render justice to their enormous accomplishments. Still, there are a few things that stand out in the roles some played in historic events of their day or as relatives to individuals known to readers. I will identify the signators whose names could be made out and highlight a few things of possible interest.
Edwin Henckel von Donnersmarck (1865-1929) (Figures 4b & 5) was a German-Polish count, landowner, mining entrepreneur, and member of the Prussian House of Representatives.
Albrecht Eugen Maria Philipp Carl Joseph Fortunatus Duke of Württemberg (1895-1954) (Figures 4b & 6) was a German officer and prince of the Royal House of Württemberg. Albrecht Eugen belonged to the Catholic line of the House of Württemberg. At the beginning of WWI, he was drafted into the Württemberg Army where he served four years as captain of the 1st Württemberg Grenadier Regiment; he fought in Flanders, France, and Italy. With the death of King Wilhelm II of Württemberg in 1921, Albrecht Eugen inherited the lordship of Carlsruhe in Silesia, where he worked as a farmer and forester.
During WWII, Albrecht Eugen Herzog von Württemberg again did military service in the Wehrmacht, but not at the front, but in staff service, without a rank as a general staff officer. Because members of the House of Württemberg were known as opponents of the Nazi regime, Albrecht Eugen remained in the rank of captain and was not promoted. He was involved in missions in France, Romania, and the Soviet Union. In 1943 he was forced to resign from the Wehrmacht due to the “Prince’s Decree” (German: Prinzenerlass) This refers to a secret decree issued by Adolf Hitler in the spring of 1940. In it, he prohibited all princes that were soldiers in the Wehrmacht who came from the princely and royal houses that had ruled until 1918 from participating in combat operations in WWII. On the 19th of May 1943, Hitler completely expelled all members of formerly ruling princely houses from the Wehrmacht.
By January 1945, Albert Eugen was forced to flee from Carlsruhe (now spelled Karlsruhe) in the current German state of Baden-Württemberg, as Russian troops besieged the area. His castle there with its extensive library of over 30,000 volumes was destroyed by the Red Army.
On the 24th of January 1924, Albrecht Eugen Duke of Württemberg married the Bulgarian Princess Nadezhda (1899-1958), a daughter of Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria. Like her husband, she too signed Dr. Bruck’s guestbook and was probably also one of his patients. (see signature 19)
3. Otto Lummer, Direktor des Physikalischen Instituts der Universität Breslau, Geh[eimer] Reg[ierungs-] Rat, Dr. ing. h.c. etc.—März 1923
(Otto Lummer, Director of the Institute of Physics of the University of Breslau, Privy Government Councilor, Doctor of Engineering, h.c. etc., March 1923)
Otto Richard Lummer (1860-1925) (Figures 4b & 7) was a German physicist. Among multiple other inventions, with Eugen Brodhun (1860-1938) he developed the photometer cube. A photometer cube or photometer is an instrument for measuring photometric quantities such as luminance or luminous intensity. In astronomy, it is used to measure the brightness of celestial bodies, while in photography, as readers know, the photometer is used as an exposure meter.
Julius Heinrich Pohl (1861-1942) (Figure 4b) was an Austrian-German pharmacologist and biochemist. From 1897 to 1911 he was Professor of Pharmacology at the German University of Prague and then Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Breslau until 1928.
This signature belongs to Mary Theresa Olivia Cornwallis-West, called “Daisy” (1873-1943) (Figures 4b & 8), who was born in Ruthin Castle, Wales, Great Britain. She became the Princess of Pleß [today: Pszczyna, Poland], the Countess of Hochberg, and the Baroness of Fürstenstein [today: Wałbrzych, Poland]. She was considered the first high-society lady of the European aristocracy. Quoting about her from a website entitled “hostedby.pl”:
Figure 9. Current map showing the distance from Pless, Germany [today: Pzczyna, Poland] to Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]“Duchess Maria Teresa Olivia Hochberg von Pless, born on June 28, 1873, known as Daisy, was a English aristocrat connected with the palace in Pszczyna, Poland [German: Pless] (Figure 9) and castle in Książ, Wałbrzych [German: Waldenberg] (Figure 10), eldest daughter of Colonel William Cornwallis-West, the owner of the castle Ruthin and estate Newlands, and Mary Adelaide from the home of Fitz-Patrick. She spent all her happy childhood in the Ruthin Castle in North Wales and in a manor house in Newlands. She was closely associated with the court of King Edward VII and George V, relative to the major aristocratic houses of Great Britain. Her brother George was the stepfather of Winston Churchill. She was considered one of the most beautiful aristocrats of her time. Her involvement with the House of Hochberg resulted from an invitation to a masked ball hosted by the Prince of Wales where she met her future husband, Hans Heinrich XV, Prince of Pless, eleven years her elder.
On the 8th of December 1891, (one year after first meeting him) the eighteen-year-old Daisy married wealthy Prince Hans Heinrich XV Pless Hochberg. The wedding took place at London’s Westminster Abbey, and the witness was Edward, Prince of Wales. The wedding was very impressive (the Hochberg Family was the third richest family in Germany and the seventh richest in Europe), echoed in the wide world with the political and aristocratic guests from all parts of Europe. After the wedding ceremony Daisy and her husband went on their honeymoon around the world. After that she came to the Ksiaz, where she felt at this point like a princess from a fairy tale: she had her own castle, own service, beautiful costumes, rich husband and… was terribly far from her native home in England.”
Daisy hosted lavish parties at her family’s immense estates in Silesia and at the magnificent castles of Fürstenstein and Pleß. Invitations to her affairs were highly sought. She was friends with the outstanding men of her time, including the last German Emperor Wilhelm II. Despite her fairytale existence and trying to become a good subject of her new country, Daisy von Pless felt a British sense of superiority over Germany, which she considered “uncivilized.”
At the beginning of WWI, Daisy von Pless left Fürstenstein Castle for political and family reasons. As an Englishwoman, she was constantly subjected to political hostility and accusations of treason. From August 1914, she worked as a Red Cross nurse on hospital trains in France and experienced the end of the war in 1918 in an Austrian hospital in Serbia.
She did not return to Silesia until 1921. On December 12, 1922, Daisy divorced her husband in Berlin and received a severance payment, which lost value due to inflation. She first lived in the English community of La Napoule near Cannes and in Munich until she moved back to Waldenburg for financial reasons. The entire property of the von Pless family was expropriated in 1939, and in 1940 she had to move out of the castle when a new Führer’s headquarters was expanded there. She visited the Groß-Rosen concentration camp nearby several times and sent food there to demonstrate her revulsion with the Nazi regime. In 1943, lonely due to chronic diseases and social isolation, she died impoverished in Waldenburg. Her coffin was reburied in an unknown place before the Red Army invaded in 1945.
This signature belongs to Prince Heinrich XXX of Reuss (1864-1939). (Figures 4b & 11) On September 28, 1898, in Breslau, he married Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen (i.e., located in the southwest of the present-day German state of Thuringia (Figure 12)). He was born in the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha [German: German Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha] (Figure 13) which was a dual monarchy in Germany. This means that one ruler ruled over two countries, in this case the duchies of Coburg and Gotha.
Hans Heinrich XV, Prince of Pless, Count of Hochberg (1861-1938) (Figures 4b & 14) was a German nobleman and mining industrialist and married to Daisy von Pless (1873–1943) (see signature 6). They and their three children often lived at Fürstenstein Castle, the largest castle in Silesia. It is located on the northern edge of the town of Wałbrzych [German: Waldenberg] in the Książ district in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland (see Figure 10). Prince Pleß had a close relationship with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who regularly spent the hunt season in autumn at Pleß Castle. The emperor also commissioned the prince with confidential missions. During WWI, Pleß Castle was the seat of the imperial headquarters for months.
After the end of the war and the re-establishment of the Polish state, Hans Heinrich remained in Upper Silesia. The attempt to sell the entire property before July 12, 1922, the official takeover of Upper Silesia by Poland after WWI, failed. Thus, Hans Heinrich XV became a Polish citizen, although he was often on trips abroad or lived on the estates located in Germany.
Hans Heinrich XIV Bolko Graf (Count) von Hochberg (1843-1926) (Figures 4b & 15) was a German diplomat, conductor, and composer. He was born at Fürstenstein Castle [German: Waldenberg; Polish: Wałbrzych] (see Figure 10) and came from the noble family of the Counts of Hochberg who resided at Fürstenstein Castle.
10. Per aspera ad astra – R. Pfeiffer—30.4.23
(“Through hardships to the stars,” R[udolf] Pfeiffer: 30th of April 1923)
This signature belongs to Rudolf Carl Franz Otto Pfeiffer (1889-1979) (Figure 4b) who was a German classical philologist (i.e., a person who studies classical antiquity usually referring to the study of Classical Greek and Latin literature and the related languages; it also includes Greco-Roman philosophy, history, archaeology, anthropology, art, mythology, and society as secondary subjects)
Per aspera ad astra is a Latin phrase meaning “through hardships to the stars” or “Our aspirations take us to the stars.” The phrase is one of the many Latin sayings that use the expression ad astra, meaning “to the stars.”
Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (German: Hermine, Prinzessin Reuß zu Greiz (1887-1947) (Figure 4c) was the second wife of Germany’s last Emperor, Wilhelm II. (Figure 16) They were married in 1922, four years after he abdicated as German Emperor and King of Prussia. He was her second husband; her first husband, Prince Johann of Schönaich-Carolath, had died in 1920. I have previously explained Dr. Bruck’s relationship with Kaiser Wilhelm II and his second wife in Post 100.
12. Geheimrat Professor Dr. Max Koch—25. Juni 1923
(Privy Councilor Professor Dr. Max Koch, 25th of June 1923)
Maxwell “Max” Koch (1854-1925) (Figure 4c) was a German-born Australian botanical collector.
13. Dr. jur. Bernhard Grund, den 17. Juli 1923—Präsident der Handelskammer
(Dr. jur. Bernhard Grund, President of the Chamber of Commerce)
Dr. Felix Porsch (1853-1930) (Figures 4c & 17) was a German lawyer and politician of the Centre Party. The latter gained its greatest importance between 1871 and 1933 (i.e. the period between the founding of the German Empire and the end of the Weimar Republic). It was the party of Catholics and political Catholicism in the strongly Protestant-dominated German Empire.
15. Fürstin Hatzfeldt—24. Mai 1924 [Trachenberg bei Breslau] (Figure 18)
(Princess Hatzfeldt, Trachenberg [today: Żmigród, Poland] near Breslau, 24th of May 1924)
Hatzfeld, also spelled Hatzfeldt (Figure 4c), is the name of an ancient and influential German noble family. It is not clear who exactly was this princess.
Karl von Frisch (1886-1982) (Figures 4c & 19) was a German-Austrian ethologist (i.e., someone who studies animal behavior) who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, along with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz. His work centered on investigations of the sensory perceptions of the honeybee, and he was one of the first to translate the meaning of the waggle dance. Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honeybee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share information with other members of the colony about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new nest-site locations.
17. M[ax] Friederichsen, Universitätsprofessor Dr. phil, Direktor des Geographischen Instituts—3.6.1924
(M[ax] Friederichsen, University Professor, Dr. Phil., Director of the Geographical Institute, 3rd of June 1924)
18. Dr. Fritz Reiche, Universitätsprofessor für theoretische Physik—5.6.1924
(Dr. Fritz Reiche, University Professor for theoretical physics, 5th of June 1924)
Dr. Fritz Reiche (1883-1969) (Figure 4c) was a German theoretical physicist who emigrated to the United States in 1941. I will not try to unintelligibly explain to readers the disciplinary studies Reiche was involved in. There is, however, one fascinating account from a book written by a Robert Jungk entitled “Heller als tausend Sonnen,” “Brighter Than A Thousand Suns,” worth mentioning. The book describes the history of the atomic bomb and its carriers. According to this book, shortly before his departure to the United States in March 1941, Max Reiche was approached by the physicist Friedrich Georg Houtermans asking him to deliver a secret message to physicists in America about the atomic bomb. Anticipating that the Nazis would urge the German physicists to build an atomic bomb, the German theoretical physicist Werner Karl Heisenberg, one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics, was supposedly trying to slow-walk the process. Reiche delivered this message to Rudolf Ladenburg, whom he knew from Berlin and Breslau, who forwarded the message to Washington. However, according to a play entitled “Copenhagen” by Michael Frayn, a three-person play based on the historic meeting of the two physicists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe in 1941 in German-occupied Copenhagen, there are strong doubts as to whether Heisenberg and his working group were really trying to thwart the construction of the atomic bomb. Perhaps, future historic documents may reveal the truth?
