About renamed streets and job descriptions 1940

Here are two letters written by my grandfather to my grandmother. The one on the left was from his office at the Dollfussplatz 6, where he was Primarius, or chief surgeon at one of Vienna's largest hospitals. The date on that one is September 1939. Less than a year later things had changed; gone was his professional designation and the street had been renamed Herrmann Göringplatz. The street, which has been renamed several times during history according to the political style of the day, is now known as the Roosevelt Platz, and is very close to the family house in the Währingerstrasse. If you look closely, you can see that the phone number remained unchanged during all this.

There's an interesting footnote about Dollfuss, who was Austria's anti-facist chancellor until his assassination in 1934 by the Nazis. His children had been given a miniature motorised Italian made sportscar. Having no appropriate place to use this fantastic object, Dollfuss brought it, with his children, to my father's house, which had extensive gardens and paths, and there it was driven around in circles between the greenhouses and the carriage house. As far as I know, neither my father or any of his siblings were ever allowed to have a turn using it!

Andreas writes for the first time from training camp 19 October 1941

Andreas was drafted into a reservist unit on the 1st of October 1941. His training area was in Frankstadt, in Moravia, now in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. As the eldest, he was the first to go.

This is the first of his letters. Interestingly, it has not been written to the family, but to the beloved nanny and later cook, Marie. Marie came to the family as a young teenager from the agricultural and wine country north of Vienna, just in time for Andreas' birth. She was famously afraid of answering the telephone when she first encountered one. This letter contains the first mention of a theme which arises again and again in the letters of the siblings: they were viewing their happy and well-fed childhoods with much appreciation. I can't help feeling that in writing to ask forgiveness for childish misbehaviour, he is anticipating a time when it would be good to know he had put everything to rights. There is also, I think, a touch of homesickness in the final lines.

19 October 1941

Frankstadt

Dear Marie

Firstly 1000 thanks for your lovely letter, which gave me great pleasure to receive. Please accept my apologies for not answering you until now, but other than Saturdays and Sundays I have no time to write.

You will be able to imagine just how much I appreciate every package sent to me. I especially enjoyed the condensed milk, which I am consuming in tiny amounts to prolong the experience. It’s just occurred to me, that in my hurry to depart I completely forgot the acacia honey. I will appreciate it all the more when I come home on leave. When that will be is not known at the moment, but I am hoping to be home for Christmas. Whenever! When I come I will bring my food ration coupons with me, and I am looking forward to eating properly, and want to sleep and just enjoy myself.

You know, sometimes in the evenings before I fall asleep, I think about the lovely teas you prepared in the kitchen, all the wonderful bread, and the butter, and honey too. I am only now beginning to realize just how good we had it at home. I am also thinking with great appreciation on the “Ham-and-Eggs” you used to prepare, as well as the frequently prepared “pre-lunch”. You know, even if I was a pain in the neck to you at times, I never meant it, I was just being childish.

I must close now, as I have office duty to attend to , and everything needs to be ship-shape. Don’t forget me now, think about your Andi, and rest assured, that I am always with all of you in my thoughts.

with love from

your long-legged Andi

28th March, 1940. Rudolf, aged 14, is called up

This document, which was bundled with the letters, is particularly chilling for me, both as a daughter, as well as a mother. My father was 14 when this letter, written on the thinnest foolscap and stamped vigorously on the bottom with the official insignia of the author of this "proclamation", arrived in the post.

What sticks out when you read it is the relentless use of the imperative tone in nearly every sentence. "Your child will be there". "He will wear the swastika armband". "Your child will fulfil their role".

I'm also struck by the fact that the Hitler Youth of Vienna had established themselves on the Tuchlauben 14, today a street of very smart shops not far from St Stephens cathedral. What offices did they commandeer to get the office, I wonder.

At the beginning, my father's forays with the Hitler Youth were relatively benign, and involved weekly meetings, song singing, marching and turning up for parades, etc. On one such occasion he stood too long in his short trousered uniform outside in the bitter cold and contracted pneumonia. Under local anaesthetic, part of a rib was removed to gain access to the affected lung and drain it. He was lucky to survive. By the time he was 16, my father's school had moved to the outskirts of town to provide anti-aircraft defense, but more about that in another posting.

28 March 1940

NSDAP Hitler Youth

Wien, Tuchlauben 1

Proclamation number 501

Dear Parents!

