Note: This post is inspired by a German action-thriller I recently streamed on Netflix in which the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde cemetery in the eastern part of Berlin is shown; this is where one of my great aunts happens to be buried. Investigating further, I learned a little about the importance of this cemetery in the former German Democratic Republic or East Germany and some of the important socialist and communist personages interred here.
I recently finished streaming a German action-thriller comedy series entitled “Kleo.” It follows the revenge journey of a former East German Stasi assassin named Kleo Straub. According to the storyline, in 1987, after successfully assassinating a double agent in a West Berlin club, Kleo is falsely imprisoned for treason by her agency. When she is released after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, she plans her revenge on the conspirators who framed her, using her considerable skills as a trained assassin.
While the story is not true, it is based on real history. Fundamentally, it is historical fiction, with artistic license used to embellish real figures, politics, and history. To provide an authentic setting for the spy show, the show was filmed in different locations in Germany and Serbia.
As I will further explain, one scene in an episode of the first season was filmed in the former eastern part of Berlin and was immediately recognizable to me. This was very surprising since I claim no specific or even general knowledge of the geographic layout of Berlin, notwithstanding my family’s deeply rooted connection to this city but particularly because the landscape has been vastly altered from prewar times due to heavy Allied bombing during the war.
One historic personality who figures as a major antagonist in the first season is Erich Mielke (1907-2000). Mielke was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatsicherheit – MfS), better known as the Stasi, from 1957 until shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Dubbed “The Master of Fear” (German: der Meister der Angst) by the West German press, Mielke was one of the most powerful and most hated men in East Germany.
Wikipedia describes his role following his return to Germany from the Soviet Union after WWII as follows: “Following the end of World War II in 1945, Mielke returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany, which he helped organize into a Marxist–Leninist satellite state under the Socialist Unity Party (SED). The Stasi under Mielke has been called by historian Edward Peterson the ‘most pervasive police state apparatus ever to exist on German soil.’ During the 1950s and 1960s, Mielke led the process of forcibly forming collectivized farms from East Germany’s family-owned farms, which sent a flood of refugees to West Germany. In response, Mielke oversaw the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall and co-signed standing orders for the Border Guards to use lethal force against all East Germans who attempted to commit ‘desertion of the Republic’.”
Wikipedia goes on to further describe his fate following German reunification: “After German reunification in 1990, Mielke was prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for the 1931 policemen’s murders. A second murder trial for the 260 killings of defectors at the Inner German border was adjourned after Mielke was ruled not mentally competent to stand trial. Mielke was also charged, but never tried, with ordering two 1981 terrorist attacks by the Baader-Meinhof Group against United States military personnel in West Germany. Released from incarceration early due to ill health and senile dementia in 1995, Mielke died in a Berlin nursing home in 2000.”
According to the plot line in the German action-thriller, Kleo, suspecting Mielke, the former head of the Stasi, of a role in her indictment on treason cleverly orchestrates the now-imprisoned chief’s poisoning in Season 1, Episode 4. Her intent is not to kill him, but rather have him transported to a hospital where she can implausibly infiltrate the hospital, disguise herself as a nurse, and interrogate him. Suffice it to say, things go awry, and she winds up killing Mielke.
In Episode 6, Mielke’s State funeral takes place at the realZentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde cemetery in the eastern part of Berlin, and is presided over by another historic personality, Erich Honecker’s wife, Margot Honecker (1927-2016). Mielke is, in fact, buried in the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde.
Erich Honecker (1912-1989) was a real German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic, East Germany, from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He was the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the National Defence Council; in 1976, he became Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As leader of East Germany, Honecker was viewed as a dictator. During his leadership, the country had close ties with the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country.
As Cold War tensions eased in the late 1980s with the advent of perestroika and glasnost, the liberal reforms introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Honecker refused to make any fundamental changes to the East German political system. He continued to maintain a hardline attitude modeled on the inflexible regimes of North Korea, Cuba, and Romania. Honecker was eventually forced to resign by the SED Politburo in October 1989 to improve the government’s public image, an effort that ultimately failed and resulted in the collapse of the entire regime the following month.
Following German reunification in 1990, Honecker sought asylum in the Chilean Embassy in Moscow, but was extradited back to Germany in 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, to stand trial for human rights abuses in East Germany. Suffering from terminal liver cancer, however, the trial was abandoned, and Honecker was allowed to rejoin his family in exile in Chile, where he died in May 1994. Honecker is buried in the central cemetery in Santiago, not in the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde in Berlin.
A brief digression for context as to why I’m writing this post. My father customarily referred to family and acquaintances using sobriquets, often slightly pejorative ones. In French, the language we spoke at home when I was growing up, he called one of his aunts living in East Berlin during the Cold War “la Communiste,” the Communist. I never met her. I can no longer recall exactly when I learned her real name was Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970) (Figure 1), but I probably heard it from my German now-deceased older first cousin. This may also have coincided with when I learned that her surviving personal papers are archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau. (Figure 2) I discussed in Post 15 having visited and photographed Elsbeth’s personal papers (Figure 3) in 2014. I visited her tomb in 2012, located in none other than the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichfelde (Figure 3) in the Lichtenberg borough of Berlin. (Figure 4)
Let me provide some brief history about this cemetery. Beginning in 1900, with the burial of Wilhelm Liebknecht, founder of the Socialist Democratic Party (SPD), the cemetery became the resting place for many of the leaders and activists of Germany’s social democratic, socialist and communist movements. In 1919, the coffins of Karl Liebknecht (son of Wilhelm Liebknecht) and Rosa Luxemburg, co-founders of the Communist Party of Germany, were buried in a mass grave in a remote section of the cemetery.
