Family

Posts about both sides of my family

Childhood Memories – Books

In my opinion the best gift you can give a child is a book. There is nothing I love better than shopping for books for my grandchildren. I can spend hours browsing through the titles in the children’s section of bookstores. Sometimes I know exactly what I am looking for

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Difficulties in Childbirth

I am the only child of an only child. I know of several reasons why I have no siblings. I know my father, after his experiences during WWII, decided not to bring any children into a world which could create such misery and destruction. Before he agreed to marry her,

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Curiouser and Curiouser…

I never know what treasure I will find whenever I dig through the countless documents, certificates and photographs left to me when my father died. There is documentation from both sides of my family, mostly in either German or Russian. But now and again I stumble across something in English,

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The Damage Done

„Gone, gone, the damage done“ are lyrics from a Neil Young song and, while the song is about drug addicts, the words could also describe the feeling my father, and I’m sure other Baltic Germans, felt when their properties were confiscated. I wrote about their estate, Nurmhusen, here and described

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Organising family history research – why I dread it

Google “I am hopeless at organising” and a myriad of websites pop up. The first page has links to various sites which help with depression and a lack of organisation. I might need those websites if I don’t manage to find a way to organise the ever growing pile of

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Family – new and old

Last weekend I wrote about my family and their resilience here. After the family reunion I travelled to Neuruppin to research my father’s movements during WWII – more about that in another post, and then to Berlin for no reason at all, except that I love the city. Sometimes decisions

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