On the morning of 30 March 1940, hundreds of thousands of youths from the entire Reich who have reached the age of fourteen will join the ranks of German’s youth and will take part in an obligatory celebration, which will inaugurate them into the Hitler Youth. Most of them will in this year leave school and begin their working life, but the others too will have reached a turning point in their lives. They will be joining the ranks of those who direct their lives towards fighting for the communal life of the German people.

Your child will be there. He will wear the swastika arm band. He will discover the same camaraderie and kinship, and will be called up to the hard law of discipline and responsibility. Through his continuing personal dedication, he will prove that he has what is necessary to belong to the growth of the party, and the core of the Hitler Youth.

The job of educating the Hitler Youth can only be done with the full support of the parents. Therefore you also, as parents, have an obligation to participate in this duty, and in the calling up of your child. Therefore we also invite you to take part in the obligatory celebration. The day should also be marked within your family as a special day of celebration.

The majority of fourteen year olds will be engaged in the following units: transport, navy, air, communications, cavalry, sport, and patrol. The differing nature of these roles should prepare them for the lives that lie ahead of them. You and your child will appear on March 31, 1940 in the afternoon from 3 pm until 6pm, on the grounds of the Messepalast. You are warmly welcomed.

In this time where the entire German nation has been brought to decisive battle, your child will fulfill their role. This is only possible if we have your trust and complete support.

Heil Hitler!

Author of Proclamation 501

Karl Pfoser

Oberstammführer

Parents and Politics

Before I write about the politics of the war as it came to my family in 1939, I should say a few words about my grandparents, who you see here in these photographs. On the left is my grandmother, in her WW1 nurse's uniform. She served as a nurse with the order of the Knights of Malta on the Italian front from 1914 to 1918. There, she met my grandfather, who at that time had recently graduated from medical school. They married in 1922; the photo on the right shows them on their wedding day. In a memoir, she wrote this about her arrival in the Alto Aldige of northern Italy:

We set up a small hospital and soon had plenty of work. The hospital was bombed by planes, which used both light and heavy ordinance. If a 30.5 mortar bomb was shot at us anywhere in the area, the lids on the cooking pots jumped and jangled; the patients screamed. There was much work during the offensive. Often three days and nights straight without any rest for us. But it was a time in which one gave one’s entire strength for our beloved Fatherland. We helped the poor wounded and dying not only with physical and medical support, but also tried to help them emotionally, and provide them with maternal care.

I spent that first Christmas on the front far from my parents and siblings. We received a number of wounded with terrible head injuries, screaming, confused, dying. It was a ghastly night. I found leg amputations a most terrible shock, and in this operation I had to assist. I had to hold the leg of the poor man, and then as it was dismembered, it fell heavily into my arms. I remember the first detatched eyeball, and the reproachful look it cast upon you. We nursed and helped to the best of our abilities in the operating room.

I think it would be a fair characterisation to say that after their war experiences together, my grandparents had a very good idea about what was coming when war was declared in September 1939. Neither of them was political. My grandfather, who at the outbreak of the war held an important post as chief surgeon in one of Vienna's largest hospitals, was relieved of this position and sent to a smaller provincial clinic. The reason for this remains unclear, but I know it was a blow to him and a bewildering development for the family, whose lives orbited the twin hubs of Vienna and their house in Bohemia.

As the war became a part of their lives, it is clear from my grandparents' correspondence that there was a sickening sense of anxiety about the future, not only for the immediate family but for their world.

No one shown on these pages was a member of the Nazi party. The boys were drafted into the army as reservists when their time came--all reservists were of course required in combat. Those who had a career as "regular" army (ie officers) found that being Nazi party members was required for their advancement--something that was clearly embraced by the many enthusiastic members of the Nazi party. But certainly within the circle of the family described here, this was not the case. The only reference I can find in the war letters that refers to their life in the military is described as "wearing the grey uniform". Leo died with the rank of Private, Andreas as a Reserve Lieutenant. Rudolf, also a Private when the war ended, only survived because the Americans holding him prisoner divided enlisted men and officers: enlisted men were delivered into the American zone and survived, Officers were handed over to the Russians in command of the Russian zone and were shot.

A few statistics: Total losses for the Axis on the Eastern Front exceeded 4 million, most of these dying in the last two years of the war, and 3/4 of these during the final phases of the campaign described here. The Russians lost more than 10 million--these numbers do not include civilians, but represent military losses only.

