Category Archives: Berlin

Hans Boltz’s school photograph

10 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in Berlin, Boltz, Sepia Saturday

≈ 11 Comments

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt photo, taken in the 1920s, shows a group of children.

My maternal grandfather, Hans Fritz Boltz, was born 1910. Among the photos we inherited from him was a school photograph, probably taken about 1920 when he was 9 or 10 years old.

Hans Boltz school about 1919

Hans Boltz is sitting in the 4th row 2nd from the right

When Hans applied for a position as a cartographer with the Australian Government in 1948 he declared that he first attended the preparatory school of the classical school from the age of six, in 1919 changing to the Realschule in Steglitz, a district of Berlin. A Realschule was of middle rank and provided students with a general extended education. It ranked above Hauptschule, which provided a basic general education, and lower than Gymnasium which prepared students for university.

Hans Boltz course of life beginning 1948

from the National Archives of Australia: MT105/8, 1/6/4531 Page 3 of 143 [file of Hans Fritz Boltz , General Correspondence and Administrative files of the Department of Post-War Reconstruction]

Among our family photographs is a small cardboard wallet of postcards with images of the Realschule Steglitz.

Steglitz Realschule

Collection of postcards of the Realschule Steglitz among the family photographs

The school is now called the Gymnasium Steglitz. It was founded in 1886. The architect Walter Gropius (1883 – 1969) was a pupil.

Hans Boltz as a child

Hans is younger in this photograph than when he is with his classmates above

 

Further reading

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Sweetened condensed care

26 Saturday Oct 2019

Posted by in Berlin, Boltz, USA

≈ 2 Comments

One of the stories from her childhood in Berlin that my mother told me when I was a girl was about her first taste of sweetened condensed milk. She had never had anything like it.

The milk was part of a ‘CARE Paket’ received by her paternal grandparents, Fritz and Anna Boltz, in 1947 or 1948, when she was about eight years old. She vividly remembers opening the parcels in their apartment. There were at least two packages, both gratefully received, in them sweetened condensed milk and sweetcorn in tins, and cocoa, and corned beef, which she found less interesting. My mother does not recall any of her friends’ families getting such parcels. She remembers the name ‘CARE Paket’.

CARE is a relief agency founded in 1945. The acronym was first from “Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe” then, from 1993, “Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere”. The CARE Package was the original unit of aid distributed by this humanitarian organization.

CARE package

CARE -Paket 1948: from the collection of the German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv) retrieved through Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S1207-502 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

 

The first CARE packages were so-called ‘ten-in-one rations’ of the US Army during WWII, originally meant to provide ten soldiers with one meal. Each package contained:

  • 9.8 pounds of meat and offal,
  • 6.5 pounds of cornflakes, oatmeal and biscuits,
  • 3.6 pounds of fruit and pudding,
  • 2.3 pounds of vegetables,
  • 3.9 pounds of sugar,
  • 1.1 pounds of cocoa, coffee and other beverage powder,
  • 0.8 pounds of condensed milk,
  • 0.5 pounds of butter,
  • 0.4 pounds of cheese,
  • a pack of cigarettes, some gum

Most CARE parcels were sent to their European relatives by Americans. It seems a family would have paid $10 to send such a package (about $US143 in today’s value or $AU210). Except that they would have been from her father’s side of the family, my mother does not know anything about her American cousins.

Nearly ten million packages reached West Germany from 1946 to 1960; three million went to West Berlin, many at at the time of the Berlin Airlift, from June 1948 to May 1949, when the city was blockaded by the Soviets.

C-54landingattemplehof

Berliners watching a C-54 land at Berlin Tempelhof Airport, 1948. From Wikimedia Commons United States Air Force Historical Research Agency via Cees Steijger (1991), “A History of USAFE”, Voyageur, ISBN: 1853100757; USAF photo 070119-F-0000R-101

My mother lived in Zehlendorf, in the American sector of Berlin. She remembers watching the planes land during the airlift. More than 1500 flights a day landed at Templehof in the month of August 1948 alone, delivering 4,500 tons of cargo.