Notwithstanding a 2009 Charité autopsy report casting doubt on whether Rosa Luxemberg’s remains were ever buried there, to this day a grave commemorating her and nine other foremost socialist leaders surrounds the central garden roundel at the cemetery. The Charité, incidentally, is Europe’s largest university hospital, affiliated with Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. And Humboldt University it so happens is where my uncle Professor Dr. Franz Müller (Figure 5), husband of my aunt Suzanne Müller, nee Bruck, murdered in Auschwitz, taught until the Nazis came to power in 1933 and revoked his teaching credentials.
The so-called “Monument to the Revolution” was erected in front of the mass grave where the coffins of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had been interred in 1919. It was destroyed by the National Socialists in January 1935. The division of Berlin following the Second World War caused the cemetery to be within the borders of East Berlin, where it was used to bury East German (GDR) leaders.
The current “Memorial to the Socialists” (German: Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten) was inaugurated in 1951. Although located some distance from the site once occupied by the 1926 Monument to the Revolution, the 1951 memorial was planned as its “moral successor” and as the central memorial site for East Germany’s Socialists, Communists and anti-fascist fighters.
The 1951 Memorial to the Socialists consists of a central garden roundel (Figure 6) surrounded by a semi-circular brick wall. (Figure 7) The central garden roundel is dominated by a porphyry stele or obelisk with the words Die Toten mahnen uns (English: The dead remind us), which is surrounded by 10 graves commemorating foremost socialist leaders, including Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. (Figure 8) Set into the semi-circular brick wall are gravestones and niches with the urns of distinguished Socialists and Communists, as well as a large red marble tablet bearing the names of 327 men and women who gave their lives in the cause of fighting the National Socialists between 1933 and 1945.
Of more personal interest is the area immediately behind the semi-circular brick wall of the Memorial to the Socialists, referred to as the Pergolenweg Ehrengraben (i.e. “tombs of honor”) section of the cemetery. Here are buried the urns of Socialists, Communists and anti-fascist fighters of merit who were considered distinguished enough by the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany to rest in the vicinity of the foremost party leaders yet not as eminent as to entitle them to a grave in the Memorial to the Socialists itself. Until 1989, decisions whether a person should be buried in the Memorial to the Socialists or the adjacent Pergolenweg section of the cemetery rested solely with the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, and many honored this way were also given a state funeral.
Previously unknown to me is that my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck’s headstone is in the Pergolenweg section of the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde. (Figure 9) My great-aunt’s placement in this section of the cemetery confirms what I already knew about her, namely, that Elsbeth was a very high-ranking apparatchik in the former GDR government, that’s to say, a prominent member of the Communist Party apparat or administrative system. Whether she was given a state funeral upon her death in 1970 is unknown to me.
Another thing that attests to the high esteem with which Elsbeth was regarded within the former GDR is an award she received. She was given the “Vaterländischer Verdienstorden in Silber,” the “Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver,” for “special services to the state and to the society.” This order survives with Elsbeth’s personal papers at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau. (Figure 10)
Fascinatingly, people buried in the Pergolenweg section could also have the urns of up to three family members buried with them. Amusingly, all this makes me wonder whether I could be buried alongside my great aunt. I presume this tradition ended with the demise of the GDR but it’s still entertaining to contemplate.
REFERENCES
Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde: Der Pergolenweg. Gedenkstatte der Sozialisten, Table 12. Tafel 12
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: My paternal grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner, had an older sister, Margareth Berliner, the evidence of whose survival beyond birth is examined in this post.
Berliner was the maiden name of my grandmother, Else Bruck (Figure 1), born on March 3, 1873, in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland). According to Jewish birth records for Ratibor, available from familysearch.org, my grandmother had two siblings, an older sister MARGARETH AUGUST BERLINER, born on March 19, 1872 (Figure 2), and a younger brother, ALFRED BERLINER, born on November 6, 1875. All three children were the offspring of my great-grandfather, HERMANN BERLINER, and his wife, OLGA BERLINER née BRAUN. (Figure 3)
As discussed in Post 14, Olga Berliner was one of twelve children the brauereipachter (tenant brewer) MARCUS BRAUN had with his wife CAROLINE BRAUN née SPIEGEL. Through the names and dates of birth of all of Marcus’s children, I was able to establish connections with descendants of Marcus Braun, distant cousins living in America whose names I’d heard about growing up. Thus, I was aware of and came to learn of Alfred Berliner’s three children with his wife CHARLOTTE ROTHE, first cousins of my father; readers may recall, Charlotte Rothe died in the Holocaust and was the subject of Post 18. Alfred died in 1921 in Ratibor and was once buried in the Jewish Cemetery there. (Figure 4)
Oddly, no one in my family ever mentioned my grandmother’s older sister Margareth Berliner, so after learning of her, I assumed she had died at birth or shortly thereafter; this would not have been unusual at the time.