September 5, 1939; The childrens' loft in Passek

This loft, the upstairs of the little house in Passek, Bohemia, figures prominently in these letters. Edina mentions it in the letter that makes up the previous post.

It was, and remained in 1999, a simple loft with unfinished wood panelling. You can see here where the children would pass their time as teenagers before the war, playing chess, listening to the radio, or -- in the case of Andreas-- painting this picture. There are other watercolours pinned to the sloping ceiling.

I reproduce here a letter written by my grandmother at the eve of the war. She is with the children in Bohemia, still in the school holidays, while my grandfather is working in Vienna. It belongs on this page as the upstairs loft, full of children, provides part of the setting:

5 September 1939

Dear A

Many thanks for your long letter. I received a telegram on the 3rd from Gabrielle [her sister] to say she’d made it home. You will already have heard from her. What’s going on as far as cars are concerned? Here we are only allowed to use them for important business. One really has the impression that there is war. I went upstairs, and the children were listening to their jazz music, and are laughing at me because I am saying there is to be a war. “It’s nothing but a little trip to Poland” is their take on it. Then I hear absolutely nothing upstairs. It’s a shocking, disturbing time, and the quiet upstairs is as difficult to bear as if they were making a racket. It’s weighing heavily on me now.

Then tom-foolery, smoking and loud music. Leo [16] has announced that he should be permitted to smoke 15 cigarettes per day. He looks absolutely green, and takes it for granted that he should be permitted this. It’s been a difficult few days with the children. They sit around upstairs and listen to the radio and music. Then they won’t get up in the morning. Ping pong and hanging around doing nothing. They will do chores if Forester Grund makes them, but to do anything without being asked?? Well, Rudolf yes, but the older boys not a chance. On Sunday Rudolf went with Grund to go partridge shooting. The others didn’t know what to do with themselves. Leo acted mortally wounded when I suggested he go out and work with the forester, and wanted to know if he’d be paid? “The forester gets paid” he said. “That’s something else entirely” I answered. “Then this is coersion” was his response.

I am aware that everyone is nervous, everyone is on edge. The air seems to be crackling with it. But if the boys won’t obey and just give me their blasé attitude, loafing around with a truly unnecessary air of entitlement. I shall send one to the dairy farm and one to Herr Pohl. In Passek, under this roof, they shall never have the feeling that life is just a holiday and they are the VIP guests. Doing nothing is particularly bad for Leo’s nerves. I can’t get him to even look into a book, and now with all this talk of war I have even less chance. Even the dogs’ teeth are on edge. Did I tell you that Bonzo had a go at Murka? Then lifted his leg on the stair to show his disdain.

Andreas has been once in the evening with Forester Grund to practice with the local air raid group. Leo caught 19 trout on Friday.

I went yesterday with Edina to Reichenberg. Today she went back to the dairy farm. She will stay there. We bought her a bicycle with the money her grandmother left her. She went happily off to the farm to work, and in any case it is better for her to be there than sitting around with the boys. She could work here of course, helping out in the garden or kitchen, but she seems happier away from us at the moment, and she has many friends on the farm. She gets on very well with Frau Johne. They love her there and she works very hard, which I unfortunately can’t say for the boys.

Impossible to make proper plans at the moment, with all this going on. We must do something with the boys, but one doesn’t know what, especially as it is uncertain whether or not schools will actually open as usual. Perhaps they should go to school in Reichenberg, rather than Vienna? I think there is only a little school. We must wait and see.

How much I would like to have you here. There is so much to discuss. I would love to know what you make of all this.

Father, I am sending you so much affection, 1000x my love

E

The sister, Edina: 19th May 1943

This is Edina, the twin sister of Leo, born in 1923. During the war she went to stay on the farm of friends in Bavaria, where she did some work in the fields and also in the offices of the agricultural business.

This letter was written just before her joint birthday with Leo. Because she had access to a typewriter, she was fond of typing out letters in triplicate and posting them on to all the various family members. She describes doing this out of necessity, because she couldn't be asked to type the same news over and over!

The Passek she refers to is the house in Bohemia, shown in the photograph of the previous blog.

19.5.1943

My dear ones

Thank you for writing for my birthday. My God, it’s clear that it’s not the birthday I’d have wished for. Everyone has their cross to bear. You’d probably rather be sitting around in Passek, like Rudi? Instead of playing at war and letting yourselves be ordered around?

