OBERKALBACH, HESSEN, GERMANY
Village of My Berthold and Ullrich Ancestors Includes Information about Surrounding Villages Katharina Berthold When my mother was born in 1907 in Oberkalbach, there had already been three daughters and a son born before her. The oldest, a daughter was 7 years old. Katharina's father, Johannes, had to work hard to provide for his family. Because the inherited land had been divided many times in the past, what remained was not sufficient to provide for his large family and his animals. There were eventually 15 children. Oberkalbach was a Lutheran town and the young people were only allowed to socialize with other Lutherans. The nearby village Mittelkalbach was a Catholic village. Apparently the Catholic boys were cuter there and a Berthold girl risked punishment when she was discovered by her older brother talking with a Catholic boy and was immediately taken in tow to confess to her parents. For the most part, Katharina remembers life as hard and full of constant work. |
She, like most of the Berthold children when they turned 14 and their formal education was at an end, was placed in another village to earn money, which her father collected each month to take home for the support of the family. This was her life until she was 21 years old. She worked in different places as a nanny, as a farm hand and as a milk maid at different times during those seven years. Delivering milk with a horse and wagon from house to house was a demanding job and she remembers being so tired one afternoon that she fell asleep while driving the horse and wagon. The reigns dropped from her hands and the horse began to run wild. A kind man was able to come to her rescue before any harm came to her.
She moved to Fechenheim, the eastern part of Frankfurt am Main, with a population of about 10,000 and found a job in a chemical factory, where she met her future husband, also working there. Richard was a young man who had been born and raised in this place, a city boy compared to her upbringing in a small village. While courting, they enjoyed bicycle outings with a club, as well as camping and costume parties. They married without fanfare, with none of her family present, when they were almost 24, then had two children and started a leatherwork business of their own, making wallets and purses, etc. They often rode their bicycles or the train to visit her family in Oberkalbach.
Then WW II began. For two years Richard's business was assigned to make felt canteen covers for the army. His luck ran out in 1941 and he was drafted. I was two years old and my brother was eight. We had never had a family picture taken of all four of us, but after he left we had one taken of my mother and my brother and me at a formal photography studio to send to my father. Katharina struggled through the war with two young children, running from bombs and scraping for food. We had some close escapes during the air raids that targeted the big city to the west of us. Two years later, on a day when no mail had come from Richard for too long and we had no food to eat, mother rode her bicycle to her sister's house in Markoebel (about 15 miles) to ask her for some bread to bring home to us. She had stopped at the post office to check if any mail had come from my father. There was none. Her sister assured her that surely there would be a letter soon. Shortly after she arrived at home, a man delivered the black-edged envelope that announced the death of my father on 21 October 1943, age 36, in Albania. He had contracted malaria and a kidney infection. His body was never brought home. Two more long years passed before this tragic war ended. On Richard's death certificate issued in 1946, the cause of his death was recorded as "sepsis from his wounds." It will forever remain a mystery whether he died of disease or wounds received in the field.
We lived in the American sector. The American soldiers started dating the German women. In 1948, Katharina who was 41, having been widowed for 5 years, met a widowed U.S. soldier. They courted about a year and then married. My stepfather returned to the States and eight months later had the money to pay the train and ship fares so we could emigrate and join him in Connecticut. After a 3-day train ride to Italy, we got on a ship at Genoa and after nine days on board the S.S. Atlantic we arrived in New York. Following a 2-hour train ride we arrived in Hartford, Connecticut, where I lived until I left for BYU.
Initally, life in America was not all it had been promised it would be. We lived in a 2-room apartment with my stepgrandfather. We were poor; we were lonely; we were homesick. Katharina sat for hours by the window of the 2nd floor apartment, crying heartfelt tears. After four months, she took the bull by the horns, got a job in a laundry, found a more appropriate place for us to live and started saving her money for our return to Germany.
Six years later, when she had finally saved enough money for the trip, my brother and I were assimilated into the lifestyle of America and didn't want to go back to live in Germany. In fact, my brother was in the U.S. Army, had served in Korea and then married to an American girl and they were expecting their first child. Then my mother changed her goal from returning to live in Germany to saving enough money to buy a big house to live in and to rent the spare rooms to gentlemen. In 1961, when she had been in the U.S. for twelve years, she bought a 3-story Victorian-style house built in 1900. By this time, I was married and living far away. She and my stepfather lived on the first floor of the big house and they rented out the six rooms on the upper floors. She continued to work in a laundry, the work she had obtained after first arriving in the country, when she hadn't mastered the language yet. The plan was to pay off the mortgage as quickly as possible and owe nothing to anybody.
They sold the house when she was 76 years old and moved closer to me so that I could care of them in their old age. After my stepfather died, she lived another 11 years. She died at age 90, living to be older than all except one of her siblings at death.
Over the years, Katharina made several trips to visit her family in Germany. She was there for the 800-Year celebration of Oberkalbach's mention in written history. She was there at her 60th anniversary of her confirmation into the Lutheran church. She was never in Germany when her parents or any of her siblings passed away. She was only occasionally there when a birthday was celebrated and the family gathered for coffee and German pastries. She did not regret staying here to be near her children and grandchildren.
HOME
Copyright 2000 - 2022
Sue (Ursula Kaiser) Foster
Please contact me for permission to copy. I would love to know why this information interests you.
Copyright 2000 - 2022
Sue (Ursula Kaiser) Foster
Please contact me for permission to copy. I would love to know why this information interests you.