Fast forward to this past summer when I visited my first cousin’s son in Hilden, Germany, who inherited my uncle Fedor Bruck’s personal papers and pictures. On the off-chance they might contain family items of interest, I asked if I could peruse these items. Cached among the photos was one labelled on the back as a GRETE BRAUER. (Figure 5a-b) This caught my attention because during my visit in 2014 to the Stadtmuseum, where the personal papers of two renowned great-aunts, Franziska and Elsbeth Bruck, are archived, I discovered multiple letters sent to my great-aunt Elsbeth in East Berlin from Calvia, Mallorca by HANNS & HERTA BRAUER. The letterhead on some letters read “DR. E. H. BRAUER,” and they were variously signed “Ernst,” “Hanns,” and “Ernst & Herta.” Elsbeth’s archived materials also include photos the Brauer family sent her, though none of Grete Brauer. Until I found Grete’s photo, I had assumed the Brauers were family friends of my great-aunt.
As I said, the photo of Grete in my uncle Fedor’s surviving papers was captioned. In one handwriting was written “Three generations: Grete-Herta-Till & Neubabelsberg 1933”; Neubabelsberg is located near Spandau, on the outskirts of Berlin. Then, in what was unmistakably my uncle’s shaky handwriting, he had added: “Aunt Grete Brauer (mother’s sister with her daughter-in-law and grandson).” This was an “aha!” moment because I knew then that my grandmother’s sister had indeed survived into adulthood and had lived at least as late as 1933, making her 61 years of age at the time. This is the first concrete evidence I’d come across confirming Margareth’s “existence.”
Armed with this new information, I turned to ancestry.com. I found a surprising number of documents and information on the Brauer family there, although notable gaps still exist. In combination with the photos and letters from the Stadtmuseum, I’ve been able to partially construct a family tree covering four generations.
Among the documents found were birth certificates for two of Margareth Brauer’s sons. An older son, KURT BRAUER, was born on July 7, 1893 (Figure 6), in a place called Cosel, Prussia (today: Koźle, Poland), located a mere 20 miles north of Ratibor, where Margareth was born; the younger son, ERNST HAN(N)S BRAUER, was born on August 9, 1902 (Figure 7), also in Cosel, Prussia. The birth certificates provided the father’s name, SIEGFRIED BRAUER. Given the proximity of Cosel and Ratibor, I thought some Brauers might have been buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, and, indeed, I discovered Kurt Brauer died in 1920 and was buried there, and that a photo of his headstone exists. (Figure 8)
Also, once buried in the Ratibor Jewish Cemetery was a young girl named THEA BRAUER, born in 1911 who died in 1919. Whether or how she might be related to Margareth and Siegfried Brauer is unclear, but a poor photo of her headstone also survives.
Siegfried Brauer’s death certificate (Figure 9) states he was born in approximately 1859 in a place called “Biskupitz County Hindenberg” (today: Zabrze, Poland, near Katowice), and died at 67 years of age, on February 5, 1926 in Cosel, Prussia; he appears to have been a Judicial Councilman. Interestingly, his death was reported by a HILDEGARD BRAUER, who I initially thought was his daughter-in-law, the aforementioned “Herta”; because no maiden name is given, I now think Hildegard was another of Siegfried & Margareth’s children. A 1927 Address Book for Cosel, Prussia lists Siegfried’s widow (“witwe” in German) Margareth still living there. (Figure 10)
Margareth & Siegfried’s son, Ernst Hanns Brauer (Figure 11), eventually became an American citizen, and died on May 19, 1971 in Calvia, Mallorca, Spain (Figure 12), where he’s buried. He and his family traveled to Puerto Rico in 1941 (Figures 13 & 14), where they appear to have ridden out the war there before moving to Mallorca. Oddly, a 14-year old girl named YUTTA MARIA MUENCHOW was in their company when they traveled to Puerto Rico; her connection to the Brauer family is unknown. Ernst’s wife, HERTA LEONORE BRAUER, maiden name unknown, was born on February 4, 1904 in Neumünster, Germany, and passed away in August 1983 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Figure 15) According to letters Ernst and Herta sent to my great-aunt, their son, alternately referred to as “TILL” or “OLIVER,” born in 1933, was married to an unnamed Puerto Rican woman, and they had a daughter MERLE-MARGARITA, born 1966. (Figure 16) The fate of Oliver, his wife, and their daughter is unknown.
These vital statistics merely highlight the large amount of data available from ancestry.com on the Brauer family.
Still, so far, I’ve been unable to determine when and where my great-aunt Grete died, someone who for the longest time was an ethereal figure. I tried one other thing attempting to ascertain her fate. I turned to the Mallorca White Pages to search for Brauers possibly still living there. I found a KERSTEN BRAUER living in a community only 22 miles north of Calvia, where Ernst Brauer is buried. I was firmly convinced I’d found one of his descendants. I was able to reach her by phone, after having carefully translated my questions into Spanish. Amusingly, I’d barely introduced myself in tortured Spanish, before Ms. Brauer impeccably asked, “do you speak English?” What a relief! Reaching Ms. Brauer was a veritable stroke of luck as she hails from Switzerland and spends only short periods in Mallorca. Nonetheless, originating from Switzerland and given that her name is spelled “Bräuer” (pronounced “Breuer”), makes it exceedingly unlikely she is distantly related to my great-aunt.
