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Introduction to this “Print” edition of Kurt O. Friedrichs’ “The Story of My Ancestors”
Martin Friedrichs created this edition of “The Story of My Ancestors” by Kurt O. Friedrichs in 2001 using
OCR (optical character reading) and then editing the output. Therefore, some OCR created errors may
have been missed or mistakes made in correcting the OCR output. This is especially the case with names.
Please let me know if you find any significant errors. I have, however, inserted the hundreds of KOF’s
handwritten corrections and additions so this text is, on one level, much cleaner then the final original copy
from 1980. Asterisked comments are inserted immediately after the asterisk as page formats vary. Where I
have added my own comments these are in brackets followed by my initials MNF.
The various charts and maps that were part of the original copy can be attached
Referred to appendixes are added at the end.
The ancestor list Appendix L. A. is still in hand written form.
This edition is presented in the same 12 chapters and 4 appendixes as originally written.
As the original objective of writing this was for future generation to understand their roots Dad would, I am
sure, have appreciated that it was now in a more accessible and modern format for all to read. This version
was made not only for the family but also as a remembrance of Dad.
Martin Friedrichs April 2001
The Story of my Ancestors
By Kurt O. Friedrichs Written in 1980
Preface
This story of my ancestors is written for my children; if it is read by others, I hope they will bear this in mind.
There are various motives that led me to be curios about my ancestry. I wanted to know where I came from. I
was fascinated by the ups and downs of the fate of my ancestors, and finding out about them was also just a
hobby.
The information on which the story is based comes mainly from written records, primarily from church
records, but also from what my mother told me. To a minor degree other relatives gave me some
information. Actually, I have only very few close rela-tives. My father had one unmarried sister and an
unmarried brother who died early. My father’s father had no brothers, but three unmarried sisters. I knew
only one of them; the other’ two had died earlier. But my father’s mother had two brothers with descendents.
Neither my mother, nor my mother’s mother had brothers or sisters. My mother’s father had only one brother
with two grandsons. One of these grandsons is an ardent investigator of family history. From him I received
very interesting information about some of my very early ancestry.
In fact, my story concerns to a large degree not only parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, but
earlier ancestors as well.
A few technical remarks must be made. To each of my ancestors a number is assigned. It is called his or her
ancestor number. This number appears in brackets, ( ), behind the name of the an-cestor. The meaning of
these numbers is explained in the introductory part of Appendix A L 1. (Not included-but it is basically a
numbering scheme for tracking ancestors where KOF is 1, his father 2, his mother 3, and anyone’s father is
double their number, and anyone’s mother is double their number plus 1- MNF) This appendix contains a
list of all known ancestors.
Chapters Page (varies by printing)
Preface
1 The Area of Origin
2 The early Friedrichs Family
3 The Arndt Family
4 Ludwig Friedrichs and the Rosenthal Family
5 The Family of Ludwig Friedrichs
6 The Heiberg and Schroder Families
7 The Family of Carl von Baudissin
8 The younger Heiberg Family
9 Carl and Karl Friedrichs
10 The Entel and Stenger Families
11 The Schneider and Baenisch Families
12 Karl and Elisabeth Friedrichs
Chapter 1
The Area of Origin
My ancestors came primarily from the eastern part of Germany, that is, essentially, from the area between
the Elbe river on the West, the Oder river on the East, Bohemia on the South, and the Baltic Sea on the
North.*
* This area largely overlaps with the area of the present Deutsche Demokratische Republik (East Germany),
except for parts in the northwest which are in the present “Deutsche Bundesrepublik” (West Germany) and
parts in the southeast that are in present day Poland.
Close to the coast, halfway between Berlin arid Sweden, there is a large island, called Rügen. The
Friedrichs family comes from this island.
Before telling the story of this family I should like to mention some historical facts about the area described.
Except for its extreme northwestern part, this area was formerly occupied by various Slavic tribes, related to
the Poles, called “wendisch” by the Germans. (The had come from the east after about 500 A.D.) They are
also referred to as “Elbslaven” by a Polish author writing in German. These tribes had settled in this area at
ab-out 550 AD Up to about 1,000 AD there had been frequent fighting between the Wends and the
Germans living to the west of them. But later on the Wendish rulers accepted German settlers in their land
since the Germans had farming methods and were effec-tive craftsmen and merchants in the towns. This
wave of settle-ment had its high point at about 1150 AD, but it continued for several centuries. Soon most of
the population in this area con-sisted of German or Germanized Wends; but there always existed some
Wendish pockets. Most of them have disappeared; but some of them still exist today.
There can be no doubt that I have quite a number of Wendish an-cestors. Never the less, there are only two
strictly Wendish names among my known ancestors: the name “Subklev” of a serf and the name “Baudissin”
of a noble family. In addition there are three or four Germanized Wendish names. Germanization, and also
trans-lation of Wendish names into German ones, happened all the time, even up to recent years. Still I am
sure that the majority of my ancestors were Germans.
The main reason for this assumption is that most of my earliest known ancestors were craftsmen and
merchants in the towns, while only few of them lived in the country.
The island of Rügen was gradually settled by Germans from 1200 AD on. After 1300 the Germans already
dominated there. In a will, issued in 1306, Prince Wizlaw II of Rügen implored his heirs to see to it that their
Wendish subjects would enjoy the same freedoms that they had enjoyed during his lifetime. By 1404 the
Germanization of Rügen was complete. It is reported that the last person on Rügen who still could speak
Wendish, an old woman, called Frau Gülz, had died on a remote peninsula in 1404.*
*In a Polish book I found the statement that Wendish was still spoken on Rügen in the 15th century. Strictly
speaking, this statement -as formulated - is correct.
The German settlers near the Baltic coast came mostly from the north-ern Rhineland and hence spoke Low
German. Among them there may have been one or more with the name “Frederiks” i.e. son of Frederik. In
fact, at about 1500, there were a mayor and a councilman in the city of Riga in Latvia with that name.
Somewhat later they changed their name to the High German from “Friedrichs”, perhaps under the influence
of Luther’s Bible. Such a change may have taken place in other parts of northern Germany. In any case the
name Friedrichs is rather common on the island of Rügen.
It should be mentioned that Rügen and the adjacent part of the main-land, called Pomerania, had become
subjected to the Grandduke of Brandehburg in the seventeenth century. The area called Brandenburg,
south of Pomerania, was the nucleus of the later Prussia. At the end of the Thirty Years War, 1648, the
western part of Pomerania, in-cluding Rügen, became subjected to Sweden and remained so up to 1815.
Thus, between 1648 and 1815 the members of the Friedrichs family were Swedish subjects; but, of course
they did not normally speak Swedish.
My early ancestors on Rügen spoke Low German. They understood High German though, since Church
services and other ceremonies were conducted in High German. In later years educated people spoke only
High German among themselves, but spoke Low German to farm workers. That was still so in 1916, when I
stayed on Rügen for some time.
Chapter 2
The Early Friedrichs Family
While most of my known ancestors were craftsmen and merchants in the towns, or Lutheran ministers, the
earliest members of the Friedrichs family, in the 18th century, were Farmers. The kind of farmers they were,
should be explained. There were hardly any in-dependent small farms on Rügen since the Thirty Years War.
Most agricultural units on Rügen, in fact all I know of, were large “land estates”. In German such an estate is
called a “Gut’ In the following I shall use the German term. Such a Gut might cover 500 to 1,000 acres or
more. Its owner, mostly a nobleman, had the farm work done by quite a number of employees, most of them
serfs (up to 1807). Such an owner, called a Gutsbesitzer”, might lease such a Gut to a tenant, or to several
tenants if he owned several “Güter”. Since the English term “tenant” has connotations that do not apply, I
prefer to use the German terms “Gütspächter”. Such a Pächter, if he was efficient, was rather well off. A
Gutsbesitzer or Pächter would sometimes sublease his cow and milk business to a subtenant, who was
called a “Hollander” since this system of subletting had come from Holland. (If the cow and milk business was
not subleased, the em-ployee who handled it was called a “Schweizer” since, presumably, this system came
from Switzerland).
The first definitely known ancestor with the name Friedrichs, Joachim Christoph (32)* was a “Holländer”.
*-Number in the brackets ( ) refer to the numbers in the ancestor list Appended L. A. (attached –in the
original hand written version -MNF)
He worked from 1744 on at a place called Gruridsdorf, which was a part of a pair of Güter, Mulitz and Klein
Carow.*
* “Klein” refers to the area of the mansion: “Gross” refers to the area in which the farm workers live.
In 1762 or a little later, Joachim Christoph became the Pächter of these Güter. Of the wife of Joachim
Christoph, probably named Regina Sophia Vorköper one knows not much more than that she bore quite a
number of children. Only four of them grew to adulthood.
This information is taken from the church register in the village of Samtens near Grundsdorf. An interesting
item in these records is that after every funeral service a fee had to be paid for ringing the bell. The amount
that Joachim Christoph Friedrichs had to pay was based on the fact that he was a free man, not a serf. For
that reason he was actually called “Herr Friedrichs”.
Only one son and one daughter of Joachim Christoph had children. The daughter, Eleonora Regina
Friedrichs married to Johann Martin Dalmer, had a sequence of rather prominent descendants, but there is
no personal relationship to them. The son was Adolph Heinrich Friedrichs (16), my ancestor.
After the death of Joachim Christoph, (1787), his oldest son, Carl, became Pächter of Mulitz and Klein
Carow. Adolph Heinrich became Pachter of a different Gut, Silvits, owned by the Count of Putbus, the
leading nobleman on Rügen. Eventually, two probably smaller Güter were joined with Silvitz: Dalkwitz and
Dolgemost.*
*Place names ending with itz, in, ow, and bus are Slavonic. “Dolgemost” is the Slavonic expression for ‘Long
Bridge”.
Adolph Heinrich married Johanna Christine Arnd (17). The pair had eight children. All of them are listed in
Adolph Heinrich’s will (1811), which is a beautiful document displaying his seal and those of relatives and
friends. I still own this document. (For a copy see Appendix 1) (Martin now has this document,-MNF) The
children were a Carl, Adolph, Heinrich, Moritz, Julius, Wilhelmine, and the twins Charlotte and Ludwig. The
last one was my greatgrandfather. Before describ-ing his life I want to say something about his father, Adolf
Heinrich, the other children, and his mother, Johanna Christine.
Adolph Heinrich was described as a friendly person, who however, worried on occasion. When the twins
were born and he was “wringing his hands over the cradle”, his father in law, Hinrich Arnd (34), called him a
coward “Don’t you believe that what God has given, He can support?”.
When the oldest of Adolph Heinrich’s children, Carl, had reached the proper age, he was installed a Pächter
on a Gut, “Streu”, but he drank and ruined it. Eventually, his brother Moritz: took over. The next, Adolph,
committed suicide.*
* The minister entered the following statement on the church register “ Morebo, quam dicunt melancholiam,
commotus, incubiculo cranium et cerebrum plumbo ita percusset etc.”
Heinrich became Pächter of another Gut. Julius took over Silvitz after his father’s death, 1828. Wilhelmine
died young. Charlotte had many descendents, about whom I have quite some information but there is no
personal relation-ship with them.
There is a peculiar story about Heinrich and Julius. It is said that both had fallen in love with Emma, the
beautiful daughter of a minister’s widow and that this widow had insisted that one of the brothers had to
marry her first, before the other could marry her daughter.
What actually happened is that Lina (Caroline), the widow, suggested to Heinrich that he marry her, which
he did (1839). Heinrich died six years later, a month before his son, also called Heinrich, was born. The next
year (1846), Julius married the beautiful Emma; but she died three years later at the birth of her daughter,
also called Emma; who was christened at the funeral of her mother. Julius died five years later (1854). Thus
Lina was left to raise her son Heinrich and her granddaughter Emma.
The younger Heinrich was evidently the cousin, as well as the uncle, of the younger Emma, but only four
years older. The story goes that sometimes little Emma came howling to her grandmother’ my uncle beat me.
This “little Emma” was married in 1866, when she was only 17 years old; she brought a dowry of 80,000
Thaler into the marriage. This huge amount shows that her father, Julius, must have been extremely
efficient. Some members of the family felt that a part of this amount came from the inheritance of Adolf
Heinrich and that they should have been included in it. They even suspected that young Emma’s uncle, who
had arranged the marriage, may have profited in someway.
There were several sons and one daughter from this marriage. The sons vanished somehow. The daughter
was married, without children, to a retired colonel, who was in charge of the resort town of Binz on one of the
shores of Rügen. I met this couple once at the Gut of one of my uncles.
The younger Heinrich also became a Gutspächter like his father; but he did not do well; his son, also
Heinrich, but called Henny, grew up under difficult circumstances and was not very successful; but he had a
very efficient wife, Meta. We met two of Henny’ s and Meta’ s three children at a family gathering in 1975,
they made a very good impression.
The fourth son of Adolph Heinrich, Moritz, who had taken over the Gut Streu, was a very efficient farmer. He
married the daughter of a wealthy Gutsbesitzer, Friederike von Kathen, known in the family as Tanta Fritze.
She kept a detailed diary about the Friedrichs family, which I have used extensively. She was also very
stingy, as my father told me. He was sometimes invited for dinner at her house, but always had to go to a
restaurant after those meals.
At one Christmas eve Friederike surprised her son Ernst with a great number of little rolls of paper dangling
from the branches of the Christmas-tree. It turned out that every roll was a 1,000 mark bill. That gift made it
possible for Ernst to buy a Gut, Patzig. Thus he became a “Gutsbesitzer”, in fact a Rittergutsbesitzer. (A ”
Rittergut” is a Gut that once was owned by a nobleman).
Ernst was also a very efficient farmer, in fact so much that he was able to buy two additional rather large
Güter for his two sons, Willy and Walter, both of whom were also enthusiastic farmers.
My parents had originally not much contact with these relatives. But, in the midst of the First World War,
1916, when I was almost starved, my mother took the initiative to ask Willy and Leise (Luise) his wife,
whether I could spend an entire summer (including a month or two of school time) on their Gut. This was the
first of many wonderful times I enjoyed there.
After the second World War Willy and Walter lost their Guter and the families had to flee to West Germany,
where we on occasion met Tante Leise and quite a number of descendents of Willy and Walter.
Chapter 3
The Arnd Family
The wife of Adolph Heinrich Friedrichs (16), Harma Christine Arnd (17) was the daughter of Hinrich Arnd
(34), whose father, Ludwig (68) and grandfather Andreas Arnd (136) were shepherds and serfs of the
Count of Putbus. The last name of Ludwig Arnd’s wife was Subklev. This is one of the two purely slavonic
names among those of my ancestors.
The story is told in the Arnd family that the first member of this family was the son of a Swedish corporal who
had married into a farmer’s family on Rügen. This story just cannot be true, After all, Andreas Arnd was a
serf and a shepherd, not a farmer. Also, many people with the name Arnd lived near Putbus at that time. It is
inconceivable that this name should have been introduced by a Swedish corporal. The true story is more
likely that the first Arnd was the illegitimate son of a Swedish soldier. Illegitimacies of course happened
frequently everywhere and in particular in an area through which soldiers passed all the time in the various
wars between Sweden and countries on the mainland. Illegitimacies are even explicitly recorded to have
occurred in the Arnd family, in fact, three times.
Hanna Christine’s father, Hinrich Arnd, was born a serf. He started out as a shepherd; later on he had
various other jobs. At one stage, probably after 1763, he was made a free man by the Count of Putbus, who
evidently had recognized his great abilities. Eventually, he became Pächter of a Gut, Posewald. More about
him will be found in Appendix 2. Hinrich’s younger brother, Ludwig Nicolaus, was also freed and also became
a Pächter. He changed the spelling “Arnd” to “Arndt”.
One of the sons of Ludwig Nicolaus Arndt, Ernst Moritz, played a considerable role in Prussian history. He
studied at the University in Greifswald, a small city on the mainland, straight south of Putbus and later went
on to become a professor of philosophy there. He wrote a paper about serfdom in this part of Germany,
which played a decisive role in the abolition of serfdom in Prussia in 1807. During and after the Napoleonic
Wars, Arndt led a restless life; eventually he was associated with the Frei-herr vom Stein, who tried to
liberalize the state of Prussia. When a new university was founded in Bonn, Arndt was made a pro-fessor of
history there (1818).
Arndt’s political attitude was democratic as well as nationalistic. These two attitudes, originating in the
French Revolution, were essentially the same at that time. In later years Arndt was mainly concerned with
the unification of the various German states.
After reaction had set in, in 1820, Arndt was forbidden to teach for 20 years.
Arndt wrote profusely. Among his writings are poems, fairy tales, travel stories, and also an autobiography.
In one of his many published letters, Arndt also speaks about his family. In particular he writes about his
cousin Henna Christine Friedrichs in glowing terms “the good old Friedrichs, who was four or five years older
than myself, took an early liking to me... As a young woman she was a very pretty, friendly and orderly
person. She had given me many good snacks and had done me as a youth many good favors. Later on,
she had gone through her not always thornless path valiantly and virtuously.” The last remark may refer to
her oldest son Carl’s ruining his Gut, to the suicide of her son Adolph, and the death of her son Heinrich.
My grandfather, Carl Friedrichs (4) told me that he had seen his grandmother, Hanna Christine, on a visit to
Silvits, when he was a child. He remembered that she was bedridden, but could pull herself up by a towel
hanging down from the ceiling.
Chapter 4
Ludwig Friedrichs and the Rosenthal Family
The youngest son of Adolph Heinrich, my great grandfather Ludwig Friedrichs (8) was sent by his brothers
to the city of Greifswald on the mainland, easily reached by boat sailing south from the town of Putbus. In
Greifswald Ludwig was to be a merchant, selling products that came mainly from the Güter of his brothers or
buying some that were needed there. Ludwig got married and had four children. Before discussing what
happened to him and his family I shall tell the story of his wife’s family.
The name of Ludwig Friedrichs’ wife was Wilhelmine Rosenthal (9) always called “Minna”. She was the
daughter of a prosperous merchant in Greifswald, Carl (18). whose father, Johann Christian (36) was born
in Halberstadt, a small city north of the Harz Mountains. The latter’s father, August (72) was a brewer and
farmer.
The name Rosenthal, also spelled Rosendahl, is common in that area; it can be traced back to the year
1619.
I may mention, as a curiosity, that a descendent of Minna’s brother, a physician in Berlin, was afraid of losing
his patients after 1933. Therefore he changed the name Rosenthal to the last name of his grandmother,
Schlutius.
The Jewish name Rosenthal has actually quite a different origin.
Before telling the story of the family of the mother of Minna’s father, which is somewhat long, I shall say
something about the family of her own mother, Henriette Heller (19). Henriette’s father, Carl Friedrich Heller
(38) and her grandfather, Joachim Heller (76) were Lutheran ministers in small towns on the mainland south
of Rügen. (This area, called Vorpommern in German and Hither Pomerania in English, will be referred to as
Westpomerania.) Carl Friedrich Heller’s wife was Elisabeth Marie Schulz, and Joachim’s wife was Marie
Margarethe Schulze.
The name Schul(t)s(e), which occurs in four different spellings, means “Village Mayor” It is the most frequent
name occurring independently among those of my ancestors, I know about, except for names of noblemen it
occurs six times independently. This name is also one of the three most common German last names:
Muller, Schulse, and Schmidt. The names Muller and Schmidt do not at all occur among those of my known
ancestors;
In a book about the Lutheran ministers in West Pomerania, Carl Friedrich Heller is described as a man of
‘Heart and Head,’ who was tried through severe family suffering and never succumbed. This suffering refers
to the fact that his wife, probably after the birth of her daughter. Henriette, became deaf and blind. She died
when the daughter was three years old. Pastor Heller married again and his wife seems to have been a
good stepmother.
Minna’s Father, Carl Abraham Christian Rosenthal (18), and Grandfather, Johann Christian Rosenthal (36)
were merchants in Greifswald, who held high positions in the city government. Apparently, they were
importers, importing in particular salt. Outside of the city boundaries of Greifswald, there is an area that
even today is called ‘The Rosenthal”. It was apparently a salt flat, also referred to as a “saline.”
The wife of Johann Christian Rosenthal was Marie Dommes (37), the daughter of Moritz Christian Dommes
(74). Moritz Dommes was the son of a minister in a small town near Hannover, who belonged to a family
which apparently was of some importance in, and near, Hannover. There is a relationship between the
branch of the Dommes family and that of the great mathematician Bernhard Riemann; but I am connected
with another branch. Hence there is no common ancestry unfortunately.
The wife of Moritz Dommes (74) was Anna Trendelenburg (75), daughter of Caspar Trendelenburg (150), a
merchant in Greifswald, whose family came originally from Lübeck. Caspar also had high positions in the city
government. One day he was called to appear before the City Council, There he was accused of having
done something improper. Hearing this he collapsed and died. He was 41 years old. His widow, Anna
Lemmius (151), had a lot to cope with.
A year after this sudden death her home and the warehouse burnt down. Still several years later the widow
and the husband of her daughter, Moritz Dommes, started a successful spice trade; they also owned the salt
flat temporarily.
The wife of Caspar Trendelenburg, Anna Lemmius (151), was the daughter of Georg Christoph Lemmius
(302), in Greifswald and Stralsund.He was a descendent of successively, a minister, a city judge, and two
more ministers. The earliest one, Enoch Lemmius, a pastor in the small city of Welsen, north of
Braunschweig, was the first one to give a Lutheran sermon there, sometimes in the 16th century.
The wife of Georg Christoph Lemmius, Agnis Battus (303), was the daughter of Abraham Battus (606), who
was a professor of theology, logic, and metaphysics at the University of Greifswald. His father,
Bartholoiuaeus Battus (1212) was also a professor of theology and logic there. He was born in Hamburg as
the son of a merchant, Johannes Battus, who had come from Antwerp. His father, Bartholomaeus, in turn,
was a learned man, a student of Martin Luther, who lived in Aelst in Flanders. He was expelled under the
Spanish occupation.
The ancestry of Agnis Battus on her mother’s and grandmother’s side in Greifswald can be traced back to
the 13th century.
Having given an account of the ancestry of Minna’s father, Carl Rosenthal, I now want to say something
about her father’s and her own brother and sisters and their descendants.
One sister of Carl Rosenthal (18), Caroline, married to Friedrich Wüstenberg, had many, mostly prominent,
descendents, of whom detailed records exist; but there is no personal relationship. A brother, Friedrich
Christian Rosenthal, was a professor of anatomy at the university in Greifswald and later in Berlin. He was
not married. About a sister, Wilhelmine Margarethe Rosenthal, the following story is told.
In 1810, when Napoleon’s army had occupied Prussia and Vorpommern, then still belonging to Sweden,
Wilhelmine Margarethe, then 32 years old, had taken care of a wounded French officer at a hospital in
Greifswald. They got engaged and agreed that he should go back to France, settle his affairs and return to
Greifswald in a year to get married. He did not appear at the arranged date; she waited. All this time a local
merchant, Lorenz Luhde, urged her to give up waiting and marry him. Finally, she did. When they left the
church, there was the French officer -- so the legend says.
The Luhde couple had no children. He died at the age of 101 (still reading the newspaper without glasses)
and she a few years later, 90 years old. At their golden wedding the Queen of Prussia gave them a Bible
with her inscription. I still have this Bible. (David Snyder has this bible-MNF)
Minna Friedrichs (9), the daughter of Carl Rosenthal (18) had several brothers. One of them, Ferdinand,
was the grandfather of the physician, who changed his name under Hitler. Another brother, Wilhelm,
emigrated to St. Louis in America (1841). A granddaughter of his, and her husband with the name Morisse,
visited us in Germany; but I failed to trace these relatives after we had come to America.
Still another brother of Minna, the oldest, Johann Carl Rosenthal, was a merchant in Greifewald, as most of
his ancestors had been. Johann Carl had three sons, who somehow disappeared, and three unmarried
daughters.
One of these daughters, Marie, was born in 1848, the year of the revolution in Prussia; she was baptized
Maria Victoria Constitutionella. My grandfather, her cousin, addressed her always with those three names
when he wrote her. I knew her and her older sister Clara quite well, when I was a student in Greifswald in
1920. Clara told me that her father hated being a merchant; he would have liked to go to the university and
study history. Apparently, he was not successful as a merchant. My great-grandfather Ludwig was perhaps
also not too successful. Aunt Clara indicated that there had been some financial problems between Ludwig
and Johann Carl. This may partly have been due to some competition between these two and other cousins
who apparently were in the same business. I have a tiny newspaper clipping from 1838, in which Ludwig
advertises that he desires to buy certain seeds and right above this his brother-in-law Wilhelm advertises
that he wants to buy the same kind of seeds.