(Nadezhda, Duchess of Württemberg, 18th of July 1924)
Figure 20. Nadejda [Nadezhda] Herzogin von Württemberg (1899-1958)Nadezhda (1899-1958) (Figures 4d & 20) who spent her childhood mainly in Sofia and Euxinograd, Bulgaria as well as on the estates of her father came from the House of Saxe-Coburg (see Figure 13). After WWI she had to leave Bulgaria with her family and went into exile in Coburg. In 1924 she married Duke Albrecht Eugen (see signature 2) with whom she had five children. From 1925 to 1930 the couple lived in Carlsruhe (now spelled Karlsruhe) in the current German state of Baden-Württemberg (see Figure 12).
20. Universitätsprofessor Dr. Ludolf Malten—Direktor des Philologischen Seminars
(University Professor Dr. Ludolf Malten, Director of the Philological Seminary)
Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf Malten (1879-1969) (Figure 4d) was like Rudolf Pfeiffer (see signature 10) a German classical philologist and religious scholar. As previously mentioned, philology is the literary study of Latin and Ancient Greek, the two languages considered “classical.” In 1919 Malten became a professor at the University of Königsberg in East Prussia. In 1922 he moved to the University of Breslau, where he remained until the end of WWII. After his escape from Breslau in 1945 as the Red Army was approaching, Malten went to the University of Göttingen where he spent the remainder of his career.
21. ?????
UNKNOWN
22. Professor Puppe—Direktor des Gerichtsärztlichen Instituts—Geheimer Medizinalrat
(Puppe, Director of the Judicial Medical Institute- Privy Medical Councilor)
Georg Puppe (1867-1925) (Figure 4d) was a German forensic and social physician. He basically founded the field of social medicine which essentially deals scientifically and practically with the state of health of the population and its determinants, the organization of health care, social security, and the political determinants of health, as well as the effects and costs of medical care. According to some experts, social medicine is a bridge between medicine and other disciplines, such as law, sociology, social work, psychology, statistics, and economics.
23. Professor R[obert] Wollenberg—Direktor der Univ[ersitäts] Nervenklinik—Geheimer Medizinalrat
(Professor R[obert] Wollenberg, Director of the Univ[ersity] Nerves Clinic – Privy Medical Councilor)
Sieghard (1886-1963) (Figures 4d & 22) was a Prince from the Schoenaich-Carolath family, a Lower Lusatian noble family that came to Silesia as a branch in the 16th century; the Silesian branch was elevated to the rank of Imperial Count in 1700 and to the Prussian princely status in 1741. Lower Lusatia is a region and former territory in the south of the state of Brandenburg, northern Saxony, and western Poland. Its principal city is Cottbus. He got married in May 1936 to Gräfin (Countess) Elisabeth zu Castell-Rüdenhausen (1906-1977), from whom he divorced in 1956.
Friedrich Christian Albert Leopold Anno Sylvester Macarius Prince of Saxony Duke of Saxony (1893-1968) (Figures 4e & 23) was the second eldest son of King Frederick August III of Saxony, the last King of Saxony, and his wife Louise of Tuscany. Friedrich Christian Herzog was the younger brother of Georg, Crown Prince of Saxony (see signature 29), born a mere eleven months later.
Kinsky of Wchinitz and Tettau (originally Wchinsky, Czech Kinští z Vchynic a Tetova) is the name of a Bohemian noble family, which is known in documents since 1237. Historically, the family acquired important properties in the Kingdom of Bohemia, a medieval and early modern monarchy in Central Europe and the predecessor of the modern Czech Republic. By 1929, roughly 50 percent of Prince Rudolf’s (1859-1930) extensive Bohemia properties had been expropriated. The remaining Czech possessions were lost after WWII due to nationalization because of the Beneš Decrees, though some former possessions in the Czech Republic were returned to the family after 1990. The Kinskys provided numerous important statesmen in the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the Habsburg Monarchy. The historical capital of Bohemia was Prague, since 1918 the capital of Czechoslovakia and now the Czech Republic.
27. Friedrich Christian Herzog zu Sachsen—17.III.1925
(Sieghard Prince of Schoenaich-Carolath, 17th of March 1925)
Georg, Crown Prince of Saxony (1893-1943) (Figures 4e & 25), the last Crown Prince of Saxony, was the heir to the King of Saxony, Frederick Augustus III, at the time of the monarchy’s abolition on 13 November 1918. After the abolition of the monarchy and the abdication of the emperor and the federal princes, George became a Roman Catholic priest. As I implied under Duke Albrecht Eugen von Württemberg (see signature 2), during the time of the National Socialists, former royal members were unpopular, so Georg Herzog devoted himself to consulting at this time. He died of a heart attack while swimming at the age of 50. Georg was the older brother of Friedrich Christian Herzog of Saxony (see signatures 25 & 27).
30. Carl Budding—Deutscher Staatsvertreter bei der Gemischten Kommission und dem Schiedsgerichte für Oberschlesien
(Carl Budding, German State Representative to the Mixed Commission and Arbitration Court for Upper Silesia)
Aloys Fürst of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg (1871-1952) (Figures 4e & 27) was a member and from 1908 head of the southern German noble family Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg, a centrist politician and from 1920 to 1948 president of the Central Committee of German Catholics. Adolf Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933 made it impossible for the Central Committee to continue working. In 1934, for the planned German Katholikentag, German Catholic Day, Prussian Prime Minister Hermann Göring demanded an oath of allegiance to the Third Reich, which Aloys zu Löwenstein refused to provide resulting in cancellation of the event; it would not again take place until 1948.
Hermann Friedrich Anton was the 3rd Prince of Hatzfeldt of Trachenberg (see Figure 18). He was born at the family castle in Trachenberg and raised Catholic. In 1874 he succeeded his deceased father, who was excommunicated in 1847, as head of the Hatzfeldt-Trachenberg line. On the 1st of January 1900 he was awarded the hereditary title “Duke of Trachenberg” in primogeniture. From 1894 to 1903 he was President of the Province of Silesia. In 1872 he married Natalie Gräfin von Benckendorff (1854–1931), who is presumed to be signature 34.
34. Prinzessin von Hatzfeldt Trachtenberg—11.4.1927 (see signature 15)
(Princess Hatzfeldt, Trachenberg [today: Żmigród, Poland] near Breslau, 11th of April 1927)
(see signature 33 & Figure 4f)
35. v[on] Gröning—Universitätskurator—Regierungspräsident z. D.—12.4.1927 (v[on] Gröning, University Trustee-Governor (retired), 12th of April 1927)
Albert Heinrich von Gröning (1867-1951) (Figure 4f) was a German administrative lawyer in Prussia. From 1926 Gröning was curator of the Silesian Friedrich-Wilhelms-University and state commissioner for the Technical University of Breslau.
Countess Herzeleide of Ruppin (1918-1989) (Figures 4f & 30) was born on Christmas Day 1918, shortly after the defeat of the German Reich and the collapse of the monarchy. For this reason, she was given the name Herzeleide, which in German means “heartbreak.” Her grandfather was Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor, and her father was Prince Oskar of Prussia, the 5th son of Wilhelm II. On August 15, 1938, Herzeleide married Prince Karl Biron von Courland, and was thereafter known as Herzeleide Prinzessin von Preussen (Prinzessin Biron von Curland).
Biron of Curland is a Courland noble family, originating from Latvia (Courland in Latvia is Kurzeme), that also settled in Silesia and Bohemia. Branches of the family still exist today. Courland (Latvian Kurzeme) (Figure 31) is one of the four historical landscapes of Latvia, along with Semgallen (Zemgale), Central Livonia (Vidzeme) and Latgale (Latgale).
37. Wanda, Fürstin Blücher von Wahlstatt—26.IX.1928
(Wanda, Princess Blücher of Wahlstatt, 26th of September 1928)
Gräfin Wanda Ada Hedwig Blücher von Wahlstatt (Prinzessin Radziwill) (1877-1966) (Figure 4f) was married to Gebhard Leberecht Fürst Blücher von Wahlstatt (1836-1916), a Prussian nobleman and member of the Prussian House of Lords. Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher was the 3rd Prince Blücher von Wahlstatt, a family of the Mecklenburg nobility (see Figure 13). He was one of the great feudal landowners of Silesia.
Blandine Gravina (1863-1941) (Figures 4f & 32) was a daughter of Cosima Wagner and Hans von Bülow and a granddaughter of Franz Liszt. Blandine’s parents divorced in 1870, and her mother Cosima married Richard Wagner later that same year. Richard Wagner, known to many readers, is considered one of the most important innovators of European music in the 19th century.
Princess Eudoxia of Bulgaria (1898-1985) (Figures 4f & 33) was a Bulgarian princess who played the role of the First Lady of Bulgaria for some time until her brother Boris married Princess Joan of Savoy. Eudoxia’s sister was Princess Nadezhda (see signature 19), and her brother-in-law was Duke Albrecht Eugen of Württemberg (see signature 2).
Princess Eudoxia was born in Sofia, Bulgaria as the eldest daughter of King Ferdinand I of Bulgaria and his first wife, Princess María Luisa de Borbón-Parma. Princess Eudoxia never married or had children and lived with her sister Nadezhda’s in-laws in Germany.
(M[agnus] Baron v[on] Braun, Reichminister of Agriculture, 7th of October 1932)
Magnus Freiherr von Braun (1878-1972) was a German lawyer and politician. In the last two governments of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) he served as Minister of Agriculture (1932-32). One of his sons was the armaments and missile manager Wernher von Braun (1912-1977), the very well-known German and later American rocket engineer who pioneered weapons and space travel.
42. Dr. iur. [Dorotheus] Kracker von Schwartzenfeldt—Kaiserlich Deutscher Gesandter a.D. (fragt ergebenst an, ob er Dienstag den 5. d[es] M[onats] zu irgend einer Zeit …..) z[ur] Z[ei]t Breslau, Tauentzienstr. 71
[BUSINESS CARD—Figure 4g]
(Dr. iur. [Dorotheus] Kracker von Schwartzenfeldt, Imperial German Envoy (retired)) (humbly inquires whether he will be available on Tuesday, the 5th of March at any time. . .)
This business card belonged to Dr. iuris Dorotheus Kracker von Schwartzenfeldt (1869-1953). He was the Kaiserlicher Legations-Sekretär und Geschäftsträger in Bogotá (Imperial Legation Secretary and Chargé d’Affaires in Bogotá) and had previously worked for the last German Emperor Wilhelm II in Doorn, Netherlands, after the Kaiser abdicated the throne following WWI.
As mentioned at the outset, the entries in Dr. Bruck’s guestbook for “special” visitors and/or dental patients covers the period from January-February 1923 until October 1932. Among the signatures, you will notice multiple names that include former hereditary titles. To remind readers, the nobility system of the German Empire ended in 1919 when it was abolished. Today, the German nobility is no longer conferred by the Federal Republic of Germany, and constitutionally the descendants to German noble families do not enjoy legal privileges. Former hereditary titles, however, are permitted as part of the surname (i.e., the nobiliary particles von and zu), and these surnames can then be inherited by a person’s children. The continued use of hereditary titles by Dr. Bruck’s visitors should not surprise anyone given the brief time since their use had been abolished in 1919.
Beyond the former members of the nobility that signed Dr. Bruck’s guest register, one will also notice an array of accomplished individuals in the fields of law, politics, science, academia, and more. This speaks to the rarified environment in which Dr. Bruck worked and socialized.
Note: This post is about my great-uncle Robert Samuel Bruck, one of the younger brothers of my grandfather Felix Bruck; he died at sixteen years of age. Not surprisingly, little is known about him, though mention on one family tree suggests he suffered from a mental disability.
My paternal grandfather, Felix Bruck (1864-1927) (Figure 1), whom I never knew, had seven siblings. These were the eight children of my great-grandparents, Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 2) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924). (Figure 3) Because my father almost never spoke about his family, I was able to figure out all the names only after scrolling through one of the Church of Latter-day Saints (LDS) Jewish Microfilms (LDS Microfilm Roll 1184449) for the town where all were born, Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. Here I found the birth register listings for my grandfather and only six of his seven siblings. I knew of the seventh because my father used to refer to her somewhat derisively in French as “la Communiste,” because she was a high-ranking member of East Germany’s post-WWII Communist government. In time I came to learn her name was Elisabeth “Elsbeth” Bruck. (Figure 4)
Because of events surrounding what is called the Kulturkampf, vital records such as births, marriages, and deaths, that used to be maintained and recorded by the various religious denominations, came to be registered as civil events. The Kulturkampf was a conflict that took place from 1872 to 1878 (dates vary) between the government of the Kingdom of Prussia led by Otto von Bismarck and the Roman Catholic Church led by Pope Pius IX. The main issues were clerical control of education and ecclesiastical appointments. Because of the Kulturkampf Elsbeth Bruck’s birth which occurred in 1874 was entered into the civil records and found at the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”) rather than among the Jewish vital records. (Figure 5)
Regardless, after discovering the names of my grandfather’s siblings, naturally, I became curious what had happened to them. I quickly learned that in addition to my grandfather, five of his siblings had survived to adulthood, and been productive or accomplished members of society. The two siblings whose fate I was initially unable to uncover were Elise Bruck (born 1868) and Robert Samuel Bruck (born 1871). (Figure 6) Then, as I discussed in Post 44, I uncovered a family tree in the “Pinkus Family Collection,” archived and available online through the Leo Baeck Institute, that provided the death dates for these two ancestors. (Figure 7) Elise Bruck died at less than four years of age of unknown causes, while Robert Samuel Bruck died in Braunschweig, Germany, otherwise known as Brunswick, Germany, in 1887, also for untold reasons.
Following publication of Post 44, my friend Peter Hanke (Figure 8) offered to help me learn more about Robert Samuel Bruck. I affectionately dub Peter the “Wizard of Wolfsburg” because of his genealogical prowess and the fact he once worked at the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. In reading Post 44, Peter noticed that Robert had passed away in Braunschweig (Brunswick), which just so happens to be only 20 miles southwest of Wolfsburg near where he lives. (Figure 9) By contrast, Braunschweig is 444 miles west-northwest of Ratibor, (Figure 10) where Robert was born. It is a persistent mystery why Robert died so far from home. Naturally, I accepted Peter’s gracious offer to learn what might have happened to Robert; given that he was a teenager when he prematurely died, I thought he might have suffered an accident while serving as an apprentice in some unknown specialty.
Peter submitted an inquiry to the Staatsarchiv Wolfenbüttel, the State Archive in Wolfenbüttel, eight miles south of Braunschweig (Brunswick), which forwarded the request to the Stadtarchiv Braunschweig, the City Archive in Braunschweig. Ultimately, despite Peter’s efforts, the archive was unable to uncover any evidence that Robert either lived or died in Braunschweig. Thus, without Robert’s death certificate his cause of death remains a mystery.
Naturally, I assumed this would be the last I would learn of my distant ancestor. And this is mostly true. However, among the personal papers from my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), given to me by Dr, Tilo Wahl, which I discussed in Post 99, is another family tree. Amazingly, in capitalized letters is written “ROBERT IDIOT.” (Figure 11) Setting aside the obviously inappropriately crass and vulgar reference to a person with a disability, it strongly implies Robert suffered a mental or possibly physical impairment that dramatically shortened his life. What this may have been remains unknown. Also, why he wound up in Braunschweig can only be guessed at, but possibly he was sent to a sanatorium there for medical treatment of a chronic illness.
Given the many accomplished and interesting characters that populate my family tree, I feel compelled at times to remember the less fortunate ones who were unable to lead normal lives or achieve greatness. Which naturally gives rise to questions of one’s mortality or the reason we’re born. So perhaps this post says more about me than it does about Robert Samuel Bruck?
BIRTH & DEATH DATES FOR FEDOR & FRIEDERIKE BRUCK’S EIGHT CHILDREN
Note: In the second part of Post 109, I discuss the broader historic context in which Johanna and Renate Bruck, wife and daughter of my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), recorded the daily happenings in their lives between January 1942 and December 1944. Regrettably, their “Tagebuch” does not encompass the final few months of the war in Berlin through the surrender of the city on May 2, 1945. Thus, the circumstances of any hardships Johanna and Renate may have suffered in this period at the hands of the Russians and the Allies are unknown to us. Like in years 1940 and 1941, Johanna and Renate’s lives are replete with social engagements (getting together with friends; attending movies, plays, and operas; dining out; shopping; clothes fittings; etc.), distractions (tap, tennis, violin lessons), Renate’s amorous liaisons, and, most remarkably, multiple trips. With a few notable exceptions, the war passes almost unnoticed. I do not dwell on Johanna and Renate’s personal lives except where it adds nuance and texture to their accounts or provides some temporal context. From a story-telling perspective, I explore developments in the war and other happenings that while not explicitly discussed in the diary must have weighed on Johanna and Renate’s minds.
As discussed in Post 109(1), in November and December 1941 Johanna Bruck transacted the exchange of her apartment in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] at Oranienstrasse 4, with one in Berlin occupied by a couple named the Günthers, located at Xantener Straße 24, in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Johanna physically relocated to Berlin in February 1942, followed several weeks later by Renate. Johanna used the intervening period to have the apartment completely refurbished and upgraded.
By September 1941 Johanna understood that Renate’s application for her to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” had been or would be rejected. Given how prominent Dr. Walter Bruck (Figures 1-2) had been in Breslau during his lifetime and the certainty the Nazis knew he was “racially” Jewish and that his daughter was a mischling of the first degree may have been the impetus for Johanna to move her daughter to Berlin; after all, by 1938, Renate Bruck had already been expelled from the “Oberlyzeum von Zawadzky,” the Upper Lyceum in the Zawadskie district of Breslau, the private school for daughters from upper class families. Johanna must have felt the anonymity of a larger city afforded her daughter better protection.
My cousin Thomas Koch discovered an interesting thing when he examined the Berlin Address Books following Johanna and Renate’s move to Berlin. Johanna is not listed in the 1942 directory, though this may simply have been a function that her move occurred after the directory went to press. However, more mystifying is that she is not listed in the 1943 Berlin Address Book. There are several possible explanations: (1) sloppiness on the part of the publisher in updating the 1943 Address Book; (2) Johanna and Renate lived at Xantener Straße 24 but under the name of another person because of Renate’s racial status as a mischling. This possibility seems unlikely because it would have made obtaining ration cards very difficult and would have been contradictory to the openly, social lifestyle Johanna and Renate led. (3) Johanna unintentionally forgot to register properly; or (4) Johanna and Renate temporarily lived outside Berlin, which was in fact the case for a period in 1943-1944, which I will discuss below.
On May 4, 1942, Johanna makes one of the few entries suggesting the war may have started to impact the everyday lives of ordinary Germans, when she remarks, “Food very scarce!!!” While the scarcity of food is rarely mentioned again, the arrival of “care” packages from friends and relatives outside of Berlin is carefully noted throughout the diary suggesting Johanna and Renate depended on these.
In Post 109(1), I mentioned to readers that upon Renate’s arrival in Berlin, she attended the “Kunstgewerbeschule,” the School of Arts and Crafts. However, neither Johanna nor Renate ever takes her compulsory schooling seriously; numerous instances of Renate missing school are noted. According to Renate’s lifelong friend, Ina Schaesberg, Renate acquired a special skill in arts and crafts that enabled her to make “very pretty and practical things from felt that sold well and brought in money.”
Renate departed Breslau accompanied by her mother on March 19, 1942, though Renate makes a point of noting that two days prior she had visited Matthias Mehne, her future first husband, at his luthier shop to say her goodbyes. (Figure 3) There was already a clear fondness between the two of them. It seems likely Renate and Matthias met at his shop while she was taking violin lessons there. According to Bettina Mehne, Matthias’s daughter by his second marriage, lessons were given not by Matthias himself but by his good friend, a man named “Kulenkampf.”
Regardless, immediately after Matthias’s arrival in Berlin in February 1943, he called Renate and they become inseparable until he was forced to enlist in the Wehrmacht towards the latter part of April 1943. Readers may recall from Post 108 that Matthias was found to have helped a Jewish detainee and friend, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, escape a Sammellager in Breslau, a collection camp for Jewish deportees, with his rucksack in hand. As punishment, the judge, a friend, forced him to join the army rather than let the Gestapo kill him as they had wanted to, figuring he would be killed anyway. Clearly, Matthias’s departure from Breslau, did not prevent the Wehrmacht from finding him there, so his relocation to Berlin was more likely related to his blossoming relationship with Renate than an attempt to avoid military conscription.
By around the 22nd of April 1943, Matthias was forced to present himself in Paris for induction into the German Army, but not without first talking to Johanna about his future with Renate according to an entry before his departure. It took me a while to work out that Renate and her mother referred to Matthias as “boy” throughout much of the diary, possibly because of his youthful demeanor or for some other unknown reason. He was clearly Renate’s primary love interest (Figure 4), though a man named “Gerhard” (surname unknown) was also vying for her affection at the time, a man her twin daughters claim was a love interest for years after the war following her marriage and divorce from Matthias.
Before backtracking and telling readers about some historic events of WWII I would have expected to be discussed in the Tagebuch, let me briefly tell followers what happened to Matthias following his enlistment. Renate received news of Matthias’s capture on October 12, 1943. He was evidently assigned to the Italian theater-of-war. The Allies landed in Sicily in around July 1943, and by September 1943 had invaded the Italian mainland. Matthias was captured by the Americans in Italy, but quickly turned over to the British and interned as a prisoner of war near Nottingham, England. Renate received her first letter from him dated the 27th of February 1944 about a month later, on the 26th of March 1944. I want to emphatically emphasize that Matthias was not a Nazi but was forced as punishment to enlist in the Wehrmacht because of the courage he had shown trying to help a Jew escape an internment camp in Breslau.
On her 17th birthday on the 16th of June 1943, Renate received a diamond ring. While there is no reason to think this was connected to Matthias, who was by then in the German Army, the day after receiving his first letter in March 1944 following his British internment, Renate celebrated what Johanna referred to as Renate’s “engagement day.” Might Matthias have proposed in his letter? Possibly.
At the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces including Germany’s 6th Army and its foreign allies surrendered in Stalingrad following a brutal battle that had lasted five months, one week, and three days. There is nary any mention of this development during the war in Johanna’s diary. Nor is there any mention of the “Rosenstrasse Protest” that took place in Berlin during February and March 1943, which fundamentally affected Renate and other mischlinge. This demonstration was initiated and sustained by the non-Jewish wives and relatives of Jewish men and mischlinge who had been arrested and targeted for deportation, based on the racial policy of Nazi Germany. What started out with dozens, then hundreds of women protesting, eventually turned into thousands of women demonstrating in icy winter weather over seven days, until 1,700 Berlin Jews herded together into the Jewish community house on Rosenstrasse near Alexanderplatz were freed. The Rosenstrasse protest is considered a significant event in German history as it was the only mass public demonstration by Germans in the Third Reich against the deportation of Jews. One can only imagine how much horror and misery might have been avoided had such protestations by Germans occurred much earlier. To my cousin Thomas Koch this is very personal since his grandmother and future mother were among the Rosenstrasse protestors, and his Jewish grandfather among those freed.
Let me turn now to an entry made by Renate on the 11th of May 1943, in which she noted that she would not be accepted in the Reich Labor Service, the Reichsarbeitsdienst or RAD. The Reich Labor Service was a major organization established in Nazi Germany to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarize the workforce, and indoctrinate it with Nazi ideology. It was the official state labor service, divided into separate sections for men and women. So called “half-breeds,” mischlinge, were not excluded from labor service. The mother of my cousin Thomas, like Renate also a mischling, was in the Reichsarbeitsdienst in 1940. Thus, it is a source of irritation to Thomas that Renate was somehow able to avoid the labor service. Were the conditions “tightened” for Renate through contacts Johanna had that “prevented” her from being accepted? Or was Renate’s non-acceptance intended to protect her from something or exclude her from something contrary to the rules? We may never know the answers to these questions.
Years ago, when I was still working with Thomas Koch trying to discover where Johanna and Renate Bruck had gone after they left Breslau, which we now know to have been in February-March 1942, Thomas shared with me an application that had been submitted by a woman named Ms. Edith Czeczatka to the Tracing Service of the German Red Cross in 1948. Ms. Czeczatka requested information on the whereabouts of Johanna and Renate and gave as their residential address in the town of Erfurt, Germany, Dammweg 9. (Figures 5a-b) I mentioned this in Post 83, even including a picture of the residential building where they lived. (Figure 6) Johanna and Renate’s association with Erfurt was a mystery until the discovery of their Tagebuch.
