Note: In this post, I discuss and present a series of photos of Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s second wife, Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Bruck née Gräbsch, and some of her immediate family. While Johanna Bruck was identifiable in most photos, I was aided at times by captions provided by Johanna and Walter’s daughter, Renate Bruck. In a few instances, I arrived at the conclusion of who some of Johanna’s family members were by logical deduction.
Related Posts:
POST 68: DR. JULIUS BRUCK AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERN ENDOSCOPY
POST 68, POSTSCRIPT: DR. JULIUS BRUCK, ENGINEER OF MODERN ENDOSCOPY-TRACKING SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS
POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS
POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY
POST 101: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK: HIS DAUGHTER RENATE’S FIRST HUSBAND, A “SILENT HERO”
The seven photo albums left to me by my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (1907-1994), covering the period from his early childhood during the 1910’s until he came to America in 1948, were the inspiration for researching my family and ultimately developing this family history Blog. I distinctly remember a comment from a Jewish audience member when I gave my first translated talk in Tiegenhof, today Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland, the town in the Free State of Danzig where my father had his dental practice between 1932 and 1937, remarking on how fortunate I was to have my father’s collection of photos; he remarked he had only three surviving images of his Jewish ancestors, a not uncommon circumstance among descendants of Holocaust victims. For this reason, I consider it quite fortuitous that Dr. Tilo Wahl, the German doctor who purchased the medals that once belonged to my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, chanced upon my Blog and shared pictures of Walter’s personal effects. I have experienced the same thrill and used the same forensic techniques in examining Walter’s pictures and documents as I have in studying my father’s papers, often with comparable success. In the ensuing post, I will discuss one such enthralling find involving Walter and Johanna’s daughter.
There are only a few pictures among Walter Bruck’s surviving photos showing Johanna Gräbsch prior to his marriage to her (Figures 1-2), and none, insofar as I can tell, that show her as a child or young girl. Prior to obtaining copies of Walter’s papers and photos, I had found Johanna’s marriage certificate to her first husband, Dr. Med. Alfred Friedrich Karl Kurt Renner, showing they had gotten married on the 6th of May 1905 in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]. The certificate listed her date and place of birth, the 10th of April 1884 in Breslau. As sometimes occurs on marriage certificates, a notation was added later showing they divorced on the 8th of March 1917. (Figures 3a-c; 4)
There is one particularly joyful picture in Walter Bruck’s photo album that Renate Bruck, who later captioned some photos, rather vaguely titled. (Figure 5) The subjects were identified according to how they were related to her three children rather than herself, which initially confused me. Regardless, while only five people were identified I was eventually able to work out who all six of the people in the photo are likely to have been through logical deduction. (Figures 6a-f) I am convinced the photo was taken at the marriage or celebration of Johanna’s wedding to Dr. Alfred Renner in 1905. Renate Bruck who was the offspring of Johanna’s second marriage in 1923 to Dr. Bruck was born in 1926 and probably never met her mother’s first husband, thus would have been unlikely to recognize him; she in fact has a question mark above his picture. There appears to be a level of intimacy between the unidentified subject and Johanna which suggests to me this was her first husband, Dr. Renner.
As to the other subjects in this photo, on Johanna’s 1905 marriage certificate her parents, misidentified on the caption as great-grandfather and great-grandmother, are named as Paul Gräbsch and Emma Gräbsch née Nerche. I found their marriage certificate on ancestry.com indicating they got married on the 26th of July 1873 in Dresden, Germany. The “Tante Leni” in the photo was Johanna’s older sister, Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch, born on the 7th of March 1876, and “Onkel Willy” was her husband, Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg. I found his death certificate showing he was only 43 years old when he died on the 12th of February 1909 in Berlin.
As an aside, I mentioned to readers in Post 99 the existence of old annual periodicals that Dr. Tilo Wahl told me about (e.g., “Handbuch für den Preußischen Hof und Staat” (a printed guide of the Royal Prussian court and administration); “Ranglisten der Königlich Preußischen Armee” (rank lists of the Prussian Army)) that were once published for persons in official positions and/or of higher rank listing the decorations they were awarded. For personalized medal groups Tilo purchases that come without attribution, these handbooks are most useful in identifying the person to whom the medals were awarded. Coincidentally, Tilo found a listing for Alfred Steinberg, Johanna’s brother-in-law, in a 1908 Prussian Ranklist showing he had been given the “Roter Adler Orden Kreuz 4.Klasse (1861-1918) (ehrenzeichen-orden.de)” (Red Eagle Order Cross 4th Class (1861-1918)) that year. (Figures 7a-b) The Order of the Red Eagle was a Prussian order of merit, the second highest Prussian award. It is providential that my research into Johanna’s family members also wound up overlapping with Tilo’s interest in phaleristics.
