A Box of Pictures from the Past

Imagine, a few years ago I found a cardbord box filled with dozens of old photographs in my cousin Brigitte's attic. I poured its contents on the dining table and let my eyes and hands shuffel through this treasure: my grandmother Hammer in 1907, when she was 39, my mother at 2 tucked into a sled pushed by Tante Gretel, the ravishingly beautiful Hammer sisters Magda and Käthe at 19. And again and again my archetypal Hammer-Grandmother from whom I inherited so much.... I begged Brigitte, and she let me take them home.

We lost all our pictures in the exodus from Habelschwerdt. By necessity I have learned to live without such tangible memorabilia, keeping the images I need in my mind, but to study the faces of these people with a magnifying glass gave me a great, unknown pleasure. Then Eberhard Schmidt, one of the cousins on my father's side, visited us in California and presented me with another small box of photographs and Xerox copies of our common grandparents Gross. There was my statuesque grandfather, the pastor, God's nearest relative with his white beard and his always grubby suit, and the "Grosse Käthe," Eberhard's mother and my father's sister, and dozens of pictures of the 5 cousins - well-remembered from visits before the end of the War....

Every now and then I would pour these treasures out and look at them with new eyes. How to share them with my children? A few nights ago - I had spent a couple of weeks investigating my parents' psychological makeup with an uncanny astrological computer program (believe it or not!) - I woke up with the idea of restoring the pictures digitally and put them on a website. And all these people came from their graves and talked to me and walked through my dreams for several nights. A compelling experience.

The results of this labor of love you find below. There must be more pictures in the possession of cousins and siblings: brother Dieter in Berlin, who inherited many of my parents' possessions, must have some, Fritz Hammer may own another set, Udo Hammer surly has more pictures of his beloved mother Irmgard, Susanne rifled my treasure once in a while. Would you let me borrow what I don't have and let me add them to this collection? Maybe these things become only important as one grows old....

Pacific Palisades, September 2002-2005

Before my Time

1900 - 1931

1907, Königshütte, Oberschlesien. My Grandmother The Family Matriarch, Anna Elisabeth Laffert-Hammer, born on 29 September 1869 to Robert Konrad Laffert and Agnes Krambs who owned a hat-factory in Breslau. The Lafferts were French Huguenottes who had fled to Prussia. Grandfather Friedrich Hammer was a mining engineer who died in 1911 of pneumonia leaving his wife and five children to the benevolent and enlightened care of the owner of the mine.
1944(?), Frankfurt a/Oder, Grandfather Gross, a reconstituted Xerox copy of a photo from the last years of his life. With his white beard and stature he was the effective Patriarch of our family: A protestant pastor, he seemed to me, as a child, the closest image of God.		1906, Sakro, my Father Ulrich and his sister Käthe
May 1915, , My father Ulrich (14) as "Gymnasiast" in Görlitz. His Grandfather was the director of the Gymnasium in Görlitz.	1917, Sakro(?), Ulrich and Käthe Gross. Unfortunately this most charming picture of the two is also a reconstituted Xerox copy, I cannot improve contrast or definition
1915, Jannowitz, Grandmother Hammer and her two strapping daughters on vacation		1901, Jannowitz, Tante Grete Laffert, Anna's unmarried sister who would outlive her, took care of the children and here pushes my 2-years-old mother, Käthe Hammer in the sled. Mother's older brother Fritz and sister Magda look on.
1917, Janowitz, Grandmother Hammer with Magda, Kaethe, Gerhard and Hans. Fritz was in the War		1917, Janowitz, Hans, Gerhard, Kaethe, and Magda

1927, Schweidnitz, My mother when father met her

1927-28, Schweidnitz, My laughing mother.

1929, Breslau, My mother in the year she got married

1929, Breslau, Käthe and Ulrich's wedding in Grandmother Hammer's apartment on the Clausewitz Str. A young friend with a guitare and her brother, represent their Wandervogel group. Because of the great magnesium flash everyone has their eyes closed except for Grandmother Gross....