The letters Ernst and Herta Brauer wrote to my great-aunt Elsbeth spoke of their public work in Mallorca, and even included a newspaper clipping. (Figure 17) Herta was working on a novel as well as building up the ballet school in Palma de Mallorca, while Ernst was play-writing and making connections with local members of international high society, such as the English writer Robert Graves settled in Deià, Mallorca. (Figure 18) One letter from 1967 (Figure 19) spoke about two Englishmen visiting Mallorca looking for two ballerinas from Herta’s ballet school to appear in a movie starring Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn, who did in fact collaborate on at least three different movies. Ernst did some translations of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s works that were performed in Mallorca, while their son, Oliver, had a minor role in a movie starring Roy Black, the famous German schlager singer and actor. No mention is made of Grete in any of Ernst and Herta’s letters from Mallorca, so we can safely assume she was no longer alive.
The last year we can assuredly place my great-aunt Grete in Germany, 1933, would have been a very perilous time for Jews. Whether she escaped Germany with the rest of her family, died before the mass arrest of Jews there, or was deported on an age-transport to a concentration camp is unknown. More forensic work is required to answer these queries.
Part of the appeal for me in doing forensic genealogy is finding connections between people and places, sometimes in the most unexpected fashion. Case in point. One place in Europe my wife and I like to recuperate during our family pilgrimages is a town called Velden along the Wörthersee, a lake in the southern Austrian state of Carinthia, a place my parents first took me to as a young boy. Imagine my surprise this year when we were strolling along the lake and discovered a bust of Roy Black (1943-1991) in Velden. (Figure 20) Knowing that Roy Black was of German origin, I could not imagine why he was being celebrated in southern Austria. As it turns out, in the last years of his short life, Roy had a comeback as singer and leading actor of the hit TV show “Ein Schloß am Wörthersee (known internationally as “Lakeside Hotel”; literally “A Castle on Lake Wörthersee”).” Small world!
In the previous post, I described to readers how I went about finding my grandfather’s younger brother, Wilhelm “Willy” Bruck (1872-1952), as well as his wife, son and daughter-in-law. Starting with the knowledge that my great-uncle wound up in Barcelona, Spain and sent a congratulatory card from there to my parents in 1951, shortly after I was born, I began there. From the FamilySearch’s “International Genealogical Index” I knew my great-uncle Willy’s wife, Antonie Bruck née Marcus, had pre-deceased him by ten years in Barcelona, dying there in 1942; clearly, 1942 was the latest they would have arrived in Spain, and likely sooner. I assumed my great-aunt and -uncle had gone to Barcelona to escape the Nazis, although the circumstances of how they were able to immigrate to Spain was a complete mystery.
In Post 32, I explained how I obtained the Certificados de Defunción, death certificates, for my great-uncle Willy (Figure 1), and his son Edgar-Pedro (Figure 2) during a visit in 2014 to two bureaus in Barcelona, the Cementiris de Barcelona, S.A. and the Registro Civil de Barcelona; other than learning that payments for keeping them and their wives interred were current, the Cementiris refused to give me names of next of kin. Instead, they suggested I write a letter explaining my interest in contacting them, and they would forward my request asking if the next of kin were willing to share their contact information. In fact, I tried this approach upon my return to the States in 2014, ultimately to no avail, although I strongly suspect the Cementiris never contacted my relatives.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself. As previously explained, following my visit to the Cementerio de Montjuïc in Barcelona to visit the tomb of my great-uncle Willy and his family (Figure 3), I returned to the Registro Civil de Barcelona hoping to obtain documents for additional family members. I had the good fortune to encounter a very helpful English-speaking lady there who spent several hours researching records for possible relatives. She eventually gave me copies of various birth, marriage and death certificates for five individuals, the relationship and significance of which would take me several months to figure out. I didn’t realize it at the time, but one of these documents was the key to locating my great-uncle Willy’s grandchildren. Just to be clear, none of these certificates provided names of next of kin.
Readers may recall from Post 15 that the personal papers of two of great-uncle Willy’s renowned sisters, Franziska Bruck and Elsbeth Bruck, are archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, a suburb of Berlin. Earlier in 2014, my wife and I spent two days there examining and photographing all the documents and pictures. (Figure 4) Among my great-aunt Elsbeth’s papers, I discovered multiple pictures that her brother Willy had sent from Barcelona of himself (Figure 5), his children, Eva (Figure 6) and Edgar Pedro, his daughter-in-law Mercedes and her family (Figure 7), and his grandson Antonio. (Figure 8) The captions on these pictures allowed me to partially piece together the family tree. I was able to match some pictures to a document I’d obtained at the Registro Civil de Barcelona, notably the Certificado de Matrimonio, marriage certificate, for Edgar Pedro Bruck Marcus and Mercedes Casanovas Castañé, married June 24, 1945. (Figures 9a-c & 10) I was also able to relate theCertificados de Nacimiento, birth certificates, to their two children, Antonio Bruck Casanovas, born 1946 (Figure 11), and Margarita Bruck Casanovas, born 1948. (Figure 12) To remind readers, in Spain, at birth, an individual is given two surnames, that of his mother and father. Again, none of these documents allowed me to determine whether great-uncle Willy’s grandchildren were still alive, or where they might be living.
