“We Have Survived This Terrible War Alive”: Letters from World War I Germany in the Dittmar Family Papers

Sent to Emmy Dittmar in December 1915, this postcard states: "England be on guard, during daylight and in the dark night. Can't you hear the ringing from afar and through the water and in the air? The blood judgment is coming."

For the past several months, DRT Library volunteer Lore A. Senseney has been translating more than fifty German-language letters in the Dittmar family papers. Thanks to Lore’s efforts, we now know the contents of letters sent to Emmy Dittmar from relatives and friends living in Germany during and after World War I.

We’re highlighting some of these materials in honor of Armistice Day, which ended World War I on November 11, 1918. Additionally, more than ninety years after the conflict, Germany paid the last of its war reparations just two months ago.

"Now we write 1916," stated Emmy Dittmar's relative Marie on the back of the above postcard, "and as God's will we might have peace."

Letters from German relatives and friends contained within the Dittmar collection are filled with news of births, marriages, deaths, and other significant events in the lives of Emmy Dittmar’s loved ones. The letters document the extent to which all were greatly affected by World War I and its aftermath, and the authors describe and offer opinions about the general course of the conflict.

"I hope you are all alive," wrote Emmy Dittmar's aunt Marie in August 1919. "As you see (in the picture on the front of this postcard) Willi is happily engaged after this horrible war and hopes for happier times for the young couple."

In letters written during the early years of World War I, Emmy Dittmar’s relatives celebrated German victories but also expressed desire to see the “brutal,” “terrible,” and “gruesome” conflict end and wondered how anti-German war propaganda in the United States would affect their German-American relatives. For example, a portion of a letter written on November 17, 1915 states:

Now the terrible war has gone on for one year and four months, and still no end in sight. But we stand unshakably tight in the belief for a total victory, even if it costs so many sacrifices for us. Until now we have shown our friends what German strength and toughness can do. We have thrown over the enemy which fought against us in greater number, defeated everywhere and taken over great stretches of their lands, Belgia, Northern France and a great stretch of Poland are in our hands, Serbia will stop existing in a few weeks. Now comes still the accounting with our enemy till death, the English…Before England, the driving force of this horrible war, is not destroyed on the ground, the world will not have peace. How infamous the deceitful English through their bribed press has deceived the whole world and gave us the whole blame for the gruesome murders. Sadly, even America sided against us through war deliveries and worked towards our downfall, which made us very sad and killed all sympathy for this land for a long time…How must our German brothers in America have felt, who still have kept the love for their fatherland faithfully in their heart, when they read again and again about the huge masses of ammunition which were delivered to our enemies to ruin our homeland. God be thanked that it has not helped our enemies, even with American help at the huge offensive, to even then have little success. God will keep helping us with success for our victory…Pray for our beloved fatherland and fight all its enemies as far as it is possible for you, through word and deed.

Meat tickets (left) and a meat ration card (right) from post-war Germany.

Only one letter in the collection dates from 1917-1918, the final year of World War I following the entry of the United States. However, several post-war letters describe the hardships Germans faced, including illness; scarcity of food, fuel, clothing, and other necessities; and skyrocketing inflation. Despair and distress are evident, as Emmy’s sister Linchen wrote on November 2, 1919, “what terrible things we may still have to live through, sometimes I lose the will to live, [although] when I feel better and can work it is bearable again.”

October 14, 1919

…Sadly of the good things which you sent, nothing has arrived yet, even though they have been on the way almost 1/4 year. If only something arrives, we need it so badly. The whole summer we had almost rotten margarine and moldy bread. I got thoroughly ill from it and have been again for quite a few weeks. The whole body covered with painful sores, lots of fever and no appetite. I am still not well, but I can do some things again. A lot of anemia and malnutrition and spoiled food gave me the rest. There are never any eggs, milk or butter. Our boy wanted to bring me 1/2 lb. butter when he came Sunday and it was confiscated as contraband. You cannot imagine how it is here and what difficulties we have to bear. Petrol and candles are rarely to be had. In April we had no gas for the whole month and since we have no electric light, we sat in the dark and could not cook anything warm in the evening, because the coal had to be saved also. How will it be going this Winter – coal we have now in the basement, it was extremely expensive. Our landlord has raised the rent again and Lili and the boy have changed the whole apartment around, so that we can at least rent out one room, because moving is unthinkable, it would cost many thousands now. It is not going to get much better…

In response to this information, Emmy Dittmar sent multiple packages to several relatives containing things such as soap, chocolate, tea, coffee, rice, corned beef, cream of wheat, wool, and money. “There is almost no day where I don’t think of you with gratefulness,” wrote Emmy’s sister Marie in May 1920. “I am so glad about everything you sent to me.” Care packages to Germany were apparently common, as Emmy’s cousin reported in February 1921 that “there were, according to newspaper articles, a very large amount of care packages in Hamburg from America, which they could not deliver all at once,” which caused delays.

This postcard, dated January 31, 1916, depicts young Siegfried who, "with heart and hand," states "Now I have forged a good sword. Now I am worthy like other knights. Now I slay like any other hero, the giants and dragons, in Forest and in Field!"

While the vast majority of the materials in the DRT Library’s archival collections document the history of Texas communities, particularly San Antonio, some items describe other places in the United States and around the world, as San Antonians recorded their travels and received news from friends and relatives living elsewhere. When conducting historical or genealogical research about an individual, be sure to check for archival collections of his or her relatives, friends, neighbors, and business associates, even if they are in a distant location.

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Elaine B. Davis Research Award Winner Announced

Former DRT Library Director Elaine Davis, left, and current Director, Leslie Stapleton, right. Mrs. Davis accepted the research award at the Texas History Forum on behalf of the winner, