Note: In this post, I discuss a man with whom my father was once friends, Dr. Herbert Holst, a teacher by profession, and Vice-President of Tiegenhof’s Club Ruschau.
In the previous post, I discussed what I learned about my father’s erstwhile friend Dr. Franz Schimanski. He was a lawyer and notary by profession, and the President of the Club Ruschau, the sports organization my father was a member of in Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland]. This is the town in Freistaat Danzig (Free State of Danzig) where my father had his dental practice between 1932 and 1937. In this post, I turn my attention to Dr. Schimanski’s deputy in the Club Ruschau, Dr. Herbert Holst (Figure 1), another former friend, to relate the little I know about him. As with the previous post, I owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Peter Hanke from “danzig.forum.de,” who uncovered much of the information I relate below.
Around 2012, I began my forensic investigations into my father and his family prompted by seven albums of photos my dad bequeathed me covering from the late 1910’s until his departure for America in 1948. Two of these albums include photos exclusively from the five years my father spent in Tiegenhof and the Free State of Danzig. While many of the images are labelled, often they include only the people’s forenames or nicknames, making it difficult to figure out who they were, how they were connected to my father, and what might have happened to them.
Around the time I was trying to make sense of my father’s collection of portraits, my mother reminded me about two aged friends of his both born in Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland], Peter (b. 1923) and Lolo Lau (b. 1925). I wrote about this couple in Post 2, and my visit to see them in Germany in 2012. (Figures 2-3) Peter Lau lived in Tiegenhof from around age 5 to 15, when his father, Kurt Lau (Figure 4), was the Managing Director of the “Tieghenhofer Oelmühle,” the rapeseed oil mill there. For this reason, he recognized many of the people in my father’s pictures and told me the fates of some of them. Interestingly, though Lolo Lau never lived in Tiegenhof, one person she recognized among my father’s photos was Dr. H. Holst, the Vice President of Tiegenhof’s Club Ruschau; she recognized him because he’d seemingly moved to Danzig and been a teacher at the Gymnasium, high school, she attended there. Lolo could not remember what subject he taught, nor, for that matter, his first name, which Peter Hanke recently discovered.
I was able to confirm Dr. Herbert Holst indeed relocated from Tiegenhof based on listings for him in Danzig Address Books for 1940-41 (Figure 5) and 1942 (Figure 6), indicating he’d lived at Adolf Hitlerstraße 97. In these directories, his profession is listed as “Studienrat,” which is an obsolete term for high school professor or teacher.
Astonishingly, Peter Hanke found a book written by a gentleman named Hubert Hundrieser, entitled “Es begann in Masuren:Meinen Kindern erzählt (It Began in Masuria: I Told My Children)” (Figures 7-8), who was a student of Dr. Herbert Holst in the early 1930’s for about 18 months in Tiegenhof and wrote kind words about him (1989: p. 98-99). Peter graciously translated these lines for me (I’ve added footnotes to clarify a few things):
“My mathematics teacher was a bachelor, Dr. Holst, who always gave himself up to being distinguished. I was truly sorry that I had to disappoint him in his subject. It seemed almost embarrassing to him to have to return my mathematics work to me with the grade ‘unsatisfactory’ (a) that I was used to and undoubtedly deserved.
After a teachers’ conference he took me aside, as he had done several times before. He couldn’t make any sense of the fact that I, who would have achieved the grades ‘good’ in the main subjects German, Latin and English, failed so completely in his subject. He offered private tutoring (b). There he wanted to find out, outside the scholarly setting, when and where my mathematical knowledge stopped or began
After the most recent comprehensive examination he could not help but let his arms sink helplessly. . .because with the latest ‘Tertian’ (c) material my mathematical knowledge was lost in impenetrable fog wafts. But Dr. Holst did not dismiss me with a devastating verdict or with the prophecy that I would amount to nothing. Instead, he had his landlady bring us coffee. With the remark that as a future Obersekundaner (d), this once he offered me a cigar (e), and we talked for an hour about things that had nothing to do with school.
Before I said goodbye, he encouraged me. If I could only keep my good grades in languages, I could also have a grade with bad results in his subject, and certainly there would be an angle in my later life where mathematical ignorance would not be decisive.”
(a) At the time grades ranged from 1 (best) to 6 (worst). The “unsatisfactory (ungenügend)” corresponded to “6.”
(b) These lessons were not held in the school building but in the teacher’s apartment. Essentially, Dr. Holst was offering a “school psychological evaluation” to understand the reasons for Hubert Hundrieser’s failure in the mathematical field.
(c) “Tertia” corresponded with mathematical knowledge of grades 8-9 which was inadequate for the 10th or 11th grades, “Sekunda.”
(d) The next-to-last year of high school before the “Oberprima.”
(e) This was a one-time thing, because at that time it was strictly forbidden for “Tertia” students to smoke, ergo the reference to the student’s soon-to-be status as a “Sekunda” student, when smoking would be permitted.
From these few lines, we learn that Dr. Holst was a mathematics teacher.
Peter Hanke uncovered what’s called a “Beamten-Jahrbuch 1939,” that’s to say, a “Civil Servant Yearbook” (Figure 9) for all the civil servants working in Danzig in 1939, including Dr. Holst. Figure 10a includes a partial list of teachers who taught there at the time, the schools where they taught, their birthdays, and their Service Date.
Below is a table transcribing and translating the column headers, and detailing the information specifically for Dr. Holst (Figure 10b):
Column 1 (German), Translation & Information for Dr. Holst
Column 2 (German), Translation & Information for Dr. Holst
Column 3 (German), Translation & Information for Dr. Holst
Column 4 (German), Translation & Information for Dr. Holst
Column 5 (German), Translation & Information for Dr. Holst
Column 6 (German), Translation & Information for Dr. Holst
Amtsbezeichnung
Name
Dienstort, Behörde (Amt, Schule)
Wohnort, Wohnung
Geburtstag
Dienstalter
Official title
Name
Place of employment, authority (office, school)
Place of residence, apartment
Birthday
Seniority (i.e., Service Date)
StudRat (Studienrat)=teacher, professor
Dr. Herbert Holst
Lfr GudrS (Langfuhr Gudrun-Schule)
Ad. Hitlerstr. 97 (Adolf-Hitlerstraße 97)
25th August 1894
1st May 1928
From the above we learn that Dr. Holst was born on the 25th of August 1894, that he began teaching on the 1st of May 1928, and that he taught at the Gudrun-Schule (i.e., Helene Lange School) (Figures 11a-c) located in the Danzig borough of Langfuhr. Peter found one additional item, a roster of teachers from the Gudrun-Schule listing Dr. Holst as one of its professors. (Figure 12)
As I discussed in the previous post, on account of the removal of all Germans following WWII from much of what is today again Poland, it’s been impossible to learn what may have happened to Dr. Holst. Possibly, someone with knowledge of his fate will stumble upon this post and contact me with information.
Note: I continue my forensic investigations into people my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, knew during the five years he lived in Tiegenhof, in the Free State of Danzig. In this post, I discuss a man who befriended him named Dr. Franz Schimanski, a lawyer and notary by profession, and President of the Club Ruschau. The fate of such people, though not family, has always intrigued me, and I’m continuously trying to locate some of their descendants.
I return in this post and the ensuing one to Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland], the town in the Free State of Danzig where my father briefly had his dental practice between April 1932 and April 1937. I’ll talk about two men who were, respectively, the President and Vice-President of the “Club Ruschau,” the local sports club my dad joined with whose members he regularly socialized. The President was Dr. Franz Schimanski (Figure 1), and his deputy was Dr. Herbert Holst, both of whom I discussed in Post 7. My father would no doubt once have characterized these people as good friends given the numerous pictures of them which survive among his photos.
Finding out what happened or may have happened to people from Tiegenhof and Danzig who were once within my father’s orbit of friends, acquaintances and professional colleagues has always piqued my interest. Because of the turbulence, movements and vast relocations in this part of Europe during WWII, and the eventual ouster of Germans from the area after the war, it is particularly challenging to track down what happened to some of the people my father knew. As regular readers know, I’ve already related the fates of some of them. I tell these stories dispassionately since I have no idea how my dad’s relationship with these people ended in the era of National Socialism. The only thing my father ever said about this is that by the time he left Tiegenhof in 1937, he no longer had any dental clients and knew few people who still acknowledged his existence. I can only imagine how heartrending and dangerous this must have been.
Thanks to the intervention of Mr. Peter Hanke, my acquaintance from “forum.danzig.de,” recently I’ve learned a little more about Dr. Schimanski. There are major gaps in my understanding of his life, and unlike other people my father knew from Tiegenhof, I’ve yet to track down any of his descendants. Let me briefly review what I know for sure, what I surmise, and what Peter has recently uncovered about Dr. Schimanski.
From Address Books for the District in which Dr. Franz Schimanski resided, Kreis Großes Werder im Freistaat Danzig, listings in 1925 (Figure 2) and 1930 (Figure 3) directories show him to have been a “Rechtsanwalt und Notar,” a lawyer and notary. Two newspaper articles Peter found in Die Presse. Ostmärkische Tageszeitung. Anzeiger für Stadt und Land. (The Press. Ostmärkische Daily Newspaper. Gazette for City and Country.) (Figure 4) from 1912 first announce Dr. Schimanski’s appointment as notary (Figure 5), then several days later provide background (Figure 6):
Thorn [today: Torun, Poland], the 20th of August 1912, page 6:
Transcription:
“Tiegenhof, 20. August. (Drei Rechtsanwälte)
hat sich unser Städtchen in den letzten Wochen ge-
leistet. Die Überfüllung der Juristenlaufbahn be-
dingt, daß viele Assessoren nicht in den Staatsdienst
aufgenommen werden. Der Überschuß ist auf die
Rechtsanwaltschaft angewiesen. Wird nun in einem
Ort durch Fortzug oder Tod eine Anwaltsstelle frei,
so sind gleich viele Bewerber auf dem Posten. So
war es auch hier. Herr Justizrat Künstler siedelte
als lebenslänglicher Notar nach Berlin über.