The break-through in finding my great-uncle Willy’s grandchildren came during Thanksgiving 2014. My wife was out-of-town with her family, so I set myself the task of re-examining the documents I’d been given at the Registro Civil de Barcelona. When reviewing the birth certificate for Antonio Bruck Casanovas, I noticed something I’d previously overlooked, specifically, a notation that had been added in the upper-left-hand corner on October 26, 1983 indicating he’d gotten married to a woman named Ingeborg Prieller née Wieser in 1982 in a place called “Haag-R.F.A.” (Figure 13) Having no idea where Haag is, and what “R.F.A.” stood for, after researching these places, I quickly determined that Haag is in Bavaria, and that “R.F.A.,” is Spanish for “República Federal de Alemania,” the German Federal Republic. This was the first concrete evidence I had that one of my great-uncle Willy’s grandchildren had at least for some period lived in Germany and might still be there.
I made this discovery on a Sunday, I clearly remember. I immediately searched to find out whether this small town of approximately 6,500 inhabitants has a Rathaus, a town hall, where I could inquire about Antonio Bruck. I learned they do, and without delay sent them an email inquiring about my second cousin, laying out what I knew. Incredibly, by the following morning, the Rathaus confirmed the information I had uncovered on Antonio Bruck’s birth certificate was correct and that he still lived in Haag; this was the good news, the bad news was they couldn’t give me his contact information. Fortunately, the gentleman at the Rathaus offered to call Antonio and explain that a cousin from America was trying to reach him. By Tuesday, my second cousin Antonio had sent me an email explaining his consternation at being phoned by Haag’s Rathaus, asked to appear in person at their offices, and told I was trying to get in touch with him. Antonio wasted no time contacting me. So, only two days after figuring out that one of my second cousins was living in Germany, we’d miraculously established contact.
Let me briefly digress and touch on something that may be of passing interest to some readers. Given my persistence, it’s likely I would eventually have figured out another way to get in touch with my second cousins, although there’s no guarantee of this. The 1983 marriage notation on Antonio’s 1946 birth certificate simplified my search. What makes this notation on Antonio’s Spanish birth certificate notable is that he was married in Germany, but this information was somehow conveyed to the Spanish authorities in Barcelona. In my years of doing forensic genealogy, I’ve come across multiple examples where marriages and even divorces are noted on German birth certificates, but this is the only instance I’ve come across where such a notation crosses country borders, this in the time before the European Union. For people doing research on their ancestors, it pays to look for notations on vital documents, particularly on German birth certificates, that may inform when and where their relatives got married. While Antonio’s birth certificate includes this information, the birth certificate of his sister Margarita, also married in Germany, contains no such reference.
Once Antonio and I connected, we began a lively exchange of emails. (Figure 14) I learned a lot more about my great-uncle Willy and his family and widened my circle of previously unknown relatives who I eventually contacted. From the International Genealogical Index, I already knew that my great-aunt and -uncle had married in Hamburg on April 2, 1904 (Figure 15). Once Antonio confirmed that Wilhelm and Antonie’s children, Edgar and Eva, had been born respectively, in 1905 and 1906, in Barcelona, I wrote to the woman who’d helped me at the Registro Civil de Barcelona, asking for copies of their birth certificates. She remembered me, and in February 2015, sent me their Certificados de Nacimiento. (Figures 16a-b & 17a-b)
It turns out, Antonio’s grandfather had been an electrical engineer for AEG, Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft, a company established in Berlin 1893 that went defunct in 1996. Among other things, AEG was involved in the installation and generation of electrical power and transmission lines, and, as technical director at AEG, my great-uncle was sent to Barcelona in 1905 to supervise the set-up of electrification and street illumination in Barcelona. (Figure 18) As noted, Wilhelm and Antonie’s two children were born in Barcelona, where the family stayed until 1910 (Figures 19 & 20), whereupon they returned to Berlin.
The family’s association with Spain no doubt saved their lives during the rise of the National Socialists. It appears after Hitler’s ascendancy to power in 1933, the family returned to Barcelona at least until the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, although the family’s chronology during this period is at best confusing. It seems that Wilhelm and Antonie returned to Germany for a short period, because in 1937 they were given the choice by the Nazis of attending a re-education school to learn to become “better” Germans or leaving the country; they decided to relocate to Antwerp, Belgium.
At the outset of the Spanish Civil War, Edgar left for Geneva, Switzerland, but, unable to find work there, went to Paris soon after. Between 1937 and 1941 he was in France, living in Paris and Bordeaux, before eventually being incarcerated at the French detention center of Condom. Since France and Germany were at war, and Edgar was a German national, he was arrested. Seemingly, it was only the persistent efforts of Wilhelm that got Edgar released, whereupon he rejoined his family in Barcelona in 1941. It’s likely that once the Spanish Civil War ended on April 1, 1939, Wilhelm and Antonie returned to Barcelona from Antwerp.