Aunt Clara had been a governess in Sweden for many years and loved it. One day, when she was high up
beyond the Arctic Circle, a Lapp, who, I suppose, owned many reindeer, asked her to marry him. He could
not understand that she refused. During my semester in Greifswald she gave me Swedish lessons with some
success. This knowledge came rather handy to me in 1930, when I was somewhat stranded in a small hotel
high up in Finland. Since then, I have forgotten nearly all my knowledge of Swedish.
Chapter 5
The Family of Ludwig Friedrichs
After having told the rather lengthy story of the Rosenthal family, I must return to Ludwig Friedrichs and his
family. Ludwig (8) and Minna Rosenthal (9) were married in 1835. I have a tiny card on which “Cammerarius
Rosenthal,” Minna’s father, invites his sister Wilhelmine Margarethe and her husband “Altermann Luhde” to
attend the wedding.
Ludwig and Minna had four children, Carl (4), my grandfather, Marie, Hermine, and Clara. Ludwig died of
typhoid fever when he was 39 years old (1842). The children were then, 4, 2, and 1 year old Minna took
over her husband’s business with the aid of a manager; but after six years she gave up doing this. She then
had a hard time raising her children. Her manager, however, was able to buy an estate.
None of Minna’s three daughters got married. (Incidently, the same is true of the three daughters of her
brother Johann Carl.) One of the reasons that none of Minna’s daughters married may have been that
Minna could not provide a trousseau for her daughters; but that was not the only reason. Apparently, a
young man was interested in Clara and wanted to marry her. In fact, I have a small letter containing a poem
written by him for Clara. But nothing came of it. Later on it was said that Minna did not allow Clara to get
married; Clara should take care of her.
Minna was said to be a stern mother. On the other hand, a letter she wrote shortly before her husband’s
death shows that she loved him dearly. Also in later years the letters she wrote to her children show her
concern.
While Clara lived with her mother and took care of her until she died (1869), Marie and Hermine were
teachers and governesses. When Marie and Clara were 38 and 35 years old (1876), they moved into a
retirement home in Putbus on Rügen. This home was founded by Hofrat Bernhard Engelbrecht, the
administrator of the Count Malte of Putbus, sometime after 1810, when the City of Putbus was developed by
this Count. Hofrat Engelbrecht was one of those who had signed the will of Adolph Heinrich Friedrichs. Since
Engelbrecht’s wife was a nee Arnd, a daughter of Heinrich Arnd, the members of the Friedrichs family
qualified to be admitted to the retirement home. Aunt Marie was still alive and well in 1916, when I visited her
in this retirement home during my stay on Rügen in that year.
Hermine had first founded a private school; later on (1878) she became the director of a newly established
trade school for women, a rather novel institution at that time. This school was located in Kiel, a city at the
southwestern corner of the Baltic Sea, where her brother lived at that time.
This brother of Hermine, my grandfather, Carl Friedrichs (4), would have liked to attend a university and
study mainly history; but he could not do so since his mother could not have supported him. So he started
as a clerk in a bookstore in Greifswald. Later on he took a position in a bookstore in Kiel. There he met
another clerk, Hermann Heiberg, who at that time was also working in that store.
Later, Carl took a position in the book store of Hermann’s father in Schleswig and soon, (1863), he got
engaged to Hermann’s sister, Nanny (5). A year later Carl was made the owner of the “Schwerssche
Buchhandlung” in Kiel, which was the main bookstore used by the professors at the University in that city. A
year later Carl and Nanny got married (1864).
Before telling about the life of Carl and Nanny Friedrichs I must relate — at least to a certain degree — the
story of the Heiberg family, which is quite involved and colorful.
Chapter 6
The Heiberg and Schröder Families
Carl Heiberg (10), the father of Nanny Heiberg (5), had been a lawyer in the city of Schleswig, but now, in
1864, he ran a bookstore. To explain how this came about I must make a few historical remarks about the
Duchies of Schleswig, adjacent to Denmark, and Holstein to the south. These duchies had been subject to
the kings of Denmark for several centuries. But while Danish was spoken in the northern part of Schleswig,
only German was spoken in its southern part and in Holstein. This difference of language was originally not
felt to be very significant, but after the French revolution the people became aware of their nationality,
mainly defined by their language.
In 1848 the Germans in Schleswig-Holstein rebelled against their Danish ruler. They wanted to be
independent of Denmark and have their own duke they claimed to be entitled to. Carl Heiberg played a
considerable role in this uprising through his writings. Also he proposed the colors of the flag, blue, white,
red, for the new independent duchies to be reestablished. But the uprising failed. Because of this support of
the uprising, Heiberg was not allowed by the Danish government to remain a lawyer. To make a living,
Heiberg started to run a bookstore.
I should like to relate an incident that happened in one of the restrictive years after 1848. My grandmother,
Nanny (5), and two other girls, then about 14 years old, were walking somewhere outside of the city, one girl
wearing a blue, one a white, and one a red dress, when some Danish sergeants approached them and
rebuked them for displaying the forbidden color combination. The girls claimed it was a coincidence. This
incident aroused a big fuss in Copenhagen and Carl Heiberg had to pay a heavy fine. I asked my
grandmother many years later, whether that was really a coincidence. Of course not, she answered.
After 1848 the Danish government had tried to force the Danish language on the people of the duchy of
Schleswig, but without success. Still, many educated Germans in this area knew Danish more or less. I am
rather sure that my grandmother, Nanny, understood some Danish; her mother was even bilingual since she
had lived in Denmark as a child and young teenager. My father, Nanny’s son, could read Danish and
sometimes did.
In 1864 the desired independence from Denmark was attained after a successful war that Prussia and
Austria had made on Denmark; but, to the great disappointment of the people of Schleswig-Holstein, these
duchies were annexed by Prussia.
In the course of years, however, most Germans in Schleswig--Holstein accepted this situation and their
feelings against Prussia gradually subsided and also their feelings against Denmark mellowed.
Carl Heiberg (10) was born in 1796 in a small village north of the city of Schleswig as an illegitimate child.*
* In the report of his birth in the church records of the village, the parentage of Carl Heiberg is falsified.
His mother was Anna Marianne (Nannette) von Schwarzenfeld, who at that time stayed with friends, a
physician and his wife, in Schleswig. To cover up the illegitimacy, it was said that the child had been found
on a haystack, a Heuberg in German. The child was named Carl Friedrich Heuberg; the name Heuberg was
later changed to Heiberg. Carl grew up with the physician couple mentioned above. At his confirmation he
was told that the aunt who had sent him gifts each Christmas was really his mother, but he did not see her
then. In fact, he visited her for the first time together with his wife in 1835, right after his marriage.**
** In the report of this marriage in the church records in Schleswig the parentage of Carl Heiberg is falsified.
Carl grew up as a shy and modest child, displaying, as a teenager, an interest in philosophy and also in art
and music. Later on he went to various universities, among them the University of Berlin, where he took a
course with the philosopher Hegel. A slip on which Hegel certified that Heiberg had taken the course
successfully is in my son Christopher’s possession. Actually, Heiberg was mainly a student of law. In 1823 he
established himself as a lawyer in Schleswig. He wrote profusely, mainly about the political situation. On
account of that he received in 1830 an honorary doctor’s degree from the University of Rostock (which is at
the Baltic Sea to the east of Kiel). After the defeat of 1848, Heiberg had to leave the country, but was
permitted to return somewhat later. In 1857 he founded a book and music store. After 1864, under the
Prussian regime, he was again allowed to be a lawyer. In all these years he played a considerable role in the
intellectual life of Schleswig. He died in 1872.
Heiberg’s mother, Nannette von Schwarzenfeld (21), had come from Vienna. Her father, Franz Carl, born in
Prague, was a captain in the Austrian army. He died early. When Nannette was about 14 years old she
entered a theater school in Vienna.
In the years from 1781 to 1785, Friedrich Ludwig Schröder, the greatest actor and theater director in
Germany at that time, played with his troupe at the Hoftheater in Vienna. There, he met Nannette, then an
orphan. When Schröder and his wife returned to Hamburg (1785) where he had his headquarters, they took
Nannette along. She was then about 19 years old. In Schröder’s theater Nannette played at first mostly boy’
s and girl’s parts. Apparently she played only a limited number of years.
After she ceased to be an actress, Nannette continued to live with Schröder and his childless wife in their
country home in Rellingen, not far from Hamburg. After the death of Schröder (1816) and the death of his
wife (1829), Nannette inherited their fortune. (We have in our possession the bank accounts of Schröder’s
wife from the time after his death and various silver pieces.) Nannette died in the Schröder’s country home
in 1846.
The family tradition and the opinion of biographers, who have written about Schröder and Heiberg, is that
the father of Carl Heiberg, born 1796, was Schröder himself. My father, who was a lawyer, wrote a very
careful and convincing “lawyer’s brief” to prove this. One must assume that Heiberg knew that Schröder was
his father. There are definite indications implying this.
About the person of F. L. Schröder and his role as an actor, I can make only a few remarks. First of all I
mention that Schröder’s paternity is also clouded. Schröder’s mother, Sophie Charlotte Biereichel (41), the
daughter of a court goldstitcher (82) in Berlin, married an organist Diedrich Schröder in 1734. But, the
marriage did not last long; the couple separated - without divorce - in 1738. Sophie Charlotte then joined a
travelling theater group, which somewhat later was run very successfully by Conrad Ackermann, the son of a
Pächter in Mecklenburg and his wife Sophia Metta Tholeni.
In 1744, a son was born to Sophie Charlotte; he was named Friedrich Ludwig Schröder. In 1749, while the
theater group was in Moscow, Sophie Charlotte married Conrad Ackermann. It must be assumed that at that
time it was known that Diedrich Schröder had died.
The story is told that Diedrich Schröder, described as a drunkard, had visited Sophie Charlotte in January or
February 1744 at the place where she was at that time and had fathered the child.
That story is most unlikely; it was probably invented to cover up the illegitimate birth of the child. One must
assume that Ackermann was the father of F. L. Schröder. This assumption is also made, as a matter of
course, in a recent biography of F. L. Schröder.
Friedrich Ludwig Schröder grew up under awkward circumstances since his parents constantly traveled,
except for one year in Königsberg (1755), where Ackermann had built a theater. There F. L. Schröder, then
11 years old, went to a regular school for one year. Soon after that Schröder made himself independent, but
met his parents again, when he was 15 years old. Then he started training to become an actor and a
dancer. In 1764 he joined the theater that Ackermann had founded in Hamburg. When Ackermann had died,
1771, Schröder took over. After his last performance, in 1798, he withdrew to his country home in Rellingen.
He died in 1816.
Several books and articles have been written describing Schröder’s role as an actor and director, and also
his great role in Freemasonry.
Charter 7
The Family of Carl von Baudissin
The wife of Carl Heiberg was Asta, Countess von Baudissin (11), the daughter of Count (“Count”
corresponds to “Graf” in German.) Carl Christian von Baudissin (22). In her memoirs Asta relates that, the
night before a formal party, she had dreamed that Carl Heiberg would kiss her on her shoulder, which would
be bare as was the custom at that time (1835). At the party the next day, Heiberg did what she expected.
Thus they were engaged; they soon got married.
Asta and Carl complemented each other very well. While Carl was shy and modest - my grandmother told
me that she once observed her father sewing a button on his coat - Asta was resolute and determined,
rational and logical. Whenever any of their relatives got into trouble - and that happened frequently - they
asked Carl and Asta for help. More will be said about Asta later in this chapter.
The Baudissin family had lived in Schleswig-Holstein for decades and owned a number of large estates.
Originally, however, the Baudissins had come from the city of Bautzen in the eastern part of what is now
called Saxony, north of the northern tip of Bohemia. “Baudissin” was the original name of the city of Bautzen.
This name is the second one of the two purely Slavonic names among those of my ancestors. (The first one
was Subklev on Rügen).
One of the early Baudissins, Wulff Heinrich (704), 1579-1646, served during the Thirty Years War under the
ruler of Saxony as well as under the King of Denmark, eventually as a field Marshal. He married Sophia von
Rantzau, (16 years old, her husband was 57 –MNF) who came from a leading family of noblemen in Holstein.
The descendents of this couple lived partly in Saxony, partly in Holstein.
One of these descendents, Heinrich Christian, Count von Baudissin (88), was married to Susanne
Magdalene Countess von Zinzendorff (89). Her grandfather, Georg Ludwig Count von Zinzendorff*,
*A sister of Georg Ludwig is an ancestor of Queen Victoria, who thus was a 5th cousin of Asta Baudissin.
a half-brother of the founder of a famous pietist sect, was married to Maria Elisabeth Baroness von Teuffel
(357).
The Zinzendorffs were originally Protestant refugees from Austria. Their ancestry can be traced far back, in
fact to Charlemagne and beyond. A short such ancestry line will be shown in Appendix 4
A son of Heinrich Christian Baudissin, Heinrich Friedrich (44), the father of Carl Christian, was at some time
the ambassador of the King of Denmark at the court of the King of Prussia. The story is told that while
traveling from Copenhagen to Berlin, which took several days, he always sat upright and never leaned back
in his coach. This is all the family tradition has to tell about him with one exception.
In earlier times it was customary among well-off people to spend the evenings by playing at cards - for
money. On one occasion Heinrich Friedrich’s wife owed her opponent an enormous sum at the end of a
game. The opponent offered to forget the debt if she allowed him to give her a kiss. She refused, so her
husband had to sell one of his estates to pay for her gambling debt.
Heinrich Friedrich’s wife was Caroline Adelhaid von Schimmelmann (45). Much will be said about her father
later on. Her mother Caroline Tugendreich* (*Tugendreich means “Rich in Virtue.”) was the daughter of a
Prussian officer, Alexander von Friedeborn and his wife Marie von Müllenheim (183). Caroline grew up as if
she were adopted by a nobelman, Heinrich von Gersdorff, who had his estate in Saxony near the place in
Prussia at which von Friedeborn was stationed. It was generally assumed that Caroline Tugendreich was
actually the daughter of Heinrich von Gersdorff. In later years, when she lived in Hamburg and Denmark,
she was always named “nee von Gersdorff’, even in legal documents. Her husband had seen to that.
Caroline Tugendreich’s husband, Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann (90), was born in 1724 in a small city in
Pomerania, north of Berlin, as the youngest son of a prosperous merchant. His mother’s father, Johann
Ludendorff, also a prosperous merchant, was the ancestor of two famous people, the astronomer
Ludendorff and the General Ludendorff.
In later years it was frequently assumed that Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann was a Jew, because of very
primitive “reasons”: his name, his prominent nose, and his spectacular success as a merchant*
*He was sometimes called the Rothschild of the North.
Such primitive assumptions appeared frequently in print and were accepted to some degree, even in the
family.
When Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann was about 18 years old he made himself independent. After some years
he started a business in Dresden, the capital of the state of Saxony, and soon, when he was 23 years old,
he married Caroline Tugendreich, the foster-daughter of Heinrich von Gersdorff, who was then minister of
commerce of the state of Saxony. In 1756, after the start of the Seven Years War, in which Saxony and
Prussia were on opposite sides. Schimmelmann left Saxony and soon he worked for King Frederick II of
Prussia by selling to England (via Hamburg) the stock of the famous China (Porcellane) factory in the city of
Meissen (which then belonged to Saxony). In doing this he made a great fortune. After that he settled in
Hamburg as a merchant. Later on, he became Treasurer of Denmark and he was also made a Count. He
was the richest man in Denmark at that time. He died in 1782. The great fortune he left fizzled out more or
less in three or four generations.
I should like to mention that Schimmelmann owned sugar plantat-ions on the Virgin Islands, which then
belonged to Denmark. His oldest son, who was mainly interested in poetry and literature, nevertheless
succeeded his father as Treasurer of Denmark. He made a great effort to eliminate slavery on the Virgin
Islands. After some years he succeeded in having the importation of slaves into these islands forbidden.
Thus Denmark became the first country to do that. (England was the next country to do that. Somewhat later
England forbade slavery altogether and Denmark followed soon after.)
I now turn to the descendents of Heinrich Friedrich von Baudissin(44)and his wife, the daughter of
Schimmelmann. They had three sons and several daughters. Only two of their sons, Carl and Joseph, had
descendents who live today.
A grandson of Joseph acquired a law degree and became a high government official in Prussia: his son Wolf
von Baudissin was an army officer in the Second World War. After the war, as a general, he was in charge
of the democratization of the new West German Army. He joined the social Democratic party and is highly
respected by the labor unions. Later on he was in charge of strategy for NATO in Paris and Brussels. Now
he is a profes-sor of strategy at the University of Hamburg. We are good friends with him and his wife; we
always visit them when we have a chance to pass through Hamburg on our travels in Europe.
The life of the second son of Heinrich Friedrich(44) and Caroline Adelheid (45), Carl Christian (22), was
rather peculiar and the same can be said, more or less, about some of his descendents.
When Carl was 19 years old, he eloped with Henriette Kunniger(23), the wife of a Danish officer. She was
the daughter of a very respec-table government official in Schleswig, Kammerrat Kunniger (46). His father
(92), in turn, was an actor and theater director in the city of Flensburg in the northern part of Schleswig.
The elopement caused quite a shock to the family. Carl was disinherited by his parents and he was also
denied recognition as a Count. Some years later though, he was again accepted as a Count.
After being divorced from her husband, Henriette got married to Carl Baudissin. The couple moved
restlessly from one place to another, and produced many children; thirteen in fact. At first they stayed near
Dresden, where they had the chance to observe the Napoleonic armies pass by. Carl, so his daughter said,
always carried a loaded gun, so he could shoot Napoleon if he had a chance. The next place at which they
stayed for a while was the city of Greifswald, (near Rügen). There one daughter was born. In Greifswald Carl
had heard about the Count of Putbus on Rügen and his habit of giving his daughters strange names such
as Wanda and Asta. Carl himself had the same inclination; so he named their daughter “Asta.” This
daughter was my great-grandmother (11). Eventually Carl and Henriette lived on a small estate in the
central part of Jütland, the mainland of Denmark, north of Schleswig. Later on they lived in the city of
Schleswig.
The characters of Carl (22) and Henriette (23) are described in a striking way by their daughter Asta in the
Memoirs, which she wrote, (of which I have a copy) (Martin now has the copy-MNF). A pertinent excerpt from
this book is appended, A3. Her own strong and determined character becomes clear in the excerpt. But her
description of the characters of her parents, though certainly correct, is not easily reconciled with the
following story which is based on family tradition and some letters.
On some occasion, when both Carl and Henriette were about 50 years old, Carl entered a room in which
Henriette was playing the piano and saw that her music teacher, Peters, had placed his arm on Henriette’s
shoulder. Carl turned, left the room without saying a word and sued for divorce (1840). After the divorce
Henriette had to marry Peters, who then took a small position in the city of Stralsund. Henriette lived with
Peters for 24 years till her death. I have the impression that her children were mainly on their father’s side,
but at least Asta’s husband Carl Heiberg corresponded with Henriette, his mother-in-law, and with Peters.
I should like to make a few remarks about the 13 children, six sons and seven daughters, of Carl and
Henriette Baudissin. The oldest son, Wolf, was a postmaster; his son Friedrich was an admiral in charge of
Kaiser Wilhelm’s Yacht. Four of the other six sons of Carl emigrated to America since their chances were
small under the Danish regime. One of them intended to become a physician by studying with a practicing
doctor; but he died soon. Another son returned to Schleswig Holstein. The youngest of the four, Felix,
became a farmer, but lost the farm due to the depression in the 1870’s.
Our son David found out that grandchildren of Felix existed and were living in St. Louis. One grandson wrote
to us that it is 111 years that someone of his family had heard from their family in Germany. He was a press
operator. One granddaughter owns a beauty shop; another is an audit assistant. For some years we have
corresponded with her.
The fourth of the four sons who went to America, Adelbert, served in the northern army in the Civil War and
then returned to Germany. He became a prolific writer; among others he wrote books for German immigrants
to America. We are good friends with two of his granddaughters in Munich.
One of the seven daughters of Carl and Henriette was not married; another one did not marry a nobleman;
but the five other daughters did. The names of the husband of one of them was Marquis de Cubieres; the
names of the other husbands are: von Bischofshausen, von Stockhausen, von Lilienkron, von Luckner, von
Arnim.
A daughter of Charlotte von Arnim was married to a Lutheran minister in a small town in Silesia. One of their
daughters, Elisabeth, was married to a sports journalist, Karl Markus. We knew the Markus family quite well
since they lived for some years in Düsseldorf, where we also lived at that time. In particular we have
maintained contact with their youngest son, Karl-Lutz Markus.
Chapter 8
The Younger Heiberg Family
Carl and Asta Heiberg had one daughter, Nanny (5) and three sons.
Nanny, as was said in Chapter 5, married my grandfather Carl Friedrichs (4). (Nanny’s grandfather, father,
brother, and husband were all named Carl, her son was named Karl-MNF)
The oldest of the three sons, Carl was a merchant in Hong Kong and died there. The youngest son Julius, it
is said, wanted to be an actor, but found actors too immoral; so, he studied law and became a pro-secuting
district attorney. Later on he became the mayor of the city of Schleswig for two terms, each term being
twelve years. He had a very captivating way of dealing with people. His spec-ialty was Kaiser’s birthday
speeches once every year. His - extremely tall - son, Ulrich, became an army officer. I have talked with
Ulrich’s daughter, the wife of a physician, when I was in East Germany. She was very unhappy there.
The third son of Carl and Asta Heiberg, Hermann was the one who had introduced my grandfather to the
Heibergs in Schleswig, Hermann became a writer. He was highly regarded at his time; perhaps he was the
first German novelist to employ a quick and fluent way of writing novels. He was a great charmer. That was
described by other writers and it was also told me by my mother.
Hermann applied his charm also in dealing with his creditors. So, when he died, he left great debts. Since I
was one of his godsons, this negative inheritance was also offered to me; but my father rejected it in my
name. I was 8 years old then. Finally, his brother Julius, the mayor of Schleswig, accepted the negative
inheritance, most admirably. He slowly and perhaps painfully paid off the debt. Hermann’s children were not
able to do that at that time.
Hermann’ s wife Ines Voilmer had come from Venezuela. Her father, a German, was very rich, but drowned
with all his wealth while travelling on a boat between Hamburg and Caracas. His wife had come from a
leading Spanish family; her mother was a first cousin of Simon Bolivar, the leader of the movement to make
Spanish South America independent of Spain. Tante Ines sometimes told us about her childhood in
Venezuela; that was fascinating.
Among the many children of Hermann and Ines Heiberg I mention only Felix and Asta. The adopted
daughter of Felix is my brother’s wife, Eva. Asta’s Jewish husband, Alfred Brandt, was a Prussian
government official (Regierungsrat) in Berlin. Years ago we had close contact with their daughter Irene and
her husband Heinrich (now Henry) Jordan, a diplomat, when they lived in New York. Later on, in 1951, Asta’s
and Alfred’s son Klaus, his wife Hanna, and their daughters Sabine and Cornelia moved to New York and
soon became an important part of our family circle.
Chapter 9
Carl and Karl Friedrichs
I now return to my grandfather Carl Friedrichs (4) and his wife, Nanny Heiberg (5). Carl was an attractive
man; he was a good storyteller. Nanny, however, was not outgoing. She very much demanded proper
behavior of us children. Only when she was ninety and I twenty-eight years old, could I talk to her freely.
As the owner of a bookstore in Keil, Carl was at first very successful. Most professors at the university
frequented his store. In particular, if anyone needed a special rarely used, book, Carl could locate it. He
became a personal friend of several of the professors, in particular of Nöldeke, a famous specialist for old
Oriental languages. Some of the professors had the habit of walking in the afternoon to a certain garden
restaurant at the seashore in order to chat there. Carl always went with them and left a salesman to handle
the store. After a number of years, other bookstores sold cheap novels or something like paperbacks. Carl,
however, would not do that. He considered that below his dignity as a scholarly book dealer. That caused
trouble. My father, Karl, told me that, when he was 17-18 years old, he had to act as a salesman in the
store. A few years later (1888) the bookstore went bankrupt.
Carl took a job as an accountant and bookkeeper at a printing firm in Breslau, run by a former apprentice of
his. Carl’s wife, Nanny, stayed in Kiel and established a boarding house, which she ran on a very high level
with the help of her daughter Anna. The boarders were mostly what now would be called post-doctoral
visitors at the university. They were from Finland, Turkey, Japan, American, and other countries. Some of
them I have met on one of my many travels.
In the course of years, Nanny and Carl met on occasion, but did not live together any more.