My mother in about 1947

My mother in 1947

Sources

 

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G is for Gustav

07 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by in A to Z 2018, Berlin, Brandenburg, Peters

≈ 10 Comments

One of my great great grandfathers on my mother’s side was Gustav Waldemar Alexander Karl Peters (1860-1904), the father of my great grandmother Helene Manock née Peters (1889-1944).

Some years ago, when I began compiling my family history, I learned that my mother’s maternal grandmother was called Helene Manock, and had the maiden surname Peters, but I had no access to records that might tell me more about Helene  and the people on her side of the family through whom I am descended.

In recent years increasing quantities of German birth, marriage and death certificates have been digitised and I have been able to use some of this material to assemble and document more of my mother’s side of our family history.

German genealogy is difficult for me, and not only the language.  Well into the twentieth century German printed documents used the so-called ‘blackletter’ typeface, difficult for an inexperienced modern reader of German to understand. I also find the handwriting of the clerks who filled in the various official forms quite hard to read.

Below is the marriage certificate of my great grandparents Helene Augusta Minna Peters and Emil Wilhelm Manock (1883-1966). They were married in Berlin on 30 December 1911.

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Emil and Helene around the time of their marriage

Manock Peters marriage 1911

Name Helene Auguste Minna Peters Gender weiblich Birth Date 5 Okt 1889 Age 22 Marriage Date 30 Dez 1911 Civil Registration Office Berlin VIII Spouse Emil Wilhelm Mancik Spouse Gender männlich Spouse Birth Date 30 Apr 1883 Certificate Number 1328 Archive Sequence Number 362 Register Type Erstregister from Berlin, Germany, Selected Marriages, 1874-1920 retrieved through ancestry.com

The certificate records when and where Emil and Helene were born and the names of their parents. Helene was born on 5 October 1889 in Prenzlau, about 100 kilometres north of Berlin. Her father was Gustav Peters and her mother was Agnes Helene née Stern. The clerk spelled Helene as Jelena.

Helene Peters, born out of wedlock in October 1889, was registered as Helene Augusta Minna Stern. In 1890 at the time Gustav married Helene’s mother Agnes Stern he declared her to be his daughter .

Stern Peters Helene Augusta Minna birth

Name Helene Auguste Minna Stern Gender weiblich Birth Date 05/Okt/1889 Birth Place Prenzlau Brandenburg Deutschland Civil Registration Office Prenzlau Mother Helene Stern Certificate Number 444 from Prenzlau Germany births 1874-1901 retrieved from ancestry.com

On 28 March 1890 Gustav Peters and Agnes Stern married in Prenzlau, Brandenburg.

Peters Gustav 1890 marriage

Name Gustav Waldemar Karl Alexander Peters Gender männlich Birth Date 11/Dez/1860
Age 29 Marriage Date 28/März/1890 Marriage Place Prenzlau Brandenburg Deutschland
Spouse Agnes Helene Louise Stern Spouse Gender weiblich Spouse Birth Date 31/08/1861
Certificate Number 27 from Prenzlau, Germany, marriages 1874-1923 retrieved from ancestry.com

 

From this certificate I found that Gustav’s full name is Gustav Waldemar Karl Alexander Peters. He was born on 11 December 1860 at Alt-Ruppin. His father was Karl Peters and his mother was Auguste Peters née Grust. Agnes Helene Louise Stern was born 31 August 1861 at Prenzlau. She was the daughter of Christoph Ludwig Friedrich Stern and Charlotte Juliette Stern née Schmoll.

Alt Ruppin  is at the north of the Ruppiner See and is now part of Neuruppin, which is on the western shore of the lake. Neuruppin, 60 km north-west of Berlin, is the administrative seat of the Ostprignitz-Ruppin district in Brandenburg.

Prenzlau is 95 km north-west of Neuruppin and 105 km north of Berlin. Prenzlau is the administrative seat of the Uckermark District in Brandenburg state.

In 1904 Gustav Peters died in Berlin.

