A New Beginning in Southern Germany

In June 1947, Ernst Klopp established himself anew in Rohrdorf , a small village near Meßkirch in Southern Germany. After finding employment as a forestry worker of the Fürstlich-von-Fürstenbergischen Forestry Administration located at Donaueschingen with a branch office in Meßkirch, he was able to reunite with his wife Erika and children. Adolf and Erika (see my sister’s report in an earlier chapter) joined them after a two- years interim with Uncle Günther in Erfurt.

Karl, the eldest son, was the last one to join the Ernst Klopp family. The von Waldenfels couple, having to flee from their Panwitz property, had settled at their newly acquired estate Pentenried near Munich. In February 1948, they took the 19 year-old Karl into their care and provided food and shelter  for about a year. After an agricultural apprenticeship in Nellenburg near Stockach, Karl was finally able to join his family.

Rohrdorf consists of a long drawn-out assembly of farms and houses divided into a lower and an upper village. In the upper village we find the places where most of the social activities took place in the late 40s. There were at least two inns, a grocery store, a branch of the Credit Union, a dairy operation on the road to Meßkirch, an elementary school and the catholic St. Peter and Paul church. Our family lived in the lower village in the upstairs portion of a house, which my siblings called the ‘poor house’. Its primitive tight living quarters were a far cry from the spacious and luxurious estate in Gutfelde. Being the youngest child, I felt nothing of the stress that the other family members experienced during these difficult times of the postwar era.