So a few things I wanted to add to the blog were things from Oma and Grandma Bernice
Ancestral Histories:
Emilie Herta Heinze
A few years ago prior to going on my mission I posted in my
blog about a trip I took to Germany. The
post is as follows:
“Germany was not at all what I expected. It was not a vacation of sights
but stories. I spent most days from 9am-9pm in a nursing home room playing sudoku
watching my grandma (Granny) taking care of her mom (Oma). Oma was never really
there. She is 89 and her body and mind are mangled by the devastating effects
of Parkinsons. Everyone she loved, husband, friends, brothers and sisters (1O)
are gone. Friends who are left are in the same sad state. At this point though
she doesn’t remember them. She rarely recalls who my Granny is. Yet each Sunday
my Granny calls her from her home in Kansas to talk to her so that even though
she may not know her, she knows she is not alone. I think even though she lives
mostly in her head, until the constant pain with which she exists causes her to
cry out to any one who is there to listen, I think some times all we want is to
know we are not alone.” (3 Sept 2009)
So this experience was at the end of Oma’s life, she was
trapped in her body and her mind was gone.
She was a shell of who she once was and I wanted to know who she was
really. The following is from
information gained from stories told during the long hours at Oma’s bedside and
a recent interview of her daughter Burga Hudson (Granny).
So who was Emilie Herta Heinz, she was a survivor, a mother,
a daughter, a dancer, and a world traveler.
Emilie was born in Oberthomasdorf on the 28th of September
1920. She was the youngest of 10 living children. There were 2 boys and 8
girls. Oberthomasdorf was part of
Czechoslovakia which had been created 2 years prior to her birth. Life for her as the youngest child was
difficult. Her mother was not very
affectionate and this distance reflected in her own relationship with her own
daughter.
Her life and childhood were that of staunch German
life. Her life was one of hard
labor. When she was in her early
twenties she worked as a farm hand and a waitress at the restaurant on the farm. According to Burga, “She helped on the farm and then worked as a waitress when needed. There
she met my father who was playing the harmonica. My mother dated him for a
short time and got pregnant with me. He was transferred to another place before
I was born. My mother filled out the papers and he paid child support, which my
mother put in the bank... My mother found out that his parents had a secondhand
store but she wanted no contact with him after she found out so many things
about him.”
So she met a man and had a child. Her siblings thought this an affront to their
catholic upbringing and this influenced Burga’s life forever. Emilie liked the name Veronica for her
daughter but her sisters thought the child need a good Catholic name to help
counteract the circumstances of her birth so the named her for a German
catholic saint Walburga. She became
known affectionately as Burgi or Burga.
When Burga was a year and a half old her half brother
Alois Heinz Nistler was born 23 April 1944 in hospital in Freiwaldau. His
father was born 24 June 1921 in Adelsdorf near Freiwaldau. They married 28
September 1944 in Oberthomasdorf. He was a soldier and who left the Sudetenland
to fight the war. He was not back when they
had to leave the Sudetenland in 1945/46.
They had to leave because the Czech government took their property and
ordered us to leave. The German
government assigned them a new place to live. They were transported to the
Schwabenland where Emilie, her mother, and children lived in a farmhouse with a
good family until her husband came back from the war.
Her mother remained on the farm
while they moved to another city where Alois would leave each evening on Sunday
to work and return on Saturdays. They lived
like this for a few years. Emilie
enjoyed growing vegetables and fruit which she would can. She also had chickens
and rabbits and goats. They often got eggs and goat milk and she butchered the
animals for food. She often travelled by
bike until she got a moped.
On 19 October 1949 her son, known
affectionately as Heinzi, died after he had been hit on the head by a horse and
then had a stroke after having whopping cough for awhile. He died in
Hinterlintal where they lived and was buried in Spraitbach in the catholic
cemetery. She never quite got over his
loss and later after they had moved away she found out that the cemetery was
had taken up the graves and built a mausoleum and the bodies were destroyed,
this hurt her deeply and influenced her own decision to be cremated upon her
own death.