Peters Gustave 1904 death

Name Gustav Waldemar Alexander Karl Peters Age 43 Birth Date 1861 Death Date 25/März/1904 Death Place Berlin Berlin Deutschland Civil Registration Office Berlin IX Certificate Number 542 from Berlin, Germany, deaths, 1874-1920

From the certificate I can confirm he was born in Alt Ruppin and married to Agnes Stern. I am sure there other interesting details on the certificate but I need to spend more time deciphering.

In 1945 Gustav’s sister, Charlotte Minna Auguste Paasch née Peters (1869-1945) died in Hamburg. Her death certificate is easier to read.

Paasch nee Peters Charlotte 1945 death

Name Charlotte Minna Auguste Paasch Age 75 Birth Date 15/Mai/1869 Death Date 24/März/1945 Civil Registration Office Hamburg-Winterhude Father Karl Peters Mother Auguste Grust Certificate Number 233 Reference Number 332-5_9955 from Hamburg, Germany, deaths 1874-1950 from ancestry.com

 

Type-written certificates of course are easier to read. This sort of vocabulary helps:

  • ohne Beruf = without profession
  • verstorben = deceased
  • Schuhmachermeister = master shoemaker
  • Lehrer in Ruhestand = retired teacher
  • Eheschließung = wedding

I am very grateful to the people on Ancestry.com who supplied and indexed the certificates I have been  using. I would have achieved much less without their help.

It frustrates to me to not know much more about my German forebears. However, I hope that more records that shed light on their lives will come available and that I will learn more about their lives.

The Advent Angel Orchestra

27 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in 52 ancestors, Berlin, Boltz, Christmas, Manock

≈ 11 Comments

 

I asked my mother to write about the angels that she displays each Christmas.

The Advent Angel Orchestra

Beginning in late November or early December, the weeks before Christmas are the season of Advent. Though the major display is the tree at Christmas, it is traditional in Germany for candles to be placed on a wreath, with a new one lit on each of the four Sundays. They are accompanied by suitable decorations, and families gather for afternoon coffee and cake.

Images of angels are one form of decoration for Advent, and Wendt and Kuhn of the Erzgebirge in Saxony have been making models for just over a hundred years; their green wings, each with eleven white dots, are a special and unifying feature. When Christa was born in 1939 her family already had an orchestra of angels, and the musicians and their conductor were set out each year.

Advent 1937

Advent display ca.1937, probably at the house of Christa’s aunt Helene Manock

When Christa came to Australia with her parents Hans and Charlotte in 1950 they brought a small group of the angels with them – including three trumpeters and a triangle-player – and the family continued to celebrate Advent in the new country.

Original angels from 1937 in 2017

Members of the original Boltz orchestra, Christmas 2017

From 1989, however, with the reunification, Christa and Rafe have been able to travel more easily to the east – the old DDR [German Democratic Republic], and the orchestra has grown considerably. The originals, now eighty years old, still perform, but they have been joined by candle- and lantern-bearers, there are new stringed instruments – including harps and a lute – while the percussionists have gongs and a tambourine and the brass has a trombone, a French horn and a small tuba. There are also an accordion player and a guitarist, and a stronger cohort of singers – three of them supported by bluebirds.

Fuller angel orchestra 2017

The fuller orchestra, Christmas 2017

Recruitment continues.

Trove Tuesday: Flying the Kangaroo route in 1949

04 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Berlin, Boltz, immigration, Trove Tuesday

≈ 6 Comments

Qantas Kangaroo Route Advertisement 1948 retrieved from Pinterest

Most migrants to Australia, including immigrants in my family, came here by sea. My grandfather is an exception. He arrived by air.