Darauf ließen sich die Herren Gerichtsassessor Dr.
Schimanski aus Stuhm und Rechtsanwalt Selleneit
in die Liste der Rechtsanwälte beim hiesigen Gericht
eintragen. Beide konnten sich jedoch hier nicht be-
haupten, da hier noch ein dritter tätig ist. Es han-
delte sich also bei den beiden neuen Herren darum,
wer das Notariat bekommen würde, denn von den
Einnahmen eines Rechtsanwalts allein kann in
dem kleinen Bezirk der dritte Herr nicht bestehen,
und mehr als zwei Notarstellen sind hier nicht vor-
gesehen. Es schweben zwar schon lange Gerüchte
darüber, daß unser Amtsgerichtsbezirk durch den
rechts der Weichsel belegenen Teil des Kreises Dan-
ziger Niederung vergrößert werden soll, doch liegt
die Verwirklichung dieses Wunsches noch in weitem
Felde. Infolgedessen wird der nicht zum Notar er-
nannte Rechtsanwalt unsere Stadt wieder verlassen.”
Translation (using DeepL Translator):
“Tiegenhof, 20 August. Our town has afforded itself three lawyers in the last few weeks. The overcrowding of the legal career means that many assessors are not accepted into the civil service. The surplus is dependent on the legal profession. If a lawyer’s position becomes vacant in a town as a result of a move away or death, the same number of applicants are on the job. So it was also here. Mr. Justizrat Künstler moved to Berlin as a lifelong notary. Then the court assessor Dr. Schimanski from Stuhm and lawyer Selleneit joined the list of lawyers at the local court. Both could not assert themselves here, however, since here still a third one is active. So the two new gentlemen were concerned with who would receive the notary’s office, because the third gentleman cannot exist in the small district from the income of a lawyer alone, and more than two notary offices are not provided for here. Although there have been rumors for a long time that our court district is to be enlarged by the part of the district of Gdansk’s lowlands to the right of the Vistula, the realization of this wish is still a long way off. As a result, the lawyer, who was not appointed a notary, will leave our city again.”
One of the most remarkable things Peter found related to Dr. Schimanski, he located, of all places, on eBay! He discovered an original document with Dr. Schimanski’s signature and seal, dated the 15th of July 1913 (Figure 7), from shortly after he was appointed notary in Tiegenhof. From this document, we can determine that one of the earliest projects he worked on was a contract for construction of a narrow-gauge railroad.
My father arrived in Tiegenhof according to his Pocket Calendar (see Post 6) precisely on the 9th of April 1932 (Figure 8), exactly one week before his 25th birthday. Throughout his life, my dad was an active sportsman, and he wasted no time applying for membership to the local sports club, the “V. f. B. Tiegenhof, Baltischer Sportverband (Baltic Sports Federation),” to which he was accepted on the 12th of November 1932. (Figure 9) While this was ostensibly a sports club (Figure 10), in order to be accepted by the businessmen and social elite, one clearly had to be a member of civic organizations in town, particularly if one expected to have a successful dental practice. Many of the club’s social events appear to have taken place at the Club Ruschau, located in Petershagen [today: Zelichowo, Poland], just outside Tiegenhof. Mr. Marek Opitz, the current director of the Zulawskie Museum in Nowy Dwór Gdański, was unaware of the club’s existence until I asked him about it and sent him photos. I discussed in Post 7 how Mr. Opitz was able to locate one of the Club’s surviving buildings, to which he took me and my wife on one of our visits to Nowy Dwór Gdański. (Figure 11)
Numerous of the photos of Dr. Schimanski and other members were taken at the Club Ruschau. (Figure 12) In multiple photos, he is shown holding a cane. I surmise Dr. Schimanski was a veteran of WWI and was wounded in theater. Ancestry.com has numerous WWI German Casualty Lists, identifying those killed and wounded in action. I attach a single example with a “Franz Schimanski” listed; in this case, the number “15.6” (i.e., 15th of June) follows the name. (Figure 13) This may correspond to the month and day of birth, or, just as likely, to the day the person was killed or wounded. Regardless, I have no knowledge this Franz Schimanski was my father’s friend. I only know from other pictures in my father’s photo albums that Dr. Schimanski was born in June, year unspecified, based on a birthday party held in his honor that month in 1933. I’m not a very good judge of age, but I would gauge Dr. Schimanski was born around 1880, give or take a few years. If he went to war in 1914, he would have been around 34, seemingly old to be a foot soldier, although Peter Hanke found a secondary source which indicates about 30% of German soldiers were that age or older during WWI. To date, I’ve been unable to locate any primary birth, marriage or death records definitively related to Dr. Schimanski. This was a very common surname in Kreis Großes Werder, and in fact in the 1935 Danzig address book alone, there are 98 listings for Schimanski!
Several pictures among my father’s collection show Dr. Schimanski with who I think is his wife and three adult daughters. (Figure 14) Unlike most of his other pictures, he doesn’t identify the ladies by name but merely refers to them as Lieblinge, “darlings.” My dad clearly had a sweet spot for Dr. Schimanski’s family. Regardless, his pictures give no further clues I can pursue to determine the fate of Dr. Schimanski’s family.
The Totenkarte, death card, from the Heimatortkartei Danzig-Westpreußen database for Dr. Schimanski (Figure 15) indicates only he died in 1940. The information was reported by a Dr. Kurt Heidebrecht, who is listed in the Amtliches Fernsprechbuch für den Bezirk der Reichspostdirektion Danzig 1942 (Official telephone directory for the district of the Reichspostdirektion Danzig 1942) as a Rechtsanwalt u. Notar, lawyer and notary (Figure 16), just as Dr. Schimanski was. I assume Drs. Heidebrecht and Schimanski were once colleagues. Peter Hanke was able to find a Heidebrecht living in Hamburg, Germany who may be a descendant of Kurt Heidebrecht. I’ve written a letter to this person hoping he is related and may be able to tell me what happened to Dr. Schimanski and his family. Watch this space for further developments.
Note: This post is about two of my father’s former friends, non-Jews, from his time living in the Free State of Danzig in the 1930’s, and information I recently uncovered about their peculiar deaths.
My father, Dr, Otto Bruck, received his dental accreditation from the University of Berlin’s Zahnheilkunde Institut, Dentistry Institute, on the 31st of May 1930. This was followed by two brief dental apprenticeships, first in Königsbrück, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, then in Allenstein, Germany [today: Olsztyn, Poland]. These lasted until about mid-August 1930 according to letters of recommendation written by the two respective dentists. My father did not open his own dental practice in Tiegenhof, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] until April 1932, so inasmuch as I can surmise from surviving letters and photos, my father spent the intervening period apprenticing in the Free City of Danzig. (Figures 1-2) He may have been mentored by a Dr. Fritz Bertram, a dentist whom he took pictures of (Figure 3) and who is identified by name in his surviving pocket calendar (Figure 4), the subject of Post 6.
As a brief aside, my father’s decision to relocate to Danzig from Berlin may have been prompted by the fact he had an aunt and uncle who lived there, and that he was close to at least two of their three children (Figures 5-6), who interestingly I met when I was a young boy.
In any case, a gentleman whom my father befriended in Danzig was named Gerhard Hoppe. (Figure 7) As I discussed in Post 6, I learned from a 1934 Danzig Address Book that, like my father, he too was a dentist, in the adjacent town of Neuteich, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Staw, Poland] (Figure 8), 8.8 miles southwest of Tiegenhof. Possibly, Gerhard, who appears from pictures to have been about the same age as my father, may also have been a dental apprentice when he and my father became friends. (Figure 9)
Gerhard and his girlfriend Ilse (Figure 10) are among a group of my father’s former friends whose fates I’ve so far been unable to determine; pictures exist of all of them in my father’s surviving photo albums. These friends were non-Jewish, and I refer to them as “former” friends since during the Nazi era they would have been under enormous pressure to disassociate themselves from any Jews and any businesses they might have run. So, in the case of my father, I know that while he still had a few non-Jewish friends who whom he socialized, he no longer had any dental clients by the time he shuttered his practice and left Tiegenhof for good in 1937. The relationship he had with these erstwhile friends may have been more nuanced, but I don’t know this for a fact. Judging from the dates on my father’s pictures, after mid-1936, his circle of friends had narrowed considerably.
I’ve told readers that I periodically recheck these one-time friends’ names in ancestry.com and other ancestral databases. I recently did this again with Gerhard and Ilse, and, astoundingly, uncovered historic documents related to both. I tell myself I should perhaps be less surprised I discover new documents, and more bewildered I did not find them during earlier searches. Regardless, my recent finds have allowed me to sadly put to rest the fate of Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe. But, like most of the mysteries I seemingly resolve, they are like the mythological hydra, lop off one head and two grow in its place.
The search parameters I entered in ancestry.com were simply Gerhard’s first and last name, a place he might have lived, Danzig in this case, and the year I estimated he was born, so 1907, the same year my father was born. I immediately discovered his marriage certificate (Figures 11a-c), and the marriage register with he and his wife’s names, and their respective parents’ names. (Figure 12a-b)
The two-page marriage certificate, among other things, provides Gerhard’s complete name: “Gerhard Ludwig Rudolf Otto Hoppe”; his date of birth: 18th of February 1908; the date and place he was married: 30th of July 1932, Marienburg [today: Malbork, Poland] (Figure 13); his wife’s complete birth name: “Frida Charlotte Ilse Grabowsky” (also ending in “i” in some documents); his wife’s date of birth: 3rd of August 1907; and Gerhard’s profession: “Zahnarzt,” dentist. Three things instantly confirmed I had found the “right” Gerhard Hoppe: his date of birth off by one day from the date listed in my father’s pocket calendar (Figure 14), his wife’s name, Ilse, and his profession, dentist. Very likely, my father would have attended Gerhard and Ilse’s 1932 wedding. The second page of German marriage certificates typically list witnesses, but unfortunately my father’s name is not among them.
