Category Archives: Boltz

Newly-released German records: Fritz Hermann Boltz, 1879-1954

01 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by in Berlin, Boltz, genealogical records

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Ancestry.com has added to its collection Berlin civil-registration death records from 1874 to 1955. My great grandfather Fritz Boltz died in 1954; I searched for his record, hoping that the official document would tell me something more than I already knew.

My great grandparents Fritz and Anna Boltz about 1952; two years before his death

In 1874 the Prussian Government passed a law governing the collection of information about civil status, including the registration of deaths. This was the “Gesetz über die Beurkundung des Personenstandes und die Form der Eheschließung”.

Section 56 in the Fifth section, Notarization of deaths, requires that “Every death must be reported to the registrar of the district in which the death occurred no later than the next day of the week.” Section 57 says it must be reported by the head of the family or if that person not available “the person in whose apartment or dwelling the death occurred”. Section 58 provides for official investigation into the death. Section 59 prescribes the information to be provided to register the death:

  • First name and family name, status or trade and place of residence of the notifying party;
  • Place, day and hour of death;
  • First name and family name, religion, age, status or trade, place of residence and place of birth of the deceased;
  • First name and family name of his spouse, or a note that the deceased was single;
  • First name and surname, status or trade and place of residence of the deceased’s parents.

If the information is unknown, this must be noted against the relevant entry.

Section 60 states that no funeral may occur until the death has been
registered.

The legislation was amended in 1920 and again in 1937 but apparently without changing the requirements for death registrations.

My great grandfather’s death was registered in Dahlem, Berlin on 7 April 1954, the day after he died.

Name Fritz Hermann Boltz Gender männlich (Male) Age 74 Birth Date 13/Juli/1879 (13 Jul 1879) Death Date 06/04/1954 (6 Apr 1954) Civil Registration Office Zehlendorf von Berlin Death Place Berlin Berlin Deutschland (Germany) Spouse Hedwig Anna Berta Boltz Certificate Number 730
Landesarchiv Berlin; Berlin, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Laufendenummer: 1940 Berlin, Germany, Selected Deaths, 1874-1920 retrieved from ancestry.com

His occupation was ‘Schulhausmeister im Ruhestande’: Retired school caretaker.

It was noted he was ‘evangelisch’, evangelical, that is, Protestant.

He was living in Steglitz, Stubenrauchplatz 1. I knew he had retired and was no longer living at the school in Florastraße where he worked as caretaker, but I did not know where my great grandparents were living at the time.

Initially I could not find this Platz on a map; it was renamed to Jochemplatz in 1962. Their flat was on the corner of Jochemplatz and Florastraße, only 60 metres from where they had lived at Florastraße 13 when Fritz Boltz was school caretaker. The school is still in existence. There is a small park in the triangle bounded by Jochemplatz.

from Google maps showing my great grandparents’ addresses at Florastraße 13 and Stubenrauchplatz 1 which has now been renamed Jochemplatz.

The 1952 photo above seems to be from their balcony overlooking Florastraße.

from Google street view: image captured July 2008. The balcony of my great grandparents can be seen I think towards the right looking onto the trees on the top floor.

My great grandfather died at 2:30 on 6 April 1954 at Nikolassee, Kurstraße 11. This is the address for Evangelisches Krankenhaus Hubertus, now a small general hospital of 200 beds. https://www.krankenhaus.de/evangelisches-krankenhaus-hubertus/

Map generated by Google maps showing Stubenrauchstraße 1 now Jochemplatz 1, my great grandparents’ former residence at Florastraße 13, the hospital at Nikolassee, Kurstraße 11, and the residence of the informant of the death: Willi Lindemann, residing in Berlin-Steglitz, Grunewaldstraße 4. The hospital was about 9 kilometers away from my great grandparents’ home; Grunewaldstraße 4 was less than 1 kilometer from where they lived.

Fritz Hermann Boltz, ‘Der Verstorbene’, the deceased, was born on 13 July 1878 at ‘Götz, Kreis Zauch-Belzig (Standesamt Götz Nr. 12)’, that is, at Götz in the district of Zauch-Belzig (Registry office Götz Number 12).

He was married to Hedwig Anna Berta Boltz, born Bertz.

Fritz Hermann Boltz married Hedwig Anna Berta Bertz on 26 April 1909 in Brandenburg, Germany.

The death was entered from a verbal report from a businessman, Willi Lindemann, residing in Berlin-Steglitz, Grunewaldstraße 4. The reporter is known [presumably to the deceased]. He stated that he had been informed of the death from his own knowledge.

‘Todesursache Krebs der Vorsteherdrüse, Knochenmetastasierung’: Cause of death: cancer of the prostate gland, bone metastasis.

The death certificate does not mention children. Fritz and Anna had only one child, my grandfather Hans. He had emigrated to Australia in 1949.

My mother does not recall Willi Lindemann but remembers that her paternal grandparents had several close friends, Willi Lindemann presumably one of these. His address, in Grunewaldstraße, was close to theirs in Florastraße.