Hans Boltz was born on 4 July 1910 in Berlin, where he trained at the State Institute for map drawing as a cartographer. From 1930 to the beginning of World War II he worked for the Prussian Geological State Institute (Geological Survey of Prussia or Preußischen Geologischen Landesanstalt). After the war, when he found his way back to Berlin, he discovered that this building, in Invalidenstraße 44, was situated in the Russian zone. Hans lived in the American zone and, reluctant to travel every day into the Russian-occupied part of the city or move there, he resigned. In 1948 he applied for work with the Australian government, which at the time was recruiting Germans with qualifications and skills in short supply in Australia. He got a job as a cartographer with the Australian Bureau of Mineral Resources.

Berlin, Mitte, Invalidenstraße 44, Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklung
Invalidenstraße 44 in Berlin-Mitte, the building of the former Geological Survey of Prussia. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Hans Boltz’s file created by the Department of Post War Reconstruction includes the dates of his journey from Berlin to Canberra:

  • Wednesday 13 July 1949 left Germany for London
  • Sunday 7 August 1949 left London
  • Thursday 11 August 1949 arrived Canberra via Sydney
  • Friday 12 August 1949 commenced working for the Bureau of Mineral Resources.
NAA: MT105/8, 1/6/4531 Page 2 of 143 (click to enlarge image)

In the late 1980s with the help of my grandfather Hans I spent some time compiling my family tree on my mother’s side. I had bought a book in 1978 called The History of our Family, published by Poplar Books of New Jersey. This had a series of templates for recording family history. One of these was for immigration.

Decades afterwards, my grandfather remembered very clearly his trip from Berlin and his arrival, on 11 August 1949.

 

I summarised my grandfather’s recollections as follows:

Hans Fritz Boltz emigrated from Berlin to Canberra 11 . 8 . 1949
Aeroplane – Berlin – Hamburg – London 4 weeks London
museums / concerts … wandering around sightseeing
London – Cairo – Karachi – Singapore – Darwin – Sydney –
Helopolis Hotel Cairo  Raffles Hotel Singapore  Qantas flight

In London my grandfather was given English lessons. He was not just a tourist.

Qantas Sydney-London Constellation route map retrieved from Pinterest

On Trove I have found an advertisement for the route in August 1949.

AUSTRALIA-ENGLAND CONSTELLATION SERVICE (1949, August 4). Daily Commercial News and Shipping List (Sydney, NSW : 1891 – 1954), p. 4. Retrieved July 4, 2017, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article163836624

 

A Qantas Empire Airways Constellation airliner, photographed by Frank Hurley retrieved from http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/40487425

In 2007 Qantas celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Kangaroo route. This video includes footage of the journey on the Lockheed Constellation aeroplanes. The first flight on the route had departed 1 December 1947.

The journey took four days, 55 hours of flying time. There were two overnight stops, one in Cairo and the other in Singapore. In Cairo my grandfather stayed at the Heliopolis Palace Hotel. In Singapore at the Raffles. There were 29 passengers and 11 crew.

Poster for the Heliopolis Palace Hotel retrieved from Palace intrigue: Egypt in the Golden Age of Travel

 

COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Entree van het Raffles Hotel Singapore TMnr 60018239
Raffles Hotel in 1932. Image from Wikimedia Commons

The airfare in 1949 was £260 sterling. By way of comparison my grandfather’s salary on starting with the Australian Public Service as an experienced cartographer was £222 a year and the average earnings for men in Australia was about £220 a year. The Australian government paid my grandfather’s fare.

Sources

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Z is for Zehlendorf

29 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in A to Z 2017, Berlin, Boltz, Manock

≈ 2 Comments

My maternal grandparents, Hans Boltz (1910-1992) and Charlotte  Manock (1912-1988) were married in 1937.

Their first home was in Eschershauser Weg 27, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin. Zehlendorf is a district in the south-west of Berlin near the Krumme Lanke lake, on the edge of the Grunewald forest.

They lived in a  flat (apartment) in a housing estate known as Onkel Toms Hütte, served by a  U-Bahn station named after the 1852 anti-slavery novel. The estate, designed by several by well-known architects, among them Bruno Taut and Hugo Härings, was built between 1926 and 1932 . The apartment blocks had communal back gardens that led into the forest.