I would eventually locate documents for three generations of Gerhard and Ilse’s ancestors.
Now, here’s where things began to seriously stray from my preconceived notion of Gerhard and Ilse’s fates. With Ilse’s maiden name in hand, “Grabowsky,” I was now able to search entries for her. The first document I found for her was her death certificate showing she’d died on the 15th of April 1940 in the Langfuhr borough of Danzig (Figures 15a-b), known today as Gdansk-Wrzeszcz, the most upscale of Danzig’s boroughs, then and now. This document shows she died at less than 33 years of age, somewhat surprising but perhaps not so unusual given wartime realities. Shortly after discovering Ilse’s death certificate, I found Gerhard’s death record, showing he’d died on the 27th of July 1941 (Figures 16a-b), a little more than a year after his wife, also in Danzig-Langfuhr; at the time of his death he was 33, only slightly older than his wife had been. To say I was stupefied learning Ilse and Gerhard Hoppe had died so young, so soon after one another, and outside the theater of war would be an understatement.
Immediately curious as to whether the death certificates listed their causes of death, I turned to Mr. Peter Hanke. He is a German gentleman from “forum.danzig.de” with whom I’m in touch and who’d recently offered to ask the Polish archive in Malbork, Poland for death certificates for some of my father’s former friends, including Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe. I wanted to let him know I’d found their death certificates and ask if the records stated how they died. The answer left both of us horrified and saddened.
Ilse Hoppe’s cause of death was listed as:
“Todesursache: Durchschneiden der Halsschlagader (Selbstmord)” (Figure 15b)
Cause of death: cutting through the carotid artery (suicide)
And, Gerhard Hoppe’s death was caused by:
“Todesursache: Schädelbruch und komplizierter Oberschenkelbruch links- und rechtsseitig” (Figure 16b)
Cause of death: skull fracture and complicated thigh fracture on the left and right sides
Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe’s deaths leave us with more questions than answers given their extreme violence; they seem more like murders than suicides or health-related deaths.
According to Peter Hanke, an implausible but not impossible explanation as to the cause of Gerhard’s death may relate to the location of his apartment. I mentioned above that a 1934 Danzig Address Book indicates Gerhard was a dentist in Neuteich, Free State of Danzig, although by 1940-1941, a Danzig Address Book shows he’d relocated to Danzig proper and lived at Karrenwall 5 (Figure 17); he is not listed in the 1939 Address Book (Figure 18), suggesting he moved to Danzig in 1940 before Ilse’s death (i.e., Ilse commits suicide in Danzig, not Neuteich). Old German Address Books list people alphabetically as well as by street address and occupation, and, interestingly, in 1940-1941, Karrenwall 5 shows that not only did Gerhard Hoppe reside there but so too did numerous bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP (Figure 19), a trend that continues into 1942. (Figure 20) Could it be that the Nazi Party wanted Gerhard’s apartment, and was not squeamish about asserting its interests? We may never know. Unfortunately, contemporary Danzig newspapers have not yet been digitized, although by 1941 the news outlets were most assuredly controlled by the Nazis and are not likely to provide an accurate portrayal of what might have happened to Gerhard.
There exists a database of displaced Germans refugees from the former province of Danzig-Westpreußen, Germany, now Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz provinces in Poland, referred to as “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” that include images of a civil register (handwritten and printed works); more than 20 million persons are included in these card files arranged by the town of origin. I discussed this database in Post 38. Peter Hanke checked the name “Hoppe” for Danzig, and, incredibly found HOK cards for Gerhard and Ilse’s daughter, Gisela Hoppe, born on the 24th of November 1939 in Danzig (Figure 21), and for Gerhard Hoppe’s parents, Otto Hoppe and Anna Hoppe née Birkholz (Figures 22a-b), who raised Gisela after her parents’ deaths. The timing of Ilse Hoppe’s supposed suicide less than a year after her daughter’s birth makes the cause of her death even more suspicious.
Gisela is shown living in Bad Harzburg, Germany in May 1958. As I prepare to publish this post, just this morning I learned that Gisela, who is about to turn 80 years of age towards the end of November, is still alive. As we speak, I’m trying to establish contact with her and share the multiple images I have of her parents. (Figures 23-24) Watch this space for Part II of the story!
Note: In this Blog post, I discuss how I inadvertently uncovered vital records information for several people in my family tree and talk about leaving open the possibility of discovering evidence of ancestors whose traces appear negligible.
In the prologue to my family history blog, which I initiated in April 2017, I conceded there are some ancestral searches which are bound to end up unresolved during my lifetime. While I never actually close the book on these forensic investigations, I place them on a back-burner in the unlikely event I discover something new or make a new connection. This Blog post delves into one recent find that opened the door to learning more about several close ancestors whom I’d essentially given up hope of unearthing anything new.
Given my single-minded focus over the last two years on writing stories for my family history blog, I’ve woefully neglected updating my family tree which resides on ancestry.com. An opportunity recently presented itself to piggy-back on a friend’s membership to ancestry and review the hundreds of “leaves” associated with the roughly 500+ people in my tree. Typically, at the top of the list of ancestry clues are links to other family trees that may include the same people as found in one’s own tree. While I systematically review these member trees, I only “import” new ancestral information if source documents are attached to the member trees and I can confirm the reliability of the details; I may occasionally make exceptions if trees or tree managers have been trusted sources of information in the past, and/or I otherwise can confirm the origins of the data. Over the years I’ve seen multiple trees replicate the same erroneous information, and this is a path I choose to avoid.
The family ancestral information I happened upon came from a family tree I discussed in Blog Post 39, entitled “Schlesische Jüdische Familien,” “Silesian Jewish Families.” Regular readers may recall this tree has an astronomical 52,000+ names in it, so it should come as no surprise that it is often the source of overlapping or new information for individuals found in my own modest-sized tree. That said, I still apply the same rigorous principles in assessing the information found in this larger tree. I rarely take anything at face-value when it comes to vital records (e.g., births, baptisms, marriages, deaths) given the multiple reasons, often inadvertent or negligent, why data may be incorrect or divergent (e.g., illegible or unintelligible writing on source documents; transcription errors). With these caveats in mind, however, I came across some vital record information on the Silesian Families tree that seemed credible given the specificity of birth and death dates for a few individuals in my tree. The information related to my great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer’s first wife, Esther Ernestine Lißner, and their son, Gerhard Mockrauer; while I’d previously found Gerhard’s birth certificate mentioning his parents, I had never found precise birth and death dates for Ernestine or Gerhard, so this was particularly intriguing.
Having previously established contact with the manager of the “Schlesische Jüdische Familien” family tree, a very helpful German lady by the name of Ms. Elke Kehrmann, I again reached out to her. I acknowledged that remembering the source of data for 52,000+ people is unrealistic but thought I should still ask. Initially, Ms. Kehrmann could only recall the information came from a manuscript prepared by an American Holocaust survivor who’d wanted to memorialize his lineage; with numerous computer upgrades over the years, Elke expressed the likelihood the document was digitally irretrievable. Disappointed, but not surprised, I was prepared to accept the vital records information at face-value.
Then, much to my delight, a day later Elke told me she’d located the source document from a larger collection entitled the “Pinkus Family Collection 1500s-1994, (bulk 1725-1994).” (Figure 1) It was too large to email, but she opined I might be able to locate it on the Internet, and, sure enough, I immediately learned the collection is archived at The Leo Baeck Institute—New York/Berlin (LBI) and can be downloaded for free. For readers unfamiliar with this institute, according to their website, “LBI is devoted to the history of German-speaking Jews. Its 80,000-volume library and extensive archival and art collections represent the most significant repository of primary source material and scholarship on the Jewish communities of Central Europe over the past five centuries.”
The Pinkus Family Collection is enormous. From the “Biographical Note” to the collection, I learned the Pinkus family were textile manufacturers. Their factory, located in Neustadt, Upper Silesia [today: Prudnik, Poland], was one of the largest producers of fine linens in the world. Joseph Pinkus became a partner in the firm S. Fränkel when he married Auguste Fränkel, the daughter of the owner. Their son Max Pinkus (1857-1934) was director until 1926. Subsequently, Max Pinkus’s son Hans Pinkus (1891-1977) managed the family company from 1926-1938 until he was forced out after the company’s total aryanization in the wake of Kristallnacht. Both Max and Hans Pinkus were very active in civic and cultural affairs and interested in local history; they amassed a large library of books by Silesian authors. In their spare time, they devoted themselves to genealogical research, the basis of the family collection archived at LBI. Hans Pinkus left Germany at the end of 1938, emigrated to the United Kingdom with his family in 1939, and died in Britain in 1977.
In reviewing the index to the collection, I had no idea where to begin. Fortunately, Elke came to my rescue and pointed me to “Series VII” (Figure 1), described as encompassing not just close Pinkus family relations but the broader array of families in Upper Silesia. Within this series I located pages related to my family, although, unlike other portions of the collection, ancestral information is recorded in longhand, in Sütterlin, no less. Even so, I was able to decipher most of the numerical data, and enlisted one of my German cousins to translate the longhand.
Here is where I discovered the source of the birth and death dates for my great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer’s first wife, Esther Ernestine Lißner, and their son, Gerhard Mockrauer. A summary of vital information for Josef Mockrauer, his two wives, and their children follows:
I made other surprising discoveries in the Pinkus Collection. Briefly, some context. The second-generation owners of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel in Ratibor were my great-grandparents, Fedor Bruck (Figure 10) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer. (Figure 11) As the table below shows, Fedor and Friederike Bruck had eight children, only six of whom I’d previously been able to track from birth to death; Elise and Robert remained wraiths whose existence I knew about but assumed had died at birth, a not uncommon fate in the 19th century. This was not, in fact, what happened. Elise lived to almost age 4, and Robert to age 16. While Elise expectedly died in Ratibor, mystifyingly, Robert died on December 30, 1887 in Braunschweig, Germany, more than 450 miles from Ratibor. Why here is unclear. Their causes of death are a mystery, though childhood diseases a real possibility.