Carl and Nanny Friedrichs had three children, Karl, Ernst, and Anna. Anna first attended her Aunt Hermine’s
trade school for women and later on helped her mother in her boarding house. She was severely hard of
hearing. Still she was very active and quite enterprising; in particular she was active as something like a vice-
president of the organization in Germany for those that are hard of hearing. She could communicate very
well by asking questions. That way she could extract any information she wanted. She died when she was 97
years old.*
* Being hard of hearing was, and to a certain degree, is a family trait. My father, Karl, and his father, Carl
suffered from this failing in later years. Carl’s sister Marie suffered strongly. Their mother, Minna (9), also
was hard of hearing. I myself became hard of hearing when I was about 60 years old.
The younger son of Carl and Nanny, Ernst, did not finish the gymnasium and went into agriculture. He was a
very effective charmer of the girls. Supposedly, he had fathered two illegitimate daughters; but I have not
been able to find out about them. He went to South-West-Africa, then a German Colony, to be a farmer. This
worked well for some years, up to the uprising of the Herero tribe, 1903. To Protect himself he fled, with
others, to a minis-ter’s house. A group of Hereros demanded of the minister to surrender Ernst. They
claimed that Ernst had done something wrong to them – what, I do not know. They threatened that otherwise
everybody would be killed. Reluctantly, the minister surrendered Ernst who then was shot dead. This was a
great shock to the family.
My father, Karl, went to various universities to study law and Oriental languages. The latter was the wish of
his father, Carl, who was very enthusiastic about the rise of the German Empire, and, in particular, about the
fact that Germany now had colonies, just as other countries. He wanted my father to be a consul in one of
the colonies or in a foreign country, but, my father was totally unsuited for such a position. In fact he soon
gave up the study of Oriental languages.
Actually, my father was born to be a German university professor with all the trimmings; too bad that the
circumstances prevented achieving that.
My father was in his second year of study when his father went bankrupt. My father’s grandmother, Asta,
then supported him as a student. Still he had a hard time getting by. He told me that he always bought a last
year’s herring instead of meat and, when he was invited for a meal, he got severe stomach troubles since he
was not used to heavy good food. Apparently, this poverty situation improved over the years.
My father got his degrees at the University of Breslau in Silesia. There he lived together with his father. My
grandfather had become a friend of the manufacturer of the ink that was used by the printing shop for which
my grandfather worked. On several occasions my father met a grandniece of this friend, Elisabeth Entel,
and soon they got engaged and married.
The couple traveled together to Kiel where my father was to settle down as a practicing lawyer. When they
arrived in Kiel, they were confronted by three elderly ladies, all looking nearly alike. My father asked his wife
to point out which one was her mother-in-law. Sure, my father should not have done that; he often did
peculiar things, not realizing their effect. But my mother had a very good instinct; she approached the right
one, Nanny. My mother was not only accepted but even very much loved by her husband’s family.
Before talking about Karl and Elisabeth’s life I shall describe Elisabeth’s family.
Chapter 10
The Entel and Stenger Families
My mother’s father, Otto Entel (6), was the son of Carl Friedrich Entel (12), a Lutheran minister in a small
town in western Silesia. Carl Friedrich’s father, Michael Entel (24), as well as his wife’s father, Carl Stenger
(26), were such ministers, as were many of their forefathers.
A typical situation may be described by the following scheme: There was a son of a craftsman, or merchant,
or minister, who did well in school and was therefore sent to a university to study for the ministry. When he
received a position as a minister in a small town or village, he married a daughter of the minister of the next
village. That minister himself was also the son of a craftsman or merchant and had done well in school and
was therefore sent away to study for the ministry, and so on.
A particular such case is this: Otto Entel’s father, Carl Friedrich Entel (12), had married Albertine (13), the
daughter of a minister, Carl August Stenger (26), (son of a merchant) whose wife, Charlotte (27) was the
daughter of a minister, Christian Stürmer (54) (son of a brewer) whose wife, Johanna (55) was the daughter
of a minister, Daniel Spangenberg (110) (son of a tax collector).
Another such case is: Carl Friedrich Entel’s father, Michael Entel (24) (son of a cloth maker) had married
Johanna (25), the daughter of a minister, Gottfried Gebauer (50) (son of a coachman) whose wife Johanna
(51) was the daughter of a minister Gottfried Schultze (102) (son of a minister) whose wife, Christiana (103)
was the daughter of a minister, Christian de Bouquoy (206).
The family de Bouquoy was descended from a Belgian merchant, who had immigrated to Germany. Gottfried
Schultze (1717-91) was the leading minister in the city of Görlitz. His father was a minister and one of his
brothers, also a minister, was the grandfather of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who was called “Turnvater Jahn”
since during the Napoleonic time he invented and introduced gymnastics (Turnen) for the people to develop
their health and strength. After a few years (1819) “Turnen” was considered revolutionary by the - now
reactionary - Prussian government and was forbidden. Thus Jahn and his friend Ernst Moritz Arndt had the
same fate.
It is peculiar that of the two non-noblemen involved in attempt-ing democratization of Prussia during the
Napoleonic time, one, Arndt, was a first cousin of a great-great-grandmother of mine and the other, Jahn,
was a second cousin of another great-great-grandmother of mine.
The ancestors of Carl Friedrich Entel’s father Michael Entel (24)(son of a cloth maker) in Görlitz can be
traced back to before 1500. They were mostly cloth makers, tanners, or craftsmen of other kinds. In the
years after 1600, a great mystic, Jacob Boehme, lived in Görlitz. He was a shoemaker. One of my ancestors,
Paul Hillebrand (157), a tanner, had sold his house to Boehme, and had later on posted a bond for him so
he could be released from prison. (The imprisonment was not for religious reasons; it was connected with
the quarrels between shoemakers and tanners. Boehme wrote a very witty but nasty, letter to the tanners’
guild during this quarrel.)
Most of my minister ancestors, except perhaps Gottfried Schultze and his father were rather poor. Christian
Stürmer (54) was a teacher and rector at the gymnasium in Züllichau, a city in the South East of
Brandenburg, for many years before he got a position as a minister. He then was 66 years old. His son-in-
law and successor, Carl August Stenger (26), whose mother’s father and grandfather (106,212) were
ministers, was also first a teacher and rector at the gymnasium. He was only 41 years old when he became a
minister. One of these ancestors must have had an interest in philosophy. For, a copy of Kant’s “Kritik der
reinen Vernunft” (Critique of Pure Reason), 1st or 2nd edition, came to me from the Stenger family.
The ancestry of Carl August Stenger, who had come from the city of Neu Ruppin, north of Berlin, can be
traced far back. Among these ancestors was one who was also an ancestor of Bismarck. Another ancestor
was a great-grandfather of Johann Friedrich Struensee, who for about two years, 1770-1771, ran the State
of Denmark, got involved with the queen, and was beheaded. Some of the Stenger ancestry can even be
traced back to mayors and senators of the cities Hamburg and Lüneburg, living in the 13th century
(generations 22 and 23).
Another of the Stenger ancestors, Bartholomäus Schönebeck, Mayor of the city of Stendal in northwest
Brandenburg, who died 1581, had left part of his fortune to a foundation with the stipulation that it should be
used to help students of theology in need. Some of my Stenger ancestors profited from this. In fact, in 1969,
when we visited some Stenger relatives, the Hoffmanns in Stralsund in East Germany, the son of these
relatives, who was a student of theology, told us that he had gotten some support from the Schönebeck
foundation, which still existed.
It was said above, Carl August Stenger (26) was 41 years old when he became a minister. As some of his
children told my mother, he was a very happy person; but his wife, Charlotte Stürmer (27), suffered from a
persecution complex later in life and had to be sent to an institution. Carl August and Charlotte had six
children. I mention only two of them; Franz Otto and his sister, my great-grandmother Albertine (Bertha)(13).
Franz Otto became first a minister and later a “superintendent” in Trebnitz, a small city east of Breslau in
Silesia. The function of this position was essentially that of a bishop, without its prestige. Franz Otto and his
wife had a number of children. In addition, there were always some relatives in their house, who needed a
shelter, among them my mother. Franz Otto died in 1912, when he was 97 years old. His unmarried sister
Marie, “Tante Mauschel”, who lived in his house, was 91 years old when she died.
Franz Otto Stenger had two sons and several daughters. Since my mother grew up in the house of Franz
Otto, her great uncle, she was close to all of his children, in particular to the youngest daughter, Gertrud,
who was three years older than my mother. My mother was also very close to the grandchildren of Franz
Otto. Several of them helped my mother when we were children.
In recent years I had the pleasure of meeting some of these relatives again, including two I had not known
before. One of them is Anita Hoffmann in Stralsund in East Germany, whose husband had provided me with
interesting information about the early Stenger family.
The husband of Albertine (Bertha) Stenger (13), Carl Friedrich Entel (12), was a minister in a village near
the city of Görlitz. This village was somewhat large, so it had an ordinary pastor and head pastor. Carl
Friedrich eventually reached that position.
I have in my possession a sermon and a great number of letters he had written between 1850 and 1870 to
his brother-in-law, Franz Otto. From these letters it becomes clear that Carl Friedrich was very much a
conservative, while his brother-in-law, who was 21 years younger, displayed some liberal ideas.
Carl Friedrich and Bertha Entel had four sons and one daughter. The youngest of the four brothers was
Hugo Entel. He had a government position as a “Rechnungsrat.” He lived in Strassburg in Alsace, at that
time part of Germany. Hugo died near the end of the First World War. His two children, a daughter and a
son, moved out of Alsace in 1918 since they wanted to retain their German citizenship. After a few years
they tried to locate us in Düsseldorf; but we had already left that city (1922). Fifty years later a grandson of
Hugo Entel accidentally met a member of the Stenger family, who knew of our family; he then wrote to us.
We have become good friends with the two grandsons of Hugo Entel, Jürgen Entel, and Helmut Langer.
The oldest son, Max, of Carl Friedrich and Bertha Entel, went to a university to study theology. Apparently,
he became more interested in the philosophy of Spinoza than in Lutheran theology. After some years he
developed schizophrenic tendencies. He was taken to an institution and died there soon.
The next son, Rudolph, also went to a university, but could not finish his studies. He went home where he
was mostly rather sick. Later on he stayed for some time at the home of his uncle, Franz Otto, who could
use him in one way or another, since he was a candidate of theology. My mother knew him well. She told me
that he was extremely shy, withdrawn, and polite, as all the Entels were. He could not get out of bed when he
should and had other similar inhibitions. My mother also told me that, when they were travelling by train, say
between Trebnitz and Breslau, Rudolph would get out at every second stop and wash his hands under a
pump, drying them with a red handkerchief. Eventually, his hands were also quite red. For some time he
stayed with his youngest brother Hugo in Strassburg, but finally he was sent to an institution.
The third son of Carl Friedrich and Bertha, my grandfather, Otto Entel (6), was tolerably good in school (his
best fields were writing and history); but his father could not afford to send this third son of his to a
university. So Otto became an agricultural inspector. My mother told me that he was not at all suitable for
such a job; she thought he should have become an elementary school teacher. I doubt that. I think he
should have had a job like that of his younger brother. Just like his brothers, he was very polite, but shy and
withdrawn. When he was 31 years old he married Marie Schneider, 26 years old. She was a very active,
enterprising, outgoing, and happy person; but she died of tuberculosis less than four years later. Their
daughter, Elisabeth, my mother, was less than three years old at that time.
After the death of his wife, my mother’s father gave up his job and took the position of customs official. I
have in my poss-ession an official report about his work as customs official, which is very positive, but he
gave this job up after 2½ years. Otto then moved around restlessly and he withdrew more and more into
himself. Eventually, 1881, he was taken to an institution. His Uncle Franz Otto delivered him to this asylum.
Otto’s daughter, my mother, accompanied them. When her father had gone in and the door was closed, my
mother received a deep shock, which she never overcame. Her great uncle took her to his house in
Trebnitz. She stayed there till her marriage. An inheritance, which had come to my mother from her mother’s
mother, enabled her to pay for the support of her father. (As I understand, Otto’s younger brother Hugo also
contributed.)
My mother’s father’s case would perhaps now be classified as a mild schizophrenia. In later years my mother
visited her father whenever possible. She told me that the doctors said he would not be able to live
independently. She would have liked to have him at our home. But, that would have been possible only if my
father’s situation were definitely settled. That was the case about 1913. But then my mother’s father died in
that year.
If any of Otto Entel’s descendants had inherited some of his afflictions, I would be the one. Perhaps my
inclination to withdraw into a world of abstractions, my pondering quite some-time before acting, and also my
hesitation to approach people I do not know, might have come from there. On the other hand, I have
definitely inherited some counter-balancing abilities from my father; for example the ability to give lectures
before large audiences without inhibition.
Chapter 11
The Schneider and Baenisch Families
Before talking about the families of my mother’s mother, I should like to tell a story. My mother had various
family pictures on the wall of our dining room. Among them there were two large pictures of a man and a
woman dressed in the style of about 1780, say. One day, I may have been 13 years old, I took down these
pictures and looked at their back. There it said: Johann Gottfried Hoppe and Johanna Eleonora Giller. I
asked my mother who they were. She said they were her mother’s mother’s mother’s parents. I got quite
excited and, in fact, this discovery was the starting point of my interest in family history.
It turned out that J. Gottfried Hoppe (62) was a wealthy man living in the city of Liegnitz, East of Görlitz, in
western Silesia. He owned a special estate called the “Goldene Hufe” (Golden Hide). He played quite some
role in the city government. The father of J. Eleonora (63), David Göller (126), was the owner of an inn,
“Zum Storchen” (At the Stork’s). Certainly, he was also well off. Gottfried and Eleonora had a daughter,
Henriette Caroline, born 1782. There were other children, but I have not been able to trace them. Henriette
Caroline (31) married Carl Wilhelm Baenisch (30) in 1804. Carl Baenisch was a very attractive man with
pitch black hair; but he was very hot-tempered. By profession he was a leather merchant. His father,
grandfather and great-grandfather had all been furriers and leather workers. The last named of these
ancestors lived in Lissa, a city just on the eastern side of the Prussia-Polish boundary. The Baenischs, at
least during the 18th century, were Germans. Of course, there were many German craftsmen living in
Poland at that time and earlier. The name Baenisch, however, is probably of Polish or Czech origin.
The dowry Carl Baenisch received from his father-in-law, perhaps 10,000 Thaler or more, enabled him to
buy an estate, a “Gut”; so he called himself a “Gutsbesitzer.”
Carl and Henriette Baenisch had two daughters, Pauline (15) and Auguste. Henriette died in 1813, when the
daughters were 8 and 3 years old. Carl Baenisch then sold the estate for his daughters’ sake; for it was their
inheritance. He made himself a “Gut’spächter”, that is, the tenant of a large “Gut” (Estate).
The parents of Henriette lived till 1831 and 1829. Probably they left an additional inheritance to the two
daughters of Henriette. Carl Baenisch married again in 1822. One of the sons of this second marriage, Carl
Gustav Baenisch, was a friend of my grandfather Carl Friedrichs. It was at Carl Gustav’s house that my
parents met.
Carl Baenisch died in 1839. His daughters, then 28 and 23 years old and now in possession of their mother’
s dowry, moved to a house in Steinau, a small town north of Liegnitz. There they were comfortably off, but
lonely. When Pauline was 36 years old, (1841), she married Friedrich Schneider (14), a minister in a small
village, not very far. He was 47 years old then.
Friedrich Schneider (14) was born in 1794 in Bunzlau, a city between Liegnitz and Gorlitz. His father, his
grandfather, and his great-grandfather were potters. The city of Bunzlau was famous for the pottery made
there. At some time the potters were asked what they make. They answered: tea and coffee pots, tobacco
and butter containers, bowls, laboratory utensils, and chamber pots. Friedrich’s father, Johann Gottlieb (28),
though being a potter, was not a master. He wanted to become a master, but the five other pottery masters
in Bunzlau did not allow that, although he was supported by the city government. He tried to be admitted as
a master in another city, but then he died, 43 years old, leaving his wife with five children. Seven months
later his widow bore a child, Friedrich, (14), my great-grandfather.
The only information I have about Friedrich Schneider as a person comes from a letter he had written to his
wife’s sister, Auguste. After some personal matters he writes:
“Oh how beautiful is it now here. At least 50 nightingales warble, the robins, the finches, the cuckoos give
every day their concerts. Our wild bumble bee roves the whole day around on meadow and garden. We are
all so healthy; what more does a frugal heart need to be happy.”
None of any other ancestors ever mention nature and its beauty. I must say that I feel very much being
Friedrich Schneider’s great-grandson. I am sure, if he ever had seen a mountain he would also have been
enthusiastic about it.
I doubt that he or any other of my ancestors ever saw a mountain, except Carl and Asta Heiberg on a trip to
Italy.
Friedrich and Pauline Schneider had one daughter, Marie (7), born 1846; four years later Friedrich
Schneider died. Pauline and her sister Auguste then bought a house in Bunzlau, using the inher-itance from
their mother. There they lived with Marie for 26 more years, except that Marie, when she was 26 years old,
1872, married Otto Entel (6), my mother’s father.
My mother had in her possession two large paintings of Pauline and Auguste, rather good looking with pitch
black hair. A peculiar feature appeared on Pauline’s painting: her lower teeth protruded a little over the
upper ones. Now my great aunt Marie Friedrichs had the same trait and I myself also have it. Thus there is a
clear case of the inheritance of a recessive trait.
My mother, Elisabeth (3), was the only child of her mother, Marie (7), who was the only child of her mother
Pauline (15), who was the only married child of her mother, Henriette Hoppe (31). The dowry Henriette had
received from her parents in 1804 contin-ued down to my mother essentially unchanged since the principal
was probably rarely touched. What happened to this inheritance will be described later on.
Chapter 12
Karl and Elisabeth Friedrichs
In speaking about my parents I shall first say something about my mother, Elisabeth Entel (3). She had pitch
black hair and pale skin. Except for her straight nose, inherited from the Stenger family through generations,
she resembled her mother very much. However, she was very beautiful while her mother was not.
My mother did not have any higher education since there was no school for girls beyond elementary school
in the small city in which she grew up. So she went to the top grade three times. She learned some French
there, but not much else beyond element-ary material; she was however eager to learn.
Once my mother was married to my father, her views opened greatly, in particular her views about religion.
The religious attitude of the family she came from was basically fundamentalist, but not narrow minded.
As I have found out only recently, my mother has written many articles and small stories for newspapers.
She certainly took a great interest in what was going on in the world. In 1918 she was deeply affected by the
collapse of the Hohenzollern Empire. Still she took a great interest in the new ideas that then were
developed. In fact, she read the work on women, written by the socialist leader Bebel.
Altogether my mother was a wonderful person, so much so that I do not feel able to tell more about her in
detail.
My father was a sturdy person and a very hard worker. As I have mentioned earlier, one may say that he
was born to be a German university professor; but unfortunately, that did not come about. While he was a
practicing lawyer in Kiel, he wrote two books. The second one, on police law, was highly acclaimed. As a
practicing lawyer he was not satisfied with handling cases in a routine way; he often dug out an old rule of
law which was valid but not used any more, to the annoyance of the judge and the opposing lawyer. In one
such case my father had done something for his client which the opposing lawyer claimed to be unethical.
That led to lawsuits, which went to the highest court in Germany. He was acquitted because of lack of proof.
Still his law practice went down and also his chances for a university career. This happened in 1901,
somewhat before I was born.
My father then took a position as a counselor for an industrial firm in Dortmund, a large city at the eastern
end of the Ruhr area in northwestern Germany. But he did not have enough to do in this position; so he
continued his writing there. The boss did not like that. So my father left and opened a law practice with
another lawyer. During that time, 1905, my brother Wolfgang was born; my sister Asta was then seven years
old and I was four years old. In 1906 my father did something that worked out very well. To describe this I
must make a few remarks about the court system in Germany.
There was one highest court, an appeals court, in Germany, cor-responding more or less to the American
Supreme Court. Below that were a number of appeals courts, I call them “higher courts” for convenience. In
Prussia, there was one such court for each province. The “higher court” for the Rhineland, in Cologne, was
over-burdened at that time; so a new “higher court” was to be established in Düsseldorf, a large city on the
Rhine north of Cologne. My father moved to Düsseldorf to be a lawyer at the new court. (In Germany a
lawyer was associated with only one court.) For my father it was easier and more natural to handle cases at
a higher court than those at a lower court. The advantage of the move was that he would be new at the new
court just as any other lawyer there. Even so it took my father more than two years before he was firmly
settled there.
My father had rented an apartment on a busy street near the rail-road station. I suffered very much from
being cooped up in that apartment. However, every Sunday - if possible - the family made an excursion to
the zoo, to some parks, to a large hill out-side the city with garden restaurants, or a boat trip on the Rhine
river to an old Roman city, or what I liked best, we took a short train ride three stations distant to a village
called Hochdahl, from which we walked through woods and meadows down to another village called
Neanderthal, or we took the train to Neanderthal and walked up to Hochdahl. In later years our father often
made even larger excursions with us and our mother. (For many years here in New Rochelle, we adopted a
similar system.) I was very happy about the readiness of my father to make such excursions.
There were some aspects of my father’s character, such as his liberal ideas, which meant very much to me;
but, there were other aspects. He had very original ideas about how one should behave under certain
circumstances. If everybody had understood these ideas, it would have been fine; but, nobody except I
understood them. At times he was quite unreasonable. That made it often rather difficult for Asta and
Wolfgang, and hence also for my mother, but hardly for me. Since I understood him, I could take it; but,
anyway, I was rarely involved.
There are other positive aspects. We all, in particular Asta and I, learned very much from his great store of
knowledge. In fact, I got my first inklings of mathematics from him.
In 1908 my father bought a house, I suppose with the help of my mother’s inheritance. It was on a quiet
street near parks, with a rather peculiar backyard. There were large and small trees, a covered arbor, a
pond with goldfish at a rock structure with a waterfall. The walk to school took me 12 minutes; for Asta it took
a little longer to her school
I remember quite well the start of the First World War (1914). The people were extremely excited and firmly
believed that France, Russia and England were going after Germany. I myself - I was almost 13 years old -
did not participate in their excitement. I thought that after some time there would be a stalemate and long
negotiations with the result that everything would be as before. However, I was very enthusiastic at one
times namely, when we heard of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points about self-determination of all people -
I expressed my enthusiasm in a composition we had to write at that time. The teacher accepted that
although he felt differently. In fact, in our school we had a number of very good teachers, with whom one
could speak openly.
During the war years, in particular during the winter of 1916, our bread and butter rations were extremely
small. We mostly lived on turnips in that year. I was always hungry, before and after meals. My stay on
Rügen, and also three weeks in Holland, were vital and so I survived.
My interest in mathematics started in my fourth school year or earlier. (It is true that I could rarely do long
division correctly in the third year, but that is no contradiction,) In my fourth year, my mathematical ability
was evident. In later years, although we had good teachers, I had to send quite some time to explain to my
fellow students what they had not understood. On the other hand, I had (and still have) trouble writing
compositions and letters.
From spring 1920 on, I went to various universities; in spring 1922 I went to the University of Göttingen. The
mathematics group here was sometimes called the center of mathematics in the world.
After being here a month or two, I received a letter from my father saying that he had resigned from his
lawyership at the higher court in Düsseldorf.
As my mother told me later, my father got involved with a secretary. Apparently he did not know how to
handle such a situation. The final result was his resignation. He then took a position as a law counsel for the
government of a small city, Ilmenau, in central Germany.
The resignation of my father came at a time when both Asta and Karl-Wolfgang were not very happy about
their studies and ware not certain about their final goal in life, as I was. They decided to quit studying and
took jobs. This made it easier for my father to keep supporting me. I am very grateful for that. If I had to
give up my studies of mathematics, I would have been desperate.
After my father had gone to Ilmenau, my mother was willing to follow him. But first she sold our house. A part
of the pro-ceeds were her inheritance, about 30,000 marks before inflation. My mother wanted to invest the
proceeds in industrial stocks, which were the safest investment at that time because of the prevailing great
inflation. She, and we children, understood inflation, but my father did not. He transferred the money on
savings accounts or something like that. Two years later, in the superinflation, it was gone.
Thus the dowry that Carl Baenisch had received in 1804 from his father-in-law, J. Gottfried Hoppe, of which
the principal probably had not changed much, was annihilated in a short time after 120 years.
About five years after my father had gone to Ilmenau, he gave up his position at that city and worked
independently. He wrote many articles for law journals and did some consulting. From this he had a good
income; it even enabled him to have a nice house built in Ilmenau.