My grandmother, Charlotte Boltz, outside her new home in 1937

 

Eschershauser Weg in 1937

 

Eschershauser Weg in the snow about 1937
from Google maps
A satellite view of Eschershauser Weg showing how it is set in the forest and the communal grounds surrounding the flats from Google maps

According to Google Maps a U-Bahn leaves for Berlin Zoo every ten minutes. The journey takes just over half an hour. Charlotte’s parents lived near Berlin Zoo.

Public transport from Eschershauser Weg to Berlin Zoo from Google maps

Hans’s parents lived at Florastraße 13 in Steglitz. His father, Fritz Boltz (1879-1954) was a live-in janitor at a school there. There is still a school at that address. Florastraße is about six kilometres away from Eschershauser Weg and it takes about half an hour to get there by public transport.

From Eschershauser Weg, Zehlendorf, to Florastraße, Steglitz per Google maps
I visited Eschershauser Weg in 1982
The back of the flats overlook a communal garden with a sand pit and play space. Each flat has a balcony. Photographed 1982.

 

The sandpit at the back of the flats in 1982
My mother playing in the sandpit at Christmas time. She was three years old.
My mother playing in the sandpit aged 4
My mother on her sled at Christmas when she was three years old. The balconies at the back of the flats can be seen.

My mother told me about tobogganing on her sled down a very steep slope with two stones at the bottom of the path that you had to avoid. I found the path and stones in 1982. The slope was not big but it must have seemed so to a small child.

the sloping path with stones at the bottom in 1982

The flat was very close to the forest.

The forest was a very short walk from the flat in 1982

 

 

My grandmother pushing my mother in a pram near the flat with her parents Emil and Helene Manock

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K is for Kennengelernt

12 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by in A to Z 2016, Berlin, Manock, Wedding

≈ 1 Comment

My grandparents Hans Boltz and Charlotte Boltz née Manock recalled and celebrated the day they met, 24 January 1930, for the rest of their lives. The day of such first meetings is known in German as Kennengelernttag, ‘the day of becoming acquainted’. I recall it being a special day with them making toasts at each anniversary.

Charlotte Manock as a young woman

Charlotte, eighteen at that time, had gone with her family to a tea-dance, Tanztee , possibly at a restaurant by one of the Berlin lakes. Hans went up to the group and asked Charlotte to dance, and from that time they were committed to one another.

A five-o´clock tea and dance at the Berlin Eden Hotel in the 1930s. Image from https://kreuzberged.com/2016/03/30/berlin-past-five-oclock-at-the-eden/
The Hotel Eden would have been close to where the Manock family lived near the Berlin Zoo.

My grandparents would not have been dancing outside in January.
Tea Dance, Tegernsee 1932 photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt and in the collection of Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of Lufthansa German Airlines retrieved from http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/221655

Charlotte and Hans were from different backgrounds. Charlotte’s father was a prosperous businessman and Hans’s father, who had been in the army, worked as a school caretaker.

In 1931 Hans was a cadet [Anwärter] in the Prussian Geological Survey [Preussischen Geologischen Landesanstalt]. He had spent four years at the Technical School of Cartography in the State Institute for Mapping, and joined the Geological Survey in 1930. His training lasted another three years until he took and passed the examination for the Cartographic Service in March 1933. He was then appointed to a non-tenured post, on three months notice, which he held until May 1937, when he received a permanent position, subject to formal confirmation which was given in January 1938.

Charlotte and Hans married in April 1937, not long after he had received his appointment in the cartographic service. They had been engaged for four years and known each other for seven.

Charlotte and Hans following their marriage in 1937 outside the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche

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G is for great grandmother from Germany

07 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by in A to Z 2016, Berlin, Bertz, Canberra, Germany, immigration

≈ 1 Comment

My great grandmother, the mother of my maternal grandfather, was Hedwig Anna Bertha (known as Anna) Boltz née Bertz (1885 – 1961).

Anna was born at Trechwitz near Götz fifty-five kilometers east of Berlin and about seventeen kilometers west of Brandenburg an der Havel. Her father Karl Bertz (1854-1932) was a bricklayer. Her mother was Henrietta Bertz née Ritter (1862-1942).