Let me briefly digress again and draw the readers attention to a very common notation added to the birth and/or marriage certificates of German Jews during the Nazi period. (Figure 21) As previously mentioned, my great-uncle Willy and his wife Antonie Marcus were married in Hamburg, Germany on April 2, 1904. Below is the translation of their marriage certificate:
N.172
Hamburg, the 2nd of April 1904
In front of the below signed registrar appeared today because of their marriage:
1.) the chief engineer Wilhelm Bruck, known because of his birth certificate, lutheran religion, born on the 24th of October 1872 in Ratibor, living in Barcelona, son of the in Ratibor deceased innkeeper Fedor Bruck and his wife Friederike born Mokrauer, living in Berlin.
2.) Antonie Marcus, known because of her birth certificate, lutheran religion, born on the 13th of July 1876 in Altona, living in Hamburg, Heimhuderstreet 60/2, daughter of the in Altona deceased merchant Hirsch (called Harry) Marcus and his wife Adele born Hertz, living in Hamburg.
And on the right-hand side is written:
Nr.172
Hamburg, the 11th of march 1940
Antonia Bruck born Marcus, living in Barcelona Calle Balmes, has received the additional Christian name “Sara”.
Nr. 172
Hamburg, the 29th of April 1940
Wilhelm Bruck, living in Barcelona, has received the additional Christian name “Israel”.
In the next two additions on the right-hand side is written that those two additional names “Sara” and “Israel” are no longer valid
from the date of 22nd of July 1948
The certificate states that Wilhelm and Antonie were Lutherans though both were considered Jewish by the Nazis. As such, in March and April 1940, respectively, the Nazis gave them the additional names of “Sara” and “Israel,” identical names given to all female and male Jews during this period, names rescinded in writing after WWII. The Nazis even recorded the street in Barcelona on which my great-aunt and -uncle lived, Calle Balmes, presumably useful information had they ever invaded Spain. As an aside, according to my second cousins, because they were Lutherans, a major branch of Protestant Christianity, neither was able to attend “normal” schools in predominantly Catholic Spain so, instead, they were schooled at the “Lycée Français.” For this reason, in 1955 Edgar and his family returned to Germany so his children could attend regular public schools
Antonio put me in touch with additional relatives living in Munich and Berlin. One woman was a Dr. Anna Rothholz, a third cousin I eventually learned. (Figure 22) Anna, in turn, referred me to other third cousins, including the Pauly family. This was of particular interest, as a woman named Lisa Pauly helped my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck survive in Berlin during WWII. One deceased Pauly cousin developed a very detailed “Stammbaum,” family tree, which I was given, but unfortunately this still does not explain how Lisa Pauly is related to the Bruck family.
I’ve mentioned in previous posts my father’s penchant for being dismissive of family. Not only did he lose touch with most, but he lost track of how they passed away. Case in point, I was always told Wilhelm’s daughter, Eva, whom I met in 1967 in New York, had committed suicide. In fact, she died of laryngeal cancer in 1977 in Ainring, Germany. (Figure 23) There is an interesting anecdote related to her death. She had wanted to be interred with her family at the Cementerio de Montjuïc in Barcelona, but an administrative hang-up prevented this. The Spanish kept telling the family the Germans should just ship the body to Spain, but the Germans refused to do this without something in writing, something the Spaniards never provided. Thus, Eva was buried in Germany against her wishes.
My wife and I eventually met my second and third cousins on a trip to Germany in May 2015. (Figure 24) Margarita, Antonio and I all brought family pictures, including of people we were unable to identify, but, between us, we eventually figured out who most were; they would later scan and send all the family pictures they inherited from their father and aunt. One particularly interesting identification was of Wilhelm’s wife, Antonie, who entirely unbeknownst to me, had worked in my great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s flower school in Berlin. (Figure 25) Stories of other people shown in the family pictures will be the subject of future posts, as they led me to other discoveries.
NOTE: This Blog post will mark the beginning of a series of articles dealing with the Bruck family’s indelible connection to Berlin. My grandfather, his five siblings, along with my father, his two siblings and most of his cousins, as well as many extended family members lived in Berlin during the 19th or 20th centuries. A good starting point for this conversation begins with two of my great-aunts, their links to Berlin, and their eventual fates.
Figure 1-My great-grandfather, Fedor Bruck
On multiple occasions over the years, I have ordered from the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, Utah, the three rolls of microfilm records for the town of Ratibor, Germany, where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was born in 1907. These rolls, once only available on temporary loan to local Mormon Family History Centers, are now accessible on-line through familysearch.org. One microfilm roll includes Jewish birth records covering the period from roughly 1817 through 1874. Here, I discovered that my paternal great-grandparents, Fedor Bruck (Figure 1) and Friederike Bruck, née Mockrauer (Figure 2), had seven children born in Ratibor, although I was aware of an eighth child whose birth record I eventually located in the Polish State Archives in Raciborz, as discussed in an earlier post. The oldest child was my grandfather, Felix Bruck, born in 1864, followed by Charlotte (born 1865), Franziska (born 1866), Elise (born 1868), Hedwig (born 1870), Robert Samuel (born 1871), Wilhelm (1872), and, finally, Elsbeth (born 1874). (Figure 3) Growing up, I rarely heard my father mention any of these great-aunts and-uncles, but I most definitely never heard Elise and Robert mentioned and have found no documentary evidence to suggest they survived into adulthood, so presume they died young.