I attached names to this gathering of the Hammer-Gross clan, so Susanne can identify everyone! Some of their friends I don't know by name. - On the wall behind the group hangs a picture of Grandfather Hammer.

Rolf's Siblings and Cousins

1931-54

1931, Grünberg, My happy Mother with her new-born Rolf at the hospital.	1931, Grünberg, Rolf's baptism by Grandfather Gross at the house of friends whose name I don't remember. Grandmother Hammer, my mother, Grandmother Gross, an unidentified Patentante, godmother (behind my mother), Father and Grandfather Gross in the background.
1931 Grünberg, Rolf, 10-weeks old, tries to raise his head.	1931, Grünberg, Grandfather Gross, who was not particularly fond of children, tends to his grandson.
1933 Breslau (?) Rolf's first pants	1933, Spring, Mother with R. Grandmother Hammer used to keep this little circle on her desk in Gelnhausen.

1933 Breslau, R. parked at Grandmother Hammer's apartment during the time the Twins were born

1934, Glatz, Father-Mother and the Yardstick. The generations have grown taller over the years!

1934, Spring in Glatz in unserem Garten. In November 1933 the Twins, Christine and Gerhard, had been born in Breslau and Father got a new job at the Staatliche Landwirtschaftsschule (state-agricultural trade-school) in Glatz. To obtain this position he had to be a member of The Party. He satisfied this requirement by joining the National-Socialist-Auto-Club - and in the next years wore a little swastika-emblem on his lapel - which I only discovered when I enlarged these old prints.... The Twins were growing fast and seriously disturbed my relationship with Mother. You can see, how could I compete against TWO? Increasingly I became the warden of the two housemaids....

1934, Glatz, Christine and Gerhard in our Garden

1934, Glatz, Gerhard and Christine watching their older brother

1934-1937 Glatz

In 1934 father got a positon as teacher the Landwirtschafts Schule in Glatz, a pticturesque town in the Grafschaft Glatz, hundred kilometers south of Breslau. We moved into an old Gutshaus, once the manor house of a minor, local nobleman, at thened of the Herrenstrasse below the old barracks. There we lived until the end of '37 when father was transferred to Habelschwerdt, 15 km further south. Many of my early memories, Dieter's birth, the Einmarsch (occupation) into the Sudetenland (1937), Kindergarten and my first school year are connected with Glatz.

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1934, Glatz, Gerda feeding Gerhard and Mother Christine

1936, Glatz, here you see Friedemann carrying his two most profitable stars..

1934-37, Friedemann Popp, an admirerer of my mother's and a good friend of my parents from their Wandervogel years, operated a publishing house in Glatz together with his first wife Gerda. They had no children and Gerda adopted the Twins as "models" for their calendars. Friedemann published a children calendar that he reissued until his own grandchildren from his second marriage replaced the twins in the 1980s.

>A rare coincidence gave me these and many more Popp pictures. Valerie Popp, one of Friedemann's granddaughters found this website in the internet. In 2005 she visited us in the Palisades and brought me a thick pack of pictures from her grandmother!

1936, Glatz "Sommersingen" at the Popps' House	1936, Glatz, Mother with Gerhard and Christine
1935, Glatz Gerhard		1935, Glatz Christine
>1936, Glatz, The "Two Käthes," the "Grosse Käthe" and my mother. Occasionally Käthe Gross-Schmidt could play very coy, but usually she was awe-inspiring, resolute, and outspoken. I admired her greatly - but the adults also called her "Käthe Gross-Maul" - big mouth.... and my mother feared her. Käthe Schmidt was to be the last person to see Mother alive in 1981.....	1936, Breslau Clausewitz Strasse, Meeting of Fritz Hammer's (Köln) Kinder and the Gross children at Grandmother Hammer's apartment: Ilse Hammer, Rolf, Dola Hammer and twin Fritz, Gerhard and twin Christine, Ernst Hammer at the tail

Several summers during the War years we spent at the Ostsee (Baltic Sea) on the islands Usedom (1937) and Wollin (1940, 42, 43) Usually together with our cousins Schmidt (Frankfurt a. O.), Hammer (Köln), and Stölzel (Gelnhausen). These vacations were wonderful, we staged wild games, fielded several armies, and plagued our parents.