Anna had one brother, Paul, born in 1888.

In 1909 she married a soldier, Fritz Herman Boltz (1879-1954), at Brandenburg an der Havel. They had one son, my grandfather, Hans (1910-1992), who was born at Brandenburg.

Anna Boltz née Bertz, Hans Boltz, Fritz Boltz in 1911. Fritz Boltz is in the dress uniform of an Unteroffizier (NCO) [lace at collar, single cuff stripe] of the 35th Prinz Heinrich von Preussen Fusilier Regiment.

When Fritz left the army in 1912, Fritz and Anna lived in an apartment in Florastrasse, Berlin Steglitz, attached to a public school, where he worked as a caretaker. This was his address when he was called up in 1914. He returned to the same address after the war and Fritz and Anna were still living there in the 1940s [as recalled by their grand-daughter, my mother]. Fritz retired about 1949, aged 70. He died 6 April 1954 at Berlin Zehlendorf.

Easter 1941: My mother sitting on the knee of her great grandmother Henrietta Bertz née Ritter. and with her mother and her Boltz grandparents.

My mother with her grandmother outside the Sommerfeld bakery shop in Berlin in November 1943.

In 1949 Hans, the only child of Fritz and Anna, emigrated to Australia. His wife and daughter followed him a year later.

In 1960 my great grandmother emigrated. Anna Boltz came on the Australia probably embarking at Genoa and arriving on 29 February 1960. The MS Australia belonged to the Lloyd Triestino line..

National Archives of Australia: Incoming passenger list to Fremantle “Australia” arrived 29 February 1960 (K269, 29 FEB 1960 AUSTRALIA Page 3 of 33). Anna is passenger 49 on the list.

The shipping list records Anna as German, travelling tourist class . Her port of landing was Sydney, and her address in Australia was 19 Ridley Street, Turner, Canberra, A.C.T. This was the address of my grandparents.

Anna was 75 when she made this journey to the other side of the world. After she had sold and packed all her possessions in Berlin, she made her way from Berlin to Genoa at a time when Berlin was isolated in East Germany (although the Berlin Wall had not yet been built). This was quite an undertaking for an elderly woman travelling by herself. She had little English or Italian.

I looked at the other passengers on the “Australia” and found that Frieda Gunther, passenger 269 on page 9, also disembarked at Sydney. Her address in Australia was 3 Myall Street, O’Connor, Canberra, ACT. I recognised both the surname and address. Hans Gunther, like my grandfather, was a cartographer from Germany, and in fact I think from Berlin. My grandparents were good friends with the Gunthers. We often visited them at their house and they came to the Boltz’s.

Frieda died in 1982 aged 87 years. (Family Notices. (1982, November 16). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 15. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article130829619) This means she was born about 1895 and ten years younger than Anna. It seems likely that Hans Boltz and Hans Gunther made plans for their mothers to travel together from Berlin to Australia.

My mother remembers that Anna brought a tea chest of possessions. They included:

  • a tea set with a rose design and also a white china dinner set;  I can remember my grandparents using these in later years
  • an ashtray with the shoulder strap of the 35th Prinz Heinrich von Preussen Fusilier Regiment, the regiment of my great grandfather
  • a device in the shape of an owl which was meant to remove the smell of cigar smoke from a room. My great grandfather had liked to smoke cigars. My grandparents however did not smoke so I think it did not get much use in Canberra.
The ashtray with the shoulder strap of the 35th Prinz Heinrich von Preussen Fusilier Regiment

Anna died on 29 April 1961, a year after arriving in Canberra to be with her son. She is buried at Woden Cemetery, Canberra.

Further reading

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Kanu-Club Wannsee

05 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by in Berlin, Boltz, Manock, sport

≈ 2 Comments

My maternal grandparents, Hans Boltz (1910-1992) and Charlotte Manock (1912-1988), were members of the Kanu-Club Wannsee in Berlin before they were married.  The following pictures are photos from their photo album.