I am now at the end of my story. I shall add only a few remarks about later times. My brother Wolfgang had a
very good, signif-icant position as translator for English at the main bank in Germany (West). Unfortunately,
he died in 1978. He and his wife, Eva, had two children, Irene and Michael. They in turn are married and
have children, Tilo and Felix, and Martin (and after this was written Barbara -MNF). My sister Asta has had a
varied life, as a teacher, diplomatic code cracker, dietitian, and housekeeper for a large institution. She
died in 1981. I myself have attained in my life by far more than I ever could have expected. My greatest
achievement, of course, was to have discovered my wife, Nellie, and to have produced five wonderful
children. (Last phrase was hand written addition by Mom – MNF)
Appendix 1
The Last Will and Testament (1811) of Adolph Heinderich Friedrichs (1760-1828)
In the Name of God
The changeability of human fates and the unexpected accidents which can set bounds to our lives cause me
now, in good health and of my own will, after careful thought and not forced or persuaded by anyone else, to
make a disposition and determination with respect to my future legacy in the event that I should be
summoned from this life.
1.
With respect to my body I order that it should be laid to rest in a Christian and decent manner but without
any special ostentation or expense.
2.
As my heirs I determine and name my beloved children
1. Johann Carl
2. Adolph
3. Heinrich
4. Moritz
5. Julius
6. Wilhelmine
7. Charlotte
8. Ludwig
and if after this time any others should still be born to me, all to receive equal portions of my total property.
3.
My beloved wife Hanna Christine, nee Arndt, to whom I feel obliged to demonstrate my tender thanks for her
love and loyalty, I pre—bequeath out of my own full property her own dowry and any of her things which she
will be able to provide evidence for on the basis of family inheritance agreements or other proofs signed by
me and in her possession.
4.
With respect to my estate, as soon as possible following my death an inventory should be taken, with the
restriction that until the end of the contract years of Silvitz, Dalkvitz und Dolgemost, or otherwise as long as
my family still holds the lease on these properties, no partition and division should take place but instead
they should be administered jointly on behalf of all my heirs and my wife.
5.
This administration of my estate should remain under the leadership and direction of my beloved wife Hanna
Christine nee Arndt until a termination of the leases of Silvitz, Dalkvitz and Dolgemost is made possible
either by the expiry of the contracts or by an agreement which she finds necessary and advantageous, and
since I am convinced both of her conscientious love towards me and her children and of her capacity to
carry out this administration, I also give to her the guardianship for my surviving minor children with the
proviso that she should call upon the advice and support of my beloved brother Herr Carl Friedrichs of
Stubben as a supplementary guardian. Both of them should obtain an appropriate judicial confirmation of
their guardianship but should not be bound to a public rendering of accounts. Still they should settle and
record the accounts of the administration once a year.
6.
If in fact one of my heirs is entitled to insist on a settlement before the end of the leases on Silvitz, Dalkvitz
and Dolgemost, then the appointed administration of the estate may assist and settle with the one or the
other heir as appropriate, though not to the prejudice of the common prosperity of the enterprise
7.
If this description of my last wishes is not regarded and upheld as a proper Testament, then I wish that it be
accepted as a codicil, a legal trust, a disposition of the parent to his children, or however else it can be
regarded and upheld.
Personally signed and sealed by me and executed with the additional signatures of witnesses in Silvitz on
the 1st of December 1811.
I also ordain that in case my wife should enter into a second marriage, the commonality among my heirs, as
specified in #4., should be continued until the end of the leases but thereafter her administration and
guardianship should come to end.
Johann Bernhard Engelbrecht als invited witness (seal)
Christian Heinrich Pense also invited witness (seal)
Christian Dieckmann also invited witness (seal)
Johann Wilhelm Arndt as invited witness (seal)
Adolph Heinderich Friedrichs (seal)
Johann Christopher Dalmer as invited witness (seal)
Carl Christoph Friedrichs as invited witness (seal)
Johann Friedrich Behm as invited witness (seal)
In Silvitz on 1 December 1811 the leaseholder Herr Adolph Heinrich Friedrichs, before me as undersigned
and specially summoned notary and in the presence of the seven also specially invited witnesses, presented
the above document as his last will, signed and sealed it with his own hand, and invited the required
witnesses to complete the will by signing and sealing it, whereupon the witnesses did provide their
signatures in their own hands and affixed their seals, whereby all used their own signets, except for the
witnesses Christian Diekmann and Johann Friedrich Behm who used my private seal, and finally again
acknowledged their hands and seals. I hereby confirm as requested, and with the corroboration of the
undersigned witnesses to this instrument, that all this has been done in a legal manner in one continuous
and uninterrupted session.
Johann Berhard Engelbrecht
as witness to this instrument (seal)
Carl Christoph In faith
Friedrichs (seal) (seal) [name L.S.F. Amndt Notary]
Appendix 2: Heinrich and Marina Christine Arndt
(Story 2.111)
There are two important references to our ancestors in the published writings of Ernst Moritz Arndt. In his
correspondence, there appears a reference to Johanna (Hanna) Christine Arnd, who was the first cousin of
Ernst Moritz. In his autobiography, Ernst Moritz Arndt provides a long description of his uncle Heinrich, the
father of Johanna Christine, as well as other relatives.
1. From the Correspondence of Ernst Montz Arndt:
“The good old Friedrichs, who was four or five years older than myself, took an early liking to me. Her father,
Heinrich, was a noble, remarkable, and considerate person, a kind patriarch. Their clever noble being had a
great influence on my father and myself. She herself was very pretty as a young woman, and a friendly and
orderly person. She had given me many good snacks and had done me as a youth many good favors. Later
on she had gone through her not always thornless path valiantly and virtuously.”
This may refer to the fact that her older son Carl had ruined the Gut of which he was Pächter, to the suicide
of her son Adolph, and to the death of her son Heinrich.
2. From the Autobiography of Ernst Merit: Arndt.
The following excerpts are taken from the English translation of Arndt’s autobiography, published as the Life
of Arndt. One passage in the translation is slightly confusing; Arndt describes visiting his uncle Heinrich who
was sitting, as an old man, “with his old mother;” but clearly this is a reference to Heinrich’s old wife (since
Heinrich was called ‘Vater Arndt,” his wife may have been called “die alte Mutter.”)
Note that after his description of uncle Heinrich (the “patriarch”), Arndt suddenly switches to a description of
Heinrich’s mother, Anna, born Subklev. This woman was the grandmother of both Ernst Moritz Arndt and of
Johanna Christine Arndt, who married Adolf Heinnich Friedrichs.
From:
the Life of Arndt (pp. 36—39);
“..old Hinrich was such a poetical, romantic old man, that I always enjoyed being with him. Old Hinrich,
though nothing inure than a somewhat superior peasant, was an emblem of the country, or rather he
portrayed it in his life and manners. He was a handsome man of middle height, with fine features, fair hair
and blue eyes; almost always cheerful, and like one who knew nothing of care and trouble. Me was less
educa-ted than my father, but had a fine natural genius, and never seemed to need artificial pleasures. Me
played well on the violin, but never played at cards, and when his outdoor work was over, or he had come
home tired from the chase, after enjoying the gifts of God, with which his table was always well supplied, he
would sit at midday or in the evening at his house door, and was glad if one would come and sit by him and
listen to his stories of the neighborhood,...The old man enjoyed these stories and told them well; and he
knew also a great deal about the history of Sweden and Rügen.
He had also learnt a good deal of German and general history from some old chronicles which always lay on
a shelf. But the man himself was better than all his stories. He was beloved by all around him...
I have called him the patriarch, and such he really was. Honest, brave, and ever ready to be of service
whenever and wherever he could, he let trouble and misfortune pass easily by him, and rose above them
into the sunshine of a life of strong faith in God’s government of the world...As the patriarch, the eldest of
the house, he not only had great authority over his relations, but enjoyed great influence among his
neighbors. He went by the name of Father Arndt, and would never allow his servants even to call him
anything else. He hated the word Herr and said Count Putbus was the real Herr, in which he was perhaps
right. On the strength of his paternal dignity he was allowed to do much which would have not been borne
from any one else. Once, when I was a young man, I said something disrespectful of the King of Sweden,
upon which he gave me a resounding box on the ear, saying, “Boy, do you dare speak so of the king?” To
another relation whose wife had just presented him with twins, and who was wringing his hands over the
cradle, he said, “You coward! don’t you believe that what God has given He can support?” Such he
remained to the last. My brothers and I visited him about six months before his death. He died in the winter
of 1811. The old man, who was then over eighty, and much broken down, was sitting in his room with his old
mother [This is a mis-translation; the reference is clearly to Hinrich’s wife, Anna Donothea], but he
brightened up at our appearance, and sat down with us to table; made them bring wine; and chatted almost
as well as in days gone by, saying at parting, “Children, you will soon lay me in the ground. Then you are to
be cheer-ful, and drink some of this wine, for I have lived a joyful life before God all my days”
Such was the patriarch! In a quiet little room there still sat at her spinning-wheel a quiet old Fate, the mother
[Avina], of the patriarch and of my father, whose old age the pious son had cherished with the greatest
tenderness and care. She was the model of a beautiful stately old woman, much resembling my father, once
fair and ruddy as King David of old, and always happy and beloved. She lived ninety—six years on this
earth, and with her kisses on my cheek has called down many a blessing on my head...”
In the following passages (pp. 39—41) Arndt describes his other uncles, especially the twins Jochim and
Christian Arndt. A later passage (p. 111) again refers to uncle Hinrich.
(I can find no copy of these referred to passages-MNF)
Appendix 3
Asta Heiberg
(Story7.7 and 7. )
Excerpt from “Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben.” Carl Heymann’ s Verlag, Berlin. 1897. Pages 8—12
(Martin has this book-MNF)
Life together with my brothers and sisters did not leave any special impression on me; I only know that no
one quarreled with me as it happened among the brothers. I was a somewhat weak child, had red hair and
was very ugly. This ugliness made my father feel so sorry for me that he overcame his dislike of red hair. In
those days it was not in style, nor did it look “like spun gold in the sunshine” as it is now described in novels.
My father protected me and told me as a consolation, (a consolation I did not appreciate because I was
indifferent to my lack of beauty) “ you are ugly but in spite of that you are my jewel,” I know this and I feel it;
my love of him gave me the courage to resist his tempers. Every year my father suffered from depressions
for weeks, even for months. During those times he withdrew to his room; he then could not bear children’s
noise. I was always permitted to go to him; he took me on his lap, forgot my age and told me about his
worries. (He had many children and too small an income to take care of them.) This relationship persisted to
his very end. I was his confidant, his good friend, from whom he accepted correction of his ideas, even
rebuke, without getting into a rage or anger and he was a person who otherwise did not allow any
contradiction. He demanded truth and nothing but the truth from his sons. “Never say anything different from
what you think,” he told me very often. I followed his warning and thus gained the courage to be truthful; and
because I was that way he loved me and confided in me. This way of preference gave me so to say, a center
position in the family. I overcame quite a few annoyances, prevented some punishments and whenever the
brothers and sisters had special wishes, I was the one to ask. My father was tall and handsome. The
beautiful head with the large sparkling eyes let you sense a lively spirit. He was an idealist, was a devoted
admirer of God’s alimightiness, he loved nature, observed the course of the stars, knew every tree and was
an enthusiastic botanist. To be with him was a continuous lesson. In his earliest childhood he believed that
only he existed as a human being: his parents, his brothers and sisters and everyone else around him were
just spirits who had adopted human shapes to serve him. When they left the room he opened the door to
see how they dissolved into air. Subconsciously the child sensed that every thinking human being forms a
world of his own; that means that he exists independently, that he may adjust but that he will never fully
merge with another person, that he can never be completely understood by someone else because the
other one represents a completely different image. His strange views just like his idealistic concepts that
demanded from everyone that he developed his knowledge and his higher qualities made him very strict.
This, I often told him, but also that it was difficult, in fact close to impossible, to live with him. He did not
contradict because he knew the negative sides of his character; he openly mentioned wrong-doings and
mistakes that he had committed and he tried very hard to make up for them. He was astounding in that
respect and I did not know anyone beside him who would have acted that way.
My mother was not only beautiful but she also had a mental charm and loveliness that nobody could resist.
She was more of a personality than my father, she had lots of brain, knowledge and intelligence. She was
musical had a beautiful alto voice and was gifted for drawing. She was also an efficient and saving
housewife, very diligent and a devoted nurse to the small children. But since again and again a new baby
had to be fed and nursed there was little time left for the bigger ones. We older daughters had to replace
our mother in the household, we had to sew and to knit, clean the rooms, in one word, we had to help so
that in this big household everything ran smoothly.
Appendix 4 -
Ancestral List leading to Charlemagne
45 ARNUF BISHOP OF METZ (made into a Saint) 582-640
44 ANSEGISEL -679
43 PIPPIN the “Middle One” -714
42 CARL MARTELL 676-741
41 PIPPIN the Short 714-768
40 CHARLEMAGNE KING OF FRANKS “1st Holy Roman Emperor” 742-814
39 KING LOUIS OF GERMANY HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR “the Pious” 778-840
38 KING CHARLES II OF FRANCE HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR “the Bald” 823-877
37 KING LOUIS II OF FRANCE
36 KING CHARLES III “the Conqueror of France” 879-929
35 KING LOUIS IV OF FRANCE -986
34 MATHILDE ~~ Conrad III Peace lover of Burgundy
33 GERBERGE ~~ Duke Herman II of Swabia
32 GISELA ~~ King Conrad II Holy Roman Emperor
31 KING HENRY III OF GERMANY HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR “the Black” 1017-1056
30 KING HENRY IV HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 1050-1106
29 PRINCESS AGNES OF FRANKEN ~~ Duke Frederick of Swabia
28 DUKE FREDERICK OF SWABIA -1147
27 FREDERICK I BARBAROSSA HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 1123-1190
26 KING PHILIP (OF SWABIA) HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 1176-1208
25 KUNIGUNDE of STAUFEN ~~ King Wencelas of Bohemia
24 PRINCESS BEATRIX OF BOHEMIA ~~ Margrave Otto III Brandenberg ~ 1300
23 MARGRAVE OTTO IV of BRANDENBERG
22 MARGRAVE HERMANN of BRANDENBERG
21 PRINCESS MECHTILD of BRANDENBERG~~Duke Henry IV of Sagen
20 DUKE HENRY V OF SAGAN ~ 1400
19 DUKE HENRY VIII OF SAGAN
18 DUKE HENRY IX OF GLOGAU
17 ANNA ~~ Baron Johannes Rosenberg
16 ELISABETH OF ROSENBERG ~~ Henry of Hardegg ~ 1500
15 JULIUS COUNT OF HARDEGG
14 BERNHARD COUNT OF HARDEGG
13 COUNTESS ESTER OF HARDEGG ~~ Christoph of Zelking ~ 1600
12 ANNA OF ZELKING ~~ Count Otto of Zinzendorff
11 COUNT MAXIMILLIAN OF ZINZENDORFF
10 COUNT GEORG LOUIS OF ZINZENDORFF 1662-1700
9 COUNT FREDERICK CHRISTIAN OF ZINZENDORFF 1697-1756
8 SUSANNAH OF ZINZENDORFF ~~ Henry C. Count von Baudissin 1723-1785
7 HENRY FREDERICK COUNT VON BAUDISSIN 1753-1818
6 CARL COUNT VON BAUDISSIN 1790-1868
5 ASTA COUNTESS VON BAUDISSIN ~~ Dr. Carl Heiberg 1817-1904
4 NANNY ELISABETH HEIBERG - Carl Friedrichs 1839-1931
3 KARL WILHELM FRIEDRICHS 1865-1941
2 KURT OTTO FRIEDRICHS 1901-1982
1 MARTIN NICHOLAS FRIEDRICHS 1950-
Appendix L A (modifed version)
Ancestors of Kurt O. Friedrichs Partial List by Birth Date (covering Story of My Ancestors Period)
Name - Birth date - Death date - Death location - Occupation
Andreas Goldbeck 1496 1576 Mayor of Werben / Elbe
Anna Engel 1503 1567
Martin Goldbeck 1530 1574
Lucia Kaulitz Bef. 1540 1573
Julius Count von Hardegg Abt. 1540
Nicholas Goldbeck 1560 1626
Catharina Schonhauser Bef. 1570 1616
Bernhard Count von Hardegg Abt. 1570
Wulf Hinrich Count von Baudissin 1579 1646 Swedish Field Marshall, Dan Gen. Cavalry
Catharina Goldbeck 1590 1636
Bartholomus Schonebeck 1591 1659
Christoph von Zelking Abt. 1600
Countess Ester von Hardegg Abt. 1600
Count Otto von Zinzendorff Abt. 1610
Anna von Zelking Abt. 1610
Gertrude Schonibeck 1619 1685
Erdman Schultz Bef. 1620 1675
Sophie von Rantzau 1620 1697
Count Maximilian von Zinzendorff Abt. 1630
Heinrich Gunter C. von Baudissin 1636 1673 Schleswig Princely Chamberlain/Privy Councillor
Sara Margarethe von Gunderoth 1642 1723 Lindau
Johann Kratz 1645 1674
Joachim Schulze 1648 1723 North West Baudenburg Pastor
Catharina Schultze 1652 1734
Hieronymus Ungand 1661 1740
Count Georg Louis von Zinzendorff 1662 1700
Wulf Heinrich Count von Baudissin Sept.1,1671 July 24,1748 Rixdorf,Holstein FieldMarshall Saxon Army
Marie Kratz 1675 1717
Anne Wentzel 1679
Martin Schroder Bef. 1680 "Anits"brewer
Christian Biereigel Bef. 1680 Berlin Gold Embroiderer
Franz C Schwarzenfeld Bef. 1680 1743 Grottkan Postmaster
Levin F Schulze 1681 1744 Pastor
C. Frederick Christian v. Zinzendorff 1697 1756
Hieronymus G. Ungnad 1699 1756 New Ruppin Arch Deacon of New Ruppin
Johann Deidrich Schroder 1700 1744 Orginist (in Berlin)
Franz Carl von Schwarzenfeldt 1702 1767 Vienna Austria Officer (in Vienna) Catholic
Anna E. Prahn Abt. 1706 1736
Heinrich Christoph C. von Baudissin July 12, 1709 July 4, 1786 Rixdorf General of Infrantry & Governor
Sophie Charlotte Biereichel May 10, 1714 October 14, 1793 Hamburg Germany Acctress
Joachim "Christoph" Friedrichs 1715 October 16, 1787 Carow Dairy Famer (Grundsdorf)
Johan Gottfried Schulze 1717 1791 Gorlitz Leading Pastor in city of Gorlitz
Johann Joachim Stenger December 2, 1717 February 26, 1790 New Ruppin Ger. Merchant
Susanna Zinzendorff 1723 1785
Kathrine Margrete Struving Nov. 24, 1723 March 24, 1779 Posenwald Germany
Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann 1724 1785 Copenhagen Treasurer of (and richest man in) Denmark
Johann Christoph Kobelt Bef. 1725 tenant in Bunzlau
Hinrich Arnd October 19, 1726 January 13, 1811 Posenwald Germany Farmer
Johann Michael Entel October 23, 1727 February 15, 1793 Gorlitz Germany Master Clothmaker (Gorlitz)
Carl Friedrich Heller February 22, 1729 May 3, 1788 Barth Germany Pastor
Carl Gottlieb Baenisch March 5, 1729 October 21, 1802 Liegnitz Germany Furrier (Liegnitz)
Hedwig Boldte Bef. 1730
Anna Maria Schumann Bef. 1730
Johann Kunniger Bef. 1730 1761 Flensburg Theater Director
Christian "Gottlieb" Schneider Bef. 1730 Bef. 1780 Potter (Bunzlau)
Marie Eleonora Ungnade Bef. 1730 March 1796 New Ruppin Germany
Caroline Tugendreich v. Friedeborn 1730 1795 Hamburg
Maria Dorothea Rothe March 12, 1731 1803
Elisabeth Marie Schulz 1733 May 20, 1780 Barth Germany
Johann Gottfried Gebauer July 4, 1736 May 15, 1790 Lissa Poland Pastor (in Lissa) [painting]
Jacob Petersen Bef. 1740 Schleswig Maltster
Margaethe Bunker Bef. 1740
Regina Sophia Vorkoper Bef. 1740 October 19, 1781 Mulitz Germany
Johann Christian Rosenthal Sept. 21, 1741 May 8, 1807 Greifswald Germany Merchant & Salt Importer
Friedrich Ludwig Schroder Nov. 2, 1744 August 3, 1816 Rellingen Ger. Prominent Theater Director \ Actor
Anna Rosina Kobelt 1745
Anna (wife of Schwartzenfeld) Bef. 1746
Susanna Beate Glotz 1747 March 16, 1824 Liegnitz Germany
Marie Sophie Dommes October 1, 1747 December 21, 1808 Greifswald Ger. to Bartholomaus Battus d1558
Johann Christian Sturmer Nov. 21, 1749 Sept. 8, 1823 Merzariese Headmaster State School (Zullichau)
Johann Gottfried Hoppe 1751 May 25, 1831 Liegnitz Germany Owner of Golden Huf Inn
Johann "Gottlieb" Schneider March 12, 1751 February 9, 1794 Bunzlau Germany Master Pottery Maker
Johanna Christiana Schultze June 6, 1753 December 4, 1809 Gorlitz Germany
Johanna Eleonora Giller July 21, 1753 January 4, 1829 Liegnitz Germany
Johann Jacob Herrmann Kunniger Sept. 14, 1753 February 3, 1833 Rendsburg Ger. Sec.to Superior Court
Heinrich Friedrich Count v Baudissin Dec.1, 1753 April 17, 1818 Ambassador King of Denmark to Prussia
Caroline A. C. von Schimmelmann January 21, 1759 January 17, 1826 Father- Treasurer ofDenmark
Johann Michael Entel February 11, 1760 March 2, 1838 Radmeritz Germany Pastor
Johanna Louisa Spangenberg February 12, 1760
Adolph Heinrich Friedrichs December 19, 1760 September 3, 1828 Silvitz Farmer
Elisabeth Magdalene Petersen April 15, 1761 November 12, 1839 Schleswig Germany
Anna "Nannette" Schwarzenfeldt Abt. 1765 March 11, 1846 Rellingen Ger. Actress
Johanna "Hanna" Christina Arnd July 24, 1765 July 1, 1846 Silvitz
Carl Wilhelm Baenisch February 22, 1769 April 3, 1833 Liegnitz Germany Leather Merchant
Carl August Stenger May 5, 1769 August 11, 1831 Pommerzig Ger. Pastor- (traced 19 gener. to 1200's)
Carl Abraham Christian Rosenthal November 1, 1771 December 31, 1846 Greifswald Merchant/Treasurer
Johanna Christiana Gebauer Nov. 20, 1771 August 12, 1850 No. Linda Germany
Henriette Margaretha Heller May 4, 1777 January 18, 1817 Greifswald
Henriette Carloline Hoppe 1782 December 15, 1813 Liegnitz Germany
Charlotte Wilhelmine J. Sturmer May 6, 1782 March 12, 1839 Lorau Germany
Anna Margarth Henriette Kunniger January 6, 1790 April 2, 1864 Greifswald Germany
Carl Christian Count von Baudissin Mar. 4, 1790 Apr. 9, 1868 Itzehoe Ger.(disinherited) Lord of Hovedgaard
Fredrich Samuel Gottlob Schneider October 7, 1794 July 29, 1850 Nd. Schlesien Pastor
Carl Friedrich Heiberg October 29, 1796 August 16, 1872 Schleswig "Prussia" Lawyer Bookdealer
Carl Friedrich Entel Nov. 17, 1798 July 6, 1864 Gorlitz Germany Pastor
Ludwig Christian Friedrichs August 19, 1803 Sept. 25, 1842 Greifswald Merchant (Greifswald) -
Pauline Henriette Baenisch Sept. 21, 1805 August 23, 1876 Bunzlau Germany
Wilhemine "Minna" H. Rosenthal July 24, 1809 May 3, 1869 Greifswald Germany
Albertine "Bertha" Sophie E. Stenger April 13, 1813 April 1878 Golitz Germany
Asta Sophie C. Countess Baudissin May 7, 1817 January 28, 1904 Schleswig Ger. 5th cousin of Q. Victoria
Carl Johann Friedrichs October 1, 1836 June 27, 1918 Dusseldorf Ger. Bookdealer (Kiel)
Nanny Elisabeth Henriette Heiberg January 7, 1839 March 14, 1931 Rugen Germany
Otto Bernhard Heinrich Entel March 4, 1841 March 13, 1913 Kreuzburg Ger. Agricul. & Customs Inspector
Marie Joh. Auguste Schneider August 16, 1846 March 16, 1876 Bunzlau Germany
Karl Wilhelm Ernst Friedrichs April 12, 1865 February 4, 1941 Ilmenau Germany Lawyer (Dusseldorf)
Elisabeth "Liska" M. Therese Entel August 7, 1873 February 7, 1941 Gotha
Kurt Otto Ludwig Friedrichs Sept. 28, 1901 December 31, 1982 New Rochelle NY Mathematician
(Braunschweig/New York)
Martin Friedrichs created this edition of “The Story of My Ancestors” by Kurt O. Friedrichs in 2001 using
OCR (optical character reading) and then editing the output. Therefore, some OCR created errors may
have been missed or mistakes made in correcting the OCR output. This is especially the case with names.