Figure 2-My great-grandmother, Friederike Bruck, née MockrauerFigure 3-My great-aunt Elsbeth with her older brother, Wilhelm “Willy” Bruck
Many years ago, my now-deceased German cousin told me the personal things, mostly papers, of two of my renowned great-aunts, Franziska and Elsbeth Bruck, are archived at the Stadtmuseum (Figure 4), then located in Berlin. It wasn’t until 2014 that the museum, by then moved to Spandau on the outskirts of Berlin, had organized my great-aunts’ papers and that I could thoroughly review them. (Figure 5) Being particularly interested in my paternal grandfather and his five surviving siblings, as well as their respective offspring, my great-aunts’ documents provided an ideal point of departure for learning more about these relatives and beginning to unravel my family’s diaspora.
Figure 4-Stadtmuseum in Spandau, on the outskirts of BerlinFigure 5-My great-aunts Franziska & Elsbeth’s personal papers
The family items at the Statdtmuseum include academic papers, diaries, numerous professional and personal letters, family photographs, awards, and miscellaneous belongings. The articles of primary interest to me were naturally the family letters and photographs, particularly those from and showing people I had encountered growing up or had learned about from my father. The letters came in several forms: handwritten in Sütterlin; handwritten in standard German; typewritten in standard German; or occasionally hand-or-typewritten in English. My wife and I took high resolution photographs of all the letters and pictures for future reference, although, to this day, most have not been translated. However, I have transcribed a few of the typewritten letters written by one of my father’s first cousins using Google Translate, and, while the translations are horrid, I can understand the gist of the letters. The matters discussed are often mundane in nature, although on occasion I’ve uncovered a real gem, some of which will be the topics of future Blog posts.
It goes without saying that Franziska and Elsbeth’s personal papers are the basis of some of what I learned about them, but as relatively prominent personages, I have been able to supplement, albeit limitedly, their bios from other sources. Below I provide a succinct summary of their lives, inasmuch as I’ve uncovered, illustrated with items from the Stadtmuseum or places associated with them.
Figure 6-Franziska Bruck
Franziska Bruck (1866-1942) (Figure 6)
Franziska, born on December 29, 1866 in Ratibor, Germany, was the second daughter of the owners of Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, Fedor and Friederike Bruck (the Bruck’s Hotel has been the subject of a previous post). Little is known of Franziska’s early years in Ratibor. Her father, Fedor Bruck, passed away in 1892 when she was 26 years old, so as one of the three oldest children, it is likely that along with her mother, and older brother and sister, they together ran the Bruck’s Hotel in Ratibor for a time.
Figure 7-My grandparents, Felix & Else Bruck, on their wedding day in 1894
Regardless, Franziska, along with her mother Friederike and her youngest sister Elsbeth, eventually left for Berlin in 1902, leaving the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor to be managed by my grandfather and his wife, Felix and Else Bruck. (Figure 7) A February 1915 article, in a German journal entitled “Die Bindekunst,” featured Franziska and mentioned she had gotten her start in Berlin 10 years earlier, so roughly in 1905. She introduced into Germany a form of Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, that was not initially taken seriously. It wasn’t until her first public show in 1907 at a special flower exhibition that her artistry and excellent taste began to be appreciated. And, in fact, a 1907 Berlin Address Book shows she was already in the flower business, first at Lützowstraße 27, and, no later than 1914, at nearby Potsdamer Str. 31a, both prestigious locations in central Berlin. By 1915, the Berlin Address Book shows she had both a “Blumenbinderei,” a flower shop, as well as a “Schule für Blumenschmuck,” a school where she taught her unique form of flower decoration. (Figure 8) By 1929, Franziska appears to have moved her flower shop and school to Charlottenburg in Berlin’s Westend, eventually running her shop from my aunt and uncle’s private home as the Nuremberg Laws took effect.
Family lore says the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, who ruled until November 1918, was one of my great-aunt’s clients. There can be no arguing that Franziska had an illustrious cadre of clients. One of the pictures taken in her flower shop shows the last Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia, Princess Cecilie, touring her school. (Figures 9-10) Lyrical thank you letters (front & back of envelope, Page 1, Page 2, Translation) to Franziska from the renowned German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, also survive indicating he too was an enthusiastic client of my great-aunt. My great-aunt wrote two beautifully illustrated books, one in 1919, entitled “Blumen and Ranken,” the second in 1927, called “Blumenschmuck,” that eloquently speak to her artistry and skill as a proponent of Ikebana.
Post 11-Prinzregentenstraße 75, Franziska Bruck’s last domicile in Berlin
The last year in which Franziska’s flower shop is listed in the Berlin Phone Directory is 1936, by which time my aunt Susanne Mueller, nee Bruck, and uncle Dr. Franz Müller had departed Germany. My great-aunt Franziska last lived at Prinzregentenstraße 75 (Figure 11), also in Berlin’s Westend, where she likely committed suicide on January 2, 1942 only days after turning 76 years of age, no doubt after she was told by Nazi officials to report for deportation. She is buried in the Weissensee Jewish Cemetery in East Berlin (Figure 12), and a stolperstein, or a small, cobble-sized memorial (Figure 13), recognizes her as a victim of Nazi oppression at her last known address.