Wannsee is in the south-west of Berlin, Germany. The River Havel forms two lakes separated by a bridge: the Großer Wannsee (Greater Wannsee) and the Kleiner Wannsee (Little Wannsee).  There is still a Wannseer Kanu-Club located on the Kleiner Wannsee which takes canoe hiking trips.

Kanu-Club Wannsee 1931
1931- Hans Boltz is in the middle back (wearing glasses)

Hans Boltz is second from the front

1935

Kanu-Club Wannsee 1935
waterfight
Hans Boltz is in overcoat with glasses
Charlotte Manock at the Kanu-Club
Hans and Charlotte
camping with canoes
Charlotte camping
Charlotte camping

canoes in a lock
Charlotte

This week’s Sepia Saturday blogging theme is Robinson Crusoe. There seems to be some mention of canoes in the novel giving my post a tenuous link to the theme.

Sepia Saturday: Emil and Helene Manock at the piano

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by in Berlin, Manock, Sepia Saturday

≈ 4 Comments

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt is a photograph of two people at a piano.

Here is a photograph of my great grandparents Helene née Peters (1889 – 1944) and her husband Emil Manock (1883 -1966).

Emil and Helene’s first child, also Helene, was born in 1909. The presence or absence of a child does not help much – the couple may have chosen to be photographed without their children.  If the photograph was taken in 1909, Helene was twenty and Emil was twenty-six years old.

Photographs are often dated by looking at the hairstyle and clothes. Helene’s hairstyle is a little less complicated than coiffures in photos from 1909 pictured in Lenore Frost’s book on Dating Family Photos 1850 – 1920.  It is more similar to pictures dating from 1914.  However since Lenore’s book is about Australian photographs it could be that Berlin fashions were a little ahead of Australia. The Photo Detective website based on British photographs, illustrates the Side Swirl Hairstyle as being a popular fashion for young women from about 1909 to 1914 and what is termed the Transitional hairstyle from about 1911. (“Edwardian – index.” Photo Detective. Geoff Caulton, 22 June 2010. Web. 06 Feb. 2014. <http://www.photodetective.co.uk/Edwardian-index.html>. )

The clothes look as though they date from the Edwardian era. The high collar of the dress, a slim and high standing collar, is typical of the era. From 1905 apparently sleeves changed and the “fullness at the wrist disappeared, the width at the top increased and there was a return to the leg-of-mutton, full puffed and double-puffed sleeves of the 1890s.” We can’t see much detail of the skirt. (“Fashion In The Edwardian Era: Part I .” The Ladies Treasury of Costume and Fashion. Ladies Treasury, 19 Jan. 2013. Web. 07 Feb. 2014. <http://www.tudorlinks.com/treasury/articles/view1900.html>.)

The photograph appears to have been taken at Emil and Helene’s flat, not in a studio.

Emil was an interior designer and antique dealer in Berlin.  When they first married Emil and Helene lived in Steglitz. Later, but before World War 2, his shop was in Budapester Straße and he lived in a flat upstairs, with the work rooms on the floors above.  This area including the shop and flat was bombed during the War.

My mother recalls her maternal grandparents living in Budapester Straße opposite the Zoo. This is an undated, but pre-war, image retrieved from “Budapester Straße Mit Zoo.” ALT – BERLIN. Allside.de, 6 Nov. 2010. Web. 6 Feb. 2014. <http://www.allside.de/pages/Budapester%20Strasse%20mit%20Zoo.html>.

My mother tells me that there was a grand piano in the flat in Budapester Straße.  She was too young to remember it being played.  Her mother, my grandmother and Emil and Helene’s daughter Charlotte, learned the piano for fourteen years but did not play once she stopped learning. Charlotte’s husband, Hans, spoke in later years of the enormous effort required when they decided to relocate the piano from the second floor to the first floor of the building.

Reference: Frost, Lenore Dating family photos 1850-1920. Lenore Frost, Essendon, Vic, 1991.