Please let me know if you find any significant errors. I have, however, inserted the hundreds of KOF’s
handwritten corrections and additions so this text is, on one level, much cleaner then the final original copy
from 1980. Asterisked comments are inserted immediately after the asterisk as page formats vary. Where I
have added my own comments these are in brackets followed by my initials MNF.
The various charts and maps that were part of the original copy can be attached
Referred to appendixes are added at the end.
The ancestor list Appendix L. A. is still in hand written form.
This edition is presented in the same 12 chapters and 4 appendixes as originally written.
As the original objective of writing this was for future generation to understand their roots Dad would, I am
sure, have appreciated that it was now in a more accessible and modern format for all to read. This version
was made not only for the family but also as a remembrance of Dad.
Martin Friedrichs April 2001
The Story of my Ancestors
By Kurt O. Friedrichs Written in 1980
Preface
This story of my ancestors is written for my children; if it is read by others, I hope they will bear this in mind.
There are various motives that led me to be curios about my ancestry. I wanted to know where I came from. I
was fascinated by the ups and downs of the fate of my ancestors, and finding out about them was also just a
hobby.
The information on which the story is based comes mainly from written records, primarily from church
records, but also from what my mother told me. To a minor degree other relatives gave me some
information. Actually, I have only very few close rela-tives. My father had one unmarried sister and an
unmarried brother who died early. My father’s father had no brothers, but three unmarried sisters. I knew
only one of them; the other’ two had died earlier. But my father’s mother had two brothers with descendents.
Neither my mother, nor my mother’s mother had brothers or sisters. My mother’s father had only one brother
with two grandsons. One of these grandsons is an ardent investigator of family history. From him I received
very interesting information about some of my very early ancestry.
In fact, my story concerns to a large degree not only parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, but
earlier ancestors as well.
A few technical remarks must be made. To each of my ancestors a number is assigned. It is called his or her
ancestor number. This number appears in brackets, ( ), behind the name of the an-cestor. The meaning of
these numbers is explained in the introductory part of Appendix A L 1. (Not included-but it is basically a
numbering scheme for tracking ancestors where KOF is 1, his father 2, his mother 3, and anyone’s father is
double their number, and anyone’s mother is double their number plus 1- MNF) This appendix contains a
list of all known ancestors.
Chapters Page (varies by printing)
Preface
1 The Area of Origin
2 The early Friedrichs Family
3 The Arndt Family
4 Ludwig Friedrichs and the Rosenthal Family
5 The Family of Ludwig Friedrichs
6 The Heiberg and Schroder Families
7 The Family of Carl von Baudissin
8 The younger Heiberg Family
9 Carl and Karl Friedrichs
10 The Entel and Stenger Families
11 The Schneider and Baenisch Families
12 Karl and Elisabeth Friedrichs
Chapter 1
The Area of Origin
My ancestors came primarily from the eastern part of Germany, that is, essentially, from the area between
the Elbe river on the West, the Oder river on the East, Bohemia on the South, and the Baltic Sea on the
North.*
* This area largely overlaps with the area of the present Deutsche Demokratische Republik (East Germany),
except for parts in the northwest which are in the present “Deutsche Bundesrepublik” (West Germany) and
parts in the southeast that are in present day Poland.
Close to the coast, halfway between Berlin arid Sweden, there is a large island, called Rügen. The
Friedrichs family comes from this island.
Before telling the story of this family I should like to mention some historical facts about the area described.
Except for its extreme northwestern part, this area was formerly occupied by various Slavic tribes, related to
the Poles, called “wendisch” by the Germans. (The had come from the east after about 500 A.D.) They are
also referred to as “Elbslaven” by a Polish author writing in German. These tribes had settled in this area at
ab-out 550 AD Up to about 1,000 AD there had been frequent fighting between the Wends and the
Germans living to the west of them. But later on the Wendish rulers accepted German settlers in their land
since the Germans had farming methods and were effec-tive craftsmen and merchants in the towns. This
wave of settle-ment had its high point at about 1150 AD, but it continued for several centuries. Soon most of
the population in this area con-sisted of German or Germanized Wends; but there always existed some
Wendish pockets. Most of them have disappeared; but some of them still exist today.
There can be no doubt that I have quite a number of Wendish an-cestors. Never the less, there are only two
strictly Wendish names among my known ancestors: the name “Subklev” of a serf and the name “Baudissin”
of a noble family. In addition there are three or four Germanized Wendish names. Germanization, and also
trans-lation of Wendish names into German ones, happened all the time, even up to recent years. Still I am
sure that the majority of my ancestors were Germans.
The main reason for this assumption is that most of my earliest known ancestors were craftsmen and
merchants in the towns, while only few of them lived in the country.
The island of Rügen was gradually settled by Germans from 1200 AD on. After 1300 the Germans already
dominated there. In a will, issued in 1306, Prince Wizlaw II of Rügen implored his heirs to see to it that their
Wendish subjects would enjoy the same freedoms that they had enjoyed during his lifetime. By 1404 the
Germanization of Rügen was complete. It is reported that the last person on Rügen who still could speak
Wendish, an old woman, called Frau Gülz, had died on a remote peninsula in 1404.*
*In a Polish book I found the statement that Wendish was still spoken on Rügen in the 15th century. Strictly
speaking, this statement -as formulated - is correct.
The German settlers near the Baltic coast came mostly from the north-ern Rhineland and hence spoke Low
German. Among them there may have been one or more with the name “Frederiks” i.e. son of Frederik. In
fact, at about 1500, there were a mayor and a councilman in the city of Riga in Latvia with that name.
Somewhat later they changed their name to the High German from “Friedrichs”, perhaps under the influence
of Luther’s Bible. Such a change may have taken place in other parts of northern Germany. In any case the
name Friedrichs is rather common on the island of Rügen.
It should be mentioned that Rügen and the adjacent part of the main-land, called Pomerania, had become
subjected to the Grandduke of Brandehburg in the seventeenth century. The area called Brandenburg,
south of Pomerania, was the nucleus of the later Prussia. At the end of the Thirty Years War, 1648, the
western part of Pomerania, in-cluding Rügen, became subjected to Sweden and remained so up to 1815.
Thus, between 1648 and 1815 the members of the Friedrichs family were Swedish subjects; but, of course
they did not normally speak Swedish.
My early ancestors on Rügen spoke Low German. They understood High German though, since Church
services and other ceremonies were conducted in High German. In later years educated people spoke only
High German among themselves, but spoke Low German to farm workers. That was still so in 1916, when I
stayed on Rügen for some time.
Chapter 2
The Early Friedrichs Family
While most of my known ancestors were craftsmen and merchants in the towns, or Lutheran ministers, the
earliest members of the Friedrichs family, in the 18th century, were Farmers. The kind of farmers they were,
should be explained. There were hardly any in-dependent small farms on Rügen since the Thirty Years War.
Most agricultural units on Rügen, in fact all I know of, were large “land estates”. In German such an estate is
called a “Gut’ In the following I shall use the German term. Such a Gut might cover 500 to 1,000 acres or
more. Its owner, mostly a nobleman, had the farm work done by quite a number of employees, most of them
serfs (up to 1807). Such an owner, called a Gutsbesitzer”, might lease such a Gut to a tenant, or to several
tenants if he owned several “Güter”. Since the English term “tenant” has connotations that do not apply, I
prefer to use the German terms “Gütspächter”. Such a Pächter, if he was efficient, was rather well off. A
Gutsbesitzer or Pächter would sometimes sublease his cow and milk business to a subtenant, who was
called a “Hollander” since this system of subletting had come from Holland. (If the cow and milk business was
not subleased, the em-ployee who handled it was called a “Schweizer” since, presumably, this system came
from Switzerland).
The first definitely known ancestor with the name Friedrichs, Joachim Christoph (32)* was a “Holländer”.
*-Number in the brackets ( ) refer to the numbers in the ancestor list Appended L. A. (attached –in the
original hand written version -MNF)
He worked from 1744 on at a place called Gruridsdorf, which was a part of a pair of Güter, Mulitz and Klein
Carow.*
* “Klein” refers to the area of the mansion: “Gross” refers to the area in which the farm workers live.
In 1762 or a little later, Joachim Christoph became the Pächter of these Güter. Of the wife of Joachim
Christoph, probably named Regina Sophia Vorköper one knows not much more than that she bore quite a
number of children. Only four of them grew to adulthood.
This information is taken from the church register in the village of Samtens near Grundsdorf. An interesting
item in these records is that after every funeral service a fee had to be paid for ringing the bell. The amount
that Joachim Christoph Friedrichs had to pay was based on the fact that he was a free man, not a serf. For
that reason he was actually called “Herr Friedrichs”.
Only one son and one daughter of Joachim Christoph had children. The daughter, Eleonora Regina
Friedrichs married to Johann Martin Dalmer, had a sequence of rather prominent descendants, but there is
no personal relationship to them. The son was Adolph Heinrich Friedrichs (16), my ancestor.
After the death of Joachim Christoph, (1787), his oldest son, Carl, became Pächter of Mulitz and Klein
Carow. Adolph Heinrich became Pachter of a different Gut, Silvits, owned by the Count of Putbus, the
leading nobleman on Rügen. Eventually, two probably smaller Güter were joined with Silvitz: Dalkwitz and
Dolgemost.*
*Place names ending with itz, in, ow, and bus are Slavonic. “Dolgemost” is the Slavonic expression for ‘Long
Bridge”.
Adolph Heinrich married Johanna Christine Arnd (17). The pair had eight children. All of them are listed in
Adolph Heinrich’s will (1811), which is a beautiful document displaying his seal and those of relatives and
friends. I still own this document. (For a copy see Appendix 1) (Martin now has this document,-MNF) The
children were a Carl, Adolph, Heinrich, Moritz, Julius, Wilhelmine, and the twins Charlotte and Ludwig. The
last one was my greatgrandfather. Before describ-ing his life I want to say something about his father, Adolf
Heinrich, the other children, and his mother, Johanna Christine.
Adolph Heinrich was described as a friendly person, who however, worried on occasion. When the twins
were born and he was “wringing his hands over the cradle”, his father in law, Hinrich Arnd (34), called him a
coward “Don’t you believe that what God has given, He can support?”.
When the oldest of Adolph Heinrich’s children, Carl, had reached the proper age, he was installed a Pächter
on a Gut, “Streu”, but he drank and ruined it. Eventually, his brother Moritz: took over. The next, Adolph,
committed suicide.*
* The minister entered the following statement on the church register “ Morebo, quam dicunt melancholiam,
commotus, incubiculo cranium et cerebrum plumbo ita percusset etc.”
Heinrich became Pächter of another Gut. Julius took over Silvitz after his father’s death, 1828. Wilhelmine
died young. Charlotte had many descendents, about whom I have quite some information but there is no
personal relation-ship with them.
There is a peculiar story about Heinrich and Julius. It is said that both had fallen in love with Emma, the
beautiful daughter of a minister’s widow and that this widow had insisted that one of the brothers had to
marry her first, before the other could marry her daughter.
What actually happened is that Lina (Caroline), the widow, suggested to Heinrich that he marry her, which
he did (1839). Heinrich died six years later, a month before his son, also called Heinrich, was born. The next
year (1846), Julius married the beautiful Emma; but she died three years later at the birth of her daughter,
also called Emma; who was christened at the funeral of her mother. Julius died five years later (1854). Thus
Lina was left to raise her son Heinrich and her granddaughter Emma.
The younger Heinrich was evidently the cousin, as well as the uncle, of the younger Emma, but only four
years older. The story goes that sometimes little Emma came howling to her grandmother’ my uncle beat me.
This “little Emma” was married in 1866, when she was only 17 years old; she brought a dowry of 80,000
Thaler into the marriage. This huge amount shows that her father, Julius, must have been extremely
efficient. Some members of the family felt that a part of this amount came from the inheritance of Adolf
Heinrich and that they should have been included in it. They even suspected that young Emma’s uncle, who
had arranged the marriage, may have profited in someway.
There were several sons and one daughter from this marriage. The sons vanished somehow. The daughter
was married, without children, to a retired colonel, who was in charge of the resort town of Binz on one of the
shores of Rügen. I met this couple once at the Gut of one of my uncles.
The younger Heinrich also became a Gutspächter like his father; but he did not do well; his son, also
Heinrich, but called Henny, grew up under difficult circumstances and was not very successful; but he had a
very efficient wife, Meta. We met two of Henny’ s and Meta’ s three children at a family gathering in 1975,
they made a very good impression.
The fourth son of Adolph Heinrich, Moritz, who had taken over the Gut Streu, was a very efficient farmer. He
married the daughter of a wealthy Gutsbesitzer, Friederike von Kathen, known in the family as Tanta Fritze.
She kept a detailed diary about the Friedrichs family, which I have used extensively. She was also very
stingy, as my father told me. He was sometimes invited for dinner at her house, but always had to go to a
restaurant after those meals.
At one Christmas eve Friederike surprised her son Ernst with a great number of little rolls of paper dangling
from the branches of the Christmas-tree. It turned out that every roll was a 1,000 mark bill. That gift made it
possible for Ernst to buy a Gut, Patzig. Thus he became a “Gutsbesitzer”, in fact a Rittergutsbesitzer. (A ”
Rittergut” is a Gut that once was owned by a nobleman).
Ernst was also a very efficient farmer, in fact so much that he was able to buy two additional rather large
Güter for his two sons, Willy and Walter, both of whom were also enthusiastic farmers.
My parents had originally not much contact with these relatives. But, in the midst of the First World War,
1916, when I was almost starved, my mother took the initiative to ask Willy and Leise (Luise) his wife,
whether I could spend an entire summer (including a month or two of school time) on their Gut. This was the
first of many wonderful times I enjoyed there.
After the second World War Willy and Walter lost their Guter and the families had to flee to West Germany,
where we on occasion met Tante Leise and quite a number of descendents of Willy and Walter.
Chapter 3
The Arnd Family
The wife of Adolph Heinrich Friedrichs (16), Harma Christine Arnd (17) was the daughter of Hinrich Arnd
(34), whose father, Ludwig (68) and grandfather Andreas Arnd (136) were shepherds and serfs of the
Count of Putbus. The last name of Ludwig Arnd’s wife was Subklev. This is one of the two purely slavonic
names among those of my ancestors.
The story is told in the Arnd family that the first member of this family was the son of a Swedish corporal who
had married into a farmer’s family on Rügen. This story just cannot be true, After all, Andreas Arnd was a
serf and a shepherd, not a farmer. Also, many people with the name Arnd lived near Putbus at that time. It is
inconceivable that this name should have been introduced by a Swedish corporal. The true story is more
likely that the first Arnd was the illegitimate son of a Swedish soldier. Illegitimacies of course happened
frequently everywhere and in particular in an area through which soldiers passed all the time in the various
wars between Sweden and countries on the mainland. Illegitimacies are even explicitly recorded to have
occurred in the Arnd family, in fact, three times.
Hanna Christine’s father, Hinrich Arnd, was born a serf. He started out as a shepherd; later on he had
various other jobs. At one stage, probably after 1763, he was made a free man by the Count of Putbus, who
evidently had recognized his great abilities. Eventually, he became Pächter of a Gut, Posewald. More about
him will be found in Appendix 2. Hinrich’s younger brother, Ludwig Nicolaus, was also freed and also became
a Pächter. He changed the spelling “Arnd” to “Arndt”.
One of the sons of Ludwig Nicolaus Arndt, Ernst Moritz, played a considerable role in Prussian history. He
studied at the University in Greifswald, a small city on the mainland, straight south of Putbus and later went
on to become a professor of philosophy there. He wrote a paper about serfdom in this part of Germany,
which played a decisive role in the abolition of serfdom in Prussia in 1807. During and after the Napoleonic
Wars, Arndt led a restless life; eventually he was associated with the Frei-herr vom Stein, who tried to
liberalize the state of Prussia. When a new university was founded in Bonn, Arndt was made a pro-fessor of
history there (1818).
Arndt’s political attitude was democratic as well as nationalistic. These two attitudes, originating in the
French Revolution, were essentially the same at that time. In later years Arndt was mainly concerned with
the unification of the various German states.
After reaction had set in, in 1820, Arndt was forbidden to teach for 20 years.
Arndt wrote profusely. Among his writings are poems, fairy tales, travel stories, and also an autobiography.
In one of his many published letters, Arndt also speaks about his family. In particular he writes about his
cousin Henna Christine Friedrichs in glowing terms “the good old Friedrichs, who was four or five years older
than myself, took an early liking to me... As a young woman she was a very pretty, friendly and orderly
person. She had given me many good snacks and had done me as a youth many good favors. Later on,
she had gone through her not always thornless path valiantly and virtuously.” The last remark may refer to
her oldest son Carl’s ruining his Gut, to the suicide of her son Adolph, and the death of her son Heinrich.
My grandfather, Carl Friedrichs (4) told me that he had seen his grandmother, Hanna Christine, on a visit to
Silvits, when he was a child. He remembered that she was bedridden, but could pull herself up by a towel
hanging down from the ceiling.
Chapter 4
Ludwig Friedrichs and the Rosenthal Family
The youngest son of Adolph Heinrich, my great grandfather Ludwig Friedrichs (8) was sent by his brothers
to the city of Greifswald on the mainland, easily reached by boat sailing south from the town of Putbus. In
Greifswald Ludwig was to be a merchant, selling products that came mainly from the Güter of his brothers or
buying some that were needed there. Ludwig got married and had four children. Before discussing what
happened to him and his family I shall tell the story of his wife’s family.
The name of Ludwig Friedrichs’ wife was Wilhelmine Rosenthal (9) always called “Minna”. She was the
daughter of a prosperous merchant in Greifswald, Carl (18). whose father, Johann Christian (36) was born
in Halberstadt, a small city north of the Harz Mountains. The latter’s father, August (72) was a brewer and
farmer.
The name Rosenthal, also spelled Rosendahl, is common in that area; it can be traced back to the year
1619.
I may mention, as a curiosity, that a descendent of Minna’s brother, a physician in Berlin, was afraid of losing
his patients after 1933. Therefore he changed the name Rosenthal to the last name of his grandmother,
Schlutius.
The Jewish name Rosenthal has actually quite a different origin.
Before telling the story of the family of the mother of Minna’s father, which is somewhat long, I shall say
something about the family of her own mother, Henriette Heller (19). Henriette’s father, Carl Friedrich Heller
(38) and her grandfather, Joachim Heller (76) were Lutheran ministers in small towns on the mainland south
of Rügen. (This area, called Vorpommern in German and Hither Pomerania in English, will be referred to as
Westpomerania.) Carl Friedrich Heller’s wife was Elisabeth Marie Schulz, and Joachim’s wife was Marie
Margarethe Schulze.
The name Schul(t)s(e), which occurs in four different spellings, means “Village Mayor” It is the most frequent
name occurring independently among those of my ancestors, I know about, except for names of noblemen it
occurs six times independently. This name is also one of the three most common German last names:
Muller, Schulse, and Schmidt. The names Muller and Schmidt do not at all occur among those of my known
ancestors;
In a book about the Lutheran ministers in West Pomerania, Carl Friedrich Heller is described as a man of
‘Heart and Head,’ who was tried through severe family suffering and never succumbed. This suffering refers
to the fact that his wife, probably after the birth of her daughter. Henriette, became deaf and blind. She died
when the daughter was three years old. Pastor Heller married again and his wife seems to have been a
good stepmother.
Minna’s Father, Carl Abraham Christian Rosenthal (18), and Grandfather, Johann Christian Rosenthal (36)
were merchants in Greifswald, who held high positions in the city government. Apparently, they were
importers, importing in particular salt. Outside of the city boundaries of Greifswald, there is an area that
even today is called ‘The Rosenthal”. It was apparently a salt flat, also referred to as a “saline.”
The wife of Johann Christian Rosenthal was Marie Dommes (37), the daughter of Moritz Christian Dommes
(74). Moritz Dommes was the son of a minister in a small town near Hannover, who belonged to a family
which apparently was of some importance in, and near, Hannover. There is a relationship between the
branch of the Dommes family and that of the great mathematician Bernhard Riemann; but I am connected
with another branch. Hence there is no common ancestry unfortunately.
The wife of Moritz Dommes (74) was Anna Trendelenburg (75), daughter of Caspar Trendelenburg (150), a
merchant in Greifswald, whose family came originally from Lübeck. Caspar also had high positions in the city
government. One day he was called to appear before the City Council, There he was accused of having
done something improper. Hearing this he collapsed and died. He was 41 years old. His widow, Anna
Lemmius (151), had a lot to cope with.
A year after this sudden death her home and the warehouse burnt down. Still several years later the widow
and the husband of her daughter, Moritz Dommes, started a successful spice trade; they also owned the salt
flat temporarily.
The wife of Caspar Trendelenburg, Anna Lemmius (151), was the daughter of Georg Christoph Lemmius
(302), in Greifswald and Stralsund.He was a descendent of successively, a minister, a city judge, and two
more ministers. The earliest one, Enoch Lemmius, a pastor in the small city of Welsen, north of
Braunschweig, was the first one to give a Lutheran sermon there, sometimes in the 16th century.
The wife of Georg Christoph Lemmius, Agnis Battus (303), was the daughter of Abraham Battus (606), who
was a professor of theology, logic, and metaphysics at the University of Greifswald. His father,
Bartholoiuaeus Battus (1212) was also a professor of theology and logic there. He was born in Hamburg as
the son of a merchant, Johannes Battus, who had come from Antwerp. His father, Bartholomaeus, in turn,
was a learned man, a student of Martin Luther, who lived in Aelst in Flanders. He was expelled under the
Spanish occupation.
The ancestry of Agnis Battus on her mother’s and grandmother’s side in Greifswald can be traced back to
the 13th century.
Having given an account of the ancestry of Minna’s father, Carl Rosenthal, I now want to say something
about her father’s and her own brother and sisters and their descendants.
One sister of Carl Rosenthal (18), Caroline, married to Friedrich Wüstenberg, had many, mostly prominent,
descendents, of whom detailed records exist; but there is no personal relationship. A brother, Friedrich
Christian Rosenthal, was a professor of anatomy at the university in Greifswald and later in Berlin. He was
not married. About a sister, Wilhelmine Margarethe Rosenthal, the following story is told.
In 1810, when Napoleon’s army had occupied Prussia and Vorpommern, then still belonging to Sweden,
Wilhelmine Margarethe, then 32 years old, had taken care of a wounded French officer at a hospital in
Greifswald. They got engaged and agreed that he should go back to France, settle his affairs and return to
Greifswald in a year to get married. He did not appear at the arranged date; she waited. All this time a local
merchant, Lorenz Luhde, urged her to give up waiting and marry him. Finally, she did. When they left the
church, there was the French officer -- so the legend says.
The Luhde couple had no children. He died at the age of 101 (still reading the newspaper without glasses)
and she a few years later, 90 years old. At their golden wedding the Queen of Prussia gave them a Bible
with her inscription. I still have this Bible. (David Snyder has this bible-MNF)
Minna Friedrichs (9), the daughter of Carl Rosenthal (18) had several brothers. One of them, Ferdinand,
was the grandfather of the physician, who changed his name under Hitler. Another brother, Wilhelm,
emigrated to St. Louis in America (1841). A granddaughter of his, and her husband with the name Morisse,
visited us in Germany; but I failed to trace these relatives after we had come to America.
Still another brother of Minna, the oldest, Johann Carl Rosenthal, was a merchant in Greifewald, as most of
his ancestors had been. Johann Carl had three sons, who somehow disappeared, and three unmarried
daughters.
One of these daughters, Marie, was born in 1848, the year of the revolution in Prussia; she was baptized
Maria Victoria Constitutionella. My grandfather, her cousin, addressed her always with those three names
when he wrote her. I knew her and her older sister Clara quite well, when I was a student in Greifswald in
1920. Clara told me that her father hated being a merchant; he would have liked to go to the university and
study history. Apparently, he was not successful as a merchant. My great-grandfather Ludwig was perhaps
also not too successful. Aunt Clara indicated that there had been some financial problems between Ludwig
and Johann Carl. This may partly have been due to some competition between these two and other cousins
who apparently were in the same business. I have a tiny newspaper clipping from 1838, in which Ludwig
advertises that he desires to buy certain seeds and right above this his brother-in-law Wilhelm advertises
that he wants to buy the same kind of seeds.