Emilie’s marriage was not a happy
one according to Burga and on Aug. 1, 1960 they got divorced. By then the
family moved to Schwabisch Gmund and Emilie worked at a good job for the city.
Emilie had worked hard her whole
life and it wasn’t until her later years that she truly was able to live. She was married again in her later years to
Karl Kuschmentz. With him she was able
to travel and see the world going to Italy and other places in Europe she had
always dreamed of. Burga remembers her
in those years as always being well dressed.
She loved to dance. After church
on Sundays they would go to a local restaurant for dinner and dancing. Burga
says that she and her mother would dance together and truly enjoyed this time
together.
She lived actively and
independently up until the age of 85 when she moved into a nursing home where
she quickly declined. Her room filled
with emblems of her live long past. Scarves
of a well dressed woman, gloves from west Germany. All trinkets of a life now
just a memory, rosaries and a picture of the savior symbols of a faith still
burning bright.
Walburga Marie
Heinze
Walburga known as “Burgi” by her family and friends was
born ---- in Oberthomasdorf, Sudetenland.
A country and town in which her family lived for many generations. Her
parents were Otto Winter, who was a German soldier stationed in the Sudetenland
with the German Army. Her mother, Emilie Herta Heinze, worked on a farm that
also had a restaurant. She helped on the farm and then worked as a waitress
when needed. There she met Otto who was playing the harmonica. Her mother dated
him for a short time and got pregnant with Burga. He was transferred to another
place before she was born. Her mother filled out the papers and he paid child
support, which she put in the bank. This was the only contact which she had
with her biological father. Her mother
later discovered that he also had a child with another woman. That child Burga’s half sister was born two
weeks earlier. He did not pay child support for her. Her name was Veronica
Parks. He was also married and had 4 or 5 children with his wife in Koblenz,
Germany.
When
she was about a year old her mother got pregnant with her half-brother, Alois
Heinz Nistler. His father was Alois Nistler. Heinzi was born ---- in hospital
in Freiwaldau. His father and their mother were married 28 September 1944 in
Oberthomasdorf. He was a soldier who left the Sudetenland to fight the war. He
was not back when they had to leave the Sudetenland in 1945/46. They had to
leave because the Czech government took their property and ordered them to
leave. She was almost 4 years old but
still remembers the trip. They were
ordered to bring all that they could and then the Czech soldiers could inspect
and take what they liked. They were
given physicals and deloused because many had contracted lice from the ride in
cattle cars. The German government
assigned them to a new place to live. “We were transported to the Schwabenland
and my grandmother, mother, brother, and I lived in a farmhouse with a good
family until my stepfather came back from the war.”
When
Alois returned from the war her grandmother stayed on that farm but they moved
to another town. In 1949 on 19 October Heinzi died at home in Hinterlintal and
was buried in Spraitbach in the catholic cemetery, after he had been hit on the
head by a horse and then had a stroke after having whooping cough.
Her
grandmother, Anna, moved in with them then and Emilie worked in a bra factory
and my stepfather got a job in a city nearby. Her mother grew and canned fruits
and vegetables and raised goats and rabbits.
Burga remembers a time, “When our
neighbor, a farmer, hired someone to butcher a hog my mother had the same man
also butcher one for us. So we had plenty to eat.”
Burga
either walked to school or took the bus. The school was 2 towns away in the
town where her brother was buried. She
would often pass his grave on her way to
school. Her parents spoke plattdeutsch
at home or High German with others. Her mother had to learn swabisch to work
but her grandmother only spoke plattdeutsh. She said, “I played with the neighbor’s children so I picked up the different
dialects easily. When I was allowed to bring a friend home they thought it was
funny the way I talked to my grandmother.” Burga often spoke to officials
when their family had to deal with the city or the school.
“We played hide and seek and jumped rope.
There was no allowance and I got what I needed. I had the mumps when I was 5 or
6. Most of my friends were about my age and there were more girls than boys. My
8th grade teacher made me feel good about my writing skills. My pet
had been a small goat and I walked with it on a leash. As I got older and
played less with it, I found out that my mother had killed it and we had eaten
it. That made me wonder about eating meat.”
