Month: April 2020

Meta Emma Klopp – Friedrich and Emma’s Fourteenth Child – Part 1

/ Peter Klopp / 7 Comments

The ‘Baby of the Family’ and ‘Frau Professor’ Later

Meta, the fourteenth child, was born in Jersleben on 5 January 1898. Her birth took place at a time of disputes about the ownership of the house in Wolmirstedt. Her eldest brother Friedrich (1875 – 1946) was beginning to assert his independence at the expense of the family. The steady new arrivals of siblings and consequently increasing competition for the modest inheritance was getting on the nerves of the ‘faithful’ and now 23-year old rope manufacturing apprentice.

Meta was baptized, as prescribed by tradition, eight days after her birth in the newly consecrated church in Jersleben. The officiating pastor was Dr. Friedrich Daniel, the historian of the Altmark. Very little is known about Meta’s childhood. In all likelihood, her sister Jula Steuer arranged for her the enrolment in a nurses’ training programme. According to vague family memories, it started in a branch of the evangelical church in Waldbröl, Westerwald. At the start of the 1920s, because of the proximity to Neu Rosow, she resided in Stettin. it probably was the first place of her employment in the hospital ‘Bethany’ in Kreckow Street. At the same time, her sister Else and brother-in-law Stier were living in Stettin. When the couple moved to Alt Valm, Pomerania, Meta felt more and more drawn to her sister Anna in Panwitz. At the end of the 1920s, one could find her noticeably more often, almost like a permanent resident, at the von Waldenfels estate at Meseritz. From there she must have found employment at the hospital Limburg, Lahn.

Meta was the youngest daughter of the Klopp children and maintained close contact with her elder sisters. Anna von Waldenfels, Jula Steuer and Else Stier took turns in taking the yet unmarried ‘late bloomer’ under their wings. Photos of the Panwitz time show her as a good-looking young woman, who appears not unhappy but a little bit shy. She suffered mildly from a ‘lazy eye’ problem.

In Limburg happened a fateful encounter, which will be the topic of the next post.

Natural Splendour of the Arrow Lakes

/ Peter Klopp / 25 Comments

Wednesday’s Photos

Budding of some Selected Bushes in April

This is going to be a research project on the budding development of some of the bushes in our backyard. Every week for four weeks in a row, I will take pictures of the same buds, which I have clearly marked with a red ribbon. Each week when I publish a new set of pictures, I will stack them on top of the displays of the previous weeks to allow the viewer an opportunity to follow the magical development of the budding process we enjoy every spring. Enjoy. P.S. It is not too late to start your own research process in your neck of the woods.

April Week 1

Rose                                             Lilac                                       Magnolia                                    Azelia

 

Bonus Photo

IA-MG_0613 Blog

Canada Goose Ready for Take-off

Hermine Elsbeth Emma Klopp – Friedrich and Emma’s Thirteenth Child

/ Peter Klopp / 9 Comments

The Consumptive Captain’s Wife in Farther Pomerania

Elsbeth, called Else, was the thirteenth child of Friedrich and Emma Klopp. She was born in the Wolmirstedt home on 21 September 1895. When she was 18 years old, she left Wolmierstedt and moved with her mother in 1903/04  to Elena, West Prussia. Already at that time, she must have carried the horrible lung disease within her, to which her sister Selma had succumbed.

At the beginning of the 1920s during a visit to her sister Jula Steuer (1877 – 1960) in Diensdorf she got acquainted with the Reichswehr officer Drusus Stier and married him. He was at that time stationed in Fürstenwalde/Spree and used to frequent with his army buddies Jula Steuer’s hotel, where he had met his wife. The name Stier is recorded in the position tables of the Prussian army for Stettin and Magdeburg. His father had been a royal-Prussian general, who also named his other son after a prominent Roman family Tiberius Stier. After viewing two portraits, which were taken in the photo-studio M. Kowalski in Stettin at the beginning of 1920, the author of the Klopp Family History states that the 26-or-27-year-old Else appeared to have been the prettiest of all the Klopp/Bauer daughters. She passed on her open and level-headed characteristics to her son Felix.

Captain Drusus Stier was an infantry officer and was wounded in World War I. Before the end of the war he was relocated to the fortress city of Strasbourg/Alsace. After the war, he took on his last Reichswehr employment in the early 1930s, presumably due to his poor health he was assigned a ‘retiree’ position at the army’s training camp in Groß Born (today Polish: Borne Sulinowo) in Pomerania. In Alt Valm near Bärwalde, the couple Stier lived in a no longer identifiable house at the village entrance.

Here an escalating marriage crisis eventually led to their divorce. According to vague family memories Else’s new husband Filter was supposed to have worn a police uniform. Perhaps he was a comrade of Drusus Stier. Apparently, Herr Filter did not want to deny himself the pleasures of Else’s intense passion, which often went hand in hand with women suffering from tuberculosis. The second marriage lasted only a short time. Else died in Alt Valm at the age of only 39 years. Her first husband, Drusus Stier, retired in the 1930s and moved to Berlin, where he lost his life by burning to an unrecognizable shell during a bombing raid in 1943.

Natural Splendour of the Arrow Lakes

/ Peter Klopp / 35 Comments

Wednesday’s Photos

Winter Retreating Slowly from the Arrow Lakes

Last weekend under a bright sunny sky, my wife and I went for a leisurely stroll over the local golf course in search of more signs of spring. More and more patches of green had emerged from under the snow. The Canada geese were honking happily at the sight of some fresh grass. The catkins were ready to blow their pollen into the wind,  buds even on the pine trees were already swelling, and the clouds darkening Ingarsol Mountain added drama to the otherwise cheerful scene. Enjoy.