Germany

Meta Emma Klopp – Friedrich and Emma’s Fourteenth Child – Part 3

/ Peter Klopp / 11 Comments

The Tragic Loss of a Son

In 1910 the sons Werner (died in 1990) and Paul (died in 1932) were born in Weinheim. In 1910 came the transfer of their father to the renown senior high school in Mannheim, which was named after the French major and geographer “Tulla Oberschule”. The unremarkable years of a tranquil teacher’s existence were interrupted in the middle of World War I. In June 1916 Vincenz Mülbert was drafted into military service by the 14th Army Corps of the State of Baden. He served as a truck driver at the Recovery Unit I (Genesungsabteilung) of the Reserve Infantry Regiment 109. In October his daughter Hildegard was born in Mannheim.

During the static warfares in 1918, Vincenz took on active duty at the Aisne (east of Reims) and in the Upper Alsace. At the beginning of September 1918, he was declared “no useable for service at the front” on account of his highly strained nerves. As “being capable of garrison service”, he experienced the war’s end at the balloon battalion 139. On 22 November 1918, he received his demobilization papers and was released from his military service.

He returned to the former teaching post at the school in Mannheim. In May 1923, his wife Amalie gave birth to the twins Gertrud Ida and Hedwig Margarethe in Mannheim. In December followed the birth of the sixth and last child Rudolf Pius. It was according to a teacher’s news bulletin a premature birth. At that time the family possessed a home in Quadrant L of Mannheim.

From an application for financial assistance in September 1932 to the school administration one may be able to reconstruct the circumstances of a serious fateful event. The 19-year old son Paul, a commercial employee, suffered from depression and had already been receiving medical treatment for a long time. On 30 August 1932, he withdrew from his parental home and for ten days was reported missing. On the fourth of September, the Hessian police found his clothes on the banks of the riverbank of the River Main near Frankfurt. “Whether it was an accident or suicide could not be determined”. The body was retrieved from the river on the 7th of September, transferred to Mannheim and buried there. Mülbert already owed a large amount of money to the bank and was forced to borrow some more to cover the cost of transportation and burial expenses, He had asked for assistance in the amount of 258 marks.

To be continued …

Meta Emma Klopp – Friedrich and Emma’s Fourteenth Child – Part 2

/ Peter Klopp / 8 Comments

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

Toward the end of the year 1934, the high school teacher Professor Vincenz Mülbert (1875 – 1958) underwent prostate surgery at the Limburg Hospital. Considering the whole story, Vincenz may have also received psychiatric treatment. Between this man, who was just going through the agony of divorce, and Meta Klopp developed a more than the usual patient-nurse relationship.

Vincenz had suffered a series of painful blows during the span between 1930 and 1935. They included a bitter mix of personal fateful events and ominous pressures stemming from his political and academic superiors. Meta Klopp, by no means an unattractive woman, felt with her fine sensitivity the needs of the man in her care. The call for love reached her heart, perhaps delayed by some overprotected years, but now with power, apparently for the first time in her life. After all, there was between the engaged couple an age difference of almost twenty years. In 1935 Vincenz celebrated his 56th birthday.

Vincenz Mülbert was born on 12 November 1879 in Edingen near Heidelberg, the son of a catholic commissioner Franz Mülbert in Mannheim, who had been sick and unemployable since 1896. After the elementary school in Edingen, Vincenz attended the high school in Tauberbischofsheim from 1891 up to grade 11 and transferred ‘because of his low achievement to the high school in Mannheim, where he graduated in 1899’.

He enrolled at the University of Heidelberg. In the third semester, he abandoned the study of classical linguistics and turned to modern languages at the University of Freiburg. For the last two semesters, he returned to Heidelberg. His major subjects were German and French with Latin as his minor. In his application for admission to a high school position in the spring of 1905, Mülbert mentioned in detail six key areas: Gothic grammar, Old High German grammar, Middle High German and modern German literature of the 18th and 19th century.

After his employment as a civil servant of the State of Baden, Vincenz began his exemplary career: May 1905 teaching position and passing the examen and successfully completing his trial period at the Middle School in Bretten, September 1907 High School in Hettenheim, September 1908 Middle School in Schnepfheim. On 22 March 1910 upon the authority of “Friedrich, by the grace of God, great-duke of Baden, duke of Zähringen, Vincenz Mülbert was installed as a professor of the High school in Weinheim”. Mülbert had now achieved official rank and social status. In full anticipation of a secure financial basis, he married on 30 September 1909 the merchant’s daughter Amalie Schmitt of Taubenhofsheim, presumably a sweetheart from the high school days.

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

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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.