With respect to the tables above, I don’t expect readers to do anything more than glance at them; for me, they’re a quick reference as to what I know and where it came from, a form of metadata, if you will. The italicized information in the tables was new to me and originated from the Pinkus Collection.
As a related aside, Friederike Mockrauer and Josef Mockrauer were siblings. Interestingly, Josef Mockrauer would go on to eventually marry one of his sister’s daughters, his niece, my great-aunt Charlotte Bruck. Incestuous, I would agree.
Remarkably, on the very same page where I discovered Elise and Robert’s dates and places of death, I found my father and his three siblings listed! (Figure 17) Inasmuch as I can tell, the detailed family information was recorded by either Max (Max died in 1934) or Hans Pinkus around the early- to mid-1930’s, at which time my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, would have been a dentist in Tiegenhof in the Free State of Danzig, and this is precisely what is noted: “Zahnarzt im Tiegenhof (Freistaat Danzig)”; “Freistaat Danzig” was the official name of this former part of the Deutsches Reich after World War I.
Tracking down the Pinkus Collection with its relevant family history is admittedly noteworthy, but the real service was rendered by Max and Hans Pinkus. Their detailed compilation of ancestral data from related Silesian families was gathered while running a full-time business and in the days before genealogical information was digitized, when most of the painstaking work had to be undertaken manually through time-consuming letter-writing, and perhaps occasional phone calls and family gatherings. So, while I take obvious pleasure in having discovered the Pinkus Collection, I acknowledge the true forensic genealogists for amassing this valuable trove of family history.
Let me conclude by emphasizing that well-done family trees to which ancestry.com leads genealogists can often be the source of valuable forensic clues but should be closely scrutinized and delved into to before accepting the data prima facie. And, finally, I have no idea how many “cold cases” I can eventually solve but the challenge is what motivates me.
Note: In this post, I discuss the evidence for my father’s, Dr. Otto Bruck, conversion to Christianity from Judaism, confirmation of which I recently came upon completely inadvertently.
Growing up, my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, never discussed being born into the Jewish religion. If my memory is correct, I think I first learned about it when I was visiting my maternal grandmother in Nice, France as a child. At the time, we were walking through Vieux Nice, when she turned, pointed to a building, told me that’s where my father worked as a dentist after WWII, and mentioned he was Jewish; it would be many years before I understood the significance of all this. Regular readers may recall I discussed my father’s time in Nice after the war in Post 26 and touched on the fact that he was not legally permitted to practice dentistry in France because he was “apatride,” stateless. He was eventually caught and fled to America before he could be brought up on charges that were eventually dropped by the French authorities.
Because religion was not a part of my upbringing, I never gave much thought to it, although, ironically, I was eventually baptized as a Roman Catholic in Lyon, France on August 2, 1957, when I was six years old. (Figure 1) Given the events my father had lived through, it made sense to him I should have a religion. It’s always puzzled me, however, why my father thought that being baptized would afford me any protection if a future anti-Semitic political entity gained power and decided, as the Nazis had, that anyone with two Jewish grandparents is a Jew. Puzzles without answers.
Given my father’s casual attitude about many things, including relatives and religion, it’s not surprising that much of what I’ve learned about such matters has involved a lot of effort. Because my father considered himself German rather than Jewish, it would have made sense to me if he had converted to Christianity from Judaism. But, as I just remarked, because of my father’s casual attitude, it would also not have surprised me if he’d never made the effort to formally convert. Regardless, I’d never previously been able to find definitive proof either way.
The archives at the Centrum Judaicum Berlin include documentation that my father’s brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck, converted from Judaism at the Messiah Chapel in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg, Kastanienallee 22 on June 11, 1939, very late indeed. Similarly, the Centrum Judaicum Berlin retains archival records for my Aunt Susanne’s husband, Dr. Franz Müller, who converted much earlier, on November 25, 1901, but still lost his teaching position at Humboldt University many years later, in 1933.
I’m unaware of any comprehensive database that includes the names and records of Jewish converts in Germany. However, since conversion records survive at the Centrum Judaicum for both of my uncles, and since my father attended dental school in Berlin, I began the search for proof of my father’s own conversion here; they found nothing although it was suggested that knowing the specific church where he might have converted could prove useful. Knowing my father had also apprenticed in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] for a short period after graduating from dental school, I contacted the archives there, again to no avail. The other place I reckoned where my father might have converted to Christianity was the town where he was a dentist between April 1932 and April 1937, Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland], although I had no idea at the time where to begin looking for such records.
I’ve learned, it was not uncommon beginning in the last half of the nineteenth century for German-Jews to convert to Christianity as a means of assimilating into German society. A virulent wave of anti-Semitism that had emerged in Germany in the 1880s may have been another factor in the decision of some Jews to convert.
I remember, as a child, my father talking about his time in Tiegenhof and how he drank heavily in those days. Multiple pictures from my father’s days there exist showing him visibly inebriated. (Figure 2) My father was by no means an alcoholic, and he justified his heavy drinking as “necessary to fit in.” I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that my father was an active sportsman, particularly an excellent tennis player. It’s highly likely there were barriers to becoming a member of the various sports and social organizations in Tiegenhof to which my father belonged, religion no doubt being one of them. Thus, I have concluded that if my father did not convert to Christianity before he arrived in Tiegenhof, the provincial mores of this small town may have necessitated he do so here. That said, until recently, I’d been unable to find any evidence my father ever converted.
Few of my father’s papers survive, but one document that has caught my attention only because it included the names of two members of the Joost family. (Figure 3) Readers must understand that on account of all the Tiegenhof-related documents, books, and address directories I’ve perused over the years, many family surnames are now extremely familiar to me; such was the case with the surname “Joost.” In reviewing this document, I was absolutely convinced it was a dental invoice because at the top of the paper it included my father’s name and identified him as a “zahnarzt,” a dentist. Still, it seemed odd my father would have saved only one invoice among the many he’d no doubt written over the years as a dentist.
Setting aside this anomaly, I began to research in various databases the Joost names I found on the paper in question. As readers can see, towards the bottom left side is written “Alb. Joost,” while on the bottom right side is written “f. Alb. Joost Kathe Joost.” From ancestry.com, I discovered there lived a “Schneidermeister,” a tailor, in Tiegenhof, by the name of “Jacob Albert Joost,” born on July 27, 1865, who died on January 23, 1937. The profession was passed on to his son, “Alfred Albert Joost,” born on June 4, 1898 (Figure 4-5), who died on February 18, 1975; he was married to Käthe Großnick. (Figure 6) The existence of the father and son tailors was confirmed by various Tiegenhof Address Books. (Figures 7-10) Because both father and son had Albert in their name, I was uncertain whether the presumed dental work had been done on the father or son.
To resolve this confusion, I asked one of my cousins to decipher the document. I learned the document was a receipt not for dental work, as I’d thought, but for payment of a church tax. Like in Germany and several other European countries, in the Free State of Danzig, where Tiegenhof was located, members of the Protestant or Catholic Churches were compelled to pay a church tax of 7.5% of their income. In 1936, my father was obviously a member of the Evangelische Kirche in Tiegenhof (Figures 11-14), and his annual tax amounted to 90 Guilden 90 Pfenninge; he was permitted to pay his obligation in four installments. The first payment of 22 Guilden 74 Pfenninge was made on October 6, 1936, and it was receipted by “Alb. Joost,” while the second and third installments were made on December 29, 1936. Kaethe Joost was the authorized representative of Albert Joost, so the “f” in “f. Alb. Joost Kathe Joost” stands for “fuer,” “for” or “in place of,” indicating she signed the receipt in lieu of her husband. The last installment would have been due on March 15, 1937, a payment my father is unlikely to have made because by then he would no doubt have been expelled from the Church for being of the “Jewish race.” By mid-1937, my father had left Tiegenhof.
Having found the clear-cut proof that my father had converted to Christianity and knowing he’d been a member of Tiegenhof’s Evangelical Church, I contacted Mr. Peter Hanke from the Danzig Forum asking him whether conversion records for this church still exist. He told me he’d never found such records, and that they’d likely not survived the turmoil of WWII. This was disappointing but hardly unexpected.
Interestingly, Peter did find a brief reference to Albert Joost in Vol. 36 of the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” the one-time annual journal for former German residents of Tiegenhof and their descendants. In German it says: “Bei Joost war fruehmorgens um 4 Uhr Licht, um diese Zeit arbeitete er bereits in seiner Werkstatt; um 9 Uhr abends war immer noch das Petroleumlicht in der Werkstatt zu sehen. Der war einer von den Tiegenoertern, die ich nie in einem Gasthaus gesehen habe, aber jeden Sonntag im blauen Anzug in der Kirche.” Translated: “Joost was already at work at 4 a.m. in the morning. At 9 p.m. the kerosene lamp could still be seen in his workshop. That man was one of the “Tiegenoerter,” never seen in a tavern but come Sunday always wore a blue suit to church.” Possibly, Albert Joost was the “tithe collector” with his wife for Tiegenhof’s Evangelical Church.
Proof of my father’s conversion to Christianity came in a most roundabout way. As mentioned, it’s highly unlikely his actual conversion document survived WWII, but the important thing is that my father’s attempt to assimilate into German society ended in failure and he was still forced to flee to save himself.
“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”—Oscar Wilde
Note: This story has me going back to the town in the Free State of Danzig, Tiegenhof, where my father was a dentist between April 1932 and April 1937, to talk about a man whose destiny has remained opaque, a man named Heinrich “Heinz” Regehr. Though I relate this tale in a linear fashion, the way I learned things did not follow a straight line.
For readers who have regularly followed my Blog, you may recall from Post 2 that my father’s now 94-year-old friend, Juergen “Peter” Lau, whom he first met in Tiegenhof as a young boy, recognized numerous people in my father’s photographs. This story begins with one such identification, an individual named Heinrich “Heinz” Regehr. The sole photograph of Heinz Regehr shows him walking across the street in the former East Prussian city of Königsberg (today: Kaliningrad, Russia) in April 1936, in the company of two other friends, one of whom is known to me, Hans “Mochum” Wagner discussed in Post 4. (Figure 1) When Peter first identified Heinz Regehr, he told me his name, nothing more.
In yet another post, Post 6, discussing the names in my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar, under the date January 13th I mentioned finding a “Linchen Regehr,” who I would later learn was the wife of this Heinz Regehr. (Figure 2) Seemingly, the Regehrs, husband and wife, were friends or acquaintances of my father’s, so I became intrigued about what had happened to them.
Thus, upon my return to the United States in 2013, I turned to the membership index in the back of the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” the now-defunct annual journal for former German residents of Tiegenhof and their descendants. On multiple occasions over the years, the index of members has been immeasurably useful, in part because the maiden names of women are provided. I used the index to identify all the people with the surname “Regehr,” and went on a letter-writing campaign in the hopes I could learn Heinz Regehr’s fate.
One German lady to whom I wrote was a Ms. Anneliese Franzen née Regehr. Some weeks passed, and eventually I was contacted on her behalf by her daughter living in Atlanta, Georgia, Ms. Meike Guenzerodt. She explained to me that Heinz Regehr was her mother’s father, that’s to say, her grandfather, who had disappeared in fighting at the end of WWII and was presumed dead.
Ms. Guenzerodt provided a little history about the family’s escape from Tiegenhof towards the end of WWII. Meike explained that Anneliese’s mother had been involuntarily institutionalized in a psychiatric facility outside Tiegenhof, and this delayed the family’s departure as the Russians were approaching. Eventually, however, families of institutionalized patients were assured by German authorities their loved ones would be evacuated to Bremen, in the western part of Germany, before the Russians arrived. With these assurances in hand, Anneliese’s grandfather took Anneliese and her two sisters and fled westward; at the time, Anneliese, the youngest, was six years old (born 1938); the middle sister, Evamarie, was 16 (born 1928); and the oldest, Lore, was 21 (born 1923). Their father, Heinrich Regehr, was in the German Army at the time and they would eventually learn had gone missing in action in 1945 near Küstrin, 60 miles outside Berlin in the German state of Brandenburg, on the Oder River along the border with Poland.
The promised evacuations of the patients in the psychiatric facility never materialized, and the doctors and nurses decamped, leaving the inmates to fend for themselves. With no staff to prevent them from wandering off, Anneliese’s mother made her way back to Tiegenhof. There, a nurse found her wandering the streets and took her in, where she survived a mere three weeks before succumbing to disease in 1945. After the war, the family was visited by this former nurse and learned of the mother’s fate.
Meike explained that because of the family’s hasty retreat from Tiegenhof, no family photos of Heinz Regehr had survived. She asked whether I could send her a copy of my father’s picture of him for her mother, an entreaty I was most happy to oblige.
Believing I had resolved the question of Heinz Regehr’s fate, I set the issue aside. In 2014, when I again visited Peter Lau in Germany, our conversation veered to Heinz, and I mentioned I’d learned he’d gone missing in action during the war and presumably died. I can practically visualize Peter’s look of disbelief when I told him this. He recounted that Heinz Regehr had in fact survived WWII, and eventually immigrated to Alberta, Canada. He’d previously married Lina Regehr, following the death of her first husband, Franz Schlenger, a son of Otto Schlenger, owner of Tiegenhof’s Dampfmahlmuehle (steam-operated flour mill). I would later learn from a descendant of Hedwig “Hedsch” Schlenger, to which Post 10 was devoted, that Lina and Heinz had had two boys, Henry Regehr, born in 1932, and Martin Regehr, born in 1940.
At this point, I started to wonder whether I’d uncovered the proverbial “skeleton in the family closet.” I began to question if Heinz Regehr had not had two families, that’s to say, that he had somehow survived WWII. With one wife, I knew he’d had three daughters born, respectively, in 1923, 1928 and 1938, and with Linchen Regehr, he’d apparently had two sons, born, respectively, in 1932 and 1940; the fact that he’d had his third daughter by his first wife between the time he had his two sons with his second wife troubled me greatly. As implausible as this may seem, readers must remember that Anneliese had “affirmatively” identified her father, and Peter Lau had confirmed my father’s picture depicted Heinz Regehr. Nonetheless, I never felt entirely comfortable with my conclusion, so I set the issue aside for future consideration as I continued researching other facets of my family’s history.
It wasn’t until I began writing stories for this Blog that I came back to the question of Heinz Regehr. I turned to ancestry.com, and did a query on him, and, lo and behold, was directed to “Find-A-Grave,” which confirmed that Heinrich Regehr (1898-1965) and his wife, Lina Regehr (1901-1968), were buried in Mountain View Memorial Gardens in Alberta, Canada. I also uncovered an obituary for the older of Heinrich and Lina Regehr’s sons, Henry Regehr (1932-2012). (Figure 3) The obituary confirmed that Henry Regehr was born in Tiegenhof on June 11, 1932, and provided names of surviving family members, including a son named Robert Regehr. Armed with this information, I turned to Alberta’s White Pages, and phoned several Regehrs who seemed promising. A few days later, Henry’s son, Robert Regehr, returned my call and confirmed he was Heinrich Regehr’s grandson. We exchanged information, he shared a little of his family’s story, and eventually he would confirm that my father’s picture was indeed his grandfather. So, it now seemed I had the “proof” that Heinz had survived the war and immigrated to Canada, seemingly abandoning his first family.
Not wanting to leave any stone unturned, I tried to learn more about Anneliese Franzen’s father who’d gone missing in action during WWII, thinking there might be updated information or something to suggest it was a different Heinrich Regehr. I discovered a German website (https://www.volksbund.de/en/volksbund.html) with data on German war casualties. This organization describes itself as follows: “Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. is a humanitarian organization charged by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany with recording, maintaining and caring for the graves of German war casualties abroad.” This website included the name of the Heinrich Regehr I presumed was Anneliese’s father, so I requested a copy of the documentation. What I received confirmed what Anneliese’s daughter had told me, namely, that her grandfather had gone missing on March 1, 1945. (Figure 4) An additional piece of information that Volksbund Deutsche provided was the date of birth of Heinrich Regehr, specifically, March 27, 1897. While not necessarily significant, it differed by a year from what I’d discovered on “Find-A-Grave” for the Heinrich Regehr in Alberta. Hoping to resolve this discrepancy, I contacted Alberta’s Provincial Government trying to obtain his death certificate but was told, not unexpectedly, only family members could obtain this document.
Within the past month, I again queried “Heinrich Regehr” on ancestry.com. Because “Regehr” is a common Mennonite name, often tens of thousands or even millions of “hits” will appear. Perhaps, because I’d never previously scrolled through enough of the names, on this particular occasion I was directed to an 1927-28 Address Book for the “Kreis Großes Werder,” the “kreis” or “state” (i.e, the equivalent of a county) in which Tiegenhof was located; I’d never previously come across this directory for Tiegenhof, a comprehensive one 23 pages long. What I discovered gave me further pause. It included two listings for Heinrich Regehr, one on Lindenstraße, the second on Schloßgrund. (Figure 5) However, knowing that Heinrich had been a “Bankbeamter,” or “bank official,” at the “Kreissparkaße,” or district savings bank, and knowing this bank had been located on “Schloßgrund,” I considered that the second listing might be his private residence. By itself, this was still not enough to conclude there were two Heinrich Regehrs.
A brief digression is necessary. Occasionally readers will send me photographs or documents related to my Blog posts or provide other useful information. One such reader recently suggested I register for a forum, entitled “Forum.Danzig.de,” which devotes an entire section to Tiegenhof. Because this forum is in German and requires painstaking use of Google Translate, which in the case of German yields completely tortured transliterations, it took me time to sign up. With an English-speaking member’s assistance, I eventually negotiated the process, and uploaded my first question. While this forum has turned into an absolute boon, results of which will be presented in upcoming posts, in this post I want to focus on Heinrich Regehr.
The gentleman from “Forum. Danzig.de” who assisted me, Mr. Peter Hanke, has been gracious and helpful beyond measure. In the span of less than two weeks, Peter has helped me solve no fewer than three thorny issues that have confounded me for several years, including the question of Heinrich Regehr. Uncertain whether the Danzig Forum knew of the 1927-28 Address Book for the Kreis Großes Werder I’d discovered on ancestry.com, I offered to make the Tiegenhof portion of it available to members. Peter confirmed the Forum’s awareness of this directory, then gave me a link to additional directories for Tiegenhof, which he offered to send. After looking through the list, I asked him for two address books for landowners in Kreis Großes Werder, one for 1925, the other for 1930.
After receiving these address books, I searched for Heinrich Regehr, hoping, once and for all to resolve the question of whether I was dealing with one person or two. Unlike the 1927-28 address book, the 1925 address book included only the one Heinrich Regehr listed at Lindenstraße, seemingly related to a Hermann Regehr, a “hofbesitzer,” or farm owner, and “getreidehandlung,” someone involved in crop treatment. (Figure 6) The 1930 address book again included this Hermann Regehr, but also “Lina Regehr” at Vorhofstraße. (Figure 7) While unlikely, I briefly considered Heinrich had first been a farmer, then later gone into banking. While I had no definitive answer, because Lina Regehr’s address was different, I became more certain there were two different Heinrichs.
