Germany

Friedrich Ernst Klopp – The Sixteenth and Last Child of Friedrich and Emma Klopp

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My Father – Friedrich Ernst Klopp (1900 – 1964)

Introduction Part II

It was painful for me to discover that the son of Anna von Waldenfels was an SS officer. However, what made this particular case even more shocking was that Georg von Waldenfels’ heart and soul was filled with an insatiable lust for power, glory and possessions, which even went beyond the allowable within the regime he was serving. In other words, he was an opportunist of the worst kind and would have been ‘successful’ in any other political system. He skillfully exploited every opportunity for his personal gain. For example, he attempted to acquire an estate worth millions of dollars in today’s real estate market, a large piece of property complete with a mansion, even a factory and many outbuildings that been confiscated by the state from a Jewish couple.

In spite of this blemish in our family history, I decided to publish it. What made my decision a bit easier was the fact that I had no personal connection with the son of my aunt Anna von Waldenfels. In all biographical endeavours one needs a certain emotional distance in order to preserve objectivity. Furthermore, so far my task had been to translate merely the relevant passages from my cousin’s book published in German with the somewhat long-winded title: “A Letter to the Descendants of the Klopp Family from Altenburg/Brome and Wolmirstedt.”

When I now turn my attention to the biography of Friedrich Ernst Klopp, it is important to be aware of the fact that emotional distance in describing objectively my father’s life is no longer possible. On the one hand, I continue to rely on Eberhard Klopp’s family chronicle for invaluable information. On the other hand, there are my very own experiences with and personal impressions of my father that needed to be told in order to add some deeply felt love, understanding and respect for my father to an overly sober and matter-of-fact kind report by my cousin. To distinguish my insertions from the translation, I am going to use the italic font style whenever I feel the need to throw additional light on my father’s fascinating life story or fill some of the gaps left in the Klopp family chronicle.

Klopp Residence and Rope Manufacturing, Wolmirstedt, Germany

Friedrich Ernst Klopp – The Sixteenth and Last Child of Friedrich and Emma Klopp

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My Father – Friedrich Ernst Klopp (1900 – 1964)

Introduction Part I

While translating parts from the family chronicles written by my cousin Eberhard Klopp, my main focus was on rendering an accurate translation. My personal interest in our family history and a deeply felt responsibility towards the Klopp branch and future descendants living in Canada provided me with the motivation and necessary persistence to delve into this laborious and time-consuming undertaking. With the exception of four aunts and my father Ernst Klopp, I did not get to know the other twelve children of my paternal grandparents Emma Christiane and Peter Friedrich Klopp. 

As I was writing down the wealth of ancestral information of Eberhard Klopp’s book containing more than 200 pages in small print and then publishing it on my blog one uncle and one aunt at a time, I gained deep insight into the causes of what makes a family function in harmony and of what makes it fall apart. Quite frankly, reading some of the stories shocked me so intensely that I hesitated for a long time to publish them online.

My readers, who read the posts on my nephew Georg von Waldenfels, a Nazi SS officer, may understand as to why I was tempted to leave out this embarrassing chapter of our family history. In the 1930s many people were misled by the promises made by the Nazi propaganda for a more prosperous and stronger Germany after having suffered through the worst economic depression in German history. Actually, at least initially, their hopes and aspirations were being fulfilled. While millions of people had been struggling to make ends meet, every person willing to work was now gainfully employed and able to put bread and butter on the table. They had no idea that the Third Reich that was supposed to last a thousand years would lie in ruins so quickly and millions of soldiers and civilians would be sacrificed on the altar of an insane ideology.

Title Page of the Klopp Family Chronicle

 

Meta Emma Klopp – Friedrich and Emma’s Fourteenth Child – Part 7

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Tante Meta
Aunt Meta with sister Anna von Waldenfels on the left

Meta’s Sunset Years

After the war, Vincenz and Meta Mülbert moved into an apartment on Maria-Theresia-Street 4. At the end of 1946 Meta offered to her sister-in-law Erika Klopp (1899 – 1994), mother of this blog writer, a first dwelling. Erika was a refugee, who had fled from Gutfelde near Znin via Belgard/Pomerania to Freiburg.