1937, Jochen and Peter Schmidt are being embraced by Rolf

1937 the Summer brought our first vacation at the beaches of the Baltic Sea, on Usedom. The Schmidts vacationed in Heringsdorf nearby: Hartmut Schmidt, Gerhard, Jochen Schmidt, Christine, Rolf and Peter. The fat baby we are allowed to hold is Eberhard Schmidt a few months old.

1936, Glatz, Another of Freidemann's photos This is a rare occasion in which I was given a role.

1937-38 "Our Sudetenland" had been liberated and Father and Friedemann Popp decided to ski with Mother and me across the border to the fabeled "Scheidemuehle" to indulge in whipped cream - forbidden in German lands. This picture of me on the shoulders of Father's or Friedemann's snow-effigy is the only one which survived - except my flourishing memories.

Habelschwerdt

1938-1946

In September 1938 Father was transfered to the Landwirtschafts Schule in Habelschwerdt. My parents bought their first house, one half of a brand-new duplex at the edge of town. It was much smaller than the apartment in Glatz and one of the big wardrobes had to be cut into two to carry it into the basement, and we three children had to sleep in bunk beds in one room upstairs. But the house had a large garden, still a bare field,. and beyond it stretched fields and woods to the foot of the hills in the distance. A wonderful, and until 1945 peaceful playground for us children.

1939, Habelschwerdt. In the Fall of 1938 Father was transferred to the school in Habelschwerdt, 30 km south of Glatz. My parents bought their first house, one half of a duplex with a large garden on Gartenstr.1. The area had been fields, a quagmire during the coming winter months, but a heaven for digging fortifications for my toy armies. We also had a built-in air-raid shelter! The War had already begun, Our Troops had occupied the Sudetenland a mere 18 km across the former Czech border. The Schmidts visited us in the summer of 1939. Here you see the combined children in our verandah room: from left to right: Peter Schmidt, Gerhard, Christine, Jochen Schmidt, Hartmut Schmidt, and I(?) from behind...

1939, Breslau, Father and Mother talking to Käthe Schmidt. The occasion was Eva and Gerhard Hammer's wedding. In our mother's absence I started - the Twins were excluded - an underground war against our maid. I broke into the air-raid shelter and from there attacked the "enemy" in the house...

1939, Breslau, Father in a Stresemann! I have never before or after seen him in such formal attire. In 1994 Irmgard Hammer took me to that church in Breslau where she and Hans had also been married a few years earlier.

1939 or 40, Habelschwerdt, An early photo by Gerda Popp. Gerda and I didn't like each other, and I still dislike intensely being photographed. - Look at the stupid face I pull, and the glossy smiles of everybody else! I only found this picture very recently (Nov 2002) in Gerhard's childhood picture book, which Anneliese lent me.

1941, Habelschwerdt. Gerda Popp took this photo in our garden. Father dubbed it the "Mutterberg," he was not needed. My beloved Mother sits surrounded by her four children in this masterfully constructed arrangement a little left of center and is literally piled with her children. Little Dieter in her lap. Gerhardchen in a sailor suit holds a flower in his hand which Dieter is going to grab in a second. Christine with her braids, the visual summit of the mountain, looks over Mother's right shoulder, her head in perfect contrast to Mother's face. All children are concentrating on the flower in Gerhard's hand. Me, also in a Sunday's best sailor suit, Gerda has pushed two-thirds out of the picture. I offer a radiating smile to my siblings and another blossom, a nasturtium from the flower bed near the house entry - but I am completely ignoreded by all - including the photographer. Gerda did not like me. - Yet nobody will see the sibling rivalries that the photographer has so carefully set in scene. The observer is completely drawn in by Mother's eyes and her laugh. A strain of hair falling over her forhead, she wears the dark-blue, unforgotten, silk dress printed with white flowers and her mother's granat-brooch in her décolleté. This picture captured one of the most beguiling moments in Mother's life.

