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German Roots Trip 2003 - Contents

SEEKING OUR GERMAN ROOTS

Chapter IV

May 21 - 23, 2003

LINDLAR
Kemmerich Family History

Wednesday, May 21

Today, we left Mecklenburg and the locales of our von Pressentin ancestors and headed south, to Cologne and then to Lindlar, where our Kemmerich relatives live. Barbara's grandfather, August Kemmerich, was born near Lindlar, and the relatives we will visit are descendants of August's brother, Wilhelm. One of those descendants, Bruno Kemmerich, was in Rommel's tank corps in World War II. His unit was captured during the north African desert battles and he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner at Fort Hood, in Texas. While there, Bruno learned to speak and write English, and after peace returned to Europe, he became the contact between the descendants of Wilhelm Kemmerich in Germany and the descendants of August Kemmerich in the United States. The two branches of the family have often exchanged visits.

Karen hoped to enjoy the local cuisine on this trip and she diligently steered me away from McDonald’s whenever possible. But, this morning, she relented and said, yes, we could have my favorite breakfast--pancakes and sausage, in the McDonald’s at the Schwerin train station. Unfortunately, pancakes weren’t on their menu, but we did get a nourishing and inexpensive breakfast. Germany’s train stations are well utilized and they all seem to have almost a self-contained shopping mall within their walls. We found a good deli and picked up sandwiches and pastry for lunch aboard the train as we head for Cologne.

The Deutsche Bahn trains allow very little time for passengers to get off and on, but we quickly learned to be ready to jump aboard, hauling our heavy suitcases with us. Today we pulled out of the Schwerin station precisely at 10:19 a.m. The first leg of today’s train trip was from Schwerin to Hamburg and we found the second class train car to be a little nicer than on the local run from Hamburg to Lubeck. We didn’t pay for reserved seats on this leg, and found that most of the facing seats were already taken. So, we moved to the large open area where people can put bikes and luggage. There were drop-down seats there--not so comfy, but on the other hand, we could have our bags right with us which is a nice sense of security. From now on, we will move about Germany by train or bus. Our back packs and our suitcases comprise our entire belongings and that’s reason enough to want to know where they are at all times!

The view from the train window between Schwerin and Hamburg looked very much like what we have already seen of northern Germany. Still very open country, with woodlands, rapeseed fields in brilliant golden bloom and occasionally a town. Boisenberg must have been a GDR factory town. It was full of REALLY ugly-looking buildings.

Once in Hamburg, we had an hour’s wait for our train to Cologne. We took a leisurely look at this huge train station, then settled in at a café to drink some tea and do some people-watching. Busy, busy places, these train stations. While we see plenty of cars in the cities and on the autobahns, still the bulk of German travel must be by train. There is a train arriving or departing almost every minute--just a beehive of activity.

An uneventful trip to Cologne, livened by the presence of a family traveling with four hyperactive kinder but luckily they tended to pester the hapless passengers in front of their seats--and we were a couple rows behind them. This was an "IC" or InterCity train, which meant the seats were more comfy. At the rear of the car was a metal cage for suitcases and overhead compartments above the seats for smaller items. The seatbacks have an airline-type fold-down tray and even coat hooks between the windows.

A drizzly day, and we definitely were traveling through Germany’s industrial belt with its large factory complexes, tall smokestacks and at least two nuclear plant cooling towers. Always though, there are green fields and woodlands between the cities. It is not just one massive built-up area from one city to the next. We had quick looks from the train of: Bremen, Münster, Duisburg, Essen (where August Kemmerich worked as a coal miner) and Dusseldorf (a city that appeared to be dominated by Mercedes Benz) before pulling into the Cologne train station.

The train arrived in Cologne a bit late and our ambitious idea that we might have time to visit a nearby museum before catching the 6 p.m. bus to Lindlar was no longer realistic. We barely had time to dash over to the very same McDonald’s that Glenn and I visited in 2001. At least, I knew exactly where to find it!

We had a light supper, returned to the bus station (about one block from the train station), and bought our tickets for Lindlar, about $5. each way. The bus arrived, we climbed aboard, and then heard a man calling, "Barbara!!" and here came Bruno's son, Uli, who boarded the bus to catch us.

In an earlier phone call to Bruno, we had said we planned to catch the 6 p.m. bus. Bless his heart, Uli had made arrangements to leave work in time to pick us up. So, we had a fast trip to Lindlar in Uli’s Peugot and had a chance to visit with him enroute. Uli works in Cologne and commutes from Lindlar. He works with computers at a department store. Uli’s sister, Sylvia, works for a doctor, at an office about half-way between Lindlar and Cologne.