As previously mentioned, my aunt Susanne Mueller, née Bruck, and her husband, Dr. Franz Müller, left Berlin in 1936 in favor of Fiesole, Italy, an Etruscan hill town just above Florence. My aunt and uncle’s 1931 Marriage License states that my aunt was a Managing Director in her aunt Franziska’s flower shop, suggesting my aunt and great-aunt were close to one another. According to family accounts, my aunt and uncle were able to emigrate to Italy through the intercession of the Italian Ambassador to Germany (1932-1935), Vittorio Cerruti. Perhaps, Elisabetta Cerruti (Figure 14), the beautiful Hungarian and Jewish wife of the ambassador, played some role in facilitating Susanne and Franz Müller’s emigration through contact they initiated in Franziska’s flower shop?
Figure 14-Elisabetta Cerruti, wife of Italy’s Ambassador to Germany, Vittorio Cerruti
Following my aunt and uncle’s departure from Berlin, my great-aunt Franziska Bruck went to visit them in Fiesole, Italy in 1937. I discovered at the “Archivio Comunale Di Fiesole,” that’s to say, the Communal Archive in Fiesole, a document entitled “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia,” or “Stay of Foreigners in Italy,” dated October 11, 1937, granting Franziska a tourist visa good for two months. Given my great-aunt’s ultimate fate, one can only wonder how events might otherwise have played out had she abandoned her life in Berlin and stayed in Italy or emigrated elsewhere.
Figure 15-Elsbeth Bruck
Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970) (Figure 15)
On the occasion of my great-aunt’s 95th birthday, the “Berliner Zeitung,” a Berlin daily founded in East Germany in 1945 that continued publication after German reunification, did a feature story on Elsbeth; this article provides some of my great-aunt’s own words to describe her life, which she documented in an unpublished autobiography. By her own admission, Elsbeth was the family’s black sheep, which ultimately lead to her being booted from the house. As the daughter of the owners of the Bruck’s Hotel, she chafed against their middle-class values and became an actress; by 1904, she was employed by the famous German movie director, Max Reinhardt. She had an out-of-wedlock child in 1907, a son that sadly passed away after only two-and-a-half months.
Elsbeth became a peace activist during WWI and joined the pacifist “Bund Neues Vaterland” (New Fatherland League), leading to her being charged with high treason and spying and jailed in 1916 and 1918. During the era of the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, she was involved in many social, cultural and pacifist activities, and by 1931 she was a member of the managing committee of the pacifist “Universal League of Mothers and Educators.” By January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler was appointed Germany’s Chancellor, Elsbeth fled first to Heidelberg, then to Stuttgart, and finally in 1934 to Prague. Here, she was supported by a variety of aid organizations, including the Jewish relief committee and a committee set up exclusively to help pacifist refugees, augmented by a small stipend from the latter organization; by 1938, when it became evident that WWII would not come to a quick end, she was offered refuge by an English Quaker settlement and provided an exit visa from Czechoslovakia to England, where she rode out the war.
Figure 16-Walter Ulbricht, former East German head of state
Elsbeth did not return to Germany until 1946, at which time she settled in East Berlin. While Elsbeth’s ascent into the upper ranks of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) are unknown to me, there are a few clues as to her influence as a Communist apparatchik. One of my cousins accompanied her father to visit Elsbeth in East Berlin in 1969, and clearly remembers my great-aunt describing her role as “logopäde” to Walter Ulbricht (Figure 16), a German Communist politician and the East German head of state until his death in 1973. Having no idea as to the significance of this term, I had to turn to my German relatives to explain it to me. The literal translation is “speech therapist,” although there is no indication Mr. Ulbricht had a speech impediment, akin to the stutter suffered by King George VI of England, made famous in the movie “The King’s Speech.” Rather, Mr. Ulbricht was widely derided in West Germany at the time for his use of Saxonian colloquialisms, expressions no modern-day politician wishing to further his political career would today employ. Possibly, Elsbeth’s role was as advisor on elocution and public speaking. As an aside, Mr. Ulbricht is infamous for his lie, “Niemand hat die Absicht eine Mauer zu bauen,” or “no one has any intention to build a wall (between the East and West halves of Berlin),” uttered only days before construction of the Berlin Wall began overnight on August 13, 1961.
There are two other things that attest to the high esteem with which Elsbeth was regarded within the former GDR. First, she was awarded the “Vaterländischer Verdienstorden in Silber,” the “Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver,” for “special services to the state and to the society.” (Figure 17) Perhaps, equally impressive, Elsbeth is buried in East Berlin’s “Friedrichsfelde Socialist Cemetery” (Figure 18, 19), only feet away from the central obelisk of the “Memorial to the Socialists” (Figure 20); ten graves surround this central obelisk, including that of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, founders of the German Communist Party, as well as that of the aforementioned Walter Ulbricht. Clearly, in death, Elsbeth is in lofty company.
Figure 18-Entrance to the “Friedrichsfelde Socialist Cemetery” where Elsbeth is buried
Figure 19-Elsbeth Bruck’s grave
Figure 20-The central obelisk, “Memorial to the Socialists,” in East Berlin’s “Friedrichsfelde Socialist Cemetery”
In upcoming Blog posts, I will often refer to discoveries emanating from a closer examination of my great-aunts’ personal papers and photographs. Some stories will provide telling indications as to the circle of friends and acquaintances with whom family members interacted, while others will chronicle the involved path I followed in uncovering more of my family’s history.