I mentioned in passing my quandary to Peter Hanke, and, unexpectedly, within a day he confirmed two Heinrich Regehrs had lived in Tiegenhof and provided the following information on each:
Heinrich REGEHR I (Figures 8a & 8b)
Business: Merchant
Rank: Unteroffizier (non-commissioned officer)
Date of birth: May 27, 1897
Place of birth: Neukirch [today:Nowa Cerkiew, Poland]
Address in Tiegenhof: Marienburgerstr. 14
Home State: Kreis Großes Werder
During WWII: Ground personnel in Elbing [today: Elbląg, Poland]
Missing in action since May 1, 1945 (somewhere near Küstrin/Reppen/West-Sternberg/Zorndorf)
Relatives: Father Hermann Regehr, born January 29, 1867
Place of birth: Rückenau [today: Rychnowo Żuławskie, Poland]
Address in Tiegenhof: Neue-Reihe 1-3
Business: Director of the Kreissparkaße
Immigrated to Canada after WWII: Calgary, Alberta
Wife: Lina, née ZULAUF widowed SCHLENGER
Children: Heini (Heinrich) (born June 11, 1932); Martin (born June 5, 1940)
Lina’s children by her first marriage: Brigitte SCHLENGER (born August 25, 1922 in Danzig-Langfuhr); Rudolf SCHLENGER (born October 11, 1923 in Neuteich)
Surprised as to the speed with which Peter had confirmed the existence of two Heinrich Regehrs, born in consecutive years, living in Tiegenhof at the same time, I naturally asked where the data came from. It was clear it didn’t originate from any Address Books. Peter gave me a link to a free online catalog on FamilySearch entitled “Heimatortskartei Danzig-Westpreußen, 1939-1963,” a database whose existence was previously unknown to me. This is a civil register of refugees from the former province of Danzig-Westpreußen, Germany, now Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz provinces in Poland. Consisting of handwritten and typed index-sized cards, it was developed by the German Red Cross after WWII to help people find their families who’d been expelled from this region. All the available cards have been photographed and uploaded to FamilySearch.
I reviewed the index cards on roughly 4,000 former residents of Tiegenhof. Not only did I relocate the Heimatortskartei for Heinrich Regehr I and II, but I also found a card for a Hermann Regehr (Figures 10 a & 10b); the names and dates of birth of Anneliese and her two siblings are included on the flip side of the card confirming this was the grandfather who fled Tiegenhof with his three grand-daughters. (Figure 11) This Hermann Regehr is found in the 1925, 1927-28 and 1930 Tiegenhof Address Books. In ancestry.com, I was also able to locate his birth register. (Figure 12) Additionally, Peter Hanke accessed the Church books of the Mennonites, a paid service, and discovered the family overview for Hermann Regehr’s father, Johann Regehr. (Figure 13) While not detailed here, the Mennonite books also contain information on Johann Regehr’s parents going back yet another generation
Similarly, for the family of the Heinrich Regehr II who wound up in Alberta, Canada, Peter accessed the Mennonite Church books for his father and grandfather, both also named Heinrich Regehr. (Figure 14)
The Heimatortskartei catalog often provides invaluable clues as to family connections, spouses, vital events, and more. Beyond the Regehrs, in at least three other instances, I connected names and/or dates on the cards to the corresponding information in my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar or to pictures in my father’s collection. These will be the subject of future Blog posts.
I can hear readers saying, “It’s obvious there were two different Heinrich Regehrs!” And, while I would be inclined to agree, I try to avoid making facts fit a false narrative. The “fact” is that both Anneliese Franzen and Peter Lau recognized the same Heinrich Regehr. What I initially failed to consider is that because her father disappeared from her life when she was very young, no older than six years old, Anneliese may have had only vague recollections of what her father looked like and may have jumped to the conclusion, based on the name I provided, that the picture I sent was of her father. Regardless, taking the time to patiently research Heinrich Regehr has led to a finding that supports what Anneliese and her family have always known and dispels any notion their father “abandoned” them.
REFERENCE
Jeglin, Günter
1985 TIEGENHOF und der Kreis Großes Werder in Bildern.
Among the people my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was acquainted with in Tiegenhof, and may even once have considered good friends, were the owners of Tiegenhof’s Dampfmahlmuehle (steam-operated flour mill), Hedwig “Hedsch” Schlenger, nee Fenger (b. June 13, 1899, Tiegenhof, Free State of Danzig-d. June 3, 1982, Hannover, Germany) and her husband, Alfred “Dicken” Schlenger (Figure 1). Using the membership list in the Tiegenhofer Nachrichten, the annual periodical for former German residents of Tiegenhof and their descendants, I had the good fortune to locate Hedsch Schlenger’s grand-daughter, a delightful lady by the name of Beate Lohff, nee Schlenger (Figure 2), living in Meppen, Germany. Readers will recall from an earlier post that my father had recorded Hedsch Schlenger’s name by June 13th in his 1932 Pocket Calendar, a date Beate would later confirm was when her grandmother was born in 1899 in Tiegenhof.
Not only was I fortunate enough to locate Hedsch Schlenger’s grand-daughter, but I also had the indisputable “luck” to learn that Beate had inherited some of her grand-parent’s personal papers and surviving pictures, which Beate graciously shared with me. The pictures, some of which have been discussed and shown in previous posts, included people whom my father had once known, including two personal friends, Kurt Lau and Hans “Mochum” Wagner. Perhaps even more valuable was a 12-page diary Hedsch Schlenger had written covering the period from roughly September 1944 through August 1947 that I had translated into English; readers will correctly surmise this overlaps with the period when the Russians overran Tiegenhof and East and West Prussia and worked their way westwards towards the heart of Nazi Germany as the German war-machine collapsed. Hedsch Schlenger’s diary provides a fascinating, albeit limited, look at this period. The initial entry is dated June 1, 1945, with subsequent entries dated, respectively, June 24, 1945; July 22, 1945; August 29, 1945; May 1947 and August 1947. According to Beate Lohff (personal communication), a portion of Hedsch Schlenger’s diary has been lost and was likely destroyed.
In this Blog post, I have extracted several sections of Hedsch Schlenger’s diary to highlight contemporary personal and historic events; provided brief commentary on the events or people discussed; depicted some of the individuals mentioned; and, finally, illustrated, using a few of my father’s pictures, the areas through which Hedsch and her entourage likely passed. Since most of the people mentioned will be of scant interest to the reader, I will focus primarily on the broader contemporary historical events that Hedsch Schlenger touches on that readers may find more entertaining. The complete translated diary can be found under Historic Documents for anyone interested in reading it, although readers should be prepared to go through it with an Atlas in hand.
Hedsch Schlenger’s initial diary entry dated “Schwerin, June 1, 1945”: “By September 1944, we had survived 5 years of war. My husband [Alfred] passed away in August [1944] after being severely ill for 8 weeks; my 19-year-old son Eberhard was an aircraftsman in Breslau (today: Wroclaw, Poland) and only my second 13-year-old son Juergen was with me in Tiegenhof, where I lived with my mother-in-law in the mill and where my husband used to work as a mill merchant.”
Throughout her diary, Hedsch Schlenger refers to her mother-in-law as “Omama,” although her given name was “Martha Schlenger, nee Ruhnau.” More will be said about her fate later.
Hedsch Schlenger’s diary entry: “The Russians advanced further and further into East and West Prussia and on January 23, 1945, the first tanks appeared in Elbing [today: Elblag, Poland], 20km (ca. 13 miles east-southeast) away from Tiegenhof. At 8 in the evening we received the first order to evacuate. . . At 11 p.m. it was all cancelled as the danger should have been over, but at 5 in the morning the situation became very serious. . . It was the 24th, my husband’s birthday, when we left the beautiful mill site at 8:30 in the morning.”
On the road, we were soon driving in convoy and moved forward very slowly because of the ice. We drank hot coffee for the first time at 3 p.m. in Steegen [today: Stegna, Poland] (15km), and all the vehicles gathered at 7 p.m. . .in Nickelswalde [today: Mikoszewo, Poland] (25km). Our Wanderer (car) soon crossed the river on the ferry. . .”
Commentary: Steegen was a beach community north of Tiegenhof where my father often recreated (Figures 3 & 4). Nickelswalde was the major ferry-crossing point across the Weichsel River [today: Vistula], a ferry my father often took on his way to Danzig (Figure 5 & 6).
Hedsch Schlenger’s diary entry: “In Danzig, I met Ruth van Bergen. . .thanks to her, I went once more to Tiegenhof by car. Our house was completely occupied by soldiers and plundered. . .The mill was in use, which means new flour and whole grain were produced by means of an electric motor. . . Ruth van Bergen and I spent the night in [Tiegenhof] and one could hear shooting from the front-line, which was 8km away. The next day we drove back through Burnwalde [on the Weichsel], where another pig was slaughtered and packed for us to take. The ferry from Rothebude took 10 hours because the roads were full of convoys all the way to Danzig.”
I made it once more to Tiegenhof with Erna Baumfolk. . .That night we stayed with the Regehrs (uncle). . .In the afternoon, we drove back with the Wehrmacht. I had a feeling then that I will never see my home again. The cemetery was the only place that remained untouched. I will never forget that peaceful image amidst the war. Will I ever see my husband’s grave again?”
Commentary: The above describe Hedsch Schlenger’s last two visits to Tiegenhof from Danzig. Following the war, the Communist Government in Poland not only expelled most remaining Germans but also made a concerted effort to remove traces of German occupation, a pattern we see repeated in other cities and towns across the country. Consequently, while many German-era buildings still stand today in Nowy Dwor Gdanski, the cemetery where Alfred Schlenger and other Germans were once buried in Tiegenhof no longer exists.