Uli surprised his family by marrying a woman from Russia, a year or so ago. They now have a little 8-month baby boy, "Stefan" who is the apple of everyone’s eye.

Uli dropped us off at Bruno and Marlene Kemmerich’s home and finally, after my two earlier, unsuccessful attempts to visit Bruno in Germany, we met. Mark, Karen, and most of their generation of USA Kemmerich cousins have all come to Lindlar at one time or another. When Bruno made his visit to the Kemmerich relatives in the Pacific Northwest, Glenn and I were away somewhere. After so many "misses" it was a happy meeting, at last.

Bruno will celebrate his 80th birthday this December. He and Marlene have their children all within shouting distance. The eldest son, Franz Josef and his wife Gudrun, live in a house attached to Bruno’s, while his other two children, Sylvia and Uli and their spouses, share a house just across the street. And, Bruno’s surviving brothers and sister, Hedwig, all live in nearby towns. Quite a contrast to the far-flung members of the Kemmerich clan in the USA!

Marlene served us a pleasant supper of good homemade vegetable soup, cheese, tomatoes, bread, and of course--beer. Later, Uli and Sylvia came back and we managed a good bit of conversation--a mixture of German and English. Bruno still retains the English he learned during World War II, and Uli also speaks excellent English.

Our "hostess gift" for Bruno and Marlene was a set of four plastic place mats with views of Oregon on one side, and a map of our state on the other. This was a great way to explain where we live and also for Bruno to show us where he visited on his trip to the USA in the mid-1980’s with Uli.

Bruno told us a bit more of his youth and how he came to spend some of it in a prison camp in Texas. He joined Rommel’s tank corps in 1942, at the age of 19, and was sent to the African desert. He was captured by the Americans in 1943, shipped to Fort Hood, near Austin, Texas and remained there as a prisoner until 1945. I think he was then sent to England, and not released for another year or so. Bruno said for the last portion of his time at Fort Hood, he was a truck driver. He has a vivid memory of being sent to pick peaches at an orchard on the base--where he was stung by a wasp. He remembered the peaches were very tasty, though!

We told Bruno and Marlene that we planned to go to see relatives in the Mosel Valley and they both exclaimed about that area, saying it is their favorite place for a holiday. Bruno’s house is very compact, and he has made a most pleasant sun porch just off their kitchen. Even on this damp, gray afternoon, it was bright and warm out there. Marlene had beautiful plants blooming there too.

We asked Bruno what he knew about the circumstances of August Kemmerich’s emigration from Germany. Bruno did not know many details, but he said that since August had already joined the army reserves, he could not legally leave Germany. In essence, August went "AWOL." When he did, it meant that August could never come back and his departure also "made problems for the family." August’s father appeared to be ashamed of him, and the family never spoke of him; apparently there was no correspondence between them.

We also asked about August’s uncle, Augustus, and his wife, who apparently followed August to America--they were with him in Iowa, and later came to Birdsview, Washington where they helped him build his big ranch house before August married. Bruno said that Augustus had been a "visiting minister" who would have been a lay person in the Catholic Church and could marry.

Bruno is the son of Johann Kemmerich, and the grandson of Wilhelm, August Kemmerich’s younger brother. Johann served as a first aid man in World War I. Bruno was born and grew up in the nearby village of Fenke, where his sister, Hedwig, and her husband, Heinz (Heinrich) Hamann, now live. Bruno remembered when the Kemmerich sisters, Mary and Kathryn Stupfel, came from Oregon to visit his father, Johann, in 1958.

Before leaving Bruno’s, we made our second telephone call to Glenn, using Sylvia’s "handy" (cell phone) to connect to our phone card. All was well in Oregon, and Glenn had heard from Mark, the other traveling member of the family, who has been in Colombia and Peru for several weeks.

The town of Lindlar is some 25 miles east of the city of Cologne and lies in a little wooded valley, with the houses running up the hillsides above. Everything is "up" or "down." This area is surprisingly hilly and heavily forested. Apparently Lindlar lies within the western edge of a big "nature park" that must extend many miles to the east.

Bruno had found us a great place to stay--only about 3 blocks (uphill) from his house. About 9 p.m. we trundled our suitcases over to the home of Herr and Frau Klee and they took us down to our quarters.

Our guest suite was on the lowest level of the Klees’ home. The suite was on two levels, with the entry, kitchen / dining / sitting room and bath on the lower level, and our bedroom with two knotty pine twin beds on the upper level--complete with down comforters of course! There was a connecting door to the Klees’ basement from our bedroom level. Very spacious, airy and pleasant with a lovely garden below the house.

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