Once upon a time....
I have loved puzzles all my life. As a young girl I would stick out already in kindergarten with my ability to put the pieces together. It feels like a curse and a gift at the same time very often up until today. Being able to match the pieces is not alway wanted in today's world, but that is another story... just like playing chess....
Grandpa Bernhard playing chess with my uncle Günther, while my Aunt Moni lays her head on my Grandma Elise's shoulder, somewhere around 1950
Matching the pieces together when it comes to my own family history has turned out to be on the positive side all together. With four children, a homestead with veggies, chickens and rabbits, a dog and two cats, leasure time is rare, but it is there! Once in a while I am able to search and able to find.
I found out that my Uncle Rudi died even before my father was born - just some months, during World War II. On this old photograph there he is, with Reinhard and Raute - my Uncle who died in 2012 and my Aunt who just passed away these days....
My father was born 1944 in Rauschen. Königsberg was under bombs in August - they were "sort of safe" but had to run in January of 1945....
They had tickets for the Wilhelm Gustloff - those got lost or stolen somewhere in a bakeryshop. They could get tickets for the Cap Arcona somehow - a legend to be told sometime later... too long for this quest! My Grandma arrived in the western parts of Germany end of January 1945 with 4 kids left - my father only half a year old.
Grandpa was in prison in Russia - noone knew if he would ever come back - my father grew up with his Mom and his sibblings (the ones still alive) in a refugeecamp in northern Germany...
Grandpa Bernhard was born in 1896 being a (very young) soldier in World War I already and had been wounded severly in 1917. The following picture was taken when Uncle Rudi and Aunt Moni (her name was actually Ruth, but since Rudi called her Moni the whole family called her Moni all her life)... where little children...
My Father grew up and got married to my Mother... He died when I was two months old... this being my reason for the puzzling... I am off to some puzzling now :-)
I dedicated my artist-homepage to my father... this picture is from www.nataliebosien.de - it has not been updated in the past 10 years, because there was no time and no need... In a way, a need starts to grow again, deep inside - we'll see...
I feel so sad for you, losing your father when you were just a baby. The old pictures are classic. I wish i had such pictures of my family decades ago. Resteemed :-)
I love old family pictures. Your "old" pictures are almost contemporary for me.
I was born at the tail end of the family line. We had lots of family pictures, some of them tin types from the mid 1800s and when a relative died, I always asked if I could have their picture albums. I eventually had about twenty suitcases full of old pictures, school report cards, old driver's licenses, newspaper clippings all related to family. I had always intended to do something with them, but I'm the quintessential procrastinator. I had to evacuate my house once, and what I took with me was a truckload of pictures, since these were the only things that were irreplaceable. I eventually returned them to my storage shed, but I bought some newer suitcases at the thrift store and made them more secure. Suitcases are easy to grab when you're in a hurry. Then in 2007 I had to evacuate again. This time those pictures were the only things I had left after the fire burned down my house.
I knew my nephew was interested in genealogy, and he lived deep within the city in a much more secure location than I would ever live, so I ended up giving him all of the suitcases, everything I had saved from burning.
That was probably the best thing I ever could have done. My nephew, Marshall, is also a computer programmer and now a seasoned geniologist. He has taken almost all of those pictures and scanned them into an indexed database. He is also very active online and has located a gazillion shirt-tail relatives all over Turtle Island. He's traced my paternal family line all the way back to the early 1600s. He's gotten records of births, deaths, burials, ship records and just about anything that's available online. All my pictures are now distributed throughout the family via data cds so it is unlikely they will ever be completely lost. He's even straightened out some of the family stories that had taken on a life of their own. One of them was that my great grandfather was chief of police in Jersey City, NJ and that he was killed in action during a bank robbery. Marshal has found newspaper articles and other sources that prove that my grandfather was deputy chief of police during a robbery, but was also a drunk who lost his job, was arrested for not paying child support and for walking downtown naked. He died in an insane asylum, (in the line of duty). That makes a lot more sense. No heroes in my family that I'm aware of. Lol.
It is funny, the more we dig into old family history, the more likely we are to find some very quirky stories. My eldest son is the keeper of the family archives. He is a computer programmer too and has all records digitalized and saved in many places. I used to have the same system of keeping records - old suitcases.