For our birthday Leo I’d like to have a wonderful party instead of sitting around here twiddling my thumbs. This is my dream birthday: in the morning we’d all go riding in the Prater and have a most delicious time, all over wherever our whim takes us--no irritating person along to watch over us. That would be a super start to the day. We’d be riding, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, into our 21st year, Leo. Then when we got home, Marie [one of the cooks] would have laid out a fabulous breakfast for us in the garden, where all the flowers would be blooming, and smelling sweet, and the sun just shining down on us. Freshly ground coffee, soft boiled eggs, freshly sliced ham, fresh rolls, jam, just like breakfasts that time we went hunting in Poland with the Scarbeks. Wouldn’t that be something? Then afterwards the most delicious cigarettes, as many as we like. Then during the day everyone would do whatever they wanted, and later in the evening we’d have a glorious reunion party.

Those were the days...I can hardly stop myself thinking about them. It almost feels as though I am together with you now, and we are chatting together, just like old times. Up in the loft in Passek, sitting on the red checked cushions of the chairs up there, everyone just lolling about and passing the time. Rudi would have Hexi [the dog] on his lap--or perhaps by this time a girl??--Leo would have his pipe. Idyllic. Sometimes it feels as though I live only in my imagination, in my dreams instead of reality. It’s a trick I have learned, to make things bearable, and can imagine the most wonderful times we had together. It’s cheap, and doesn’t get you in trouble! We had the most glorious childhood.

As you can tell, I’ve been better. I can’t wait to get back to Passek--I haven’t been there in ages. Lotschi, when are you getting leave? Surely in summer? Before you have to go to Berlin? I do hope I won’t be alone there, being together would be a thousand times more lovely. I was so disappointed to hear that Rudi is taking his holiday now instead of in summer, which I can understand. And Andi, sitting right in the middle of everything now, you won’t have any chance of getting home before autumn.

Mami is constantly sending me news about this and that, whether Uncle Josy is to be drafted, or whether the cook has a headache, and that the dining chairs finally have new upholstery. All types of news, both important and inconsequential, a weekly news bulletin which I enjoy for its prattle. If only the good woman could learn how to use a typewriter, she could make duplicates and only write once, as I am doing for you.

I am sending you all my love and hugs and kisses, and wish you Godspeed and am crossing my fingers too, your loving sister

affectionately

Edina

Meeting the letter writers

This photograph was taken probably the summer the war broke out, in what is now the Czech Republic, near Liberec, where my grandparents had a house on my great grandparents' estate. On the left is Andreas, the eldest. He is 18 here. In the middle is my father, aged 14, and to the right is Leo, 18 months younger than his elder brother. Leo had a twin sister, Edina, who is not in this picture. I'll post a photo of her later when I get to her letters. The lady in the picture was from the village.

I love this photo because everyone looks healthy and well fed, suntanned and happy. I don't even need to scrutinise the photo to recognise the knees!

The little house in the woods was a place of great happiness for the family. There were paths for hiking, ponds for fishing, and plenty of wildlife. All the children in my father's family were nature lovers, and felt very tied to this area, even though they attended school and lived in Vienna for most of the year.

In 1999 I visited Bohemia and saw the house, which was lived in at the time by a forester.

The German war cemetery in Honcharne, near Sevastopol

If you go to Google maps, and type in "Honcharne, Sevastopol, Ukraine" you will come to this spot. And if you go to the pull down menu in the upper left, you can see photos of the cemetery. Pull back from this view and you will see what a pretty spot this is, in hills that rise up from the Black Sea, just east of Sevastopol.

The letter that gives the blog its name: 8th November 1943

This is the letter that gives the blog its name. My father, the author, was 17 when he wrote it, and Leo was 20. When I came across it, it was with a bundle of Leo's letters. The red pencil on the envelope says "died in action: return to sender". The letter was unopened until February 2010. I can easily see how that happened.

Later in 2010 I was on the BBC website for "A History of the World in 100 Objects", which was a radio series done by the director of the British Museum. On the web page there was a link for listeners and viewers to upload a photograph and a brief story of one object that they would put into a cyber museum of human history. I uploaded the image you see here.

Shortly after this, I was contacted by BBC Radio 4 by a researcher who was intrigued by the entry. In November of that year, they came with some recording equipment while my father was visiting and made enough tape to make a documentary. This will be aired in 2012.