In studying the picture of Johanna Gräbsch and her immediate family, I realized there appeared to be other pictures in the same folio Dr. Tilo Wahl had not photographed. Knowing Dr. Walter Bruck’s personal papers and photos are now in the possession of his twin granddaughters, Francesca and Michele Newman, following the death of their brother in 2015, I asked them if they could scan and send me the accompanying images. They graciously agreed. While most people in the group pictures they sent are unknown to me, even though several are named (Figure 8), Johanna’s older brother Paul Gräbsch is identified on a separate picture (Figure 9); though not labeled, I think his wife Irene Elisabeth Klar née Gräbsch may be standing next to him in two of the group photos. In all, I now have images of Johanna Gräbsch, her parents, her siblings, and her brother- and sister-in-law. Finding images of people I discuss in my Blog posts is always enormously satisfying as it brings these people to life in some small way.
Another thing that completes the circle, so to speak, is finding primary source documents that substantiate events that may have taken place in the lives of the people I write about. In the case of Johanna Gräbsch, who is the primary subject of this post, I found her listed in a 1919 Breslau Address Book under the name “Johanna Renner née Gräbsch” (Figure 10); clearly, following her divorce from her first husband in 1917, she retained her married name until she remarried my esteemed ancestor.
Included in Dr. Walter Bruck’s surviving personal effects is a business card sized document dated the 13th of December 1923 announcing his upcoming marriage to Johanna Gräbsch. (Figure 11) Regular readers know I constantly harp about relying on primary source documents in support of dating vital events but even these are not infallible. Case in point. Included among Dr. Bruck’s surviving papers are two hand-drawn family trees I believe were developed by someone other than Dr. Bruck; one tree states Walter and Johanna got married on the 22nd of December 1922, NOT 1923 as the wedding announcement clearly indicates; obviously, the family tree is in error. (Figure 12) The date of their marriage is interesting for another reason. Walter and Johanna’s first child, Hermine, who died at less than two months of age, was born on the 18th of January 1924, less than a month after her parents got married.
Surviving photos show that Johanna and Renate lived a charmed life before the National Socialists came along. (Figures 13-17)
The Breslau address books following the death of her second husband, Dr. Walter Bruck, in 1937, continue to list Johanna Bruck until 1941 (Figure 18), whereupon her name disappears from the directory. Until I tracked Johanna and Renate Bruck to England relying on documents I obtained through the United Kingdom’s General Register Office, I was uncertain whether they had survived WWII or where they may have landed. I have detailed the results of my forensic investigations in Posts 68 and 68 Postscript so will not repeat them here.
Once I determined that Johanna and Renate Bruck survived WWII, I next wondered whether Johanna and Renate had made their way to England before or after the war. This question was eventually answered by Renate Bruck’s lifelong friend, Ms. Ina Schaesberg (Figure 19), born the same year as Renate in 1926, and still alive today.
Inadvertently, I never thought to ask Ina this question until Walter and Johanna Bruck’s twin granddaughters, Michele and Francesca Newman, recently told me they had found their grandmother and mother’s Tagebuch, the journal or diary. It was at this moment Ina confirmed that Renate and her mother lived in Berlin after they left Breslau in an apartment building that survived Allied bombing during WWII. Following the war, the Berlin sector they lived in came under British occupation, which is likely how Renate met the Berlin-born British officer, Henry Ernest Graham (1904-1959) (Figure 20), who became her second husband in 1948. Several photos exist of Johanna in England following her immigration there. (Figures 21-23)
The twins have shown great faith in sending and entrusting me with the original of their mother and grandmother’s journal, which I have since converted into a PDF and sent off to one of my cousins for transcription. (Figure 24) The journal covers the five-year period between the 1st of January 1940 and the 24th of December 1944. The memoir confirms that Johanna and Renate Bruck moved from Breslau to Berlin in February 1942. Transcription of the diary is ongoing as we speak and the major contents and findings will be the subject of a future Blog post.