. I had become a good skier and Father enjoyed to take me on ever longer tours. On of the earliest tours was at Easter 1939. We walked up the Glatzer Schneeberg (1406 m) without skins! The sun was already qite warm and we lay for a couple of hours on the roof of an shack behind the Berghaus, an unforgettable experience with snow all around us. More ambitious were our tours in the Riesengebirge in 1940 and '41. We wandered along the Kamm, mountain ridge, from Baude to Baude, simple wooden ski huts for two weeks.

Several summers during the War years we spent at the Ostsee (Baltic Sea) on the islands Usedom (1937) and Wollin (1940, 42, 43) Usually together with our cousins Schmidt (Frankfurt a. O.), Hammer (Köln), and Stölzel (Gelnhausen). These vacations were wonderful, we staged wild games, fielded several armies, and plagued our parents. These weeks are the most precious memories of my childhood. The War was far away. Except for the dark cloud which Hans Hammer's death on the Russia front cast over us. The deprevations of the War economy were substituted by vegetables from our garden. Our childhood in remote Habelschwerdt was untroubled. No American air raids which threatened our Hammer cousins in Köln. Father was excepted from the draft, because he was meanwhile too old and his heart was poor. He had been given a new, indispensable job, setting up a novel regional planning division at the agricultural administration in Breslau. It saved his life..

Our world collapsed soon thereafter. I became a Pimpf, a cubscout in the Hitler-Jugend, and soon saw all my idealized dreams of camping and hiking being smashed by paramilitary exercises. I rebelled and was demoted and eventually disqualified. A horse kicked my left knee while helping at a farmer harvest potatoes. My mother confined me to bed in the winter of 1943-44, which saved me from being trained as a youth soldier. At Easter of 1944 I was confirmed. I couldn't kneel because my knee was still swolen.

1944, Habelschwerdt. In the Winter of 44-45 the Russian front had advanced to within 60 km of Habelschwerdt. We could hear the rumble of heavy artillery at night. It was then that Father made these "mug-shots" of the three of us in our Garden with an old ground cloth as backdrop expecting that they would be the last pictures before the Germany would collapse - and they were - a year later Mother sold his old Kodak camera to some Pole in exchange for sugar..... We tried to flee from the Russian Army

1944, Habelschwerdt, last Christmas in our house.

 In 1943 my school was converted into a military hospital. For a year there was no school. A week before the End, in May 1945 Father appeared one night, and we all set out to try to flee from the advancing Russian armies. We did not get far. Thanks to my Mother's presence of mind, we returned to our house in Habelschwerdt a week after we had left - but without Father whom the Russians had taken prisoner-of-war. I, a tall 14-year-old, was let go.

Habelschwerdt was now occupied by Russians. To my mother's horror I turned into a vagrant scavenger stealing abandoned military equipment and other loot left behind by the German army. In the summer of 45 to protect my family from marouding Russian and Polish troops - and to get me off the street - Mother found me an apprentice position, first in a car repair shop, then as a radio repairman, and finally in a smithy shoeing horses. In June 1945 Father contracted typhoid in the PW camp in Glatz and was taken to a German hospital. He miraculously survived and in August 1945 returned home hairless, weak, and emaciated. We hid him in Spätenwalde, a village in the mountains.

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1944-45, Spätenwalde, Father lived with the farmer at the very top of this picture. The farm has been destroyed in the 50s and exists no longer.

"Refugies" in Oldenburg and a New Beginning in Kreuzriehe

1946 - 1999

In the Fall of 1945 an increasing flow of Poles replaced the Russians, and by 1946 the situation had become so desparate, that in May 1946 Mother on her knees begged the Polish officials to deport us - hopefully to a place in the West. For ten days we rode in cattle cars through burned-out cities and villages - to Lohne near Vechta/Oldenburg in the British Occupied Zone of western Germany.