An entry on the 22nd of May 1943 explains why Renate accompanied by Johanna temporarily moved to Erfurt that year. That day, Renate was told to come for an interview at the employment office of “MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH”; she’d apparently applied for and been hired as a technical draftswoman beginning on June 1st. More on this company below. The company had offices in both Berlin and Erfurt, but Renate was required to report to Erfurt beginning on the 17th of June 1943 for training. Almost immediately, the girls that had been hired were given two months of paid vacation until the drawing rooms were readied. It is clear from the diary that Renate was permanently assigned to work in Erfurt.
Towards the beginning of September 1943, prior to moving to Erfurt, Johanna and Renate went to visit family and friends in Breslau, then spent a few days vacationing in Jannowitz, Silesia [today: Janowice Wielkie, Poland], before returning to Breslau, then leaving for Erfurt on September 12, 1943. For the period of her employment, Renate and her mother lived in Erfurt on weekdays, then returned to Berlin on weekends.
It appears that for at least a year until September 24, 1944, Johanna and Renate lived with a family called the “Hallers.” Then, on September 25, 1944, they moved within Erfurt into the house at Dammweg 9, previously mentioned, where the “Maulhardt” family also lived. Presumably, this was a boarding house the family owned.
Let me digress now and briefly discuss the MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH that Renate worked for. MAKO was a company network owned by Max Kotzan, and the name was a combination of letters from his first and last name. The 1943 Berlin Address Book identified the various components of the business which included chemical-technical and metallurgical development; machine factories; and apparatus engineering and construction. Curious to get a better handle on what the company actually produced, I came upon an obscure reference which I found intriguing because it shed light on Germany’s efforts to develop solid fuel rockets, which might well have changed the trajectory of the war. Quoting briefly from a publication entitled “The V2 and the Russian and American Rocket Program” by Claus Reuter:
“More and more information is now surfacing telling of the launch of a ballistic missile powered by solid propellant near Arnstadt just before the war ended. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Arnstadt is a town in Thuringia, Germany, about 20 kilometers south of Erfurt. During the Second World War, it was the site of a prisoner-of-war camp, mainly for Poles and Russians.]. Many believe it was this missile which was to carry a nuclear payload. The missile was developed in the top-secret think-tank installation at the Skoda factory under the control of the SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler. . . .
. . . Most historians and experts say that because of the shortage of solid propellants the missile was never produced and that no nuclear program existed.
More and more eyewitness accounts surface telling us a different story, accounts which say the missile was launched successfully. Also, a photo surfaced showing a large missile being built at the MAKO factory in Rudesleben, Thuringia. It shows the Sonderrakete A-4 (Special Rocket A-4) for solid fuel. The launch took place nearby at one of the top-secret factories in Thuringia the Polte 2 plant. The plant was controlled by SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler.
The MAKO plant specialized in the construction of pressure tanks and also produced equipment for the Luftwaffe, like drop tank, for the rocket program oxygen tanks for the V-1 and also mobile liquid oxygen transport tanks for the V-2 rocket batteries. The MAKO was owned by Maz Kotzan. Kotzan as a WWI flyer had close connections to Hermann Goering and Ernst Udet, both WWI pilots. The MAKO received the contracts from the RLM [EDITOR’S NOTE: Nazi Germany’s Ministry of Aviation, “Reichsluftfahrtministerium,” abbreviated RLM]. Behind the Polte 2 plant Kotzan had erected two aircraft hangers and a landing strip.
Here personalities like SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler or Wernher von Braun arrived to visit some of the installations. In the MAKO and Polte 2 plants some of the top-secret developments were tested. It was here that the Americans found the top-secret radar-absorbing aircraft paint. The paint was immediately shipped to the U.S.”
I am obviously no rocket scientist, pardon the pun, so suffice it to say the advantage of a solid motor is that it can provide huge amounts of thrust, and is therefore used as a booster to make satellite launching rockets gain high initial velocity before using higher-efficient liquid motors to gain horizontal velocity above the densest part of the atmosphere. There seems little doubt that had the Nazis been able to master this technology and place fissile material atop a missile powered by solid fuel, at a minimum, the war would have dragged on and more misery and death occurred.
I will readily acknowledge to readers that I have veered quite a distance from Johanna and Renate’s diary, but this was primarily in the interest of drawing attention to the company for which Renate worked, which was obviously deeply involved in Germany’s arms development. There is virtually no mention in their diary of Johanna and Renate’s time in Erfurt, except for their continuing active social lives. However, it is safe to assume that part of their reticence to talk about Erfurt could be connected to statements of secrecy they were sworn to. Clearly, as a mischling Renate wanted to draw as little attention to herself as possible, and it’s somewhat surprising the company even hired her given her status.
Evidently, by virtue of Renate’s amorous relationship with Matthias Mehne, her future first husband, she and Johanna had gotten to know Matthias’s parents, referred to as “Ma and Pa” in the diary and his sister “Lu,” short for Luzie. Matthias’s parents were Albert Eugen Mehne (b. 1883, Dresden) and Hedwig Gertrud Marie Göbel. Johanna and Renate regularly visited, received packages, and stayed in touch with them during Matthias’s wartime absence. While a reference I found states Albert Eugen Mehne moved to Gelsenkirchen, Germany around 1922 (Figure 7), which is about 500 miles due west of Breslau, Johanna and Renate always visited them in Breslau during the war, suggesting Matthias’s parents had returned there at some point.
Surprisingly, Johanna and Renate traveled quite extensively during the years 1942 through 1944. While there were periodic disruptions and delays on account of the war, amazingly the trains continued to run on a predictable schedule though often with significant delays. Among the places they stayed besides Berlin, Breslau, and Erfurt were the widely scattered towns of Friedrichroda (small town and health resort in Thuringia), Babelsberg, Potsdam, Jannowitz, Neuendorf and Kantreck in Pomerania bordering the Baltic Sea, and Hamburg. They clearly knew people in many of these places, but others were seemingly vacation destinations.
Not surprisingly, the war had an impact on the lives of Johanna and Renate, although this fact is rarely manifested in the diary. However, on the night of February 16, 1944, the Allies launched a major bomb attack against Berlin, and the following day Johanna was notified by teletype that “our apartment had suffered greatly.” Then, on February 18th, Johanna remarks “Our apartment—a field of rubble, quite terrible.” It does not become clear until an entry in the early part of May 1944 that Johanna and Renate’s apartment was still habitable.
It goes without saying there are dozens and dozens more entries in Johanna and Renate’s Tagebuch reflecting on the weather, taking umbrage in air raid shelters, Johanna being hospitalized, and much more. Readers should realize I’ve been very selective in the entries I’ve chosen to highlight to make this post engaging and more reflective of the wartime events that had to have impacted Johanna and Renate’s lives. My intent is merely to give followers a glimpse into the lives that my ancestors Johanna and Renate Bruck lived during WWII (Figure 8), and how surprisingly “normal” their existence seems to have been given the enormity of death and destruction that surrounded them.
Note: This is the first of a two-part story about the wartime “journal” or “diary” written by Johanna and Renate Bruck, the widow and daughter of my esteemed ancestor from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland], Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), a second cousin twice removed. The German word “Tagebuch” strictly speaking translates as a diary or journal but in effect is more of a record or log of the extensive daily activities Johanna and Renate were engaged in between January 1940 and December 1944. What could have been an extremely absorbing account of the daily lives of an Aryan woman and her “mischling” daughter during WWII, within the context of global events and the impact of National Socialism on Jews, half-Jews, Germans, and others in Europe, instead turns into a mundane and drab account of their rather “ordinary” existences. The Tagebuch is often more remarkable for what it omits than what it says about the ongoing events of the tragic period in which it was written. It is difficult to make sense of many of the entries, which would in any case be of little or no interest to readers. For this reason I explain some of the war-related references and discuss a few specific people I’ve been able to identify.
Regular followers of my Blog are aware of the multiple posts I have recently written about Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) and his extended family. This sequence of posts was prompted by a contact earlier this year from a Berlin doctor, Dr. Tilo Wahl, who in around 2013 purchased at auction the commemorative medals, personal effects, private papers, and photos that once belonged to Dr. Bruck. The seller of these items was Nicholas Newman, Dr. Bruck’s grandson, who sadly committed suicide in 2015 in London.
As Ms. Madeleine Isenberg, my friend affiliated with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, has been wont to tell me, there is no such thing as coincidence but rather as her uncle impressed upon her, its “beshert,” fate or predestination. Not only was it providential Dr. Wahl would stumble upon my Blog and contact me, but that he would also share copies of Dr. Bruck’s personal papers and photos. This was magnified when Nicholas Newman’s twin sisters from Sydney, Australia, similarly chanced upon my Blog while researching their deceased brother and contacted me.
Nicholas’s twin siblings, Francesca and Michele Newman (Figure 1), are the offspring of Renate Bruck’s third marriage. Since our initial encounter, we have developed a warm relationship and have had several Zoom calls. The twins have been able to fill in a few holes in my understanding of their mother and grandmother’s lives following their grandfather’s death in 1937, but most astoundingly, while examining their family memorabilia, they happened upon a so-called “Tagebuch,” written between January 1940 and December 1944 by their grandmother and mother, Johanna and Renate Bruck. (Figure 2) Technically a diary or journal, it can more accurately be characterized as a record or log of daily events the writers were engaged in.
Knowing the numerous questions I had about Dr. Bruck’s wife and daughter following his death, they offered to send me the original Tagebuch. While hesitant to risk losing this valuable document, I accepted their gracious offer and fortunately it arrived safely. The twins have since generously donated their mother and grandmother’s diary to the Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Cemetery), a Branch of the City Museum of Wroclaw, where their great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather are interred. Since Dr. Walter Bruck is well-known to staff of the museum, they were thrilled beyond measure to receive this donation.
Briefly, let me explain to readers how I was able to learn the contents of the Tagebuch. For much longer than I have been in contact with Francesca and Michele Newman, I have known one of their cousins from the Berlin neighborhood of Köpenick, Dr. Frank Thomas Koch (Figure 3); as another instance of serendipity, Dr. Tilo Wahl is a practicing dentist in this same district of Berlin. In any case, whereas Thomas and I are fourth cousins, Thomas and the twins are third cousins, so a generation more closely related. Over the years, Thomas and I have collaborated in tracking Johanna and Renate Bruck to England following their emigration from Germany, without specifically uncovering the intermediate steps that led to them arriving there.
Given Thomas’ interest in this branch of our family, upon learning of the existence of the Tagebuch, he offered to transcribe it. I sent Thomas a high-quality PDF of the journal, which he systematically transcribed over a roughly two-month period. Then, using the best of the known online translators, DeepL, he translated the log. But Thomas went beyond a cursory perusal of the “journal.” He provided some context for events taking place in Nazi Germany that ought to have been touched on by Johanna Bruck but were not. As one additional step, I put Thomas in touch with Renate Bruck’s lifelong still-living 95-year-old friend, Ina Schaesberg (Figure 4), who was able to recall specific people named in the Tagebuch and identify their role in Johanna and Renate’s lives. Since Ina speaks little English, Thomas was more effectively able to extract information about these people from her than I could. Finally, yet another source of information was Bettina Mehne (Figure 5), daughter of Renate Bruck’s first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne, by Matthias’ second wife; Bettina was able to recognize the diminutive names of some of her ancestors.
Briefly, let me give readers an impression of the Tagebuch. It is a five-year diary, of a type that still exists today, with some peculiarities. It covers the span from January 1, 1940, through December 24, 1944, although not chronologically. That’s to say, January 31, 1940, is not followed by February 1, 1940, but rather by January 1, 1941, then January 1, 1942, etc. While this may make sense, it prevents the reader from following the flow of events. Thus, Thomas, in transcribing and translating the diary, did so chronologically.
The diary has two authors, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s widow, Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch, and his daughter, Renate Bruck. (Figure 6) Most of the entries are recorded by Johanna, whose writing is Old German Script in vogue around the 1900’s (known as “die Kurrentschrift” or “Kurrent”for short in German); Renate’s handwriting is more typical of today’s German cursive.
The Tagebuch is written in a telegraphic style, meaning in a clipped way of writing that abbreviates words and packs as much information into the fewest number of words or characters. At times, this means that certain terms or turns of phrases are not well understood or are indecipherable.
