GERMANY: A RECEPTION, NEW (OLD) COUSINS, AND A STOLPERSTEIN CEREMONY

May 23, 2025

One of the few buildings that was restored after the February 25, 1945, bombing was the Old Town Hall. It was originally built in 1911-1912 in the Art Nouveau style but was burned out in the air raid. It was repaired and expanded in 1999-2001. A plaque on the wall states, "As a lasting reminder, the Old Town Hall commemorates the destruction of old Pforzheim." 

This is the building where there was a reception for the Stolpersteine families that we--and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of our grandfather and his first wife--had been been invited to attend. We had known our grandfather was married before he was married to our grandmother, but we knew nothing of his life with the first wife or if there were living descendants. Alex, our incredible researcher, found their names, and my brother Dave used Facebook to track them down. They too were invited to the Stolpersteine events.

It turns out there were three children of that earlier marriage, two of whom survived to adulthood, and one of whom married and had two children (born in 1948 and 1951) who would also be grandchildren of our grandfather. We met the widow of the oldest son (who died in 1981) and the second son himself, who is still living and is our half-first cousin. Between them, those two children had five children. We met three of those children, who are our half first-cousins once removed. One of them brought her 11-year-old daughter, our half first-cousin twice removed.

We got there a little early, nervously checking out every small group of people who came in. We had not seen photos of any of the relatives, and as far as we could tell, each person that entered could have been a cousin. When you don't know what you are looking for, you see similarities in every smile, every nose, every setting of the eyes.

While we waited, I admired this powerful metal relief that portrays Pforzheim's streets and buildings in the Cubist style.

GERMANY: PFORZHEIM CEMETERY, DOWNTOWN, ENZ RIVER, WALLBERG

 May 23, 2025

When we got up in the morning, we knew we had a big day ahead that involved meeting cousins we didn't know we had because our mother chose to keep their existence a secret from us, if she even knew about them (and we are pretty sure she did). The day would also include a visit to the Pforzheim cemeetery, a trip to one of the archives that our researcher used to uncover some of the information that had been in hiding for 85 years, a visit to the street where our mother and her family lived until 1945, the installation of a Stolperstein in our grandfather's honor, and more.

But since parking is an issue in Pforzheim, and since the cemetery had a big parking lot, that is where we began. We could park our two vans there and walk to our other destinations during the day, then pick up the vans at the end of the day.

A map of the cemetery at the entrance had this information: "Pforzheim's main cemetery is considered one of the most beautiful park cemeteries in southern Germany. Eighty percent of its total area of approximately 33.4 hectares (82.5 acres) is protected as a historical monument. These areas are characterized by stately tree stands and . . . garden design from the imperial era. From 1877 to 1945, the basic strcture of long avenues and numerous neatly trimmed hedges, which still characterize the cemetery today, gradually emerged.The historical fabric is still largely intact."

I love cemeteries, which I've said many times in this blog. Every grave and monument represents a life and a story, and that seems especially apparent in a cemetery as beautiful as the one in Pforzheim. If I understand correctly, plots are leased for a specific period, usually 20 to 30 years, rather than purchased outright. If the lease is not renewed, the remains are moved or cremated and the site is "recycled" for another burial. Beautiful, well-maintained gravesites are a staple of German culture. Visiting the cemetery is almost like strolling through a botanical garden. Each grave is distinct from the others around it and artfully decorated as if it is a separate room. Take a look at these examples:

GERMANY: ZWIEFALTEN

 May 22, 2025  

On our way from Grafeneck to Zwiefalten, we stopped to take a photo of a bar/inn where the Grafeneck staff came to relax, have a drink, or perhaps rent a room if overflow housing was needed. Today, this charming restaurant exhibits no evidence of its past, and I suppose it is a good example of the fact that life must go on.

Zwiefalten is a tranquil village of about 2,300 people in the Swabian region of southern Germany about 70 miles southeast of my mother's hometown of Pforzheim. The skyline is dominated by the twin towers of the Abbey of Our Lady of Zwiefalten, a former Benedictine monastery founded in 1089.

In 1812 part of the property became a lunatic asylum and then later a psychiatric hospital.

Zwiefalten State Hospital and Sanitorium was the last place my grandfather was held before he was transported to Grafeneck. Of the 10,654 people gassed at Grafeneck, more than 1,000 came from Zwiefalten. Once Grafeneck was shut down in December 1940, killings by injection continued at Zwiefalten.

This distance from Zwiefalten to Grafeneck is about 14 miles and takes just under 25 minutes to drive. Perhaps it took the gray transport busses a little longer in 1940, and certainly the patients who were passengers in the bus did not know where they were going.

We began our vist to Zwiefalten at the Württemberg Museum of Psychiatry. Apparently the psychiatric clinic at Zwiefalten is the oldest in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

GERMANY: GRAFENECK

 May 21, 2025

This post is one of the hardest ones I think I have ever written. The subject matter is difficult, and six months out, I find I am still trying to process this day's events, both those that happened in 2025 and those that occurred exactly 85 years earlier in 1940.