But we were all together! - The next three years as "Refugees" in and around Lohne were the worst in our and especially in my parents lives. But Mother insisted that we go to school, barefoot three kilometers to Dinklage, and later in the winter of 1946/47 ten kilometers through the snow to the Gymnasium in Vechta.

1950, Kreuzriehe near Bad Nenndorf In 1948 Father had found a surreal job with the former Breslauer Regional Planning Group. - Its director, Prof. Obst, had fled to Bad Nenndorf near Hannover where he was producing a White Book on the lost eastern German territories - for the British Control Commission....! In 1949 we were given an apartment of our own an entire floor of a former carriage house - without bath, water, or toilet - in Kreuzriehe, a village near Bad Nenndorf. Magda donated old furniture. Life was almost normal again... The two large windows were Gerhard's, Dieter's, and my room. Christine had an alcove to herself on the left, and behind the little window on the right Father had set up a box with a can filled with peat moss - our communal toilet....

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1950 or 51, Kreuzriehe, Gerhard, Christine, Rolf, Mother, Dieter, Father. Photo by Gerda Popp, who had resurfaced somewhere in Bavaria!

1950 or 51, Kreuzriehe, Mother and Magda Stölzel on her first visit after 5 years.

 In 1947 Mother and I ventured on a bizarre rail-journey through the ruins of Hannover, across the border between the British and American Zones to Gelnhausen, where Grandmother Hammer and Tante Gretel Laffert from Breslau had found refuge in Magda Stölzel's house. There I fell in love with my cousin Brigitte, who became my closest confidante and emotional support in the next five difficult years. Whenever possible I would flee from the frictions at home to Gelnhausen.

Another love of those years was - without her knowledge - Irmgard Hammer, the beguiling, young, elegant, extrovert aunt of my childhood. Despite the tribulations after Hans's death and her hair-raising escape with two small children from the besieged Breslau in the winter of 1944, despite her son Udo's polymelitis in 1947 and a near-death bout with tuberculosis in 1951 she remaind the joyous, vibrant woman I adored since I had staying with her in Breslau in 1938. In the last four years before her death in 1999 a very close friendship grew between us. She was the only person who volunteered to accompany me on a crucial pilgrimage to Breslau, Glatz, and Habelschwerdt in 1994 and to Pommerania and East-Prussia a year later.

I passed my Abitur in Wunstorf in 1951 and moved to Göttingen to study physics. Gerhard followed me to Göttingen a year later. I met Barbara in Göttingen in 1956 and decided to emigrate to the USA to finish my doctorate at Harvard - but that is another story, to be told elsewhere at another time. Gerhard also emigrated to the US in 1958 to study at MIT. In 1966 Gerhard married Anneliese. They lived in Ithaca, NY, Seattle, and Los Angeles. He died of a terrible case of cancer in 1976. Anneliese and their son Peter continue to live in LA.

After Father's retirement in 1964 my parents bought a small house in Gelhausen, where they lived until their death in 1981. I visited them there, first with Susanne in 1965 and many times thereafter. Another occasional visitor became Father's sister Käthe Schmidt, who lived in their parents' house in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder in the GDR-DDR and could only obtain permission to visit West-Germany with great difficulties.

1980, Gelnhausen, Dieter on his last visit to his parents.

Dieter had been diagnosed with Bechterev in 1962 and by 1980 his spine had become so stiff that he could only move with difficulty. To this day he continues to work as a theoretical physicist at the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin, pushed around in a wheel-chair by his wife Evelyn. He died miserably in Berlin in 2008 of a liver cancer

By 1980 Father had lost his hearing. We could only communicate with him by writing notes. Mother became very weary of taking care of him. Father died in 1981 - and Mother had a brain aneurism a few months later from which she never woke again. They are buried in the same grave in Gelnhausen in which Grandmother Hammer and Tanta Gretel - who died, 98 years old, after her sister - are buried. In 1999 Irmgard Hammer was also laid to rest in the same grave, so that I can find three of the most important women in my life in one place....

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