Hedsch Schlenger’s diary entry: “The situation in Danzig became increasingly dangerous. The Russians reached Graudenz [today: Grudziądz, Poland], Schneidemühl [today: Piła, Poland] and were close to Dirschau [today: Tczew, Poland] and were close to Stettin [today:Szczecin, Poland]. If we stood a chance to go west by train we had to leave Zoppot [today: Sopot, Poland] (Figure 7) again. Many of our friends had left by ship but it was very difficult to get tickets; train tickets were hard to get. Philipsen, my brother-in-law, left on the “Gustloff” as boatman. The ship was torpedoed at the beginning of February near Leba [today: Łeba, Poland]. Most likely he died in the attack. My sister [Lisbeth] often went to Gotenhafen/Gdingen [today: Gydnia, Poland] to get some news but always in vain.
All of a sudden, Doempke, my brother-in-law, managed to get me 3 places on a hospital train, and on February 24th, my mother, Jürgen and I set out from Neufahrwasser [today: Nowy Port, Poland] towards an uncertain destination. There were 15 wounded in the carriage who arrived by boat from Königsberg [today: Kaliningrad, Russia] and were loaded onto the train. . .It was very cold in the compartment and it took us 3 days to get to Stettin [today: Szczecin, Poland] through Pomerania.
On the 27th we arrived in Bad Kleinen in Mecklenburg, where we got off the train. Then we travelled through Schwerin, Ludwigslust, Wittenberge and Neustadt (Dosse) to Rathenow. . . [roughly 45 miles northwest of Berlin]”
Commentary: Here Hedsch Schlenger identifies some places the Russians captured as they were closing in on Pomerania and West Prussia, and touches on one of the lesser known disasters of World War II, specifically, the torpedoing of the former cruise ship known as the Wilhelm Gustloff.
Hedsch Schlenger’s contemporary account details how the Russians were advancing into West Prussia and Pomerania from the South and East. Other informant accounts I’ve collected suggest the Russians were even backtracking East to capture pockets of German resistance they may have bypassed on their way West. Some readers may recall from my earlier Blog post dealing with “Idschi and Suse [Epp]” that their brother, Gerhard Epp, did not evacuate from near Stutthof until May 6, 1945, indicating this area east of Danzig was likely one of the last captured by the Russians. On Figures 8, 9 & 10, I have circled some of the places that Hedsch Schlenger mentions in her narrative as she travels from Danzig to the German State of Mecklenburg.
Elsewhere in her diary, Hedsch Schlenger identifies her sister by name, “Lisbeth,” without providing her married name. In the section quoted above, Lisbeth’s husband is merely identified as “Philipsen.” It was initially unclear to me whether this was her husband’s prename or surname. However, I was eventually able to locate a birth record from the Evangelical Church in Tiegenhof for a “Otto Wilhelm Max Philipsen,” a child that Lisbeth, nee Fenger, had with her husband which confirmed that “Philipsen” was Lisbeth’s married name and that she was married to Otto Philipsen. I even found Lisbeth Philipsen’s name and address in Bremen on a page in Alfred Schlenger’s Address Book, given to me by Alfred’s grand-daughter (Figure 11).
The “Philipsen” mentioned in Hedsch Schlenger’s diary is this Otto Philipsen who died when the Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk in the Baltic Sea by Soviet Navy submarines. An American scholar by the name of Cathryn J. Prince, has written a riveting account of this little-known disaster in a 2013 book entitled “Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.” As the Russians were advancing from the East, Berlin made plans to evacuate upwards of 10,000 German women, children, and the elderly from West and East Prussia aboard a former cruise ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff. Sailing from Gotenhafen/Gdingen [today: Gydnia, Poland] through the icy waters of the Baltic Sea on January 30, 1945, the ship was soon found and sunk by Russian subs. An estimated 9,400 people lost their lives, six times the number lost on the Titanic!!
Hedsch Schlenger’s diary entries: “On April 12th, the Americans were already marching into Stendal [roughly 100 miles northwest of Berlin]. On this occasion, I wanted to leave Rathenow again for I did not wish to fall into the hands of the Russians. I did not flee from the East for that. . .
In the meantime, the Russians were getting closer and closer to Berlin, the Allied forces kept advancing from the West, and the Russians began new attacks even close to Stettin. They were now near Mecklenburg, and on May 1st, they were now no more than 20km away from Krakow am See [located in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany, and the place where Hedsch, her mother and her son had temporarily taken refuge with friends as she was writing her account].
My mother. . .still wanted to stay there [Krakow am See]. However, in the morning one of the soldiers advised us to get on the truck going in the direction of Schwerin and make our way to Lübeck. By 9 we had packed everything and set out again to flee from the Russians, who were supposed to reach Krakow by 12. They were constantly on our heels during our journey. The streets were lined with tanks again, between them were soldiers, wounded and prisoners—a bleak string of hardened people, who had lost their homes and their country.
And suddenly the war ended. . .
June 24th: We are still in Schwerin, although every minute there is a rumor that the Russians will occupy this part of Mecklenburg as well. Many people from Danzig walk around with Danziger coat-of-arms on their clothes, and the rumors are circulating that a Free City shall be established again. But they lack any foundation.
July 22, 1945: Since [June] 19th we’ve been in Rostock. The Russians replaced the English in Schwerin. . .”
Commentary: In the closing weeks of fighting in Europe, the Allied powers had actually pushed beyond the previously agreed occupation zone boundaries determined at the 1945 Yalta Conference by the “Big Three” (Russia, America, and Britain) on how to split up Germany following WWII. In the case of the Americans, they had sometimes pushed by as much as 200 miles beyond the agreed boundaries. So, after about two months of holding certain areas meant to be in the Soviet zone, which was clearly the case with Schwerin, the Allied powers withdrew during July 1945, which corresponds with Hedsch Schlenger’s account.
Clearly, there was an unrealistic expectation among some former residents of Danzig that a Free City would once again be established there, a situation that obviously never came to pass.
Hedsch Schlenger’s diary entry: August 29, 1945: “We are still in Rostock. The refugees from the East keep coming still. Amongst them was also the Schritt family from Zoppot [today: Sopot, Poland], who knew for sure that Omama [Hedsch Schlenger’s mother-in-law, Martha Schlenger] had died there. . Allegedly the Doempkes tried to take their own lives. . .
. . .Many have taken their own lives, like my mother-in-law in Zoppot, who [died and]. . .is buried in the garden at Heidebergstraße. The Doempkes. . .also took poison. . . “
Commentary: Here, Hedsch Schlenger learns that her mother-in-law, Martha Schlenger, nee Ruhnau (“Omama”) (Figure 12), died in Zoppot as did the Doempkes, her brother-and-sister-in-law.
Many Germans who decided to stay in West Prussia as the Russians were approaching in the closing days of WWII were either killed or eventually took their own lives; those that survived were later expelled or naturalized as Polish citizens. In the case of women who stayed, they were the repeated victim of rape by Russian soldiers. My father’s friend from Tiegenhof, Peter Lau, to whom an earlier post was devoted, told me that his aunt decided to stay in Danzig to protect her property only to eventually arrive in West Germany months later a shattered woman on account of her brutal treatment at the hands of Russian soldiers. Peter also recounted that German women took refuge in what was once Tiegenhof’s Käsefabrik (cheese factory), and what is today the Muzeum Zulawskie, as the Russians were approaching; after the town was captured, these women were systematically removed from the factory and repeatedly raped.
Hedsch Schlenger’s diary entry: August 29, 1945: “Recently I met a Mr. Kurt Schlenger who is a distant relative of ours. He lives here in Rostock; he’s married and is a distinguished violinist. They live in Massmannstraße 10, have an 18-year-old daughter who wants to become an artist. I even met a sister of this Mr. Schlenger, a widow named Mrs. Seidel, who lives in Tremsenweg 4. They are very nice people, but completely different to us. They are dark, small and not as handsome as our Schlengers.”
Commentary: This entry took some time to unravel. Hedsch’s husband Alfred had a brother by the same name, Dr. Kurt Schlenger, who coincidentally was also a musician (Figure 13). Readers may recall from an earlier post that this Dr. Kurt Schlenger, born on April 20, 1909, was mentioned in my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar. I spent a considerable amount of time searching for a Kurt Schlenger from Rostock, Germany on ancestry.com who could be the “distant relative” to whom Hedsch was referring. Eventually, I found one Kurt Schlenger in Rostock, Germany, born on June 11, 1893, who is likely the relative in question; his marriage certificate shows he was born in Preußisch Holland (Prussian Holland) [today: Pasłęk, Poland], 46km or less than 30 miles from Tiegenhof.
From German refugees continuing to arrive from the East, Hedsch Schlenger was either able to re-encounter people she knew from West Prussia and Tiegenhof, including people my father also knew, or learn about people who’d decided to stay behind. The fate of those who stayed behind, however, is often unclear.
NOTE: The following story does not relate to my father’s time in Tiegenhof, nor directly to any of his friends and acquaintances from his time there. Rather, it is connected to a query forwarded to me by the Director of the Muzeum Zulawskie from an American woman, looking for information on one of her relatives that lived in Tiegenhof in the 1870’s. Because her query overlapped with some of my own research and sources, it provides insight on how one can sometimes also further other people’s family investigations.
In March of 2017, Marek Opitz, Director of the Muzeum Zulawskie in Nowy Dwor Gdanski, and President of the Klub Nowodworski, forwarded a request for information from a Ms. Lori Hill living in Bend, Oregon. Because Marek, in his own words, considers me “an ambassador to the United States,” referring Ms. Hill to me seemed logical. Lori was asking the Muzeum Zulawskie whether they could tell her anything about a relative of hers, by the name of “Rudolph Wilhelm Ludwig Dargatz,” who had lived in Tiegenhof in the 1870’s.
My initial reaction when I received this referral was simply to think I could provide little help since my own father’s time in Tiegenhof had been much later and short, stretching from April 1932 through perhaps June 1937, and he was unlikely to have known her relative. With this in mind, I briefly explained my father’s connection to Tiegenhof, and mentioned two books on Tiegenhof she might consider purchasing to learn about the town’s history. One, written by Marek Opitz and Grzegorz Gola, is simply entitled “Tiegenhof/Nowy Dwor Gdanski”; the second, authored by Gunter Jeglin, is entitled “Tiegenhof und der Kreis Grosses Werder in Bildern.”