Oberhummer was one of the gardeners who worked at the large house in Vienna where my father's family lived with other members of their extended family, and their grandparents.

8 November 1943

Dear Leo

I’m sitting here at home for a few hours leave, and my thoughts are with this coming Christmas--what will happen and what it will be like. Will we all be together? As you know, Andi is in Paris with his company until the holiday. That boy has luck like no other. Naturally he’s getting leave at Christmas, Edina too, and so am I, I hope. And as for you? It’s high time you were allowed home, don’t you think?

I suppose you’ve heard that good old Oberhummer has gone to the other side. With him, a big part of our childhood has died too. We will no longer see him puttering around in the garden. It is as though everything from our youth is dying away. Leaves are falling everywhere, and winter is here. Oberhummer was always for me an ancient relic, somehow secretive and not quite of this world. We often discussed what it would be like to actually die. He would grin broadly at me like a good natured troll, a smile that I can see vividly as if it were yesterday.

It makes me see clearly how we are getting older. Time is running away from us like sand through an hourglass. So fine, that you don’t even notice is slipping away, and yet it is always disappearing. Our parents are getting older and are getting grey hair and need our help more and more. In time they will put their destinies, with everything that they have and are, into our own hands. For us to protect. And we will look after them with great joy and pride, because we will want to do for them what they did for us. This is tied to the sorrowful realisation that the beautiful world we inhabited as children is no more.

But one thing we have from this time: the glorious memories of our enchanted youth. No one will be able to rob us of this, even if times become even worse than they are now.

Please excuse these ramblings--they are errant thoughts escaped! I was just letting my pen dance across the page, as it wished.

See you soon at Christmas!

Your brother,

Rudolf

Where to start?

The research is varied. Some days I sit and translate the letters, one by one, fine tuning my inner ear to hear and differentiate the voices of family members I never met. This is the easy part (unless the handwriting is a challenge--more on that in another post), and one of the most enjoyable.

Other days I dig around the internet, make phone calls, and sometimes use snail mail to contact bigger institutions like the Red Cross and the German war graves commission. Here are three envelopes that were returned last spring, all the recipients having moved, been shut down, or were just unknown now. That's the trouble with getting information from the internet--sometimes it is long defunct.

Occasionally, though, you hit the jackpot, as I did with the German war graves people, known more correctly as the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgraeberfuersorge e.V. A letter written to them at the same time as the others shown above prompted a response to tell us what we already knew: Leo had died in Melitopol on the 21st of October 1943, and was buried nearby in a village called Novo Nikolayevka. But a few months later, in June, another letter fluttered into the mailbox, this one with more interesting news. On the 25th of August this year, in a small village about 20km from Sevastopol, there is to be a remembrance service at the cemetery for fallen German soldiers. The monument there was put up ten years ago, and this year will celebrate the fallen as well as the 10th anniversary of the monument itself. Leo's name is engraved on this monument. That means that ten years ago, while my collection of letters slumbered undisturbed in the basement of my parents' home, a Ukrainian workman sat at a workbench and chiseled out the name Leonhard Winkelbauer. It's quite a thought.

Even more surprising is that this same tidbit of news--that Leo's name appeared on a monument--had come to me just a few days earlier through an entirely different source, this time with some photos. That happened through a different channel that I shall describe in a different post.

Digging in the basement, 2009

In 2009 my mother was very ill, and I spent a good deal of time in my childhood home. One afternoon I went down to the basement to do some clearing out, and came upon some boxes of letters from my father's family.

I had long known about these letters, and in fact I had brought one box over from Austria many years previously when I had been living in Vienna. My aunt, who had pressed them upon me because she could not bring herself to read them, hoped that my father might someday want to read the pages written by their two brothers, who both died on the Eastern Front. But as it turned out, he felt like she did and the letters remained unread until I picked them up again.

I have done extensive research, collecting information about the situation in the battlefield through documents obtained at NARA in Washington, and have been in contact with German authorities on the subject of where my uncles were buried. To my surprise I was contacted by the German government in June 2011 to say that one of my uncles, the one to whom the unopened letter had been written, was commemorated on a monument in Honscharne/Gontscharnoye near Sevastopol in the Crimea. This monument, now in existence 10 years, was to be the setting of a memorial service at the end of August 2011, and would I like to attend as a family member.

My trip to the Crimea, secret war reports written in 1944, my correspondence with people who also have an interest in this subject--as well of course the letters themselves--will be the subject of this blog.