There was a twenty-two year age difference between my parents, and, on account of this generational divide, my father spoke only infrequently about his life before World War II. For all practical purposes, my father’s time before the war was, for him, another lifetime—a shadow of the distant past—particularly in light of the tragic events that had intervened. Still, during my childhood, on those rare occasions when the topic came up and my father pulled out his photo albums, he spoke both fondly and wistfully of his time living in Tiegenhof in the Free State of Danzig (Polish: Gdansk). One individual he spoke about in a particularly reverential tone was a very large woman he only ever referred to as “the Schlummermutter” (Figure 1). For most of my life, I didn’t know her real name, nor the significance of her sobriquet; as a child, I never thought to ask.
Given the particularly close bond “the Schlummermutter” and my father shared, as evidenced in my father’s pictures, I was anxious to learn her true identity. I asked Peter Lau about “the Schlummermutter.” Naturally, he remembered her, as she was a larger-than-life figure in Tiegenhof, literally and figuratively. He explained that she owned the building where my father had his dental practice. Whereas I initially thought the Schlummermutter’s nickname might be a pejorative reference to her girth, perhaps a tendency to nod off during the day, when I eventually learned she was the proprietor of the building, the translation I’d fleetingly come across of “landlady” seemed apt.
Peter Lau could not initially remember the Schlummermutter’s true identity but thought it was “Dicke Grete,” a name I mistakenly transposed as “Grete Dicke.” Given that the surname “Dicke” and its variants (i.e., Dyck, Dick, Dueck) are fairly common surnames for German Mennonites formerly living in the Zulawy region, perhaps my transposition was not so far-fetched. Fortuitously, this error lead me to eventually uncovering the Schlummermutter’s actual identity.
Using the index of names in the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” the annual periodical written for former German residents of Tiegenhof and their descendants, in September 2012, I wrote letters to all people with the surname “Dicke” and its variants. None of the people who responded recognized the Schlummermutter, or “Grete Dicke” as I’d begun to refer to her. However, one person I had written to was a Marianne Harder, née Dyck. About two weeks went by before her son, Thomas Harder, emailed me to tell me that his mother had passed away in April 2011, and that her brother, Hans-Joachim Dyck, was also no longer alive. However, Thomas Harder’s aunt, Helga Dyck, who had gone to school in Tiegenhof and was still alive, suggested I contact Mr. Hans Erich Mueller, a gentleman almost 90 years of age at the time with roots in Tiegenhof, with my questions about the Schlummermutter.
So, in early October 2012, I contacted Mr. Mueller, living in an old-age home in Jesteberg, Germany. Towards the end of that same month, Mr. Mueller eloquently responded in his long unused English. He clearly recalled the Schlummermutter and said she had been well-known in Tiegenhof. He patiently explained my error, that I had interpreted “Dicke Grete” as a transposition of the name “Grete Dicke.” As German readers will realize, “dicke” translates to “fat,” and “Dicke Grete” (i.e., “fat Grete”) obviously described the Schlummermutter’s physique. Mr. Mueller told me her real name was “Grete Gramatzki.”. He mentioned that she was reputed to have weighed more than 200 kilos, that’s to say over 400 pounds, a situation that caused her to have the doors and stairs of her home widened. Mr. Mueller confirmed that she leased rooms in a house on Marktstrasse. He thought she had passed away in either 1939 or 1940. One of the last pictures of Grete Gramatzki, perhaps mailed to my father after he had already left Tiegenhof in 1937, appears to show the after-effects of a stroke she suffered, so the timing of her death seems plausible.
In discussing with my still-living mother what I had learned about “the Schlummermutter,” as she will always affectionately be known to both of us, my mother showed me a ring that Grete Gramatzki had given to my father when he left Tiegenhof in 1937, that had apparently once belonged to her husband (Figure 2). The accompanying story passed down is that the Schlummermutter’s husband had been a Baron, suggesting her name might actually have been “Grete von Gramatzki.” The signet ring given to my father would seem to corroborate the likelihood that Grete Gramatzki’s husband was indeed a Baron.
Let me briefly digress to provide background as I bring the reader up to speed on recent discoveries related to Grete Gramatzki. In connection with other branches of my family I’m currently researching, I recently had the good fortune to learn about the following database: Östliche preußische Provinzen, Polen, Personenstandsregister 1874-1945 (Eastern Prussian Provinces, Germany [Poland], Selected Civil Vitals, 1874-1945). This has recently been added to the collections ancestry.com has available on-line, and is a collection that was brought to my attention by a German archivist from Wertheim, Germany.
Since this database includes birth, marriage and death records from a large swath of Prussia, including the nearby German cities formerly known as Danzig and Koenisgberg, I did a search for “von Gramatzki.” I came across a gentleman, named “August Archibald von Gramatzki” born in 1837 who died in May 1913 in Danzig (August Archibald von Gramatzki Death Certificate (May 23, 1913)), within the time period I am seeking, who coincidentally was married to a “Margarethe (presumably Grete) Clara von Gramatzki, née Mönch” born January 7, 1871 (August Archibald von Gramatzki Marriage Certificate (April 28, 1897)), seemingly about the Schlummermutter’s age. By all measures, this would have seemed a perfect fit, since this Archibald von Gramtzki was a Baron with long-standing connections to nearby-Danzig, first as the District Administrator (“Landrat“) for “Kreis Danzig-Land” from 1867 to 1887, and, after it was subdivided, for “Kreis Danziger Niederung,” from 1887-1895. The only thing that belies this conclusion is that in 1937, the year my father left Tiegenhof for good, on June 13th specifically, a birthday party was held in the Schlummermutter’s honor. So what to make of this disconnect remains open to debate, but exemplifies the frustrations one sometimes encounters in doing forensic genealogy.
There are other telltale signs of Gramatzki in Tiegenhof and Allenstein (today: Olsztyn, Poland) that may relate to Ms. Grete Gramatzki but the verdict on this also remains open. Marek Opitz, Director of the Muzeum Zulawskie, sent me a digital copy of a 1910 Address Book from Tiegenhof, that includes a listing for a Dr. Erich Gramatzki, located at Vorhofstrasse 43, today ulica Sikorskiego. What ancestral relationship this doctor may have had with Grete Gramatzki, if any, remains lost in time. A broader search of the name “Grete Gramatzki” on ancestry.com revealed someone of that name, living in Allenstein, listed in a 1938 Phone Directory. The distance between Tiegenhof and Allenstein was only 130 km, roughly 80 miles. It does not seem unreasonable given the Schlummermutter’s large size that she would have experienced health issues, as previously mentioned, a situation which may better have been treated in Allenstein. Still, all of this is mere speculation, and I have no way to know whether the Grete Gramatzki living in Allenstein in 1938 is the Schlummermutter.
In the following blog post, I will discuss what I have been able to learn about a man who at one time was clearly a close friend of my father’s.