Suitcases work because pictures are a form of time travel and the past is our baggage.
Well said. Thank you.
I see you with the suitcases! Good thing, you saved them! As you said yourself, they were the only thing not replaceable... Tonight and tomorrow - Samhain / Halloween - is a wonder-ful time to connect to the red line of your blood - your anchesters... who knows, maybe there were some heroes there after all - ask them! It is the celtic-irish-oldfolks "sylvester" - now the year's night will begin... the gates are open today ;-)
I'm pretty superstitious about the "holiday season" and often try to visit a graveyard at least once during the "fall." I was in Oaxaca for the Day of the Dead celebrations a few years ago. It was wonderful. The graveyard was alive with people decorating tombstones, lighting candles and staying up all night. So healthy.
As the sun grows dimmer and ventures away from the North, people become uneasy. It's just built into our beings. That's why there are so many religious holidays, celebrations and festivals during this time. It's a way of coping.
I was a spring chicken and am very sensitive to waning days. Personally, I don't like the holiday season here on Turtle Island because for most people it's just about being a better consumer while lending lip service to giving and caring. Commercialization has made the whole season hypocritical. But my negative attitude only reflects my inner angst at the shortening days. My mood is always gloomy from Halloween until Lent. It's not like that for most people.
Once Groundhog's Day rolls around, I'm a much happier camper.
It used to be similar to the way the southern Americas celebrate this night and day way back when in the Celtic / Germanic days. Samhain marking the beginning of the dark half of the year's cicle was filled with gathering around the fire, celebrating with family and friends and remembering the anchestors. It is interessting that even today the celebration starts in the evening - this was the beginning of the day in older times. Once the sun had set, the day was officially over and thus the next started.... With commercialization ruling most of the world in todays days, I am so grateful to see we are not the only ones refusing to join into this game. Our family gathered last night, around a bondfire and we shared familystories :-) No photos were taken once it was dark, but I can give you one from just before the daylight went away...
hmm, now I tried to copy it in here, but it does not work - so I'll make a small post about it :-)
Interesting how the church usurped all these "pagan" holidays and tried to replace them and align them with their own agenda. Now we have the commercialization phase: candy, kids begging at the neighbors, pumpkins and mayhem in the inner cities. Where I am now, only the Mexican families gather and celebrate in a traditional manner. Most everyone else parties and gets drunk and some won't let their kids "trick-or-treat" because they might get assaulted or be offered poison candy. It's more like Carnival or Mardi Gras in that people succumb to their more basal instincts. That's part of the commercialization.
I once did a copywriting for advertising course. They maintained that to sell you had to appeal to the "7 deadly sins" of greed, lust, gluttony, pride, sloth, wrath and envy. It's no wonder that with such a constant bombardment by media that society is breaking down.
I envy you sitting around your fire with your friends telling stories.
Here's the Wikipedia entry on the Aztec's Day of the Dead if you want to learn more about life on Turtle Island before the invasion.
as promised in my comment earlier - here's some pictures of our gathering :-) https://steemit.com/life/@jkiw/halloween-samhain-with-fire-and-family-connecting-to-our-roots
This is so interesting. We have a large basket of photos sitting in my brother's office and I need to get on him to get them all scanned. And while i have your attention. Today's prompt: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-13-5-minute-freewrite-prompt-crazy
How sad that you never got to know your father...hopefully, you will be able to fill in the missing pieces of your family's puzzle. I too like a good puzzle or mystery. I love the old photos. They tell a story all on their own.
Thank you so much for your empathy - and the hope for the rest of the puzzle! I can get lost in those old photographs and their mystery - you are right, they tell a story on their own and with all the stories I learned about woven around them, it is a good thing to take them out just once in a while - like tonight. Samhain / Halloween is a wonder-ful time to reconnect :-)
Those pictures remind me so much of my youth. I also had an uncle who died very young in WWII - So much wasted lives in wars - and it never stops. Well, today's prompt fits here.... https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-13-5-minute-freewrite-prompt-crazy
Well now, I think it is time to have a beer (ran out of Vinho Verde last night, haha) and consider the crazy things I could write about.... there'll be a post in the #freewrite tonight from my side of the ocean!
yay!! :)