She
remembers her mother was always working but she was good to her. Alois her
stepfather was not very nice to her mother and he often spanked Burga for
things that her brother did because “I
should have made him behave. Most of the time I had to kneel on pieces of wood
(cut to be used for the oven) and I had to look at the wall. If my mother told
him it was enough, he got mad at her.”
Her
parents were never what she would call happy and Aug. 1, 1960 they got
divorced.
“By then we had moved to Schwabisch Gmund and
my mother worked at a good job for the city and my step-dad continued to work
where he had been for years in the city we were now living in. The one good
memory I have of my stepfather was when the 4 of us took a long walk and we got
to a watermill and he moved the wheel so we could see the water running over
the wheel as it would have when the mill had still been in use. My brother and
I laughed and ran that day and we felt so good.”
My mother’s parents were
Anna Magdalena Streit born May 4, 1876 in Streitenhau house #9 and Josef Adam Heinze born Jan 16,
1873 in Adelsdorf house #103. They got married July 30, 1900 in Freiwaldau.
They were catholic. I know that my grandfather fought in Sarajevo with the
Austrian/Hungarian Army during world war I. He was a farmer and died before we
left the Sudetenland so he was buried there. My mother told me that he had
cancer in the throat and pretty much starved to death. My grandmother died July
10, 1958 in Schwabisch Gmund in our home. She was buried in the same city. I
have a picture of my Grandparents and we always called them Oma and Opa, that
is in the dialect of my home. My grandfather’s parents were Heinze Vinzenz and
Theresia Hokel (maiden name). My grandmother’s parents were Johann Streit and
Maria Bose (maiden name).
I lived in Schwabisch Gmund
until Sept 19, 1962 when I moved to Apopka, FL which is near Orlando. I met
Willard Sidney Hudson in June of 1961 at a restaurant that my mother and I
frequently had dinner at. He was an American soldier who spoke little German
and I spoke even less English. By 17 Nov 1961 we got married at the courthouse
and then at the base chapel and my mother fixed a nice meal for us. There were
only 5 of us, my maid of honor, the best man, my husband and I and my mother.
My mother cooked a mixture of German and native Sudetenland food. We ate at our
kitchen table. We had a tradition of placing a lemon dish next to our plates, a
bowl or water with lemon, so that you could clean your hands. My husband did not know this so he took the
lemon out and drank it. We ate spatzle not like the long noodles but just as
long as your thumb with butter, sugar, and cinnamon. It’s a side dish. Meat was a common German dish like breaded
pork chops and sausages. Sometimes it
had paprika like the Hungarians. Our side dishes were spinach, scrambled eggs,
fried potatoes and wheat bread. They were all separate. Every meal started out with soups. This used
to not be the way of doing things in Germany but now they do. No matter what else you ate you had soup.”
Burga
lived in Apopka, Florida and learned to speak English. Many of the words she
learned from her husband were not proper words and so this led to many comical
situations. For example if one of his
nephews wet or soiled his diaper she would say he “crapped” or “pissed” not
knowing people don’t use those when referring to children so they laughed at
her.
She
lived near his family in Florida and remembers many positive times with them.
It was through Willard’s step mother that Burga found the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints. She was visiting a
friend of Willard’s step mother one day and the woman noticed her looking at
the Book of Mormon on the table. She asked, “Have you ever heard of Mormons?”
Burga responded that “Other than
the fact that they have more than one wife she didn’t know anything.” This woman laughed and offered to have the
missionaries visit. Burga agreed out of
politeness and shortly thereafter was baptized with Willard’s step mother. At the time he was in Korea, when he came home
he was suspicious of the missionaries and listened to them to protect his
wife. He ended up joining as well. She
had 4 children with Willard and lived with them in Chapman, KS until their divorce
in 1981 when she moved her family to Manhattan, KS so her kids could be near
the university. She has lived in
Manhattan ever since working in a nursing home until her retirement a few years
ago.
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