Rarely is the Tagebuch introspective or self-analyzing. Comparatively intimate, confidential, or personal messages are rarely recorded. The diary does not give us a sense of the broader events going on in the war during the Nazi era. For Johanna and Renate life seems to go on as normal, notwithstanding the fact that as a half-Jew Renate was considered a mischling of the first degree.
The war, the aftermath of its destruction, hunger, and repression are rarely mentioned. If Renate as a mischling or her mother were ever under observation by the Nazis and their informants is never made clear. However, as the author James F. Tent asserts in his seminal book about German mischlinge, “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans,” the intensity of persecution, discrimination, and harassment of mischlinge in the Third Reich varied greatly. Tent reports that in certain areas and regions, there was little distinction between “Jews” and “Mischlinge” in terms of persecution, while in other parts of the Reich virtually nothing happened to them, and they were not treated as outsiders.
There were at least two areas where Renate’s status as a mischling affected her life. Until 1938, Renate attended the “Oberlyzeum von Zawadzky,” the Upper Lyceum in the Zawadskie district of Breslau, which was a private school for daughters from upper class families. After 1938, all “non-Aryan” girls were forced to leave. Following her expulsion from the Lyceum, until Renate relocated with her mother to Berlin in February-March of 1942, she attended the “Kloster-Schule der Ursulinen,” the Ursuline Convent School. Then, beginning in 1942 upon her arrival in Berlin, she attended the “Kunstgewerbeschule,” the School of Arts and Crafts.
The second area where Renate’s life was affected by her status as a mischling of the first degree was in her desire to be a fully recognized member of the “deutschen Volksgemeinschaft,” wanting “to belong” and not be an outsider; the Volksgemeinschaft is a German expression meaning “people’s community” that originally became popular during WWI as Germans rallied in support of the war. It appealed to the idea of breaking down elitism, and uniting people across class divides to achieve a national purpose. During the Nazi era, the wanting “to belong” among children and young people was expressed, among other ways, in their membership in the Hitlerjugend (HJ), Hitler Youth, or the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), League of German Girls or Band of German Maidens. However, anyone who was “non-Aryan” could not become a member of the Hitler Youth or BDM.
Ina Schaesberg, Renate’s lifelong friend, relates an uncomfortable situation Renate put her in on account of her desire to belong to the BDM. So the story goes that Renate forced Ina to get her a BDM uniform so they could play together as “German Maidens” privately at home wearing their outfits. Jumping ahead to January 1942 which will be discussed in Part 2 of this post, Renate was denounced for this act by an informer that required Johanna to report to the police, although the incident appears to have had no serious consequences.
Johanna resolved to address the matter of Renate’s exclusion from the BDM. She makes the following entry on January 29, 1941. “I received first a call from Norbert Pohl about BDM application to Hess.” Let me attempt to put this in context for readers and tell readers about the players, acknowledging that I do not have a copy of Renate’s BDM application so can only surmise what it may have included.
Johanna Bruck seemingly appealed the issue of Renate’s application to join the BDM to a high, if not the highest, authority, namely to Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess (1874-1987). The quote above makes this evident. Hess had been the highest-ranking member after Hitler of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and Reich Minister without portfolio since 1933 when the Nazis seized power.
Johanna could have justified her request that Renate be accepted into the BDM in one of two ways. Purely hypothetically, Johanna could have argued that Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck was not the biological father of Renate and that she was the daughter of an affair Johanna had had with an “Aryan.” It’s conceivable Johanna was aware of a similar argument that had been made in the case of the German field marshal general Erhard Milch (Figure 7) by his mother, distant relatives of both Renate and me.
To remind readers, I wrote about Erhard Milch (1892-1972) in a post entitled “I Decide Who is a Jew” (Post 54), a saying widely attributed to Hermann Wilhelm Göring, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party between 1933 to 1945. Erhard Milch was a German field marshal general (Generalfeldmarschall) who oversaw the development of the German air force (Luftwaffe) as part of the re-armament of Nazi Germany following WWI. He was State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Aviation and Inspector General of the Air Force. During most of WWII, he oversaw all aircraft production and supply. In other words, Milch was important to the Nazis. Based on his mother’s disclosure that Erhard was not the son of her Jewish husband but supposedly born of an incestuous relationship with her uncle, an “Aryan,” he was declared a so-called “Honorary Aryan” (i.e., a person with Jewish roots who was appointed an honorary Aryan).
Thus, one way Johanna hypothetically could have argued that Renate be accepted into the BDM was by professing she was not the child of a Jew. Alternatively, Johanna could have argued that while Renate was regrettably a “mischling of the first degree,” her enthusiasm for the Nazis, their movement, and their ideals more than made up for this “flaw.” Which option Johanna chose is unknown to us. Probably her request was not supported by Hess or was delayed and put on the backburner. Regardless, several months after Johanna’s request, Hess flew to England in May 1941, ostensibly to make peace with the Allies. He was interned in England, and following Germany’s defeat, at Nuremberg he was sentenced to many years in prison as a Nazi and war criminal.
Who then was the Norbert Pohl who called Johanna Bruck on January 29, 1941? According to my cousin Thomas Koch, Norbert Pohl (1910-1968) was probably already a big shot in the SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squads) at the time of Johanna’s BDM request. He was the chief judge of the SS at the Police Court VI in Krakow from July 1940 until March 1942. Johanna makes a remarkable entry on February 12, 1941, recording that she received a call from Frau Pohl, presumably the wife of the SS grandee Norbert Pohl, urging haste with the written request. On February 20th, Johanna delivered the application to the Obergau, a division of the National Socialist state, specifically to the “Obergau 4, Obergaubehörde Niederschlesien der Nazipartei NSDAP,” which was headquartered in Breslau. Pohl may subsequently have forwarded Johanna’s letter and documentation to Rudolf Hess and kept her informed about developments.
Because of the clipped style in which the Tagebuch is written, we are left to wonder about some of the brief entries recorded by Johanna that may have been related to the application submission. For example, on February 28, 1941, so eight days after submitting the petition to the NSDAP, Johanna writes that she sent a letter to Mackensen. This is undoubtedly Anton Ludwig Friedrich August Mackensen (1949-1945), Generalfeldmarschall, Field Marshall General, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s military superior during WWI (Figure 8) and someone who stood up for him in 1933 after he was dismissed from his academic position. (Figure 9) Could the letter have had anything to do with Renate’s application to the NSDAP and a request for his support? It seems likely, but we may never know.
As it relates to the formal written request Johanna submitted for Renate to the Nazi authorities on February 20, 1941, Thomas figured out the German designation for this application was called “Gesuch über die Gleichstellung mit Deutschblütigen,” an “application for equality with German-blooded people.” The relevant literature indicates about 10,000 such applications were presented, but that only about 500 of them were ever approved. Of particular interest is that Hitler himself approved or denied these requests. Hitler’s allies were apparently more lenient in ratifying them.
What is clear from the journal and what we now know was an “application for equality with German-blooded people” submitted by Johanna is that she knew many people, including influential Nazis.
Unfortunately, the Tagebuch contains no mention as to what transpired after Renate’s application was submitted. However, based on an entry recorded on the 16th of September 1941, apparently Johanna suspects that her “request” for Renate to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” has been or will be rejected.
Let me turn now to log entries having to do with the Nazi regime and wartime events that may be of interest to readers.
On February 23, 1940, schools other than Renate’s were closed on account of a so-called “coal vacation,” days schools were closed during severe winters to save coal and heating oil to be used in support of the war effort.
On February 25, 1940, Johanna records that “Klaus,”one of Renate’s friends, had his National Socialist youth initiation ceremony as school graduation ceremonies and initiation rituals into the Hitler Youth and BDM were referred to at the time.
May 1st was a National Holiday, “Tag der Arbeit,” Labor Day, interestingly appropriating a tradition from the Labor movement.
On June 2nd, 1940, Johanna mentions listening to the radio, without specifically indicating that the broadcast presumably celebrated the Wehrmacht’s victory over France. Then, on June 25th, there was a school vacation because of “the acceptance of the peace terms imposed on the French.”
Interestingly, on November 23, 1940, the day of Hitler’s failed “Beer Hall Putsch” in 1923, in Munich, the Führer delivered a radio broadcast.
In several places, Johanna merely records “Führer speech,” so we are left to peruse the history books to identify what major speech Hitler delivered on these dates. The first instance is on February 24, 1941, which corresponds with a celebration at the Münchener Hofbräuhaus on the announcement of the NSDAP platform when Hitler declared an intensification of submarine warfare.
On April 9, 1941, Johanna remarks on the “great political events in the Balkans,” which coincided with the Wehrmacht’s campaign against then-Yugoslavia and Greece, resulting in Salonika’s capture on that date.
On May 4, 1941, Johanna again merely records, “Führer speech.” This coincides with an address Hitler made before the German Reichstag, in which he invoked the alleged desire for peace on the part of Nazi Germany, which had always been thwarted and now led once again to the defeat of then-Yugoslavia and Greece in the Balkans.
Relatedly, jumping ahead to January 3, 1942, Johanna makes another clipped entry that requires explanation: “. . .sweater and jacket donated for the soldiers.” Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion plan, called for the capture of Moscow within four months of the Axis forces invasion of the Soviet Union on the 22nd of June 1941. Hitler and his generals were convinced they would defeat the Soviet Union before the onset of winter 1941. Therefore, the German soldiers were ill-equipped for the severe winter when the Red Army counter-attacked during the Battle of Moscow, and they were largely without winter clothes. The donations of clothing from the German population were intended to compensate for this lack of winter equipment; Johanna was among the donors.
Let me turn now to some entries in the Tagebuch that give us insight into aspects of Johanna and Renate’s personal lives and their circle of friends and acquaintances. While of lesser interest than the terse war-related notes, they are still noteworthy.
According to a note recorded on the 24th of March 1940, Johanna and Renate were members of the “Christengemeinschaft.” The “Christengemeinschaft, Movement for Religious Renewal” is a Christian church that is close to anthroposophy but is regarded as an independent cult community. It was founded in Switzerland in 1922 following the suggestions of Rudolf Steiner and had followers in Breslau. Today, there are 140 congregations in Germany though the church exists worldwide. From the point of view of the mainstream churches, it represents, among other things, a different understanding of baptism.
It was through the Christengemeinschaft that Johanna sought to have Renate accepted for confirmation classes. Judging from the somewhat vague notes in the Tagebuch, there were discussions and a dispute with Church Pastor Müller about this, but Johanna eventually prevailed seemingly with the help of other members of the congregation. In any case, Renate was eventually confirmed on the 17th of March 1941.
Relatedly, on June 19, 1941, Johanna makes a point of mentioning the ban of eurythmy in schools, and the great joy it elicited; whether this was personal joy or more widespread elation is unclear. Eurythmy is an expressive movement art originated by Rudolf Steiner in conjunction with Marie von Sivers in the early 20th century. Primarily a performance art, it was also used in education, especially in Waldorf schools, and – as part of anthroposophic medicine – for claimed therapeutic purposes. The ban of eurythmy was probably connected with the flight of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s Deputy, to England on May 10, 1941. With his departure, anthroposophy lost its most important promoter among the Nazi hierarchy. Ten days prior to the ban on eurythmy, the Christengemeinschaft to which Johanna and Renate belonged had been banned, and its priests and leading community members jailed. While Johanna makes mention of the eurythmy ban, she is silent on the ban of the church. What effect the ban had on Johanna and Renate is unknown, but, regardless, by this time Renate had already been confirmed.
A brief entry from July10, 1941, “letter to . . .Lettehaus” was explained to me by my cousin. “Letteverein” and “Lettehaus” were institutions founded in 1866 to “promote the gainful employment of women.” Johanna was faced with the problem that her daughter was basically barred from higher education and university studies in Nazi Germany for “racial” reasons. But even though higher education was not attainable for Renate, economic independence was a goal for Johanna, who had to remember she would not live forever and that her assets might not be transferable to Renate. Therefore, these institutions offered options. In clarifying this entry, Thomas explained that his mother, also a mischling of the first degree, availed herself of the Letteverein and Lettehaus.
As to Johanna and Renate’s financial situation, let me say a few words. As I have alluded to and discussed in earlier posts, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck was an eminent dentist. He was the personal dentist to the last German Kaiser’s family and other members of the nobility. Judging from the lavish social events he hosted and the lifestyle he led, it can be assumed he was well-to-do.