Aunt Clara had been a governess in Sweden for many years and loved it. One day, when she was high up
beyond the Arctic Circle, a Lapp, who, I suppose, owned many reindeer, asked her to marry him. He could
not understand that she refused. During my semester in Greifswald she gave me Swedish lessons with some
success. This knowledge came rather handy to me in 1930, when I was somewhat stranded in a small hotel
high up in Finland. Since then, I have forgotten nearly all my knowledge of Swedish.
Chapter 5
The Family of Ludwig Friedrichs
After having told the rather lengthy story of the Rosenthal family, I must return to Ludwig Friedrichs and his
family. Ludwig (8) and Minna Rosenthal (9) were married in 1835. I have a tiny card on which “Cammerarius
Rosenthal,” Minna’s father, invites his sister Wilhelmine Margarethe and her husband “Altermann Luhde” to
attend the wedding.
Ludwig and Minna had four children, Carl (4), my grandfather, Marie, Hermine, and Clara. Ludwig died of
typhoid fever when he was 39 years old (1842). The children were then, 4, 2, and 1 year old Minna took
over her husband’s business with the aid of a manager; but after six years she gave up doing this. She then
had a hard time raising her children. Her manager, however, was able to buy an estate.
None of Minna’s three daughters got married. (Incidently, the same is true of the three daughters of her
brother Johann Carl.) One of the reasons that none of Minna’s daughters married may have been that
Minna could not provide a trousseau for her daughters; but that was not the only reason. Apparently, a
young man was interested in Clara and wanted to marry her. In fact, I have a small letter containing a poem
written by him for Clara. But nothing came of it. Later on it was said that Minna did not allow Clara to get
married; Clara should take care of her.
Minna was said to be a stern mother. On the other hand, a letter she wrote shortly before her husband’s
death shows that she loved him dearly. Also in later years the letters she wrote to her children show her
concern.
While Clara lived with her mother and took care of her until she died (1869), Marie and Hermine were
teachers and governesses. When Marie and Clara were 38 and 35 years old (1876), they moved into a
retirement home in Putbus on Rügen. This home was founded by Hofrat Bernhard Engelbrecht, the
administrator of the Count Malte of Putbus, sometime after 1810, when the City of Putbus was developed by
this Count. Hofrat Engelbrecht was one of those who had signed the will of Adolph Heinrich Friedrichs. Since
Engelbrecht’s wife was a nee Arnd, a daughter of Heinrich Arnd, the members of the Friedrichs family
qualified to be admitted to the retirement home. Aunt Marie was still alive and well in 1916, when I visited her
in this retirement home during my stay on Rügen in that year.
Hermine had first founded a private school; later on (1878) she became the director of a newly established
trade school for women, a rather novel institution at that time. This school was located in Kiel, a city at the
southwestern corner of the Baltic Sea, where her brother lived at that time.
This brother of Hermine, my grandfather, Carl Friedrichs (4), would have liked to attend a university and
study mainly history; but he could not do so since his mother could not have supported him. So he started
as a clerk in a bookstore in Greifswald. Later on he took a position in a bookstore in Kiel. There he met
another clerk, Hermann Heiberg, who at that time was also working in that store.
Later, Carl took a position in the book store of Hermann’s father in Schleswig and soon, (1863), he got
engaged to Hermann’s sister, Nanny (5). A year later Carl was made the owner of the “Schwerssche
Buchhandlung” in Kiel, which was the main bookstore used by the professors at the University in that city. A
year later Carl and Nanny got married (1864).
Before telling about the life of Carl and Nanny Friedrichs I must relate — at least to a certain degree — the
story of the Heiberg family, which is quite involved and colorful.
Chapter 6
The Heiberg and Schröder Families
Carl Heiberg (10), the father of Nanny Heiberg (5), had been a lawyer in the city of Schleswig, but now, in
1864, he ran a bookstore. To explain how this came about I must make a few historical remarks about the
Duchies of Schleswig, adjacent to Denmark, and Holstein to the south. These duchies had been subject to
the kings of Denmark for several centuries. But while Danish was spoken in the northern part of Schleswig,
only German was spoken in its southern part and in Holstein. This difference of language was originally not
felt to be very significant, but after the French revolution the people became aware of their nationality,
mainly defined by their language.
In 1848 the Germans in Schleswig-Holstein rebelled against their Danish ruler. They wanted to be
independent of Denmark and have their own duke they claimed to be entitled to. Carl Heiberg played a
considerable role in this uprising through his writings. Also he proposed the colors of the flag, blue, white,
red, for the new independent duchies to be reestablished. But the uprising failed. Because of this support of
the uprising, Heiberg was not allowed by the Danish government to remain a lawyer. To make a living,
Heiberg started to run a bookstore.
I should like to relate an incident that happened in one of the restrictive years after 1848. My grandmother,
Nanny (5), and two other girls, then about 14 years old, were walking somewhere outside of the city, one girl
wearing a blue, one a white, and one a red dress, when some Danish sergeants approached them and
rebuked them for displaying the forbidden color combination. The girls claimed it was a coincidence. This
incident aroused a big fuss in Copenhagen and Carl Heiberg had to pay a heavy fine. I asked my
grandmother many years later, whether that was really a coincidence. Of course not, she answered.
After 1848 the Danish government had tried to force the Danish language on the people of the duchy of
Schleswig, but without success. Still, many educated Germans in this area knew Danish more or less. I am
rather sure that my grandmother, Nanny, understood some Danish; her mother was even bilingual since she
had lived in Denmark as a child and young teenager. My father, Nanny’s son, could read Danish and
sometimes did.
In 1864 the desired independence from Denmark was attained after a successful war that Prussia and
Austria had made on Denmark; but, to the great disappointment of the people of Schleswig-Holstein, these
duchies were annexed by Prussia.
In the course of years, however, most Germans in Schleswig--Holstein accepted this situation and their
feelings against Prussia gradually subsided and also their feelings against Denmark mellowed.
Carl Heiberg (10) was born in 1796 in a small village north of the city of Schleswig as an illegitimate child.*
* In the report of his birth in the church records of the village, the parentage of Carl Heiberg is falsified.
His mother was Anna Marianne (Nannette) von Schwarzenfeld, who at that time stayed with friends, a
physician and his wife, in Schleswig. To cover up the illegitimacy, it was said that the child had been found
on a haystack, a Heuberg in German. The child was named Carl Friedrich Heuberg; the name Heuberg was
later changed to Heiberg. Carl grew up with the physician couple mentioned above. At his confirmation he
was told that the aunt who had sent him gifts each Christmas was really his mother, but he did not see her
then. In fact, he visited her for the first time together with his wife in 1835, right after his marriage.**
** In the report of this marriage in the church records in Schleswig the parentage of Carl Heiberg is falsified.
Carl grew up as a shy and modest child, displaying, as a teenager, an interest in philosophy and also in art
and music. Later on he went to various universities, among them the University of Berlin, where he took a
course with the philosopher Hegel. A slip on which Hegel certified that Heiberg had taken the course
successfully is in my son Christopher’s possession. Actually, Heiberg was mainly a student of law. In 1823 he
established himself as a lawyer in Schleswig. He wrote profusely, mainly about the political situation. On
account of that he received in 1830 an honorary doctor’s degree from the University of Rostock (which is at
the Baltic Sea to the east of Kiel). After the defeat of 1848, Heiberg had to leave the country, but was
permitted to return somewhat later. In 1857 he founded a book and music store. After 1864, under the
Prussian regime, he was again allowed to be a lawyer. In all these years he played a considerable role in the
intellectual life of Schleswig. He died in 1872.
Heiberg’s mother, Nannette von Schwarzenfeld (21), had come from Vienna. Her father, Franz Carl, born in
Prague, was a captain in the Austrian army. He died early. When Nannette was about 14 years old she
entered a theater school in Vienna.
In the years from 1781 to 1785, Friedrich Ludwig Schröder, the greatest actor and theater director in
Germany at that time, played with his troupe at the Hoftheater in Vienna. There, he met Nannette, then an
orphan. When Schröder and his wife returned to Hamburg (1785) where he had his headquarters, they took
Nannette along. She was then about 19 years old. In Schröder’s theater Nannette played at first mostly boy’
s and girl’s parts. Apparently she played only a limited number of years.
After she ceased to be an actress, Nannette continued to live with Schröder and his childless wife in their
country home in Rellingen, not far from Hamburg. After the death of Schröder (1816) and the death of his
wife (1829), Nannette inherited their fortune. (We have in our possession the bank accounts of Schröder’s
wife from the time after his death and various silver pieces.) Nannette died in the Schröder’s country home
in 1846.
The family tradition and the opinion of biographers, who have written about Schröder and Heiberg, is that
the father of Carl Heiberg, born 1796, was Schröder himself. My father, who was a lawyer, wrote a very
careful and convincing “lawyer’s brief” to prove this. One must assume that Heiberg knew that Schröder was
his father. There are definite indications implying this.
About the person of F. L. Schröder and his role as an actor, I can make only a few remarks. First of all I
mention that Schröder’s paternity is also clouded. Schröder’s mother, Sophie Charlotte Biereichel (41), the
daughter of a court goldstitcher (82) in Berlin, married an organist Diedrich Schröder in 1734. But, the
marriage did not last long; the couple separated - without divorce - in 1738. Sophie Charlotte then joined a
travelling theater group, which somewhat later was run very successfully by Conrad Ackermann, the son of a
Pächter in Mecklenburg and his wife Sophia Metta Tholeni.
In 1744, a son was born to Sophie Charlotte; he was named Friedrich Ludwig Schröder. In 1749, while the
theater group was in Moscow, Sophie Charlotte married Conrad Ackermann. It must be assumed that at that
time it was known that Diedrich Schröder had died.
The story is told that Diedrich Schröder, described as a drunkard, had visited Sophie Charlotte in January or
February 1744 at the place where she was at that time and had fathered the child.
That story is most unlikely; it was probably invented to cover up the illegitimate birth of the child. One must
assume that Ackermann was the father of F. L. Schröder. This assumption is also made, as a matter of
course, in a recent biography of F. L. Schröder.
Friedrich Ludwig Schröder grew up under awkward circumstances since his parents constantly traveled,
except for one year in Königsberg (1755), where Ackermann had built a theater. There F. L. Schröder, then
11 years old, went to a regular school for one year. Soon after that Schröder made himself independent, but
met his parents again, when he was 15 years old. Then he started training to become an actor and a
dancer. In 1764 he joined the theater that Ackermann had founded in Hamburg. When Ackermann had died,
1771, Schröder took over. After his last performance, in 1798, he withdrew to his country home in Rellingen.
He died in 1816.
Several books and articles have been written describing Schröder’s role as an actor and director, and also
his great role in Freemasonry.
Charter 7
The Family of Carl von Baudissin
The wife of Carl Heiberg was Asta, Countess von Baudissin (11), the daughter of Count (“Count”
corresponds to “Graf” in German.) Carl Christian von Baudissin (22). In her memoirs Asta relates that, the
night before a formal party, she had dreamed that Carl Heiberg would kiss her on her shoulder, which would
be bare as was the custom at that time (1835). At the party the next day, Heiberg did what she expected.
Thus they were engaged; they soon got married.
Asta and Carl complemented each other very well. While Carl was shy and modest - my grandmother told
me that she once observed her father sewing a button on his coat - Asta was resolute and determined,
rational and logical. Whenever any of their relatives got into trouble - and that happened frequently - they
asked Carl and Asta for help. More will be said about Asta later in this chapter.
The Baudissin family had lived in Schleswig-Holstein for decades and owned a number of large estates.
Originally, however, the Baudissins had come from the city of Bautzen in the eastern part of what is now
called Saxony, north of the northern tip of Bohemia. “Baudissin” was the original name of the city of Bautzen.
This name is the second one of the two purely Slavonic names among those of my ancestors. (The first one
was Subklev on Rügen).
One of the early Baudissins, Wulff Heinrich (704), 1579-1646, served during the Thirty Years War under the
ruler of Saxony as well as under the King of Denmark, eventually as a field Marshal. He married Sophia von
Rantzau, (16 years old, her husband was 57 –MNF) who came from a leading family of noblemen in Holstein.
The descendents of this couple lived partly in Saxony, partly in Holstein.
One of these descendents, Heinrich Christian, Count von Baudissin (88), was married to Susanne
Magdalene Countess von Zinzendorff (89). Her grandfather, Georg Ludwig Count von Zinzendorff*,
*A sister of Georg Ludwig is an ancestor of Queen Victoria, who thus was a 5th cousin of Asta Baudissin.
a half-brother of the founder of a famous pietist sect, was married to Maria Elisabeth Baroness von Teuffel
(357).
The Zinzendorffs were originally Protestant refugees from Austria. Their ancestry can be traced far back, in
fact to Charlemagne and beyond. A short such ancestry line will be shown in Appendix 4
A son of Heinrich Christian Baudissin, Heinrich Friedrich (44), the father of Carl Christian, was at some time
the ambassador of the King of Denmark at the court of the King of Prussia. The story is told that while
traveling from Copenhagen to Berlin, which took several days, he always sat upright and never leaned back
in his coach. This is all the family tradition has to tell about him with one exception.
In earlier times it was customary among well-off people to spend the evenings by playing at cards - for
money. On one occasion Heinrich Friedrich’s wife owed her opponent an enormous sum at the end of a
game. The opponent offered to forget the debt if she allowed him to give her a kiss. She refused, so her
husband had to sell one of his estates to pay for her gambling debt.
Heinrich Friedrich’s wife was Caroline Adelhaid von Schimmelmann (45). Much will be said about her father
later on. Her mother Caroline Tugendreich* (*Tugendreich means “Rich in Virtue.”) was the daughter of a
Prussian officer, Alexander von Friedeborn and his wife Marie von Müllenheim (183). Caroline grew up as if
she were adopted by a nobelman, Heinrich von Gersdorff, who had his estate in Saxony near the place in
Prussia at which von Friedeborn was stationed. It was generally assumed that Caroline Tugendreich was
actually the daughter of Heinrich von Gersdorff. In later years, when she lived in Hamburg and Denmark,
she was always named “nee von Gersdorff’, even in legal documents. Her husband had seen to that.
Caroline Tugendreich’s husband, Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann (90), was born in 1724 in a small city in
Pomerania, north of Berlin, as the youngest son of a prosperous merchant. His mother’s father, Johann
Ludendorff, also a prosperous merchant, was the ancestor of two famous people, the astronomer
Ludendorff and the General Ludendorff.
In later years it was frequently assumed that Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann was a Jew, because of very
primitive “reasons”: his name, his prominent nose, and his spectacular success as a merchant*
*He was sometimes called the Rothschild of the North.
Such primitive assumptions appeared frequently in print and were accepted to some degree, even in the
family.
When Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann was about 18 years old he made himself independent. After some years
he started a business in Dresden, the capital of the state of Saxony, and soon, when he was 23 years old,
he married Caroline Tugendreich, the foster-daughter of Heinrich von Gersdorff, who was then minister of
commerce of the state of Saxony. In 1756, after the start of the Seven Years War, in which Saxony and
Prussia were on opposite sides. Schimmelmann left Saxony and soon he worked for King Frederick II of
Prussia by selling to England (via Hamburg) the stock of the famous China (Porcellane) factory in the city of
Meissen (which then belonged to Saxony). In doing this he made a great fortune. After that he settled in
Hamburg as a merchant. Later on, he became Treasurer of Denmark and he was also made a Count. He
was the richest man in Denmark at that time. He died in 1782. The great fortune he left fizzled out more or
less in three or four generations.
I should like to mention that Schimmelmann owned sugar plantat-ions on the Virgin Islands, which then
belonged to Denmark. His oldest son, who was mainly interested in poetry and literature, nevertheless
succeeded his father as Treasurer of Denmark. He made a great effort to eliminate slavery on the Virgin
Islands. After some years he succeeded in having the importation of slaves into these islands forbidden.
Thus Denmark became the first country to do that. (England was the next country to do that. Somewhat later
England forbade slavery altogether and Denmark followed soon after.)
I now turn to the descendents of Heinrich Friedrich von Baudissin(44)and his wife, the daughter of
Schimmelmann. They had three sons and several daughters. Only two of their sons, Carl and Joseph, had
descendents who live today.
A grandson of Joseph acquired a law degree and became a high government official in Prussia: his son Wolf
von Baudissin was an army officer in the Second World War. After the war, as a general, he was in charge
of the democratization of the new West German Army. He joined the social Democratic party and is highly
respected by the labor unions. Later on he was in charge of strategy for NATO in Paris and Brussels. Now
he is a profes-sor of strategy at the University of Hamburg. We are good friends with him and his wife; we
always visit them when we have a chance to pass through Hamburg on our travels in Europe.
The life of the second son of Heinrich Friedrich(44) and Caroline Adelheid (45), Carl Christian (22), was
rather peculiar and the same can be said, more or less, about some of his descendents.
When Carl was 19 years old, he eloped with Henriette Kunniger(23), the wife of a Danish officer. She was
the daughter of a very respec-table government official in Schleswig, Kammerrat Kunniger (46). His father
(92), in turn, was an actor and theater director in the city of Flensburg in the northern part of Schleswig.
The elopement caused quite a shock to the family. Carl was disinherited by his parents and he was also
denied recognition as a Count. Some years later though, he was again accepted as a Count.
After being divorced from her husband, Henriette got married to Carl Baudissin. The couple moved
restlessly from one place to another, and produced many children; thirteen in fact. At first they stayed near
Dresden, where they had the chance to observe the Napoleonic armies pass by. Carl, so his daughter said,
always carried a loaded gun, so he could shoot Napoleon if he had a chance. The next place at which they
stayed for a while was the city of Greifswald, (near Rügen). There one daughter was born. In Greifswald Carl
had heard about the Count of Putbus on Rügen and his habit of giving his daughters strange names such
as Wanda and Asta. Carl himself had the same inclination; so he named their daughter “Asta.” This
daughter was my great-grandmother (11). Eventually Carl and Henriette lived on a small estate in the
central part of Jütland, the mainland of Denmark, north of Schleswig. Later on they lived in the city of
Schleswig.
The characters of Carl (22) and Henriette (23) are described in a striking way by their daughter Asta in the
Memoirs, which she wrote, (of which I have a copy) (Martin now has the copy-MNF). A pertinent excerpt from
this book is appended, A3. Her own strong and determined character becomes clear in the excerpt. But her
description of the characters of her parents, though certainly correct, is not easily reconciled with the
following story which is based on family tradition and some letters.
On some occasion, when both Carl and Henriette were about 50 years old, Carl entered a room in which
Henriette was playing the piano and saw that her music teacher, Peters, had placed his arm on Henriette’s
shoulder. Carl turned, left the room without saying a word and sued for divorce (1840). After the divorce
Henriette had to marry Peters, who then took a small position in the city of Stralsund. Henriette lived with
Peters for 24 years till her death. I have the impression that her children were mainly on their father’s side,
but at least Asta’s husband Carl Heiberg corresponded with Henriette, his mother-in-law, and with Peters.
I should like to make a few remarks about the 13 children, six sons and seven daughters, of Carl and
Henriette Baudissin. The oldest son, Wolf, was a postmaster; his son Friedrich was an admiral in charge of
Kaiser Wilhelm’s Yacht. Four of the other six sons of Carl emigrated to America since their chances were
small under the Danish regime. One of them intended to become a physician by studying with a practicing
doctor; but he died soon. Another son returned to Schleswig Holstein. The youngest of the four, Felix,
became a farmer, but lost the farm due to the depression in the 1870’s.
Our son David found out that grandchildren of Felix existed and were living in St. Louis. One grandson wrote
to us that it is 111 years that someone of his family had heard from their family in Germany. He was a press
operator. One granddaughter owns a beauty shop; another is an audit assistant. For some years we have
corresponded with her.
The fourth of the four sons who went to America, Adelbert, served in the northern army in the Civil War and
then returned to Germany. He became a prolific writer; among others he wrote books for German immigrants
to America. We are good friends with two of his granddaughters in Munich.
One of the seven daughters of Carl and Henriette was not married; another one did not marry a nobleman;
but the five other daughters did. The names of the husband of one of them was Marquis de Cubieres; the
names of the other husbands are: von Bischofshausen, von Stockhausen, von Lilienkron, von Luckner, von
Arnim.
A daughter of Charlotte von Arnim was married to a Lutheran minister in a small town in Silesia. One of their
daughters, Elisabeth, was married to a sports journalist, Karl Markus. We knew the Markus family quite well
since they lived for some years in Düsseldorf, where we also lived at that time. In particular we have
maintained contact with their youngest son, Karl-Lutz Markus.
Chapter 8
The Younger Heiberg Family
Carl and Asta Heiberg had one daughter, Nanny (5) and three sons.
Nanny, as was said in Chapter 5, married my grandfather Carl Friedrichs (4). (Nanny’s grandfather, father,
brother, and husband were all named Carl, her son was named Karl-MNF)
The oldest of the three sons, Carl was a merchant in Hong Kong and died there. The youngest son Julius, it
is said, wanted to be an actor, but found actors too immoral; so, he studied law and became a pro-secuting
district attorney. Later on he became the mayor of the city of Schleswig for two terms, each term being
twelve years. He had a very captivating way of dealing with people. His spec-ialty was Kaiser’s birthday
speeches once every year. His - extremely tall - son, Ulrich, became an army officer. I have talked with
Ulrich’s daughter, the wife of a physician, when I was in East Germany. She was very unhappy there.
The third son of Carl and Asta Heiberg, Hermann was the one who had introduced my grandfather to the
Heibergs in Schleswig, Hermann became a writer. He was highly regarded at his time; perhaps he was the
first German novelist to employ a quick and fluent way of writing novels. He was a great charmer. That was
described by other writers and it was also told me by my mother.
Hermann applied his charm also in dealing with his creditors. So, when he died, he left great debts. Since I
was one of his godsons, this negative inheritance was also offered to me; but my father rejected it in my
name. I was 8 years old then. Finally, his brother Julius, the mayor of Schleswig, accepted the negative
inheritance, most admirably. He slowly and perhaps painfully paid off the debt. Hermann’s children were not
able to do that at that time.
Hermann’ s wife Ines Voilmer had come from Venezuela. Her father, a German, was very rich, but drowned
with all his wealth while travelling on a boat between Hamburg and Caracas. His wife had come from a
leading Spanish family; her mother was a first cousin of Simon Bolivar, the leader of the movement to make
Spanish South America independent of Spain. Tante Ines sometimes told us about her childhood in
Venezuela; that was fascinating.
Among the many children of Hermann and Ines Heiberg I mention only Felix and Asta. The adopted
daughter of Felix is my brother’s wife, Eva. Asta’s Jewish husband, Alfred Brandt, was a Prussian
government official (Regierungsrat) in Berlin. Years ago we had close contact with their daughter Irene and
her husband Heinrich (now Henry) Jordan, a diplomat, when they lived in New York. Later on, in 1951, Asta’s
and Alfred’s son Klaus, his wife Hanna, and their daughters Sabine and Cornelia moved to New York and
soon became an important part of our family circle.
Chapter 9
Carl and Karl Friedrichs
I now return to my grandfather Carl Friedrichs (4) and his wife, Nanny Heiberg (5). Carl was an attractive
man; he was a good storyteller. Nanny, however, was not outgoing. She very much demanded proper
behavior of us children. Only when she was ninety and I twenty-eight years old, could I talk to her freely.
As the owner of a bookstore in Keil, Carl was at first very successful. Most professors at the university
frequented his store. In particular, if anyone needed a special rarely used, book, Carl could locate it. He
became a personal friend of several of the professors, in particular of Nöldeke, a famous specialist for old
Oriental languages. Some of the professors had the habit of walking in the afternoon to a certain garden
restaurant at the seashore in order to chat there. Carl always went with them and left a salesman to handle
the store. After a number of years, other bookstores sold cheap novels or something like paperbacks. Carl,
however, would not do that. He considered that below his dignity as a scholarly book dealer. That caused
trouble. My father, Karl, told me that, when he was 17-18 years old, he had to act as a salesman in the
store. A few years later (1888) the bookstore went bankrupt.
Carl took a job as an accountant and bookkeeper at a printing firm in Breslau, run by a former apprentice of
his. Carl’s wife, Nanny, stayed in Kiel and established a boarding house, which she ran on a very high level
with the help of her daughter Anna. The boarders were mostly what now would be called post-doctoral
visitors at the university. They were from Finland, Turkey, Japan, American, and other countries. Some of
them I have met on one of my many travels.
In the course of years, Nanny and Carl met on occasion, but did not live together any more.