The close contacts with her sister Anna von Waldenfels were also kept alive. It was perhaps Meta, who provided for her nephew Georg von Waldenfels first insights and orientation about the residential construction opportunities in the nearby town of Stauffen, before he settled down there with his wife and family.

When Anna became a widow in 1954, Meta invited her sister, who was quite wealthy, but now very lonely without any close relatives left in Bavaria, to stay with her in Freiburg. Both devoted their time and love to the care of their ailing husband and brother-in-law Vincenz. He died on October 2, 1958, after a long and painful battle with cancer in the Freiburg apartment. He had reached the ripe age of 79. He was buried at the main cemetery on the left of the entrance hall on site 16.

From Freiburg Meta and Anna undertook the occasional trip, such as visiting their brother Ernst Klopp (1900 – 1964), this blog writer’s father, who had been living in Michelbach/Vogelsberg since 1957. They also travelled to Lake Titi in the Black Forest shortly before Anna’s granddaughter Carola’s departure for America.

When Anna von Waldenfels died in November 1967, Meta was on her own. Nobody of the Klopp family lived in close proximity. The stepchildren of Mülbert’s first marriage put the woman, who had converted to the Catholic faith into a Protestant home. There the lady died at the age of 86 on January 16, 1984. Next to her husband, whom she had survived by 26 years, Meta found her final resting place.

A post describing my visit as a child to Tante Meta in Freiburg can be found here.

Meta Emma Klopp – Friedrich and Emma’s Fourteenth Child – Part 6

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Meta is Getting Married

The Gestapo Mülbert case contains for the perhaps forgetful descendants all the ingredients, which empower a dictatorship to oppress with the aid of dug-up trivialities its subjects and if found to be correct, to set into motion their elimination. The bitter cup filled by his own wife went by Vincenz only because of his political insignificance, which she had convincingly put on the table.

Nothing stood in the way to Meta Klopp to get married. Vincenz, having been found blameless, experienced in Meta understanding and compassion. In the eyes of Anna von Waldenfels, he represented after initial speechlessness certainly an acceptable person. She could not have imagined in her wildest dreams her little sister Meta as Frau Professor. The fact that the nerves of this – for Klopp standards and social status – highly educated humanist were presently stretched to their breaking point, added wings to Meta’s tender loving care. Her love enabled her to easily overlook his somewhat scurrilous outer appearance. Also the other religious (Catholic) denomination and the sudden onslaught of a large number of stepchildren were manageable burdens to bear. On the other hand, the much pampered and youngest Klopp girl was looking forward to a social climb of unimaginable proportions. They did not equal, to be sure, to Anna’s spectacular journey into the Bavarian nobility, but nevertheless brought her the respectable title of a ‘professor’s wife’.

Berlin,_Mitte,_Bebelplatz,_Hedwigskathedrale_02
Photo Credit: Wikipedia

On October 24, 1935 the Catholic wedding for the new couple Mülbert took place at the Saint Hedwig Cathedral in Berlin. Meta had converted to the Catholic faith out of love for her husband. The news reached the Wolmirstedt-Zieglitz branches of the Klopp family. They were in no way involved, but found fresh food for gossip and wallowed in their pseudo indignation.

Meta treated like a true mother all her stepchildren with tender loving care. She could not have children of her own. Until 1940 she lived with her husband in Mannheim. During his last year of service he seemed to have suffered from constant health problems. On April 1, 1942, the couple rented an apartment in Freiburg, Breisgau. On December 11, 1940 Vincenz Mülbert was granted early retirement. They lost their new residence in the heavily bombed city in World War II.