According to Breslau address books of the time, during the late 1920’s and the early 1930’s Dr. Bruck and his family lived in a luxurious home at Reichspräsidentenplatz 17 (Figure 10), with the owner of record at the time being Walter Bruck. Following the death of Paul von Hindenburg, the German general and statesman who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and later became President of Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934, Reichspräsidentenplatz was renamed by the Nazis to Hindenburgplatz. The renaming of the square was reflected in Breslau address books only in 1935. By 1937, however, his wife Johanna Bruck was now shown as the owner of record even though Walter continued to live at Hindenburgplatz 17. The change in ownership from Walter to Johanna Bruck was a measure to avoid expropriation of the estate by the Nazis as Walter was considered “Jewish,” whereas his wife was deemed to be “Aryan.” We know from elsewhere that Walter converted from Judaism in about 1917, around the time his mother died, and that, unlike his accomplished father and grandfather, respectively Dr. Julius Bruck and Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck, he was not interred in Breslau’s Jewish Cemetery. Obviously, as far as the Nazis were concerned, Walter’s conversion from Judaism was of no consequence and he was still deemed Jewish. On multiple occasions, Johanna mentions that she and Renate visited her deceased husband’s grave, regrettably never mentioning which cemetery he was interred in. This is a mystery to be resolved.
Dr. Walter Bruck died in Breslau on the 31st of March 1937, whether by his own hand or not is unknown. Following Walter’s death, Johanna is presumed to have sold the house around that time because when in 1939, the “racial” census takes place (Figure 11), the widow Johanna Bruck and her daughter Renate Bruck are no longer living at Hindenburgplatz 17, but at Oranienstrasse 4. (Figure 12) The latter house does not belong to Johanna but to a retired banker by the name of “E. Bucher.” Johanna and Renate apparently lived there in a large stately apartment, from which they sublet rooms. Apart from the income this generated, Johanna undoubtedly received a significant sum of money from the sale of the house at Hindenburgplatz 17 as well as an inheritance from her husband. At various points in the Tagebuch, Johanna bemoans the expenditure of money on certain things, but rarely do we get the impression that she is lacking for money, nor does her active social life or the multiple activities she and Renate are enrolled in suggest otherwise.
There are scores upon scores of names mentioned in the journal. An unusually large number of them are referred to as “Tante,” aunt, or “Onkel,” uncle, with most presumed to be close friends rather than blood relatives. Several, however, “Tante Leni,” “Tante Irene” or “Tante I.,” and “Onkel Willy” are known to the writer and are unquestionably Johanna and Renate’s kin. In some instances mention is made of celebrating this or that person’s birthday on a particular day or week; given my familiarity with the dates of birth of family members, I was able to work out how some of the people were referred to. Thus “Tante I.” was Johanna’s sister-in-law, Irene Elisabeth Gräbsch née Klar who was married to Johanna’s brother, Paul Karl Hermann Gräbsch. Tante Irene was often accompanied by her son “Ebi,” a cousin and frequent playmate of Renate’s. (Figure 13) “Tante Leni” was Johanna’s sister, Helene Emma Clara Steinberg née Gräbsch. (Figure 14) “Onkel Willy” was Willy Gräbsch, a merchant from Breslau, probably unmarried or widowed, whose relationship to Johanna is unclear.
Personally intriguing is the mention made on March 30, 1940, that Renate went to visit “Tante Margarethe” to wish her a happy birthday. The quotation marks indicate that while she was not a relative, she was still referred to as an aunt. There is no doubt this is Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s first wife who was Jewish, Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch. (Figure 15) She was born on March 30, 1872, in Breslau [Wrocław, Poland], and murdered in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on the 22nd of September 1942. (Figure 16) It is surprising that Johanna and Renate were in touch with Walter’s first wife, although, as this was certainly the case, it’s astonishing that Johanna made no mention in the diary when Margarethe was deported. Perhaps Johanna had already distanced herself from this Jewish “aunt” by then?
Among the names mentioned are a coterie I surmise are people who provided professional services to Johanna, such as housecleaners, cooks, seamstresses, teachers, clergy, etc. This includes “Fräulein Anna,” Miss Anna. According to Ina Schaesberg, she was the cook in the Bruck household for many years, during Dr. Bruck’s lifetime and after his death. She was considered “Aryan.” According to the 1935 “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor,” Jews were forbidden to employ “Aryan maids” under the age of 45. However, since Anna exceeded this age limit, she could remain employed in the house of Walter Bruck even after 1935. Following the death of Walter in 1937, she continued to work for Johanna and even followed her to Berlin (more on this in Part 2 of the post).
Johanna’s and Renate’s beloved long-haired dachshund, “Resi,” is often mentioned, though it took me some time to figure out that this was a dog and not a person. (Figure 17)
Because Renate was an exceptionally cute young girl who blossomed into a very attractive young woman, she had droves of admirers whom she frequently saw and skillfully manipulated. The fate of most are unknown, but in at least two instances Johanna tells us precisely the dates they were killed while serving in the Wehrmacht. The death of “Hans Roth,” often mentioned in the diary, is noted on October 26, 1941, though he was killed on the 21st of September 1941 on the Eastern Front as his death certificate confirms. (Figures 18a-b) Similarly, an even closer friend of Renate’s, “Christoph von Kospoth,” was killed-in-action on the 4th of April 1944 near Dresden, Germany. (Figures 19a-b)
Other names and deaths are recorded by Johanna, but I’ve been unable to match them with historic documents which might have been able to tell me more about them.
Many names in the Tagebuch include only forenames or surnames, so it’s impossible to precisely identify these individuals. However, in several instances, with surnames and professions given I was able with certainty to discover the identities or people. While these rarely add much to the narrative of Johanna’s and Renate’s lives, I will discuss a few only because I was able to learn something about them.
A name that frequently appears in Johanna’s entries is called “Hella Goossens.” She appears to have been a friend. This represents the sole instance where I was able to find a picture of someone named in Johanna’s and Renate’s diary who was not a family member. A vivacious looking woman born on the 21st of May 1884 in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, a Rio de Janeiro Immigration Card shows she immigrated to Brazil in 1950 (Figure 20); she is identified as a domestic worker. Seemingly, she was joining her son, Herbert Goossens, who had immigrated there in 1939. (Figure 21)
As I alluded to earlier when talking about Johanna and Renate’s financial situation, both were involved in numerous extracurricular activities, particularly Renate. For her part, Johanna was taking Italian lessons with a Frau Koesel at the home of a Frau Conberti. Mrs. Conberti is listed in Breslau Address Books between 1934 and 1941 and shows she was an interpreter and language teacher. (Figures 22a-b) One is left to wonder whether Johanna was merely taking Italian for self-improvement, or envisioned emigrating to Italy? In the case of Renate, she was taking piano lessons, violin classes, tap classes, confirmation classes, and more. She would meet her future first husband, Matthias Mehne, in late 1941 in Breslau at his luthier shop, and immediately be “smitten” by him, but there is no indication they got involved romantically until they met again in Berlin in 1942.
Readers may wonder, as I did, whether any of Johanna’s and Renate’s acquaintances and friends are directly or indirectly acknowledged as Jewish. In one instance the name “Grete Stomberg or Sternberg” is noted, who can be presumed to have been Jewish because her apartment was confiscated by the Nazis. Another named individual was “Ferdinand Abramczyk,” later identified through a Breslau Address Book as a Justizrat, a member of the Judicial Council, who’d had “Israel” added as his middle name by the Nazis to mark him as Jewish.
Johanna frequently mentions bouts of “biliary pain,” most frequently caused by obstruction of the common bile duct or the cystic duct by a gallstone. This would eventually lead to hospitalization.
There is one final topic I want to discuss before ending the rather lengthy first part of Post 109. As previously mentioned, it appears that by September of 1941, Johanna is aware that Renate’s application for her to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” has been or will be rejected. This may have been the impetus for Johanna to relocate to Berlin. However, rather than simply move there, Johanna sought to swap apartments with someone from Berlin. She hosted a couple, the Günthers, with whom she would eventually exchange apartments. In February-March 1942, Johanna and Renate would move to Xantener Straße 24, in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. More will be said on this in Part 2 of Post 109.
Among the more popular posts I have published in my Blog are veritable wartime diaries I have managed to get a hold of from various branches of my Jewish family. In all these instances, there is clearly an effort on the part of the author to write names in code or designate Jewish or “righteous” individuals by single letters or initials to conceal their identities. At no time do I detect a similar intent by Johanna or Renate.
Literally, with the hundreds of entries in Johanna’s and Renate’s Tagebuch, it is difficult to do justice to the diary. However, as I’ve indicated multiple times, the clipped style of writing associated with a telegraphic style makes it unlikely I would have been able to decipher the names of most of their acquaintances and friends nor the role they played in their lives. More importantly, it’s improbable this would have added much to the narrative since so many of the entries focused not on the political and current events of the time but rather on the social and amorous activities of the writers.
In closing I will quote from Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska’s observations of Johanna and Renate’s diary. Renate is my friend and Branch Manager, Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Cemetery) which is a Branch of the City Museum of Wroclaw, the institute where the Tagebuch was donated. Sadly, Renata’s thoughts mirror my own: “I am amazed that in the era of mass deportations of Breslau and Silesian Jews from 1941 to 1944, there is nothing in the diary on this subject. On November 21, 1941, over a thousand people were arrested, held for four days at the Odertorbahnhof train station, then deported to Kaunas, Lithuania, and shot on November 29th. Among them were many famous and influential inhabitants of Breslau, including Willy Cohn and his family, author of the famous diary/journal entitled “Kein Recht. Nirgends” (“No Law. Nowhere.”), published in German and Polish. In the context of the war, the everyday life of Johanna and Renate seems quite banal and normal. It’s hard for me to believe it, because as early as 1942, mischlinge were also deported to the occupied part of Poland and East.”
REFERENCES
Schwarzmüller, Theo. Zwischen Kaiser und Führer: Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen. Paderborn, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1995.
Tent, James F. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans. Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Note: In this post, I discuss the proof I have found for conversions from Judaism for German family members, some of which unavoidably consists of indirect evidence. This topic naturally involves touching on the political, economic, and social context under which such conversions took place.
There is a long history of Jewish conversion to Christianity, both voluntary and forced conversion. Forced conversions of Jews go back to Late Antiquity, the boundaries of which are a continuing matter of debate, but the period between roughly the 3rd and 8th centuries A.D. Royal persecutions of Jews from the 11th century onward typically took the form of expulsions with exceptions. Jews were forced to convert to Christianity before and during the First Crusade (1096-1099) including in parts of what are today France, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
The mass conversion event which took place on the Iberian Peninsula in A.D. 1391 when tens of thousands of Spain’s Jews converted to Christianity because of pogroms is the one readers will be most familiar with. Practicing Jews who refused to convert were expelled by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in the Alhambra Decree of 1492, following the Christian Reconquest of Spain. The net effect of the Alhambra Decree and persecutions carried out in earlier periods is that over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled. In adjoining Portugal, by contrast, where an edict for Jewish expulsions was also ordered four years later in A.D. 1496, most Jews were not allowed to leave but were forced to convert.
Though conversions continued over time across many other parts of Eastern, Central, and Western Europe, forced conversions were apparently less common in the 20th century and were later more often the result of Jews choosing to convert to integrate into secular society. In Germany, which is the focus of this Blog post as it relates to my family, conversions occurred in three main periods. The first began during the Mendelssohnian era, named after Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), the German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah, the “Jewish Enlightenment” of the 18th and 19th centuries, is attributed. A second wave occurred during the first half of the 19th century. And the third and longest period of conversions was a result of antisemitism and began roughly in 1880.
Conversion among German Jews was not an uncommon phenomenon in the 19th century owing to the myriad restrictions and myths that confronted them, and stymied their hopes, ambitions, dreams, and careers. In a sense, conversion to Christianity was the easy way out. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), the noted German poet, writer, and literary critic, who himself converted, was reputed to have said conversion was his “ticket of admission into European culture.” Across most of the German states that united to create “modern” Germany in 1871, dominated by the state of Prussia, Jews were often rewarded for renouncing Judaism by being given influential positions and financial incentives. Whereas, during the 17th century, most converts were poor, by the middle of the 18th century, the converts were richer. The departure of the wealthier converts deprived the Jewish community of part of its operating budget. In any event, it is estimated that by the 20th century, close to one million Christians in Germany were of Jewish origin. According to Deborah Hertz’s book, “How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin,” the majority of converts were infants whose parents wanted to spare them “conflicts” as adults. She notes that 60 percent of converts between 1800 and 1874 were under five years of age.
Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums), which excluded Jews and other political opponents of the Nazis from all civil service positions, was one of the first anti-Semitic and racist laws to be passed by the Third Reich, enacted on the 7th of April 1933. The law initially exempted those who had worked in the civil service since August 1, 1914, those who were veterans of World War I, or those with a father or son killed in action in World War I. The Civil Service immediately impacted the education system because university professors, for example, were classified as civil servants.
With the seizure of power by the Nazis, the new government enacted laws that required all citizens to document their genealogy in full. The regime sought to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in Berlin, the country’s foremost Jewish city. These records, the Judenkartei, the Jewish Register or File, begin in 1645. Work on creating this file had started before the Nazis even came to power under a private initiative which sought to uncover proof of the Jewish ancestry of university and college professors and judges. By 1932, this file had already collected 400,000 genealogical records of Jews in Germany. The constantly expanding file was taken over and expanded in 1933 by the Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung (RfS), renamed Reichssippenamt on the 12th of November 1940, the Reich Office for Clan Research.
Readers who have accessed ancestral records for their German Jewish relatives may have noticed notations in the upper left- or right-hand corners or along the margins of vital documents. Beginning August 17, 1938, Jews had to add “Israel” (males) (Figure 1) or “Sara” (females) (Figure 2) as their middle name. Similarly, on passports, which allowed German Jews to leave Germany, when they still could, but not return, a large “J” was imprinted. (Figure 3) These and other measures instituted by the Nazis were intended to officially separate Jews from the German populace. While German Jews still converted after the Nazis seized power, as I will illustrate in the case of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, readers can easily surmise this was futile.
As I contemplated the question of conversion from Judaism among my immediate and extended ancestors, I began to wonder what evidence I could find in the ancestral records proving my relatives’ “alienation” from their Jewish roots. In my limited experience, finding such documents is not easy. In the case of some of my ancestors but not all of them, conversion was a “pragmatic” decision, as I’ve alluded to. Again, citing the poet Heinrich Heine, he declared that he was “merely baptized, not converted.” Quoting from a letter he once wrote:
“From my way of thinking you can well imagine that baptism is an indifferent affair. I do not regard it as important even symbolically, and I shall devote myself all the more to the emancipation of the unhappy members of our race. Still I hold it as a disgrace and a stain upon my honor that in order to obtain an office in Prussia—in beloved Prussia—I should allow myself to be baptized.”
In re-reading the memoirs of Dr. Josef Pauly (Figure 4), husband of my great-great-aunt, who had likely been baptized Catholic as a child and whose recollections I discussed in Post 56, I wonder whether he may not have been implying the same sentiment when he wrote:
“I believe in God as the creative force of the universe, to an immanent [NOTE: (of God) permanently pervading or sustaining the universe] consciousness, to a moral world order, to the invisible God of the world as the Jewish religion has revealed it first, whose goodness is identical with the eternal laws.”
As I began to search through my files and recollect what evidence for conversion I had found for my ancestors, I initially concluded that most of the “proof” was indirect, such as in the case of my father which I discussed in Post 38. However, upon further consideration, I realize I have found considerably more direct validation than I initially thought. Beyond the obvious instances where the graves or burial records of my forefathers interred in existing and destroyed Jewish cemeteries survive, proving they did not convert, I found corroboration for several ancestors confirming they were baptized.
The earliest instance is the case of my great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer (1834-1918). (Figure 5) On ancestry, I uncovered a record showing she was baptized in Dresden, Germany, 21 years after her birth, on the 13th of April 1855. (Figure 6) This was undoubtedly in anticipation of her marriage to Leopold Julius Wolf von Koschembahr (Figure 7) later that year on the 26th of September 1855 in Saint Clement Danes, Westminster, London, England, an Anglican church. (Figure 8)
Initially, I thought Leopold von Koschembahr was also of Jewish origin because his grandson, Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr (i.e., Gerhard’s father, Wilhelm Bruck, took his baroness wife’s surname) (Figure 9), departed Germany for the United States via Switzerland in 1938 with his 12 children. However, I learned from a New York Times article dated the 2nd of October 1938 that Gerhard departed Germany NOT on account of his grandfather’s Jewish roots but because his great-grandmother, on his mother’s side, was non-Aryan. (Figure 10) This gives credence to the concern descendants of Jews whose ancestors had long ago converted or had never converted felt when the Nazis started tracing their ancestral origins. In the case of Leopold von Koschembahr, I found his baptismal record showing he was baptized on the 5th of December 1829 (Figures 11a-b), proving he was not Jewish at birth. As readers can discern from this example, confirming or refuting the Jewish origins of one’s ancestors can be like solving a complex puzzle.
Moving on to other family members, let me briefly discuss the evidence for conversion for my uncle by marriage Dr. Franz Müller, my uncle by blood Dr. Fedor Bruck, my father Dr. Otto Bruck, and Dr. Adalbert Bruck, the great-grandfather of a fourth cousin.
The Centrum Judaicum Foundation is housed in the New Synagogue Berlin which was consecrated on the Jewish New Year in 1866, at which time it became the largest Jewish house of worship with its 3,200 seats. While the synagogue was spared major damage on “Kristallnacht,” it was severely damaged by Allied bombing during WWII. In 1958, the main room of the synagogue was demolished, so that today only the parts of the building closest to the street remain structurally intact.
Documents addressing the history of Jews in and around Berlin are archived there, including surviving records on conversions that took place in the city. In the case of my uncle by marriage Dr. Franz Müller, married to my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck murdered in Auschwitz, the Centrum Judaicum has an index card on file indicating he converted on the 25th of November 1901. This did not prevent him being dismissed from his position as Humboldt University professor when the Nazis came to power in 1933 in accordance with their Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.
In the instance of my fourth cousin’s great-grandfather, Dr. Adalbert Bruck, the Centrum Judaicum could find nothing in their archives about him, so referred my cousin to the Evangelische Zentralarchiv in Berlin, the Protestant Central Archive in Berlin. In principle records of all Jewish conversions to Christianity in Berlin are kept here, though many did not survive WWII. According to a letter sent to my cousin, Dr. Adalabert Bruck’s record survives indicating he converted on the 27th of November 1890; however, his wife Anna Bruck née Flatow’s information survives only indirectly in the form of a 1930 document showing she supposedly converted on the 17th of February 1900. (Figures 12a-b)
The conversion of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, who has been the subject of several Blog posts because of his incredible tale of survival in Berlin during the entirety of WWII thanks to family and “silent heroes,” adds another element to my uncle’s compelling story. The register documenting his conversion survives and indicates he was baptized in Berlin on the 11th of June 1939 at the Messias Kapelle, a Lutheran Church. (Figures 13a-b, 14) Two godparents are named in the register, a “Herr Engelbert Helwig” and a “Herr Roderich von Roy.” Ancestry shows Englebert Helwig to have been a Holocaust survivor, and Roderich von Roy to have been born on the 3rd of August 1895, exactly two weeks before my uncle. Did my uncle know these people beforehand, or were they just random parishioners who attended the Messias Kappelle selected to be his godparents? We may never know.
Lutheran is a denomination among the Protestant, in fact it is the oldest of the denominations to break away from Catholicism and is traced to the founder of the movement, Martin Luther of Germany. (Figure 15)
Hoping to find a picture of the Messias Kapelle, I did a Google query and stumbled upon a fascinating article written by Christiane Jurik, Editor-in-Chief of Ariel Ministries, discussing the origins of the Messias Kapelle and its role in German Jewish baptisms. I quote:
“Historically, most baptized Jews in Germany joined the Lutheran Church. There, even those who were true believers in Yeshua were mostly met with indifference; sometimes with suspicion; or worst, with anti-Semitism. In order to avoid this treatment, some Jewish believers started looking for places of worship where they could stay among themselves. In 1901, the Berlin Society purchased a property in one of the most urban boroughs of the city, called Prenzlauer Berg. The ministry not only moved its headquarters to the building but soon started construction work of what became known as the Messias Kapelle (‘Messiah Chapel’). Three days before Christmas of 1902, the chapel opened its doors to the Jewish believers of Berlin.
While the goal of the Berlin Society had been to offer a haven for Jewish believers, its work was closely affiliated with the Lutheran Church. In fact, the chapel officially belonged to the union of Protestant churches that also included the Confessing Church, whose most famous member was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, in 1930, the Lutheran Church revoked its support of the work of the Berlin Society and withdrew its pastors from the chapel. From then on, the Messias Kapelle was run by laymen.
In 1935, the Lutheran Synod forbade the baptizing of Jewish people. One of the pastors in Berlin expressed the general sentiment: ‘I am convinced that the family who told me it would be a horrible thought for them that the hand that baptized a Jew would touch their child is not alone.’
Yet not everyone obeyed the new directives of the Synod. The Messias Kapelle at this point separated itself completely from any state-run institution and in turn became the most important place of Messianic baptism in Berlin. According to the baptismal records of the time, over 700 German Jews got baptized there in the years between 1933 and 1940.
On November 11, 1938, during the Kristallnacht, the Messias Kapelle and the seat of the Berlin Society were trashed by the Nazis. Still, it would take until January of 1941 for the ministry and the chapel to be officially closed permanently. Ten months later, the first deportation of Jewish people began in Berlin. Records prove that of the 700 Jewish believers who had been baptized in the Messias Kapelle after 1933, 86 were hauled off to the ghettos of Lodz, Riga, Minsk, and Warsaw. Only two of them survived the Holocaust. It is unknown what happened to the rest of the congregation.”
A few observations. Among the survivors baptized in the Messias Kapelle was my uncle who lived until 1982. Beyond the obvious interest in self-preservation for the 700 or so Jews who got baptized in the Messias Kapelle during the Nazi era, the fact they could be baptized here as late as 1939, worship among other Jewish converts, and be told about the Jewish Messiah may have had appeal. While it’s unclear whether the chapel has been deconsecrated, the author of the above quote tells us that a marketing and public relations firm now owns it and that the worship hall, altar, and a marble relief resembling a Temple survive. It’s sad this is not a recognized historic monument.
Growing up my father never spoke about religion and religion was never part of my upbringing. In fact, I was baptized as a Catholic by my grandparents at six years of age in Lyon, France, at the request of my parents almost as an afterthought, hoping it might protect me in the event of another Holocaust. However, as most readers will surmise, as a half-Jew, I would have been considered a mischlinge of the first degree according to the Nuremberg Laws. Not good enough to survive being murdered.
Aware my father had attended dental school in Berlin, I checked with the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin to ascertain whether they might have a record of my father’s conversion, but they do not. Knowing my father’s penchant for procrastinating, I have always suspected my father never placed a high priority on getting baptized and converting until it became an absolute necessity. And, in my opinion, that only became necessary after he moved to the town of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in the Free State of Danzig where he opened his dental practice in 1932. As I discussed in Post 38, the evidence for my father’s conversion comes in the form of a receipt for payment of quarterly church taxes to the Evangelische Kirche in Tiegenhof. (Figure 16)
My second cousin twice-removed, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 17), subject of several recent Blog posts is thought to have converted in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]. Dr. Barbara Bruziewicz-Mikłaszewska, professor of dentistry at the University of Wrocław, who has written about Dr. Bruck, cites a file from the University’s archives saying he converted in 1916 (i.e., University file: sygn. S99, s. 62, nr sprawy AU – 481/46/2001). As we speak, I am working with one of Dr. Bruziewicz-Mikłaszewska’s colleagues to obtain verification of the date of Dr. Bruck’s baptism. Unlike his father and grandfather, who are buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Walter’s place of internment in Wrocław is unknown but was undoubtedly in a Christian cemetery that likely no longer exists.
As I mentioned above, in principle all surviving records of Jewish conversions to Christianity in Berlin are archived at the Evangelische Zentralarchiv. For conversions that took place outside of Berlin, however, there is no central repository of this information that I am aware of. Thus, the only possibility of tracking down comparable information for one’s Jewish ancestors is to know the town and parish church where the baptism occurred, and then hope the registers have survived.
REFERENCES
Bruziewicz Mikłaszewska, Barbara. Outline of the history of university dentistry in Breslau/Wrocław. [Polish: Zarys dziejów uniwersyteckiej stomatologii we Wrocławiu]. 2010, University of Wrocław, PhD.
Note: In this Blog post, I discuss Renate Bruck’s two prominent godmothers, images of whom exist among Dr. Walter Bruck’s surviving papers and photographs.