Carl and Nanny Friedrichs had three children, Karl, Ernst, and Anna. Anna first attended her Aunt Hermine’s
trade school for women and later on helped her mother in her boarding house. She was severely hard of
hearing. Still she was very active and quite enterprising; in particular she was active as something like a vice-
president of the organization in Germany for those that are hard of hearing. She could communicate very
well by asking questions. That way she could extract any information she wanted. She died when she was 97
years old.*
* Being hard of hearing was, and to a certain degree, is a family trait. My father, Karl, and his father, Carl
suffered from this failing in later years. Carl’s sister Marie suffered strongly. Their mother, Minna (9), also
was hard of hearing. I myself became hard of hearing when I was about 60 years old.
The younger son of Carl and Nanny, Ernst, did not finish the gymnasium and went into agriculture. He was a
very effective charmer of the girls. Supposedly, he had fathered two illegitimate daughters; but I have not
been able to find out about them. He went to South-West-Africa, then a German Colony, to be a farmer. This
worked well for some years, up to the uprising of the Herero tribe, 1903. To Protect himself he fled, with
others, to a minis-ter’s house. A group of Hereros demanded of the minister to surrender Ernst. They
claimed that Ernst had done something wrong to them – what, I do not know. They threatened that otherwise
everybody would be killed. Reluctantly, the minister surrendered Ernst who then was shot dead. This was a
great shock to the family.
My father, Karl, went to various universities to study law and Oriental languages. The latter was the wish of
his father, Carl, who was very enthusiastic about the rise of the German Empire, and, in particular, about the
fact that Germany now had colonies, just as other countries. He wanted my father to be a consul in one of
the colonies or in a foreign country, but, my father was totally unsuited for such a position. In fact he soon
gave up the study of Oriental languages.
Actually, my father was born to be a German university professor with all the trimmings; too bad that the
circumstances prevented achieving that.
My father was in his second year of study when his father went bankrupt. My father’s grandmother, Asta,
then supported him as a student. Still he had a hard time getting by. He told me that he always bought a last
year’s herring instead of meat and, when he was invited for a meal, he got severe stomach troubles since he
was not used to heavy good food. Apparently, this poverty situation improved over the years.
My father got his degrees at the University of Breslau in Silesia. There he lived together with his father. My
grandfather had become a friend of the manufacturer of the ink that was used by the printing shop for which
my grandfather worked. On several occasions my father met a grandniece of this friend, Elisabeth Entel,
and soon they got engaged and married.
The couple traveled together to Kiel where my father was to settle down as a practicing lawyer. When they
arrived in Kiel, they were confronted by three elderly ladies, all looking nearly alike. My father asked his wife
to point out which one was her mother-in-law. Sure, my father should not have done that; he often did
peculiar things, not realizing their effect. But my mother had a very good instinct; she approached the right
one, Nanny. My mother was not only accepted but even very much loved by her husband’s family.
Before talking about Karl and Elisabeth’s life I shall describe Elisabeth’s family.
Chapter 10
The Entel and Stenger Families
My mother’s father, Otto Entel (6), was the son of Carl Friedrich Entel (12), a Lutheran minister in a small
town in western Silesia. Carl Friedrich’s father, Michael Entel (24), as well as his wife’s father, Carl Stenger
(26), were such ministers, as were many of their forefathers.
A typical situation may be described by the following scheme: There was a son of a craftsman, or merchant,
or minister, who did well in school and was therefore sent to a university to study for the ministry. When he
received a position as a minister in a small town or village, he married a daughter of the minister of the next
village. That minister himself was also the son of a craftsman or merchant and had done well in school and
was therefore sent away to study for the ministry, and so on.
A particular such case is this: Otto Entel’s father, Carl Friedrich Entel (12), had married Albertine (13), the
daughter of a minister, Carl August Stenger (26), (son of a merchant) whose wife, Charlotte (27) was the
daughter of a minister, Christian Stürmer (54) (son of a brewer) whose wife, Johanna (55) was the daughter
of a minister, Daniel Spangenberg (110) (son of a tax collector).
Another such case is: Carl Friedrich Entel’s father, Michael Entel (24) (son of a cloth maker) had married
Johanna (25), the daughter of a minister, Gottfried Gebauer (50) (son of a coachman) whose wife Johanna
(51) was the daughter of a minister Gottfried Schultze (102) (son of a minister) whose wife, Christiana (103)
was the daughter of a minister, Christian de Bouquoy (206).
The family de Bouquoy was descended from a Belgian merchant, who had immigrated to Germany. Gottfried
Schultze (1717-91) was the leading minister in the city of Görlitz. His father was a minister and one of his
brothers, also a minister, was the grandfather of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who was called “Turnvater Jahn”
since during the Napoleonic time he invented and introduced gymnastics (Turnen) for the people to develop
their health and strength. After a few years (1819) “Turnen” was considered revolutionary by the - now
reactionary - Prussian government and was forbidden. Thus Jahn and his friend Ernst Moritz Arndt had the
same fate.
It is peculiar that of the two non-noblemen involved in attempt-ing democratization of Prussia during the
Napoleonic time, one, Arndt, was a first cousin of a great-great-grandmother of mine and the other, Jahn,
was a second cousin of another great-great-grandmother of mine.
The ancestors of Carl Friedrich Entel’s father Michael Entel (24)(son of a cloth maker) in Görlitz can be
traced back to before 1500. They were mostly cloth makers, tanners, or craftsmen of other kinds. In the
years after 1600, a great mystic, Jacob Boehme, lived in Görlitz. He was a shoemaker. One of my ancestors,
Paul Hillebrand (157), a tanner, had sold his house to Boehme, and had later on posted a bond for him so
he could be released from prison. (The imprisonment was not for religious reasons; it was connected with
the quarrels between shoemakers and tanners. Boehme wrote a very witty but nasty, letter to the tanners’
guild during this quarrel.)
Most of my minister ancestors, except perhaps Gottfried Schultze and his father were rather poor. Christian
Stürmer (54) was a teacher and rector at the gymnasium in Züllichau, a city in the South East of
Brandenburg, for many years before he got a position as a minister. He then was 66 years old. His son-in-
law and successor, Carl August Stenger (26), whose mother’s father and grandfather (106,212) were
ministers, was also first a teacher and rector at the gymnasium. He was only 41 years old when he became a
minister. One of these ancestors must have had an interest in philosophy. For, a copy of Kant’s “Kritik der
reinen Vernunft” (Critique of Pure Reason), 1st or 2nd edition, came to me from the Stenger family.
The ancestry of Carl August Stenger, who had come from the city of Neu Ruppin, north of Berlin, can be
traced far back. Among these ancestors was one who was also an ancestor of Bismarck. Another ancestor
was a great-grandfather of Johann Friedrich Struensee, who for about two years, 1770-1771, ran the State
of Denmark, got involved with the queen, and was beheaded. Some of the Stenger ancestry can even be
traced back to mayors and senators of the cities Hamburg and Lüneburg, living in the 13th century
(generations 22 and 23).
Another of the Stenger ancestors, Bartholomäus Schönebeck, Mayor of the city of Stendal in northwest
Brandenburg, who died 1581, had left part of his fortune to a foundation with the stipulation that it should be
used to help students of theology in need. Some of my Stenger ancestors profited from this. In fact, in 1969,
when we visited some Stenger relatives, the Hoffmanns in Stralsund in East Germany, the son of these
relatives, who was a student of theology, told us that he had gotten some support from the Schönebeck
foundation, which still existed.
It was said above, Carl August Stenger (26) was 41 years old when he became a minister. As some of his
children told my mother, he was a very happy person; but his wife, Charlotte Stürmer (27), suffered from a
persecution complex later in life and had to be sent to an institution. Carl August and Charlotte had six
children. I mention only two of them; Franz Otto and his sister, my great-grandmother Albertine (Bertha)(13).
Franz Otto became first a minister and later a “superintendent” in Trebnitz, a small city east of Breslau in
Silesia. The function of this position was essentially that of a bishop, without its prestige. Franz Otto and his
wife had a number of children. In addition, there were always some relatives in their house, who needed a
shelter, among them my mother. Franz Otto died in 1912, when he was 97 years old. His unmarried sister
Marie, “Tante Mauschel”, who lived in his house, was 91 years old when she died.
Franz Otto Stenger had two sons and several daughters. Since my mother grew up in the house of Franz
Otto, her great uncle, she was close to all of his children, in particular to the youngest daughter, Gertrud,
who was three years older than my mother. My mother was also very close to the grandchildren of Franz
Otto. Several of them helped my mother when we were children.
In recent years I had the pleasure of meeting some of these relatives again, including two I had not known
before. One of them is Anita Hoffmann in Stralsund in East Germany, whose husband had provided me with
interesting information about the early Stenger family.
The husband of Albertine (Bertha) Stenger (13), Carl Friedrich Entel (12), was a minister in a village near
the city of Görlitz. This village was somewhat large, so it had an ordinary pastor and head pastor. Carl
Friedrich eventually reached that position.
I have in my possession a sermon and a great number of letters he had written between 1850 and 1870 to
his brother-in-law, Franz Otto. From these letters it becomes clear that Carl Friedrich was very much a
conservative, while his brother-in-law, who was 21 years younger, displayed some liberal ideas.
Carl Friedrich and Bertha Entel had four sons and one daughter. The youngest of the four brothers was
Hugo Entel. He had a government position as a “Rechnungsrat.” He lived in Strassburg in Alsace, at that
time part of Germany. Hugo died near the end of the First World War. His two children, a daughter and a
son, moved out of Alsace in 1918 since they wanted to retain their German citizenship. After a few years
they tried to locate us in Düsseldorf; but we had already left that city (1922). Fifty years later a grandson of
Hugo Entel accidentally met a member of the Stenger family, who knew of our family; he then wrote to us.
We have become good friends with the two grandsons of Hugo Entel, Jürgen Entel, and Helmut Langer.
The oldest son, Max, of Carl Friedrich and Bertha Entel, went to a university to study theology. Apparently,
he became more interested in the philosophy of Spinoza than in Lutheran theology. After some years he
developed schizophrenic tendencies. He was taken to an institution and died there soon.
The next son, Rudolph, also went to a university, but could not finish his studies. He went home where he
was mostly rather sick. Later on he stayed for some time at the home of his uncle, Franz Otto, who could
use him in one way or another, since he was a candidate of theology. My mother knew him well. She told me
that he was extremely shy, withdrawn, and polite, as all the Entels were. He could not get out of bed when he
should and had other similar inhibitions. My mother also told me that, when they were travelling by train, say
between Trebnitz and Breslau, Rudolph would get out at every second stop and wash his hands under a
pump, drying them with a red handkerchief. Eventually, his hands were also quite red. For some time he
stayed with his youngest brother Hugo in Strassburg, but finally he was sent to an institution.
The third son of Carl Friedrich and Bertha, my grandfather, Otto Entel (6), was tolerably good in school (his
best fields were writing and history); but his father could not afford to send this third son of his to a
university. So Otto became an agricultural inspector. My mother told me that he was not at all suitable for
such a job; she thought he should have become an elementary school teacher. I doubt that. I think he
should have had a job like that of his younger brother. Just like his brothers, he was very polite, but shy and
withdrawn. When he was 31 years old he married Marie Schneider, 26 years old. She was a very active,
enterprising, outgoing, and happy person; but she died of tuberculosis less than four years later. Their
daughter, Elisabeth, my mother, was less than three years old at that time.
After the death of his wife, my mother’s father gave up his job and took the position of customs official. I
have in my poss-ession an official report about his work as customs official, which is very positive, but he
gave this job up after 2½ years. Otto then moved around restlessly and he withdrew more and more into
himself. Eventually, 1881, he was taken to an institution. His Uncle Franz Otto delivered him to this asylum.
Otto’s daughter, my mother, accompanied them. When her father had gone in and the door was closed, my
mother received a deep shock, which she never overcame. Her great uncle took her to his house in
Trebnitz. She stayed there till her marriage. An inheritance, which had come to my mother from her mother’s
mother, enabled her to pay for the support of her father. (As I understand, Otto’s younger brother Hugo also
contributed.)
My mother’s father’s case would perhaps now be classified as a mild schizophrenia. In later years my mother
visited her father whenever possible. She told me that the doctors said he would not be able to live
independently. She would have liked to have him at our home. But, that would have been possible only if my
father’s situation were definitely settled. That was the case about 1913. But then my mother’s father died in
that year.
If any of Otto Entel’s descendants had inherited some of his afflictions, I would be the one. Perhaps my
inclination to withdraw into a world of abstractions, my pondering quite some-time before acting, and also my
hesitation to approach people I do not know, might have come from there. On the other hand, I have
definitely inherited some counter-balancing abilities from my father; for example the ability to give lectures
before large audiences without inhibition.
Chapter 11
The Schneider and Baenisch Families
Before talking about the families of my mother’s mother, I should like to tell a story. My mother had various
family pictures on the wall of our dining room. Among them there were two large pictures of a man and a
woman dressed in the style of about 1780, say. One day, I may have been 13 years old, I took down these
pictures and looked at their back. There it said: Johann Gottfried Hoppe and Johanna Eleonora Giller. I
asked my mother who they were. She said they were her mother’s mother’s mother’s parents. I got quite
excited and, in fact, this discovery was the starting point of my interest in family history.
It turned out that J. Gottfried Hoppe (62) was a wealthy man living in the city of Liegnitz, East of Görlitz, in
western Silesia. He owned a special estate called the “Goldene Hufe” (Golden Hide). He played quite some
role in the city government. The father of J. Eleonora (63), David Göller (126), was the owner of an inn,
“Zum Storchen” (At the Stork’s). Certainly, he was also well off. Gottfried and Eleonora had a daughter,
Henriette Caroline, born 1782. There were other children, but I have not been able to trace them. Henriette
Caroline (31) married Carl Wilhelm Baenisch (30) in 1804. Carl Baenisch was a very attractive man with
pitch black hair; but he was very hot-tempered. By profession he was a leather merchant. His father,
grandfather and great-grandfather had all been furriers and leather workers. The last named of these
ancestors lived in Lissa, a city just on the eastern side of the Prussia-Polish boundary. The Baenischs, at
least during the 18th century, were Germans. Of course, there were many German craftsmen living in
Poland at that time and earlier. The name Baenisch, however, is probably of Polish or Czech origin.
The dowry Carl Baenisch received from his father-in-law, perhaps 10,000 Thaler or more, enabled him to
buy an estate, a “Gut”; so he called himself a “Gutsbesitzer.”
Carl and Henriette Baenisch had two daughters, Pauline (15) and Auguste. Henriette died in 1813, when the
daughters were 8 and 3 years old. Carl Baenisch then sold the estate for his daughters’ sake; for it was their
inheritance. He made himself a “Gut’spächter”, that is, the tenant of a large “Gut” (Estate).
The parents of Henriette lived till 1831 and 1829. Probably they left an additional inheritance to the two
daughters of Henriette. Carl Baenisch married again in 1822. One of the sons of this second marriage, Carl
Gustav Baenisch, was a friend of my grandfather Carl Friedrichs. It was at Carl Gustav’s house that my
parents met.
Carl Baenisch died in 1839. His daughters, then 28 and 23 years old and now in possession of their mother’
s dowry, moved to a house in Steinau, a small town north of Liegnitz. There they were comfortably off, but
lonely. When Pauline was 36 years old, (1841), she married Friedrich Schneider (14), a minister in a small
village, not very far. He was 47 years old then.
Friedrich Schneider (14) was born in 1794 in Bunzlau, a city between Liegnitz and Gorlitz. His father, his
grandfather, and his great-grandfather were potters. The city of Bunzlau was famous for the pottery made
there. At some time the potters were asked what they make. They answered: tea and coffee pots, tobacco
and butter containers, bowls, laboratory utensils, and chamber pots. Friedrich’s father, Johann Gottlieb (28),
though being a potter, was not a master. He wanted to become a master, but the five other pottery masters
in Bunzlau did not allow that, although he was supported by the city government. He tried to be admitted as
a master in another city, but then he died, 43 years old, leaving his wife with five children. Seven months
later his widow bore a child, Friedrich, (14), my great-grandfather.
The only information I have about Friedrich Schneider as a person comes from a letter he had written to his
wife’s sister, Auguste. After some personal matters he writes:
“Oh how beautiful is it now here. At least 50 nightingales warble, the robins, the finches, the cuckoos give
every day their concerts. Our wild bumble bee roves the whole day around on meadow and garden. We are
all so healthy; what more does a frugal heart need to be happy.”
None of any other ancestors ever mention nature and its beauty. I must say that I feel very much being
Friedrich Schneider’s great-grandson. I am sure, if he ever had seen a mountain he would also have been
enthusiastic about it.
I doubt that he or any other of my ancestors ever saw a mountain, except Carl and Asta Heiberg on a trip to
Italy.
Friedrich and Pauline Schneider had one daughter, Marie (7), born 1846; four years later Friedrich
Schneider died. Pauline and her sister Auguste then bought a house in Bunzlau, using the inher-itance from
their mother. There they lived with Marie for 26 more years, except that Marie, when she was 26 years old,
1872, married Otto Entel (6), my mother’s father.
My mother had in her possession two large paintings of Pauline and Auguste, rather good looking with pitch
black hair. A peculiar feature appeared on Pauline’s painting: her lower teeth protruded a little over the
upper ones. Now my great aunt Marie Friedrichs had the same trait and I myself also have it. Thus there is a
clear case of the inheritance of a recessive trait.
My mother, Elisabeth (3), was the only child of her mother, Marie (7), who was the only child of her mother
Pauline (15), who was the only married child of her mother, Henriette Hoppe (31). The dowry Henriette had
received from her parents in 1804 contin-ued down to my mother essentially unchanged since the principal
was probably rarely touched. What happened to this inheritance will be described later on.
Chapter 12
Karl and Elisabeth Friedrichs
In speaking about my parents I shall first say something about my mother, Elisabeth Entel (3). She had pitch
black hair and pale skin. Except for her straight nose, inherited from the Stenger family through generations,
she resembled her mother very much. However, she was very beautiful while her mother was not.
My mother did not have any higher education since there was no school for girls beyond elementary school
in the small city in which she grew up. So she went to the top grade three times. She learned some French
there, but not much else beyond element-ary material; she was however eager to learn.
Once my mother was married to my father, her views opened greatly, in particular her views about religion.
The religious attitude of the family she came from was basically fundamentalist, but not narrow minded.
As I have found out only recently, my mother has written many articles and small stories for newspapers.
She certainly took a great interest in what was going on in the world. In 1918 she was deeply affected by the
collapse of the Hohenzollern Empire. Still she took a great interest in the new ideas that then were
developed. In fact, she read the work on women, written by the socialist leader Bebel.
Altogether my mother was a wonderful person, so much so that I do not feel able to tell more about her in
detail.
My father was a sturdy person and a very hard worker. As I have mentioned earlier, one may say that he
was born to be a German university professor; but unfortunately, that did not come about. While he was a
practicing lawyer in Kiel, he wrote two books. The second one, on police law, was highly acclaimed. As a
practicing lawyer he was not satisfied with handling cases in a routine way; he often dug out an old rule of
law which was valid but not used any more, to the annoyance of the judge and the opposing lawyer. In one
such case my father had done something for his client which the opposing lawyer claimed to be unethical.
That led to lawsuits, which went to the highest court in Germany. He was acquitted because of lack of proof.
Still his law practice went down and also his chances for a university career. This happened in 1901,
somewhat before I was born.
My father then took a position as a counselor for an industrial firm in Dortmund, a large city at the eastern
end of the Ruhr area in northwestern Germany. But he did not have enough to do in this position; so he
continued his writing there. The boss did not like that. So my father left and opened a law practice with
another lawyer. During that time, 1905, my brother Wolfgang was born; my sister Asta was then seven years
old and I was four years old. In 1906 my father did something that worked out very well. To describe this I
must make a few remarks about the court system in Germany.
There was one highest court, an appeals court, in Germany, cor-responding more or less to the American
Supreme Court. Below that were a number of appeals courts, I call them “higher courts” for convenience. In
Prussia, there was one such court for each province. The “higher court” for the Rhineland, in Cologne, was
over-burdened at that time; so a new “higher court” was to be established in Düsseldorf, a large city on the
Rhine north of Cologne. My father moved to Düsseldorf to be a lawyer at the new court. (In Germany a
lawyer was associated with only one court.) For my father it was easier and more natural to handle cases at
a higher court than those at a lower court. The advantage of the move was that he would be new at the new
court just as any other lawyer there. Even so it took my father more than two years before he was firmly
settled there.
My father had rented an apartment on a busy street near the rail-road station. I suffered very much from
being cooped up in that apartment. However, every Sunday - if possible - the family made an excursion to
the zoo, to some parks, to a large hill out-side the city with garden restaurants, or a boat trip on the Rhine
river to an old Roman city, or what I liked best, we took a short train ride three stations distant to a village
called Hochdahl, from which we walked through woods and meadows down to another village called
Neanderthal, or we took the train to Neanderthal and walked up to Hochdahl. In later years our father often
made even larger excursions with us and our mother. (For many years here in New Rochelle, we adopted a
similar system.) I was very happy about the readiness of my father to make such excursions.
There were some aspects of my father’s character, such as his liberal ideas, which meant very much to me;
but, there were other aspects. He had very original ideas about how one should behave under certain
circumstances. If everybody had understood these ideas, it would have been fine; but, nobody except I
understood them. At times he was quite unreasonable. That made it often rather difficult for Asta and
Wolfgang, and hence also for my mother, but hardly for me. Since I understood him, I could take it; but,
anyway, I was rarely involved.
There are other positive aspects. We all, in particular Asta and I, learned very much from his great store of
knowledge. In fact, I got my first inklings of mathematics from him.
In 1908 my father bought a house, I suppose with the help of my mother’s inheritance. It was on a quiet
street near parks, with a rather peculiar backyard. There were large and small trees, a covered arbor, a
pond with goldfish at a rock structure with a waterfall. The walk to school took me 12 minutes; for Asta it took
a little longer to her school
I remember quite well the start of the First World War (1914). The people were extremely excited and firmly
believed that France, Russia and England were going after Germany. I myself - I was almost 13 years old -
did not participate in their excitement. I thought that after some time there would be a stalemate and long
negotiations with the result that everything would be as before. However, I was very enthusiastic at one
times namely, when we heard of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points about self-determination of all people -
I expressed my enthusiasm in a composition we had to write at that time. The teacher accepted that
although he felt differently. In fact, in our school we had a number of very good teachers, with whom one
could speak openly.
During the war years, in particular during the winter of 1916, our bread and butter rations were extremely
small. We mostly lived on turnips in that year. I was always hungry, before and after meals. My stay on
Rügen, and also three weeks in Holland, were vital and so I survived.
My interest in mathematics started in my fourth school year or earlier. (It is true that I could rarely do long
division correctly in the third year, but that is no contradiction,) In my fourth year, my mathematical ability
was evident. In later years, although we had good teachers, I had to send quite some time to explain to my
fellow students what they had not understood. On the other hand, I had (and still have) trouble writing
compositions and letters.
From spring 1920 on, I went to various universities; in spring 1922 I went to the University of Göttingen. The
mathematics group here was sometimes called the center of mathematics in the world.
After being here a month or two, I received a letter from my father saying that he had resigned from his
lawyership at the higher court in Düsseldorf.
As my mother told me later, my father got involved with a secretary. Apparently he did not know how to
handle such a situation. The final result was his resignation. He then took a position as a law counsel for the
government of a small city, Ilmenau, in central Germany.
The resignation of my father came at a time when both Asta and Karl-Wolfgang were not very happy about
their studies and ware not certain about their final goal in life, as I was. They decided to quit studying and
took jobs. This made it easier for my father to keep supporting me. I am very grateful for that. If I had to
give up my studies of mathematics, I would have been desperate.
After my father had gone to Ilmenau, my mother was willing to follow him. But first she sold our house. A part
of the pro-ceeds were her inheritance, about 30,000 marks before inflation. My mother wanted to invest the
proceeds in industrial stocks, which were the safest investment at that time because of the prevailing great
inflation. She, and we children, understood inflation, but my father did not. He transferred the money on
savings accounts or something like that. Two years later, in the superinflation, it was gone.
Thus the dowry that Carl Baenisch had received in 1804 from his father-in-law, J. Gottfried Hoppe, of which
the principal probably had not changed much, was annihilated in a short time after 120 years.
About five years after my father had gone to Ilmenau, he gave up his position at that city and worked
independently. He wrote many articles for law journals and did some consulting. From this he had a good
income; it even enabled him to have a nice house built in Ilmenau.