Everyone has heard of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Sobibor, and other concentration camps, but I am guessing that very few Americans are familiar with Bernberg, Hadamar, Brandenburg, Hartheim, Sonnenstein, and--the one that matters most to me and my siblings--Grafeneck. Each of these were "extermination centers" that were part of the Nazi Aktion T4 program. 

Aktion T4 preceded the concentration camps extermination program, and in fact was a foundation for the killing methods used in the camps and the beginning of the systematic mass murder system that led to the Holocaust. Its goal was to rid Germany of "life unworthy of life," the mentally ill and disabled. 

A propaganda poster in the Grafeneck Memorial
Documentation Center showing a strong German trying
to "support" two mentally ill creatures and noting that
supporting a handicapped person until the age of 60
costs 50,000 Reichsmarks.

Victims were brought against their will and generally without the knowledge of their families to one of the six facilities I listed above. There they were gassed using carbon monoxide, which took about 20 minutes--a much slower process than the Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) gas later used in the concentration camps--and their bodies were cremated. The Nazis called these "mercy deaths." Families were notified that their relative died of some randomly chosen but plausible cause, and often a container of indiscriminate ashes was sent to the family. 

GERMANY: GIENGEN

 May 20, 2025

Halfway into this trip, Bob and I and my sister Chris and her husband Stan met up in Giengen, Germany, with the rest of my siblings (three more), two of their spouses, a cousin, and a nephew for a total of eleven family members. What a blast! 

Giengen is where my mother was born. In fact, I can work my way up the family tree and find the following births in Giengen: my mother's mother (1895), her father (1848), his father (1817), his father (1785) AND mother (1793). both sets of their parents (1748, 1760, 1759, 1761), and five more generations before that dating back to as early as 1585! Pretty incredible. 

Giengen is located in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg less than 20 miles from the much larger and more famous city of Ulm. Today, Giengen has a population of around 20,000, but it seems to always have been somewhat of a sleepy city, and as we walked around, it felt like it had a population of about 500.

Giengen's claim to fame is that it is the home of the toy stuffed animal factory Steiff, founded in 1880 by Margarete Steiff (1847-1909). Confined to a wheelchair because her legs had been paralyzed by polio as a child, she took up sewing and began making stuffed toys for friends, then opened her own store in 1877. In 1902, her company began making stuffed bears with movable joints. The bears took off in the United States. Some sources claim they were nicknamed after the then President Teddy Roosevelt, becoming the first "teddy bear," but other sources credit a political cartoon and a Brooklyn candy store owner with creating the nickname and the first bear. The two events appear to have occurred simultaneously.

While most cities have a statue of a king or famous political or religious figure in the town center, Giengen has a teddy bear (or two). 

What looked something like a Chamber of Commerce building had this image in the window. It translates to "Capital of Teddy Bears, Giengen on the Brenz [River]."

GERMANY: AN OLD POST, A NEW FRIEND, AND MANY LITTLE MIRACLES

 May 2025

And now I come to the part of the story of this trip to Germany that is nothing short of a miracle.

The very beginning of the story (if there is such a thing as a beginning of any story) was 85 years ago near a castle on the top of a rather remote hill in Southern Germany, but my part of it began just 25 years ago in December 2000 when Bob and I took our two sons, ages 15 and 12, to Europe with two objectives in mind: pick up our daughter from her study abroad program in France and spend time with my mother in Germany. 

Mom, our daughter, our sons, and I in the
Pforzheim cemetery, December 2000

My mother grew up in Pforzheim, a city that was bombed on February 23, 1945, killing 17,600 people, which was over 30% of the town's population. We met up with her in her hometown, spent the day seeing places that had been important to her, and then moved on to other cities in Southern Germany. 

GERMANY, NUREMBERG: AROUND TOWN

 May 19, 2025

After a heavy morning touring sites relevant to the days before and after World War II, we were ready for a change of pace. 

Today's Nuremberg is a large city of over a half-million people. Its roots are in the 11th century, and by the 14th century it had become one of the three most important cities of Germany. In the 15th and 16th centuries it was the center of the German Renaissance, a central city of the Holy Roman Empire, and a significant center of science and the arts.

Extensively damaged during World War II, much of medieval Nuremberg was subsequently restored, including its historic city walls and its impressive castle. Although many people, myself included, tend to connect the city to the Nuremberg Trials, there are a lot of sites to see that are unrelated to the war. 

We had already seen the old town area around the Market Square, so it was time to venture a bit farther out. 

On the left is a doorway dating to the late 16th century that served as an entry to the Fleischbrücke, or Meat Bridge--hence the steer on top. This bridge is one of the few structures that survived the bombings of WWII unscathed. Dancing Peasants (1980) is based on an engraving by Albrecht Dürer from 1514. The cute photobomber is married to me.