I explained to Lori that in the course of doing my own research, I had written to many people whose names and addresses I found in the membership index of the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten.” I told her about Mr. Hans Erich Mueller, the elderly German gentleman who’d grown up in Tiegenhof and identified the “Schlummermutter” by name, and suggested she might want to contact him. I also mentioned my father’s friend, Juergen “Peter” Lau, and how much he’d helped me. With these referrals, I naturally assumed I had done as much as I could for Lori.
Still, I couldn’t quite lay Lori’s query to rest, and continued to contemplate how else I might help. During my own investigations, Marek Opitz had passed along two Address/Telephone books for Tiegenhof, an Address Book from 1910 and a Phone Directory from 1943. I checked both for listings of “Dargatz,” and, much to my surprise, discovered an individual by the name of “Rudolf Dargatz,” spelled with an “f” rather than a “ph” at the end of the given name in the 1943 Tiegenhof Phone Directory. (Figure 1) In her initial query to Marek, Lori had mentioned that her Rudolph Dargatz had been in the plant nursery (“gartnerei”) business and there was or still is a “Haus Dargatz.” The Rudolf Dargatz in the 1943 Directory was identified as being in the business of “Gartenbaubetrieb,” or horticulture. It was logical to assume these two individuals were related.
The 1943 Phone Directory included an address for this business at “Schlossgrund 18,” today known as “ulica 3 Maja.” From having visited Nowy Dwor Gdanski on several occasions, my recollection is that “Schlossgrund” is one of the former German streets remarkably well-preserved and along which it is easy to relocate remaining structures from the German period. Having also been given a map of Tiegenhof from former times, I passed this along to Lori so she could orient herself as to where her relative’s horticultural business had once been located. (Figure 2)
It occurred to me that since Rudolf Dargatz lived in Tiegenhof at least as late as 1943, perhaps my father’s now-94-year-old friend Peter Lau might remember him. So, I called him, and Peter, whose mind is still very sharp, immediately remembered Mr. Dargatz, recalling he had been in the flower business, and remembering that his shop had been located along Schlossgrund. But, the reason why Peter had such a clear recollection of Mr. Dargatz is mildly amusing, namely, because he had a crush on his daughter, Liselotte! I think both Lori and I found it particularly intriguing that someone is still alive today who had known one of her Dargatz relatives.
Over the coming days, I continued to think back to my visits to Nowy Dwor Gdanski. I remembered that during our last visit there, my wife and I had spent the better part of a day walking the entire central part of the town taking photographs of all the remaining German-era structures. Comparing my pictures to ones I found in the two aforementioned books showing the “Haus Dargatz,” I quickly realized the structure still existed and that I had photographed and identified it (Figure 3); I immediately forwarded it to Lori telling her I clearly remembered that on one of two occasions when I walked by this house a woman was cleaning the windows of her apartment. I’m still not sure why this memory remains in my head.
Readers will recall from one of my earlier Blog posts a database brought to my attention by a German archivist, of births, marriages, and deaths of individuals from the former Eastern Prussian Provinces, entitled: Östliche preußische Provinzen, Polen, Personenstandsregister 1874-1945 (Eastern Prussian Provinces, Germany [Poland], Selected Civil Vitals, 1874-1945). Typing in “Dargatz” in the “search” query, I came up with 140 records with people by this name, two of which ultimately fit into Lori’s Dargatz family tree. Both related to an individual by the name of “Rudolph Wilhelm Dargatz,” who, coincidentally, happened to be one of the sons of the Rudolph Wilhelm Ludwig Dargatz Lori had initially asked the Muzeum Zulawskie about.
Readers may remember yet another Blog post in which I discussed what I’d learned about my father’s once-good friend, Hans “Mochum” Wagner, and the photo of him in his German military uniform given to me by a Ms. Beate Lohff, nee Schlenger. To remind readers, Beate is the grand-daughter of Alfred and Hedwig Schlenger, owners of Tiegenhof’s “Dampfmahlmuhle,” or steam-operated flour mill. Beate gave me a copy of her grandmother’s 12-page diary, written in German, covering Hedwig’s escape from Tiegenhof with her mother and younger son, as the Russians were closing in towards the end of WWII. I recently had this translated into English, and this diary provides a fascinating glimpse into the period from the perspective of Germans then forced to flee westward the advancing enemy they’d mercilessly persecuted on their way east. However, apparently, not all Prussian families chose to leave Tiegenhof, as noted in one of Hedwig Schlenger’s entry in April 1945, and Hedwig specifically mentions, among the families that chose to stay, the Dargatz family, parenthetically adding that no one knows what happened to these families. It may yet be that the ultimate fate of Lori’s Dargatz relatives may be uncovered but inasmuch as my own research is concerned, this is as far as I can take things.
My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was a witness to the rise of National Socialism from the window of his dental office in Tiegenhof, located at Markstrasse 8, later renamed “Adolf Hitler Strasse 8.” Readers will recall my father’s 1934 picture of the office building where be lived and worked, festooned with Nazi bunting and flagging. (Figure 1) But, already, the previous year, specifically, on May 1, 1933, my father photographed a regiment of “Brownshirts,” marching down Schlosserstrasse, carrying Nazi flags, framed by the “Kreishaus” (courthouse) on one side, the previously discussed Dutch-style timbered home on the other, and buildings draped with Nazi flags. (Figure 2)
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 Stahlhelm (“Steel Helmet”) members, a veterans organization that arose after the German defeat of WWI. It was eventually in 1934 that members of the Stahlhelm were incorporated into the Sturmabteilung or “SA,” the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. Interestingly, the march this particular year had an almost “festive” atmosphere to it as a carriage with an oversized Stobbe Machandel bottle was paraded down the street; Machandel or elderberry whiskey was originally produced in Tiegenhof by the firm of Peter Stobbe. (Figure 3)
The following year, on April 5, 1935, Field Marshall Hermann Göring visited and participated in the march through Tiegenhof. (Figure 4) Once again, my father was a witness to a historic event that ultimately would lead to a cataclysmic genocide. The day prior, on April 4, 1935, Hermann Göring had visited Danzig in an attempt to influence the 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 State’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.” It appears that along with everyday citizens of Tiegenhof and surrounding communities, members of the Hitler Youth, known in German as Hitler-Jugend, also lined the street in large number. (Figure 5)
Throughout his life, my father, Otto Bruck, was an active sportsman, with his greatest passion being tennis. He played actively as a youth in Ratibor, and, after moving to Berlin, to begin his dental studies, he joined the “E. V. B. Schwarz-Weiss” tennis club in Berlin-Schoeneberg (a future Blog post will deal with an interesting piece of tennis memorabilia my father saved from his time as a member of this club). After receiving his dental diploma in 1930, my father moved to Danzig where he apprenticed as a dentist in Danzig and a few other places in the Free State of Danzig. Finally, in April 1932, my father moved to Tiegenhof to establish his own dental practice. Throughout this period, until his departure from Tiegenhof in mid-1937, my father played tennis competitively. My father’s remaining personal effects include newspaper clippings and trophies attesting to his accomplishments on the tennis court.
By November 1932, my father had applied for and met the physical qualifications for acceptance to the “V.F.B. Tiegenhof, Baltischer Sportverband (Baltic Sports Federation).” (Figure 1) It appears the members socialized, recreated, and met regularly at a place called the “Club Ruschau” in Petershagen (today: Zelichowo, Poland), just outside Tiegenhof (today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland); my father took numerous photos there. (Figures 2, 3) Judging from the pictures, it was located along the Tiege River (today: Tuga).
Since I can personally attest to the fact that many buildings from the German period still exist today in Nowy Dwor Gdanski, one day I asked Marek Opitz, Director of the “Muzeum Zulawskie” and President of the “Klub Nowodworski,” whether he knew about the Club Ruschau and the buildings that once formed the Club. Whereas Marek knew what purpose and which buildings remained from the German period, until he examined my father’s photos of the Club Ruschau, he had not known of its existence. It was logical to conclude, given the widespread destruction that was wrought on Tiegenhof and Petershagen towards the end of WWII, that all remaining traces of the Club Ruschau had been erased. Therefore, I expected nothing more to come from this avenue of investigation.
Several weeks passed, when much to my surprise, Marek contacted me to tell me he had re-located one of the buildings that had comprised the Club Ruschau, now privately-owned; he included aerial and ground-level pictures of the property and structure as it appears today, and sure-enough, its location was along the Tiege River. Marek indicated his intention to take my wife and me to visit the location during our upcoming visit. And, indeed, in May 2012, Marek arranged with the current property-owner to give us a tour of the structure and land that had once made up the Club Ruschau. Given all the time my father spent here, augmented by the fact that my father’s days in Tiegenhof were unquestionably the happiest in his life, it thrilled me beyond measure to walk, if only for a short time, in the same place he’d trodden and enter the same door and touch the same doorknob he’d handled 75 years earlier. (Figure 4) This was literally like traveling by time-machine.
Members of the Club Ruschau included some of my father’s closest network of friends, specifically, the President, Dr. Schumanski, and Vice-President, Dr. H. Holst, as well as companions recognizable in various photos as Herbert Kloss and Kastret Romanowski. (Figure 5) Again, using the membership list in the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” I attempted to contact people with similar surnames, but, unlike the success I garnered with descendants of Idschi and Suse Epp, I have to date been unable to learn the fate of any of these people. Peter and Lolo Lau confirmed that Dr. Holst moved to Danzig from Tiegenhof, and was a teacher in Lolo’s gymnasium, high school. Given the political realities of the 1930’s and what little my father told me about his social circle of friends from Tiegenhof, it is safe to assume that those friends that were not themselves Jewish gradually or abruptly distanced themselves from my father in the interest of self-preservation.