Fritz’s widow, my great grandmother Anna, continued to live in Berlin until 1959, when she emigrated to Australia. She lived in Canberra with her son Hans until her death on 29 April 1961.

The new collection of death records from Berlin has several of my relatives, and I hope to be able to learn more about my family history from them.  Already, besides the death of Fritz Boltz, I have found Anna’s mother Henriette who died in 1942 and learned her father’s name.

Sources

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Remembering my grandmother on her birthday

24 Sunday May 2020

Posted by in Boltz, Manock

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My maternal grandmother, Charlotte Boltz née Manock, second daughter of Emil Manock (1883 – 1966) and Helene Manock née Peters (1889 -1944), was born in Berlin, Germany, on 24 May 1912. She died in Canberra, Australia, on 25 May 1988. Today is the 108th anniversary of her birthday.

  • 1920 Charlotte 2nd from left in Heidelberg
  • 1920 card caption
  • 1930 Charlotte standing on right
at the Kanu Club
Charlotte Manock married Hans Boltz on 24 April 1937 at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche in Berlin
  • 1937 Charlotte Boltz outside her flat in Berlin
  • abt 1940 Charlotte with her parents and daughter in pram
My grandmother in her back garden in Canberra in the 1960s

Birthdays were always very special celebrations in my grandmother’s house and she cooked the most marvellous cakes. I particularly remember her Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and in the past I have cooked it in memory of her from the recipe she used.

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Remembering my Grandfather’s Holden cars

18 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by in Boltz

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From 1948, for more than six decades, one of Australia’s most popular cars was a locally designed and manufactured General Motors sedan called the Holden.

Those days are gone. Holdens ceased to be manufactured in Australia in 2017, and yesterday General Motors announced the ‘retirement of the Holden brand in Australia and New Zealand’.

The first car of my maternal grandfather Hans Boltz (1910 -1992) was a Holden, which he bought in 1959. Hans owned only Holdens. In the 60s I remember he had a blue Holden. My parents had a similar green Holden. In the 1970s he had a metallic gold Holden with red cloth seats. Hans’s last car was a Holden Commodore, white with pale blue seats.

Ridley Street 1966 abt_0002

My grandfather, Hans Boltz, working on his lawn mower in front of the garage with a Holden parked inside. My brother is looking on. Photograph about 1966. Greg tells me this an EH.

1967 St Barbary land with Holden

My parents’ new block of land near Batemans Bay before the house was built. Their Holden car is in the middle. Photo about 1967.

deCrespigny 1968 StBarbary _0010

My parents’ Holden car in 1968 at Batemans Bay. Greg tells me this is an EJ.

Hans Boltz’s school photograph

10 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in Berlin, Boltz, Sepia Saturday

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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

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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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The Advent Angel Orchestra

27 Tuesday Mar 2018

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

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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.

Swings

16 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in Boltz, Sepia Saturday

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This week’s Sepia Saturday blog post prompt is of an image of swings.

I remembered the swing in my grandfather’s back garden and many happy hours spent there.

The second picture is of my mother pushing my aunt on the swing perhaps 10 or 12 years earlier. The fruit trees have grown very quickly.

I first wrote about my grandfather’s back garden in response to a Sepia Saturday prompt in 2014 : Sepia Saturday: My grandfather’s back garden

O is for Oma cooking from Dr Oetker’s "Backen Macht Freude"

04 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by in Boltz, Canberra, cooking, Manock

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Today I finally found my copy of “Backen Macht Freude!” (Baking makes Joy!). It once belonged to my grandmother. It is a well-worn book and the binding is held together with sticky tape. I couldn’t read the spine, so it was hard to find on my bookshelves. From the cover, it appears to be one of the original edition, first published in 1930. I can’t find Schwarzwalder kirschtorte in the index but I have noticed Frankfurter Kranz and Sachertorte as well as Obsttorte (fruit tart). “Backen Macht Freude!” is printed in Blackletter (Gothic) script, no longer commonly used.

Backen Macht Freude

“Backen Macht Freude” published 1930

Anne's Family History

I didn’t actually call my grandmother Charlotte Boltz née Manock (1912-1988) Oma, Grandma in German, when I was young. Although she was from Germany, to me she was just Grandma. However, my cousins called her Oma and my children know of her as Oma, distinguishing her from the many other Grandmas in the family.

My grandmother used to bake wonderful cakes, many of them from recipes in this book by the Dr Oetker company. I particularly remember her baking Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, Black Forest cherry cake.

My mother’s copy of Dr Oetker’s cookbook Backen macht Freude, (Cooking with joy). It probably dates from the early 1950s. It cost DM1.80. The Deutschmark was introduced in 1948.
The recipe for Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte page 104. (click on image to enlarge)
The recipe continued on page 105.

The recipe calls for a biscuit base, then a sponge. The cherries are sour cherries.

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Trove Tuesday: Flying the Kangaroo route in 1949

04 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Berlin, Boltz, immigration, Trove Tuesday

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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

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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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