Absent the transcription of Johanna and Renate’s years in Berlin, I was still able to learn a little bit about their time there from Ms. Bettina Mehne who I introduced to readers in Post 101. To remind readers, Renate’s first husband was Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne to whom she was only briefly married. Bettina is Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage. Knowing Matthias had been a “Geigenbauer,” a violin maker, in Berlin and aware Renate and Matthias had met or become reacquainted with him there (i.e., Matthias and Renate may have known one another from Breslau) after her arrival in February 1942, I wondered whether Renate and her mother had lived with his family when Matthias was a British prisoner-of-war during WWII. (It is still not entirely clear to me which year Renate and Matthias got married.) Bettina explained that her Mehne family had no relatives living in Berlin at the time, so as Ina Schaesberg explained, Johanna and Renate lived independently. It was only after Matthias was released that all three briefly lived together. According to Bettina, Johanna was a major drain on her father’s financial resources because of her love of chocolate, which was enormously expensive in the post-war period!
VITAL STATISTICS OF JOHANNA BRUCK NÉE GRÄBSCH & SOME IMMEDIATE RELATIVES
| NAME | EVENT | DATE | PLACE | SOURCE |
| Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (self) | Birth | 10 April 1884 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Breslau marriage certificate |
| Marriage (to Dr. Alfred Renner) | 6 May 1905 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Breslau marriage certificate | |
| Divorce (from Dr. Alfred Renner) | 8 March 1917 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Notation on 1905 Breslau marriage certificate | |
| Marriage announcement (to Walter Wolfgang Bruck) | 13 December 1923 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Wedding announcement among Walter Bruck’s personal effects | |
| Marriage (to Walter Wolfgang Bruck) | 22 December 1923 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers | |
| Death | 5 March 1963 | Elstree, Hertfordshire, England | United Kingdom death certificate | |
| Alfred Friedrich Karl Kurt Renner (first husband) | Birth | 20 June 1873 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Breslau 1905 marriage certificate |
| Marriage (to Johanna Gräbsch) | 6 May 1905 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Breslau marriage certificate | |
| Divorce (from Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch) | 8 March 1917 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Notation on 1905 Breslau marriage certificate | |
| Death | Unknown | |||
| Walter Wolfgang Bruck (second husband) | Birth | 4 March 1872 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Walter Bruck’s personal biography |
| Marriage announcement (to Johanna Gräbsch) | 13 December 1923 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Wedding announcement among Walter Bruck’s personal effects | |
| Marriage (to Johanna Gräbsch) | 22 December 1923 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers | |
| Death | 31 March 1937 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Walter Bruck’s Breslau death certificate | |
| Hermine Bruck (daughter) | Birth | 18 January 1924 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers |
| Death | 10 March 1924 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers | |
| Renate Stephanie Gertrude Bruck (daughter) | Birth | 16 June 1926 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers |
| Death | 3 March 2013 | Ramsholt, Suffolk, England | United Kingdom death certificate | |
| Karl Paul Otto Reinhold Gräbsch (father) | Birth | UNKNOWN | ||
| Marriage | 26 July 1873 | Dresden, Germany | Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879 | |
| Death | UNKNOWN | |||
| Friederike Emma Nerche (mother) | Birth | 2 June 1854 | Dresden, Germany | Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879 |
| Baptism | 18 June 1854 | Dresden, Germany | Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879 | |
| Marriage | 26 July 1873 | Dresden, Germany | Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879 | |
| Death | UNKNOWN | |||
| Paul Karl Hermann Gräbsch (brother) | Birth | 28 July 1874 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Hamburg, Germany death certificate |
| Marriage (to Irene Elisabeth Klar) | 9 April 1920 | Belgard (Persante), Pomerania, Germany [today: Białogard, Koszalin, Poland] | Eastern Prussian Provinces, Germany (Poland), Selected Civil Vitals, 1874-1945 | |
| Death | 31 March 1946 | Hamburg, Germany | Hamburg, Germany death certificate | |
| Irene Elisabeth Klar (sister-in-law) | Birth | 17 April 1898 | Belgard (Persante), Pomerania, Germany [today: Białogard, Koszalin, Poland] | 1920 Belgard, Prussia marriage certificate |
| Marriage (to Paul Karl Hermann Gräbsch) | 9 April 1920 | Belgard (Persante), Pomerania, Germany [today: Białogard, Koszalin, Poland] | 1920 Belgard, Prussia marriage certificate | |
| Death | UNKNOWN | |||
| Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch (sister) | Birth | 7 March 1876 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Breslau birth certificate |
| Marriage (to Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg) | UNKNOWN | |||
| Death | UNKNOWN | |||
| Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg (brother-in-law) | Birth | 15 September 1865 | MyHeritage Germany Deaths & Burials, 1582-1968 | |
| Marriage (to Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch) | UNKNOWN | |||
| Death | 12 February 1909 | Brandenburg, Berlin, Germany | Berlin death certificate | |
| Burial | 17 February 1909 | Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] | Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1500-1971 |