I am now at the end of my story. I shall add only a few remarks about later times. My brother Wolfgang had a
very good, signif-icant position as translator for English at the main bank in Germany (West). Unfortunately,
he died in 1978. He and his wife, Eva, had two children, Irene and Michael. They in turn are married and
have children, Tilo and Felix, and Martin (and after this was written Barbara -MNF). My sister Asta has had a
varied life, as a teacher, diplomatic code cracker, dietitian, and housekeeper for a large institution. She
died in 1981. I myself have attained in my life by far more than I ever could have expected. My greatest
achievement, of course, was to have discovered my wife, Nellie, and to have produced five wonderful
children. (Last phrase was hand written addition by Mom – MNF)
Appendix 1
The Last Will and Testament (1811) of Adolph Heinderich Friedrichs (1760-1828)
In the Name of God
The changeability of human fates and the unexpected accidents which can set bounds to our lives cause me
now, in good health and of my own will, after careful thought and not forced or persuaded by anyone else, to
make a disposition and determination with respect to my future legacy in the event that I should be
summoned from this life.
1.
With respect to my body I order that it should be laid to rest in a Christian and decent manner but without
any special ostentation or expense.
2.
As my heirs I determine and name my beloved children
1. Johann Carl
2. Adolph
3. Heinrich
4. Moritz
5. Julius
6. Wilhelmine
7. Charlotte
8. Ludwig
and if after this time any others should still be born to me, all to receive equal portions of my total property.
3.
My beloved wife Hanna Christine, nee Arndt, to whom I feel obliged to demonstrate my tender thanks for her
love and loyalty, I pre—bequeath out of my own full property her own dowry and any of her things which she
will be able to provide evidence for on the basis of family inheritance agreements or other proofs signed by
me and in her possession.
4.
With respect to my estate, as soon as possible following my death an inventory should be taken, with the
restriction that until the end of the contract years of Silvitz, Dalkvitz und Dolgemost, or otherwise as long as
my family still holds the lease on these properties, no partition and division should take place but instead
they should be administered jointly on behalf of all my heirs and my wife.
5.
This administration of my estate should remain under the leadership and direction of my beloved wife Hanna
Christine nee Arndt until a termination of the leases of Silvitz, Dalkvitz and Dolgemost is made possible
either by the expiry of the contracts or by an agreement which she finds necessary and advantageous, and
since I am convinced both of her conscientious love towards me and her children and of her capacity to
carry out this administration, I also give to her the guardianship for my surviving minor children with the
proviso that she should call upon the advice and support of my beloved brother Herr Carl Friedrichs of
Stubben as a supplementary guardian. Both of them should obtain an appropriate judicial confirmation of
their guardianship but should not be bound to a public rendering of accounts. Still they should settle and
record the accounts of the administration once a year.
6.
If in fact one of my heirs is entitled to insist on a settlement before the end of the leases on Silvitz, Dalkvitz
and Dolgemost, then the appointed administration of the estate may assist and settle with the one or the
other heir as appropriate, though not to the prejudice of the common prosperity of the enterprise
7.
If this description of my last wishes is not regarded and upheld as a proper Testament, then I wish that it be
accepted as a codicil, a legal trust, a disposition of the parent to his children, or however else it can be
regarded and upheld.
Personally signed and sealed by me and executed with the additional signatures of witnesses in Silvitz on
the 1st of December 1811.
I also ordain that in case my wife should enter into a second marriage, the commonality among my heirs, as
specified in #4., should be continued until the end of the leases but thereafter her administration and
guardianship should come to end.
Johann Bernhard Engelbrecht als invited witness (seal)
Christian Heinrich Pense also invited witness (seal)
Christian Dieckmann also invited witness (seal)
Johann Wilhelm Arndt as invited witness (seal)
Adolph Heinderich Friedrichs (seal)
Johann Christopher Dalmer as invited witness (seal)
Carl Christoph Friedrichs as invited witness (seal)
Johann Friedrich Behm as invited witness (seal)
In Silvitz on 1 December 1811 the leaseholder Herr Adolph Heinrich Friedrichs, before me as undersigned
and specially summoned notary and in the presence of the seven also specially invited witnesses, presented
the above document as his last will, signed and sealed it with his own hand, and invited the required
witnesses to complete the will by signing and sealing it, whereupon the witnesses did provide their
signatures in their own hands and affixed their seals, whereby all used their own signets, except for the
witnesses Christian Diekmann and Johann Friedrich Behm who used my private seal, and finally again
acknowledged their hands and seals. I hereby confirm as requested, and with the corroboration of the
undersigned witnesses to this instrument, that all this has been done in a legal manner in one continuous
and uninterrupted session.
Johann Berhard Engelbrecht
as witness to this instrument (seal)
Carl Christoph In faith
Friedrichs (seal) (seal) [name L.S.F. Amndt Notary]
Appendix 2: Heinrich and Marina Christine Arndt
(Story 2.111)
There are two important references to our ancestors in the published writings of Ernst Moritz Arndt. In his
correspondence, there appears a reference to Johanna (Hanna) Christine Arnd, who was the first cousin of
Ernst Moritz. In his autobiography, Ernst Moritz Arndt provides a long description of his uncle Heinrich, the
father of Johanna Christine, as well as other relatives.
1. From the Correspondence of Ernst Montz Arndt:
“The good old Friedrichs, who was four or five years older than myself, took an early liking to me. Her father,
Heinrich, was a noble, remarkable, and considerate person, a kind patriarch. Their clever noble being had a
great influence on my father and myself. She herself was very pretty as a young woman, and a friendly and
orderly person. She had given me many good snacks and had done me as a youth many good favors. Later
on she had gone through her not always thornless path valiantly and virtuously.”
This may refer to the fact that her older son Carl had ruined the Gut of which he was Pächter, to the suicide
of her son Adolph, and to the death of her son Heinrich.
2. From the Autobiography of Ernst Merit: Arndt.
The following excerpts are taken from the English translation of Arndt’s autobiography, published as the Life
of Arndt. One passage in the translation is slightly confusing; Arndt describes visiting his uncle Heinrich who
was sitting, as an old man, “with his old mother;” but clearly this is a reference to Heinrich’s old wife (since
Heinrich was called ‘Vater Arndt,” his wife may have been called “die alte Mutter.”)
Note that after his description of uncle Heinrich (the “patriarch”), Arndt suddenly switches to a description of
Heinrich’s mother, Anna, born Subklev. This woman was the grandmother of both Ernst Moritz Arndt and of
Johanna Christine Arndt, who married Adolf Heinnich Friedrichs.
From:
the Life of Arndt (pp. 36—39);
“..old Hinrich was such a poetical, romantic old man, that I always enjoyed being with him. Old Hinrich,
though nothing inure than a somewhat superior peasant, was an emblem of the country, or rather he
portrayed it in his life and manners. He was a handsome man of middle height, with fine features, fair hair
and blue eyes; almost always cheerful, and like one who knew nothing of care and trouble. Me was less
educa-ted than my father, but had a fine natural genius, and never seemed to need artificial pleasures. Me
played well on the violin, but never played at cards, and when his outdoor work was over, or he had come
home tired from the chase, after enjoying the gifts of God, with which his table was always well supplied, he
would sit at midday or in the evening at his house door, and was glad if one would come and sit by him and
listen to his stories of the neighborhood,...The old man enjoyed these stories and told them well; and he
knew also a great deal about the history of Sweden and Rügen.
He had also learnt a good deal of German and general history from some old chronicles which always lay on
a shelf. But the man himself was better than all his stories. He was beloved by all around him...
I have called him the patriarch, and such he really was. Honest, brave, and ever ready to be of service
whenever and wherever he could, he let trouble and misfortune pass easily by him, and rose above them
into the sunshine of a life of strong faith in God’s government of the world...As the patriarch, the eldest of
the house, he not only had great authority over his relations, but enjoyed great influence among his
neighbors. He went by the name of Father Arndt, and would never allow his servants even to call him
anything else. He hated the word Herr and said Count Putbus was the real Herr, in which he was perhaps
right. On the strength of his paternal dignity he was allowed to do much which would have not been borne
from any one else. Once, when I was a young man, I said something disrespectful of the King of Sweden,
upon which he gave me a resounding box on the ear, saying, “Boy, do you dare speak so of the king?” To
another relation whose wife had just presented him with twins, and who was wringing his hands over the
cradle, he said, “You coward! don’t you believe that what God has given He can support?” Such he
remained to the last. My brothers and I visited him about six months before his death. He died in the winter
of 1811. The old man, who was then over eighty, and much broken down, was sitting in his room with his old
mother [This is a mis-translation; the reference is clearly to Hinrich’s wife, Anna Donothea], but he
brightened up at our appearance, and sat down with us to table; made them bring wine; and chatted almost
as well as in days gone by, saying at parting, “Children, you will soon lay me in the ground. Then you are to
be cheer-ful, and drink some of this wine, for I have lived a joyful life before God all my days”
Such was the patriarch! In a quiet little room there still sat at her spinning-wheel a quiet old Fate, the mother
[Avina], of the patriarch and of my father, whose old age the pious son had cherished with the greatest
tenderness and care. She was the model of a beautiful stately old woman, much resembling my father, once
fair and ruddy as King David of old, and always happy and beloved. She lived ninety—six years on this
earth, and with her kisses on my cheek has called down many a blessing on my head...”
In the following passages (pp. 39—41) Arndt describes his other uncles, especially the twins Jochim and
Christian Arndt. A later passage (p. 111) again refers to uncle Hinrich.
(I can find no copy of these referred to passages-MNF)
Appendix 3
Asta Heiberg
(Story7.7 and 7. )
Excerpt from “Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben.” Carl Heymann’ s Verlag, Berlin. 1897. Pages 8—12
(Martin has this book-MNF)
Life together with my brothers and sisters did not leave any special impression on me; I only know that no
one quarreled with me as it happened among the brothers. I was a somewhat weak child, had red hair and
was very ugly. This ugliness made my father feel so sorry for me that he overcame his dislike of red hair. In
those days it was not in style, nor did it look “like spun gold in the sunshine” as it is now described in novels.
My father protected me and told me as a consolation, (a consolation I did not appreciate because I was
indifferent to my lack of beauty) “ you are ugly but in spite of that you are my jewel,” I know this and I feel it;
my love of him gave me the courage to resist his tempers. Every year my father suffered from depressions
for weeks, even for months. During those times he withdrew to his room; he then could not bear children’s
noise. I was always permitted to go to him; he took me on his lap, forgot my age and told me about his
worries. (He had many children and too small an income to take care of them.) This relationship persisted to
his very end. I was his confidant, his good friend, from whom he accepted correction of his ideas, even
rebuke, without getting into a rage or anger and he was a person who otherwise did not allow any
contradiction. He demanded truth and nothing but the truth from his sons. “Never say anything different from
what you think,” he told me very often. I followed his warning and thus gained the courage to be truthful; and
because I was that way he loved me and confided in me. This way of preference gave me so to say, a center
position in the family. I overcame quite a few annoyances, prevented some punishments and whenever the
brothers and sisters had special wishes, I was the one to ask. My father was tall and handsome. The
beautiful head with the large sparkling eyes let you sense a lively spirit. He was an idealist, was a devoted
admirer of God’s alimightiness, he loved nature, observed the course of the stars, knew every tree and was
an enthusiastic botanist. To be with him was a continuous lesson. In his earliest childhood he believed that
only he existed as a human being: his parents, his brothers and sisters and everyone else around him were
just spirits who had adopted human shapes to serve him. When they left the room he opened the door to
see how they dissolved into air. Subconsciously the child sensed that every thinking human being forms a
world of his own; that means that he exists independently, that he may adjust but that he will never fully
merge with another person, that he can never be completely understood by someone else because the
other one represents a completely different image. His strange views just like his idealistic concepts that
demanded from everyone that he developed his knowledge and his higher qualities made him very strict.
This, I often told him, but also that it was difficult, in fact close to impossible, to live with him. He did not
contradict because he knew the negative sides of his character; he openly mentioned wrong-doings and
mistakes that he had committed and he tried very hard to make up for them. He was astounding in that
respect and I did not know anyone beside him who would have acted that way.
My mother was not only beautiful but she also had a mental charm and loveliness that nobody could resist.
She was more of a personality than my father, she had lots of brain, knowledge and intelligence. She was
musical had a beautiful alto voice and was gifted for drawing. She was also an efficient and saving
housewife, very diligent and a devoted nurse to the small children. But since again and again a new baby
had to be fed and nursed there was little time left for the bigger ones. We older daughters had to replace
our mother in the household, we had to sew and to knit, clean the rooms, in one word, we had to help so
that in this big household everything ran smoothly.
Appendix 4 -
Ancestral List leading to Charlemagne
45 ARNUF BISHOP OF METZ (made into a Saint) 582-640
44 ANSEGISEL -679
43 PIPPIN the “Middle One” -714
42 CARL MARTELL 676-741
41 PIPPIN the Short 714-768
40 CHARLEMAGNE KING OF FRANKS “1st Holy Roman Emperor” 742-814
39 KING LOUIS OF GERMANY HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR “the Pious” 778-840
38 KING CHARLES II OF FRANCE HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR “the Bald” 823-877
37 KING LOUIS II OF FRANCE
36 KING CHARLES III “the Conqueror of France” 879-929
35 KING LOUIS IV OF FRANCE -986
34 MATHILDE ~~ Conrad III Peace lover of Burgundy
33 GERBERGE ~~ Duke Herman II of Swabia
32 GISELA ~~ King Conrad II Holy Roman Emperor
31 KING HENRY III OF GERMANY HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR “the Black” 1017-1056
30 KING HENRY IV HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 1050-1106
29 PRINCESS AGNES OF FRANKEN ~~ Duke Frederick of Swabia
28 DUKE FREDERICK OF SWABIA -1147
27 FREDERICK I BARBAROSSA HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 1123-1190
26 KING PHILIP (OF SWABIA) HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 1176-1208
25 KUNIGUNDE of STAUFEN ~~ King Wencelas of Bohemia
24 PRINCESS BEATRIX OF BOHEMIA ~~ Margrave Otto III Brandenberg ~ 1300
23 MARGRAVE OTTO IV of BRANDENBERG
22 MARGRAVE HERMANN of BRANDENBERG
21 PRINCESS MECHTILD of BRANDENBERG~~Duke Henry IV of Sagen
20 DUKE HENRY V OF SAGAN ~ 1400
19 DUKE HENRY VIII OF SAGAN
18 DUKE HENRY IX OF GLOGAU
17 ANNA ~~ Baron Johannes Rosenberg
16 ELISABETH OF ROSENBERG ~~ Henry of Hardegg ~ 1500
15 JULIUS COUNT OF HARDEGG
14 BERNHARD COUNT OF HARDEGG
13 COUNTESS ESTER OF HARDEGG ~~ Christoph of Zelking ~ 1600
12 ANNA OF ZELKING ~~ Count Otto of Zinzendorff
11 COUNT MAXIMILLIAN OF ZINZENDORFF
10 COUNT GEORG LOUIS OF ZINZENDORFF 1662-1700
9 COUNT FREDERICK CHRISTIAN OF ZINZENDORFF 1697-1756
8 SUSANNAH OF ZINZENDORFF ~~ Henry C. Count von Baudissin 1723-1785
7 HENRY FREDERICK COUNT VON BAUDISSIN 1753-1818
6 CARL COUNT VON BAUDISSIN 1790-1868
5 ASTA COUNTESS VON BAUDISSIN ~~ Dr. Carl Heiberg 1817-1904
4 NANNY ELISABETH HEIBERG - Carl Friedrichs 1839-1931
3 KARL WILHELM FRIEDRICHS 1865-1941
2 KURT OTTO FRIEDRICHS 1901-1982
1 MARTIN NICHOLAS FRIEDRICHS 1950-
Appendix L A (modifed version)
Ancestors of Kurt O. Friedrichs Partial List by Birth Date (covering Story of My Ancestors Period)
Name - Birth date - Death date - Death location - Occupation
Andreas Goldbeck 1496 1576 Mayor of Werben / Elbe
Anna Engel 1503 1567
Martin Goldbeck 1530 1574
Lucia Kaulitz Bef. 1540 1573
Julius Count von Hardegg Abt. 1540
Nicholas Goldbeck 1560 1626
Catharina Schonhauser Bef. 1570 1616
Bernhard Count von Hardegg Abt. 1570
Wulf Hinrich Count von Baudissin 1579 1646 Swedish Field Marshall, Dan Gen. Cavalry
Catharina Goldbeck 1590 1636
Bartholomus Schonebeck 1591 1659
Christoph von Zelking Abt. 1600
Countess Ester von Hardegg Abt. 1600
Count Otto von Zinzendorff Abt. 1610
Anna von Zelking Abt. 1610
Gertrude Schonibeck 1619 1685
Erdman Schultz Bef. 1620 1675
Sophie von Rantzau 1620 1697
Count Maximilian von Zinzendorff Abt. 1630
Heinrich Gunter C. von Baudissin 1636 1673 Schleswig Princely Chamberlain/Privy Councillor
Sara Margarethe von Gunderoth 1642 1723 Lindau
Johann Kratz 1645 1674
Joachim Schulze 1648 1723 North West Baudenburg Pastor
Catharina Schultze 1652 1734
Hieronymus Ungand 1661 1740
Count Georg Louis von Zinzendorff 1662 1700
Wulf Heinrich Count von Baudissin Sept.1,1671 July 24,1748 Rixdorf,Holstein FieldMarshall Saxon Army
Marie Kratz 1675 1717
Anne Wentzel 1679
Martin Schroder Bef. 1680 "Anits"brewer
Christian Biereigel Bef. 1680 Berlin Gold Embroiderer
Franz C Schwarzenfeld Bef. 1680 1743 Grottkan Postmaster
Levin F Schulze 1681 1744 Pastor
C. Frederick Christian v. Zinzendorff 1697 1756
Hieronymus G. Ungnad 1699 1756 New Ruppin Arch Deacon of New Ruppin
Johann Deidrich Schroder 1700 1744 Orginist (in Berlin)
Franz Carl von Schwarzenfeldt 1702 1767 Vienna Austria Officer (in Vienna) Catholic
Anna E. Prahn Abt. 1706 1736
Heinrich Christoph C. von Baudissin July 12, 1709 July 4, 1786 Rixdorf General of Infrantry & Governor
Sophie Charlotte Biereichel May 10, 1714 October 14, 1793 Hamburg Germany Acctress
Joachim "Christoph" Friedrichs 1715 October 16, 1787 Carow Dairy Famer (Grundsdorf)
Johan Gottfried Schulze 1717 1791 Gorlitz Leading Pastor in city of Gorlitz
Johann Joachim Stenger December 2, 1717 February 26, 1790 New Ruppin Ger. Merchant
Susanna Zinzendorff 1723 1785
Kathrine Margrete Struving Nov. 24, 1723 March 24, 1779 Posenwald Germany
Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann 1724 1785 Copenhagen Treasurer of (and richest man in) Denmark
Johann Christoph Kobelt Bef. 1725 tenant in Bunzlau
Hinrich Arnd October 19, 1726 January 13, 1811 Posenwald Germany Farmer
Johann Michael Entel October 23, 1727 February 15, 1793 Gorlitz Germany Master Clothmaker (Gorlitz)
Carl Friedrich Heller February 22, 1729 May 3, 1788 Barth Germany Pastor
Carl Gottlieb Baenisch March 5, 1729 October 21, 1802 Liegnitz Germany Furrier (Liegnitz)
Hedwig Boldte Bef. 1730
Anna Maria Schumann Bef. 1730
Johann Kunniger Bef. 1730 1761 Flensburg Theater Director
Christian "Gottlieb" Schneider Bef. 1730 Bef. 1780 Potter (Bunzlau)
Marie Eleonora Ungnade Bef. 1730 March 1796 New Ruppin Germany
Caroline Tugendreich v. Friedeborn 1730 1795 Hamburg
Maria Dorothea Rothe March 12, 1731 1803
Elisabeth Marie Schulz 1733 May 20, 1780 Barth Germany
Johann Gottfried Gebauer July 4, 1736 May 15, 1790 Lissa Poland Pastor (in Lissa) [painting]
Jacob Petersen Bef. 1740 Schleswig Maltster
Margaethe Bunker Bef. 1740
Regina Sophia Vorkoper Bef. 1740 October 19, 1781 Mulitz Germany
Johann Christian Rosenthal Sept. 21, 1741 May 8, 1807 Greifswald Germany Merchant & Salt Importer
Friedrich Ludwig Schroder Nov. 2, 1744 August 3, 1816 Rellingen Ger. Prominent Theater Director \ Actor
Anna Rosina Kobelt 1745
Anna (wife of Schwartzenfeld) Bef. 1746
Susanna Beate Glotz 1747 March 16, 1824 Liegnitz Germany
Marie Sophie Dommes October 1, 1747 December 21, 1808 Greifswald Ger. to Bartholomaus Battus d1558
Johann Christian Sturmer Nov. 21, 1749 Sept. 8, 1823 Merzariese Headmaster State School (Zullichau)
Johann Gottfried Hoppe 1751 May 25, 1831 Liegnitz Germany Owner of Golden Huf Inn
Johann "Gottlieb" Schneider March 12, 1751 February 9, 1794 Bunzlau Germany Master Pottery Maker
Johanna Christiana Schultze June 6, 1753 December 4, 1809 Gorlitz Germany
Johanna Eleonora Giller July 21, 1753 January 4, 1829 Liegnitz Germany
Johann Jacob Herrmann Kunniger Sept. 14, 1753 February 3, 1833 Rendsburg Ger. Sec.to Superior Court
Heinrich Friedrich Count v Baudissin Dec.1, 1753 April 17, 1818 Ambassador King of Denmark to Prussia
Caroline A. C. von Schimmelmann January 21, 1759 January 17, 1826 Father- Treasurer ofDenmark
Johann Michael Entel February 11, 1760 March 2, 1838 Radmeritz Germany Pastor
Johanna Louisa Spangenberg February 12, 1760
Adolph Heinrich Friedrichs December 19, 1760 September 3, 1828 Silvitz Farmer
Elisabeth Magdalene Petersen April 15, 1761 November 12, 1839 Schleswig Germany
Anna "Nannette" Schwarzenfeldt Abt. 1765 March 11, 1846 Rellingen Ger. Actress
Johanna "Hanna" Christina Arnd July 24, 1765 July 1, 1846 Silvitz
Carl Wilhelm Baenisch February 22, 1769 April 3, 1833 Liegnitz Germany Leather Merchant
Carl August Stenger May 5, 1769 August 11, 1831 Pommerzig Ger. Pastor- (traced 19 gener. to 1200's)
Carl Abraham Christian Rosenthal November 1, 1771 December 31, 1846 Greifswald Merchant/Treasurer
Johanna Christiana Gebauer Nov. 20, 1771 August 12, 1850 No. Linda Germany
Henriette Margaretha Heller May 4, 1777 January 18, 1817 Greifswald
Henriette Carloline Hoppe 1782 December 15, 1813 Liegnitz Germany
Charlotte Wilhelmine J. Sturmer May 6, 1782 March 12, 1839 Lorau Germany
Anna Margarth Henriette Kunniger January 6, 1790 April 2, 1864 Greifswald Germany
Carl Christian Count von Baudissin Mar. 4, 1790 Apr. 9, 1868 Itzehoe Ger.(disinherited) Lord of Hovedgaard
Fredrich Samuel Gottlob Schneider October 7, 1794 July 29, 1850 Nd. Schlesien Pastor
Carl Friedrich Heiberg October 29, 1796 August 16, 1872 Schleswig "Prussia" Lawyer Bookdealer
Carl Friedrich Entel Nov. 17, 1798 July 6, 1864 Gorlitz Germany Pastor
Ludwig Christian Friedrichs August 19, 1803 Sept. 25, 1842 Greifswald Merchant (Greifswald) -
Pauline Henriette Baenisch Sept. 21, 1805 August 23, 1876 Bunzlau Germany
Wilhemine "Minna" H. Rosenthal July 24, 1809 May 3, 1869 Greifswald Germany
Albertine "Bertha" Sophie E. Stenger April 13, 1813 April 1878 Golitz Germany
Asta Sophie C. Countess Baudissin May 7, 1817 January 28, 1904 Schleswig Ger. 5th cousin of Q. Victoria
Carl Johann Friedrichs October 1, 1836 June 27, 1918 Dusseldorf Ger. Bookdealer (Kiel)
Nanny Elisabeth Henriette Heiberg January 7, 1839 March 14, 1931 Rugen Germany
Otto Bernhard Heinrich Entel March 4, 1841 March 13, 1913 Kreuzburg Ger. Agricul. & Customs Inspector
Marie Joh. Auguste Schneider August 16, 1846 March 16, 1876 Bunzlau Germany
Karl Wilhelm Ernst Friedrichs April 12, 1865 February 4, 1941 Ilmenau Germany Lawyer (Dusseldorf)
Elisabeth "Liska" M. Therese Entel August 7, 1873 February 7, 1941 Gotha
Kurt Otto Ludwig Friedrichs Sept. 28, 1901 December 31, 1982 New Rochelle NY Mathematician
(Braunschweig/New York)