The Nuremberg Laws consisted of two race-based measures which deprived Jews of their rights. They were designed by Adolf Hitler and approved by the Nazi Party at a convention in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935. The first of these measures, termed the “Reichsbürgergesetz,” the “Reich Citizenship Law,” declared that only those of “German or kindred blood” were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were designated as “subjects of the state” without any citizenship rights. The second provision, the “Gesetz zum Schutze des Deutschen Blutes und der Deutschen Ehre,” the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour,” usually simply called the “Blutschutzgesetz” or “Blood Protection Law,” forbade marriage or extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans. These measures were among the first of the racist Nazi laws that culminated in the Holocaust.
Under the Nuremberg laws, Jews could not fly the German flag and were forbidden to employ in domestic service female subjects of German or kindred blood who were under the age of 45 years.
The first supplementary decree elaborating upon the Nuremberg Laws was passed on November 14, 1935. It defined Jews as persons with at least one Jewish grandparent and explicitly declared they could not be citizens of the Reich; it further decreed that Jews could not exercise the right to vote nor occupy public office. This was ultimately one of 13 ordinances that completed the process of Jewish segregation.
One enactment, passed on November 26, 1935, expanded the provisions of the law to include Roma (Gypsies) and Black people. While exact figures cannot be ascertained, historians estimate that the Germans and their allies killed between 250,000 and 500,000 European Roma during World War II. Although the Nazis did not have an organized program to exterminate African Germans, many of them were persecuted, as were other people of African descent. Black people in Germany and German-occupied territories were often isolated, and an unknown number were sterilized, incarcerated, or murdered.
It is important to emphasize that the racial definition of Jews under the Nuremberg Laws meant that Jews were persecuted NOT for their religious beliefs but for their so-called racial identity that was irrevocably transmitted through the blood of their ancestors.
Because the Nuremberg Laws did not define a “Jew” nor the phrase “German or kindred blood,” the critical task of defining their meaning fell to bureaucrats because of the criminal provisions for noncompliance contained within the law. Two basic categories of Jews were recognized. A full Jew referred to anyone with three Jewish grandparents, a rather straight-forward definition. Defining part-Jews, who were referred to as “Mischlinge,” a pejorative term meaning “hybrids, mongrels, or half-breeds,” was more challenging. Eventually they were divided into two classes. First-degree Mischlinge were defined as people who had two Jewish grandparents but did not practice Judaism and did not have a Jewish spouse. Second-degree Mischlinge were those who had only one Jewish grandparent.
Students of history may find it interesting to learn that out of foreign policy concerns, persecutions under the Nuremberg Laws did not begin until after the conclusion of the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin that year.
Also worth noting is one of the effects of the Nuremberg Laws. It gave rise to a horde of purportedly “licensed family researchers” who offered their services to concerned Germans afraid the Nazis would discover Jewish relatives among their ancestors. The Health Ministry as well as church offices were involved in providing birth and baptismal certificates as proof of Aryan origin.
I introduce the Nuremberg Laws in the context of talking about Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck and his wife Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch’s daughter, Renate Bruck. (Figure 1) While Renate’s mother was Protestant, Dr. Bruck’s parents were Jewish, so according to the Nuremberg Laws, Renate was considered a first-degree Mischling. Evidence suggests Walter converted to Protestantism around 1917, confirmation of which I am still trying to track down. The timing of his conversion may have corresponded with the death of Walter’s mother, Bertha Bruck née Vogelsdorf (1843-1917), in 1917 (Figure 2); Walter may have been reluctant to convert from Judaism until his mother passed away. Unlike his parents and paternal grandparents who are buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], the place of Walter’s burial or cremation is unknown. (Figure 3) What is clear is that Walter was not interred in a Jewish cemetery.
As for Renate Bruck, there is no indication she ever set foot in a synagogue or was taught about the Jewish religion, which makes sense if her father converted from Judaism nine years before Renate was even born. On the contrary, a preliminary examination of the five-year Tagebuch, diary, belonging to Renate and her mother covering a critical period from January 1940 through December 1944, makes it clear Renate was attending Confirmation classes throughout 1940 and early 1941, and was confirmed at age 14 in Breslau on the 17th of March 1941. (Figure 4) As far as the Nazis were concerned, however, this would not have altered Renate’s status as a first-degree Mischling. And, in fact, Renate’s lifelong friend Ina Schaesberg (Figure 5) confirms that Renate and the other Jews and half-Jews were expelled from the private school they all attended in Breslau. More will be said in a future Blog post about the contents of Johanna and Renate Bruck’s diary including their attitude towards the Nazis.
Among the pictures in Walter Bruck’s photo album are two showing people Renate identified as her godmothers. I was curious that Renate had two godmothers but learned that traditionally Christian children can have three godparents in total, though they can have as many as the parents want. Usually, girls have two godmothers and one godfather while boys gave two godfathers and one godmother, although there is no hard and fast rule about this. Without access to Renate’s baptismal record, it is unclear whether both godmothers were listed on it at the time of her baptism. There is no indication as to who Renate’s godfather may have been.
Renate provided information on the captions about each of her godmothers which allowed me to make some interesting connections.
Renate’s first godmother was named “Tante ‘Steffa’ Stephanie” (Figure 6); as readers can make out from the caption, her father was identified as “Geheimrat Prof. Erhlich,” and her husband was the “Commerzienrat Schwerin.” There was also a cryptic parenthetical notation after Stephanie’s father’s name, “Salvasan,” the significance of which only become apparent to me later. (Figure 7)
A “Geheimrat” is a Privy Counselor, a member of the government or cabinet minister; in the current context, however, “Geheimrat” refers to an honorary title used in Prussia that was bestowed upon Dr. Erhlich as an accomplished doctor (see below). A “Kommerzienrat,” a Commercial Counselor, also called a commercial attaché, is a commercial expert on the diplomatic staff of a country´s embassy or large consulate.
Based on Renate’s captions, I correctly concluded that Tante Steffa was Stephanie Schwerin née Erhlich. I discovered a substantial amount of information about her on ancestry.com, including her birth certificate. Her birth name was August Josephine Stephanie Erhlich, and she was born on the 19th of October 1884 in Berlin. Her parents’ names are listed on her birth certificate as Paul Simon Erhlich and Hedwig Erhlich née Pinkus. (Figures 8a-b)
I very quickly realized that Tante Steffa’s father was none other than Dr. Paul Erhlich (1854-1915) (Figure 9), the Nobel Prize-winning German Jewish physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. In 1908, Dr. Paul Erhlich was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to immunology. His foremost achievements were discovering a cure for syphilis in 1909 (The First Syphilis Cure Was the First ‘Magic Bullet’ | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine) and inventing the precursor to Gram staining bacteria. The techniques Dr. Erhlich developed for staining tissues made it possible to distinguish between different types of blood cells, which in turn made it possible to diagnose various blood disorders.
Dr. Erhlich’s laboratory discovered Arsphenamine, the drug introduced in the early 1910s as the first effective treatment against syphilis and African sleeping sickness. Renate Bruck’s cryptic parenthetical reference to “Salvasan” was the mistakenly spelled name for “Salvarsan,” the name under which Arsphenamine was marketed, also known as “compound 606.”
A biographical sketch on Dr. Erhlich to which I link here (Paul Ehrlich – Biographical – NobelPrize.org) makes mention of his two daughters, including Stephanie (Mrs. Ernst Schwerin) and Marianne (Mrs. Edmund Landau). Both were the result of his marriage in 1883 to Hedwig Pinkus (1864-1948). According to their marriage certificate, Stephanie and Ernst Schwerin got married in Frankfurt, Germany on the 20th of February 1904.
Along with the picture of Stephanie Schwerin née Erhlich among Dr. Walter Bruck’s papers are two showing the elegant homes she and her husband, Ernst Schwerin, owned, a large estate in Breslau, as well as a mountain retreat probably located in the Riesengebirge [today: Krkonoše, Karkonosze, or Giant Mountains in northern Czech Republic and south-west Poland]. (see Figure 7) There can be little doubt Stephanie and Ernst were wealthy, and, likely, lost much of their fortune when they fled Germany after the ascendancy of the Nazis. Primary source documents prove that in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws, both Ernst and Stephanie Schwerin had their German nationalities annulled sometime between 1935 and 1944. (Figures 10-11) Other primary source documents show that Stephanie and her husband made their way to New York City via Switzerland. They emigrated from Switzerland in October 1938. (Figures 12-13)
The Social Security Death Index indicated Stephanie died in New York in June 1966 (Figure 14) and her husband Ernst passed away on the 25th of November 1946. (Figure 15) I asked a friend with a subscription to Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank if he could track down their obituaries, hoping I might find a living descendant. My friend was unable to locate an obituary for Ernst Schwerin, but his wife’s obituary shows she died a most gruesome death on the 7th of June 1966 at the age of 81 by plunging from her 10th floor apartment at the Hotel Croydon. (Figure 16) According to the obituary, she left two notes in German, confirming she committed suicide. Likely, these notes were intended for her two sons, Hans Wolfgang Schwerin (1906-1987) and Guenther Karl-Joseph Schwerin (1910-1997), neither of whom ever appears to have ever been married. Hans Schwerin, who was an author, lawyer, and psychoanalyst, was a regular fixture on the Society pages during the 1950s. (Figure 17)
The second of Renate Bruck’s godmothers, Elfriede Reichelt, turns out to have been another prominent personage. As readers can make out for themselves, Renate Bruck identified her second godmother as a photographer. (Figure 18) Operating under the assumption she was well-known, a Google query confirmed this. She was born Elfriede Klara Emma Reichelt on the 30th of January 1883 in Breslau, and died of bladder cancer on the 22nd of August 1953 in Grünwald , outside Munich. She was a German art photographer, who in her time was one of the best-known professional photographers in Germany.
The photograph of Elfriede Reichelt appears to have been taken in April 1927 in Brioni, Yugoslavia [today: Brijuni, Croatia], when Elfriede and her unidentified husband were vacationing there with Walter and Johanna Bruck. Her unnamed husband I was later able to determine was Hans Wieland, an industrialist from Ulm, Germany, whom Elfriede married in 1927 and separated from in 1936.
In the Deutsche Fotothek 743 of Elfriede Reichelt’s portrait photos are inventoried (Deutsche Fotothek), including multiple self-portraits. Because of copyright issues, I cannot illustrate these images here, but readers are encouraged to peruse them. Allow me to make a few observations about her photos. Reichelt had unprecedented access to Germany’s last Kaiser, Wilhelm II, and his family while they lived in exile in Doorn, Netherlands following WWI, and often photographed them. It is possible that Elfriede also photographed the Kaiser’s wife, Hermine Reuß, when she visited Dr. Walter Bruck in Breslau for dental treatments. It is even conceivable Dr. Bruck introduced the Kaiserin to Elfriede. Not surprisingly, given the friendship that existed between Walter Bruck and Elfriede Reichelt, her images include one of my renowned ancestor. Oddly, the photograph is incorrectly captioned. It is most curious that Walter Bruck’s picture is labeled as Dr. Fedor Bruck, which happens to have been my uncle’s name who was also a Breslau-trained dentist. Could Elfriede have known my uncle? The period my Uncle Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) spent in Breslau following WWI suggests this is possible. (Figure 19)
Regular readers may remember I have written multiple Blog posts about the Neisser branch of my extended family. Among Elfriede’s pictures are a few she took of Dr. Albert Neisser (1855-1916) (Figure 20) and his wife, Toni Neisser, a patron of the arts. Dr. Neisser was a German physician who discovered the pathogen that caused gonorrhea, a strain of bacteria that was named in his honor (Neisseria gonorrhoeae).
Part of the pleasure I derive in doing forensic genealogy are finding connections among the people I research and write about even when the people are not blood relatives. Often these connections are trivial but nonetheless interesting. Case in point. After elementary school, Dr. Paul Erhlich attended the secondary school Maria-Magdalenen-Gymnasium (high school) in Breslau where he became friends with Dr. Alfred Neisser, who would later become a professional colleague. Coincidentally, Dr. Albert Neisser is a remote “link” between both of Renate Bruck’s two godmothers, though there is no evidence to suggest either knew Dr. Neisser. Since Elfriede Reichelt and Stephanie Erhlich were born, respectively, in 1883 and 1884, and Renate’s mother was born in 1884, it seems more likely all were schoolmates and friends growing up.