Meta Emma Klopp – Friedrich and Emma’s Fourteenth Child – Part 5

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Vincenz’s Traumatic Experience with the Gestapo

Mülbert, by no means a resistance fighter, denied having made any of the defamatory remarks and rejected any additional accusations that had made been made against him. For example, he was accused of having said in his own home, “Adolf Hitler is the protector of prostitutes.” During the investigation Vincenz made his wife appear in an unfavourable light, whom he describes as a notorious liar and whom he made responsible for cooking up all these intrigues. He claimed that she was pursuing an irregular lifestyle, was unfaithful, was not looking after the children and had offered herself to whoredom and to ‘free love’. Amalie, having become more cautious, spoke only of a hopelessly shattered marriage and of her husband’s jealousy. “I am going through a divorce with my husband and have been badly treated by him. Nevertheless, I must say that my husband has never said anything bad about Adolf Hitler. As much as I know, he has a positive attitude about Hitler.”

Vincenz also provided the Gestapo a similar statement as recorded in his files, “I would like to remark that before 19 August 1934 (plebiscite on Adolf Hitler’s Title ‘Führer of the Reich’) Loni Bitsch had asked me what she should vote. And I replied, ‘Loni, you vote for Adolf Hitler, just as we do.” With this emphatic declaration – what else could he have done before the Gestapo? – Mülbert smoothly slipped out of the trap that had been set to catch him.

During the on-going marital crisis, his Amalie, incessantly agitating against her husband, was swinging like a pendulum back and forth between the SA-Office, the SA-Organization ‘Mother and Child’, and the NS-Teachers’ Association. Through these agencies, which could not deal with her case, she hoped to gain access to Mülbert’s salary, thus securing her own apartment in the city. The NS-trustee was following via the office of the NS-Teachers’ Association the run-afoul machinations of a colleague’s wife. Of course, Mülbert’s marital problems and the sticky criminalization at the NSDAP and Gestapo were making the rounds in the school’s rumour mills. The personal and academic reputation of the until now impeccable Mülbert threatened to head towards total ruin.

The evil machinations of the triple constellation Friedrich-Bitsch-Mülbert appeared in the end too banal even to the Gestapo. The facts just did not jive. On 26 October 1934, the Mannheim Gestapo came to the succinct conclusion to return the entire file without comment to the Minister of Culture and Education and to the court in Karlsruhe. The minister did nothing. No disciplinary measures, no letter of warning and no reprimand have been recorded in his file.

On 1 March 1935, the couple was officially divorced. Amalie moved to her brother or her parents Schmitt in Würzburg.

To be continued …

Meta Emma Klopp – Friedrich and Emma’s Fourteenth Child – Part 4

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Denunciation by a Spiteful Housemaid

Vincenz’s wife did not overcome the family tragedy. Disputes with the husband and domestic quarrels were on the increase. Amalie Mülbert went her own separate way. In 1934 she was admitted to the Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic. Vincent had to look after the four remaining children all by himself.

In this unfortunate private situation, a dangerous threat came about through the denunciation by the former housemaid, Appolonia Bitsch. Since 1933 the Nazis ruled in their fortress Mannheim. On 3 October 1934, the NS leader of “District Group Mannheim Quadrant 7” reported to his boss Fehrmann that the wife of the party member Friedrich had found out through her new housemaid Bitsch the following remark made by Professor Mülbert: “Adolf Hitler associates with loose women and prostitutes.” Frau Friedrich insisted that the case as related to “the charge of defamation of the Führer be officially recorded at the court of the Party.” Thus, the mechanism of the  new regime was set into motion.

Group leader Fehrmann passed on the original message to Mülbert’s school superintendent Heck. He demanded an inquiry and asked if the NS Party court, the school district office or the NS Teachers’ Association should deal with the matter. Heck, himself a member of the party, took due notice and arranged on 15 October 1934 further investigation by the school office leader Kuh. The noose around Mülbert’s neck was getting tighter, especially as the party and the office of the civil servants were working hand in hand together.

Mülbert’s file did not contain the official statements of the two informers. For that reason, Vincenz Mülbert was summoned to appear before the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) in Mannheim. His wife, in the middle of divorce proceedings, was being questioned in the meantime by the Gestapo.

To be continued …