Month: January 2015

Norbert Werner Visits the ‘Golden West’

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My Travels to the West in 1955 and 1987

(Chart IV – III, IV)

Contributed by Norbert Werner

Part I

Born in the year of the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) I have been living here up to its collapse and beyond. How many can claim to have gone through the beginning and end of a state?! It is well known that we citizens lived here in the GDR well protected, isolated, and screened off from the rest of the world. Travels to only a very few countries were permitted in those days.

Paul Wener and family 1956

Elsbeth, Paul, Norbert and Christian Werner 1956

I vaguely remember that during my early childhood my mother, Elsbeth, and I were allowed to visit her parents in Velbert, West Germany. That was definitely before the building of the Berlin Wall. My brother Christian asserts that it must have been in 1955, because during that time he had to go to a children’s home across the street from where we lived at Reinhardsbrunner Street.

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Our House in Gotha

One thing will always remain in my memory of our visit. On the bookcase shelf in the living room was on prominent display the 20-volume encyclopedia. Later on, I found out that my father had mailed the books in separate parcels, partly using different return addresses, to his parents-in-law, who had to leave the heavy items behind at their flight in 1954 (Read more in bieneklopp.com).

On our return trip West German border officials thoroughly examined our papers. The reason for their curiosity was that they were puzzled by my father’s name (Paul Werner), which they had come across somewhere in our transit papers. At the time there was a high-ranking member of the East German government by the name of Paul Verner! This was my first visit to the West.

In Part II I will report about my second journey in 1987.

Karl Klopp and His Great-grandson Maxim

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My Grandfather and Our Family (Chart I – V,VI)

Contributed by Johanna Pasdeloup

Even though Karl, my grandfather, is turning 86 this year, he still enjoys playing ball with his great-grandchildren Alice and Maxim. On our family photo little Maxim does not care about sitting still. He has better things to do and reaches out for Alice’s cheek.

Karl and Maxim
Johanna, Régis, Alice and Maxim

Research at the Arrow Lakes Historical Society

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A Wealth of Information on Fauquier, BC

Today I paid my second visit to the Arrow Lakes Historical Society in Nakusp. I dropped in at their spacious room on the second floor of the library building to which it is conveniently connected.

The purpose was to find out what resources would be available for the menu item ‘Our Community’ on this blog. Two things impressed me very much: the friendly and helpful staff, Rosemarie Parent and Kyle Kusch, and an abundance of material for my research on Fauquier. There is very little information on the Internet. Wikipedia has less than half a dozen lines on our community with a brief reference to its namesake Frederick George Fauquier.

Kyle like the week before located all the relevant binders on the shelves of the of the archival section and laid them out on the table for me to look through. One binder that contained newspaper clippings on the present and former residents of Fauquier caught my immediate attention. Kyle opened the Klopp files for me. Apart from a reward ceremony, in which I had been honored for 20 years of service for the Arrow Lakes School District, I discovered the newspaper article on our son Richard winning a $1500 scholarship for outstanding academic achievement at Nakusp High School in 1987.

This discovery really fired me up to take a closer look. From that moment on I copied many pages using my digital camera. And while I was doing it, I caught glimpses of a legacy of so many remarkable people that had helped shape Fauquier during the past 100 years or so. Armed with all this information, I will endeavor on my next post to explain why our little community has such a strange French name that outsiders have trouble pronouncing it properly.

Arrow Lakes Historical Society Building

Arrow Lakes Historical Society Building

Chapter 2 of the P. and G. Klopp Story

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Chapter 2

The Plan

A goal without a plan is just a wish.  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

One day while cleaning up the closet in our spare bedroom, I came across half a dozen boxes overflowing with photos, documents and letters. Although some items, especially those bundled together and secured with elastic bands, were in a fairly recognizable chronological order, most were in a state of extreme disarray. Having endeavored to bring order to chaotic situations throughout my thirty years of teaching, I immediately felt the need to peruse, sort, and arrange this long forgotten wealth of family information. A formidable task lay before me. What could I do, when I had already filled my waking hours with must-do activities? To prioritize is the name of the game. Oh, how I hate this word, even though it is derived from my beloved ancient language Latin! Something ‘prior’ is something that comes before else. It became obvious to me that sorting hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures and papers would be very time-consuming and would be strictly an indoor activity for the long, dreary winter months, when my only outdoor jobs would be splitting and stacking firewood, shovelling snow and knocking off sheets of ice off the roof.

Continue reading →

Mateo and Our Family Reunion

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Mateo Klopp (Chart I – V)

Mateo, our 15-year-old grandson, arrived with his family from Montreal at the end of July in 2014 and spent two weeks mostly camping at Taite Creek Camp Site on our beautiful Arrow Lake.

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Mateo Posing with Azure and Eméline

He has grown into an amicable young man. Of course, grandparents notice changes much more, especially when they don’t see their grandchildren very often. Mateo impressed us with his kind, caring and loving manner, with which he interacted with all family members, in particular with his two little half-sisters Azure and Eméline.

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Mateo, Stefan and Lisa playing ‘Ticket To Ride’

Great-grandmother Erika Klopp would have been delighted to see Mateo’s passion for card and board games. All he needs to learn to play now is the Kegler-Klopp favorite card game ‘Doppelkopf’! In my mind I already see the approving nods from his ancestors of Pomerania, Gutfelde and Watzenborn, if he were to take up this traditional family past time.

On a warm, sunny day his uncles Robert, Tony, Michael and Stefan, his aunts or aunts-to-be Angie and Lisa, a camping buddy from the next site, and two dogs set out with Mateo on an exploratory expedition in boats and canoes to find the elusive hot springs 10 km downriver at Octopus Creek. After hours of rowing and paddling they arrived at the mouth of the creek, where a scene of total devastation presented itself to their astonished eyes. Heavy spring rains and melt waters in previous years had completely destroyed this remote campground. Trees torn down by the flood were piled up in an almost impenetrable jumble of logs and debris.

Despite the obstacles the adventurers decided to climb up in search of the hot springs by following the creek upstream. But after a few hours of strenuous scrambling over and under fallen trees, which  were straddling precariously over the canyon walls, they gave up. Caution had prevailed in the face of danger and potential disaster. Although Mateo felt very tired being the youngest in the group, he was happy and cheerful, when they returned at our camp site.

Family August 2014

The P. and G. Klopp Family – August 2014

Right now he is back in Montreal studying hard to get good grades in Math, Science and Computer Programming. It seems he has found a concrete goal for his future career in life. He will most likely follow in the footsteps of his godfather Stefan. Biene and I are very proud of you, Mateo!