Lucia Selma Elsbeth Klopp – Friedrich and Emma’s Twelfth Child

/ Peter Klopp / 4 Comments

Another Early Death in the Klopp Family

The twelfth child, born in Wolmirstedt on 4 August 1894, did not reach adulthood just as the seventh and tenth child. Although Selma had been mentioned in family circles, nobody could recall any details about her final resting place. The date and place of death could not be found in the official records of the town of Wolmirstedt, Jersleben or Elsenau. However, a photo of her exists (not in my possession), which was made in 1903 or 1904 by the photo store owned by Paul Lorenz. It shows her when she was about nine or ten years old. Her face, no longer childlike, already displays features of early adolescence. In all likelihood, she suffered from a lung disease just as her sister Else born a year later, who will be the topic of the next post. In 1903 or 1904 she moved with her mother Emma to Elsenau in West Prussia, and there she must have passed away a little later having suffered from tuberculosis.

Kirche_Elsenau_(Olszanowo)

Church in Elsenau (Olszanowo)

Gustav Robert Hermann Klopp – Friedrich und Emma’s Eleventh Child – Part 5

/ Peter Klopp / 14 Comments

Flying Ace and Inheritance Farmer

Finding himself in this financial emergency, Hermann turned to his sister Jula Steuer who as a guarantor helped him to procure a mortgage. However, all rescue efforts proved to be in vain, since Breitenberg was auctioned off by the order of the bank. Jula Steuer’s claim to the money dragged on till the 1950s and was verified and enforced by court proceedings only on behalf of the heirs of Hermann Klopp. It goes without saying that over this issue the harmony between the Lake Scharmützel family branch and Stechau fell apart. When the son Joachim Klopp (born 1926) consulted his Aunt Alma (née Klopp, 1882 – 1975) on this matter, the relationship between Jala Steuer and the Scholz/Thieß family in Berlin also had reached rock bottom in the end.

On 16 October 1935 Hermann Klopp bought with remaining funds a so-called ‘knight’s estate’ (Rittergut), which covered an area of 30.2 ha land. It was located in Stechau on the farthest eastern border of Saxony-Anhalt and Mark Brandenburg. Since the conditions of the NS Inheritance Law had been met, Hermann from now called himself an inheritance farmer. In Stechau the last son Manfred was born in May 1936. For the improvement projects of the estate, Hermann successfully tapped into the NS “Help East Fund”. The Klopp inheritance farm promised to fare better than all the previous enterprises.

The wound from the aviation disaster in WW1 had bothered Hermann for the rest of his life. The lung shot migrated passing his hips down to his upper thigh causing bone tuberculosis and blood poisoning. Only two years after he became an inheritance farmer, he died on the operating table in the Berlin hospital “Charité” at the age of only 43 years. He was buried at the Stechau cemetery located only 70 m from his sheep farm. Then 81-yer old mother Emma, who had travelled from Panwitz near Meseritz, attended the funeral.

Peter’s note: My brother Karl mentioned in a footnote added to the book that he and our parents were also present at the funeral.

Gustav Robert Hermann Klopp – Friedrich and Emma’s Eleventh Child – Part 4

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Fighter Pilot and Hereditary Estate Farmer

In 1929 Hermann left his administrative post and tried to become independent. To this end, he leased 25 km southeast in Großdammer (today Polish: Dambrowka Wielkopolska) the agricultural domain of castle owner Baron von Britzke.

1024px-17332_Dabrowka_wlkp_palac_6If you stood in front of the completely preserved castle, you would see the affiliated estate manor with the slightly altered building on the right at the same level as the castle. The manor has been given a new roof and serves now as the administrative headquarters of the state-owned power company. During the years in Großdammer, son Dietrich Klopp was born in June 1930 at the hospital of Schwiebus (Swiebodzin).

In the early 1930s, the castle owner on account of his gambling addiction lost his entire property. The beneficiary and new owner was supposed to have been a Jewish merchant. Hermann was directly affected by this unfortunate change in ownership. In 1932 the house and the estate had to be leased again to the new owner by the name of Vempner.

Forced by this turn of events, Hermann acquired a new property in Breitenburg, Pomerania (today Polish: Gologora) in the county of Schlawe (Schlawno). The village is located on the right of the highway from Bublitz (Bobolice) to Sydow (Zydowo) between Lake Kamin and Lake Papenzin. It was built on a hill and can be reached today by turning right from the highway on a paved road. At the village entrance, one can view the antenna arrays of a radio station. For a certain segment of the lake, Hermann obtained fishing privileges. Here son Ulrich Klopp was born in July 1933. The estate Breitenberg lies immediately behind the village entrance on the left behind the first houses, which surround a large village pond. On the east bank stands today the building, which is still being used as a school.

In Breitenberg, Hermann continued to depend on Vempner’s lease payments in Großdammer. Since the latter failed to honour his financial obligations, Hermann was soon hampered by financial difficulties. He took out a loan, which he could not pay off on its due date because just then in the summer of 1935 his entire crop in his barns was consumed by fire.

To be continued …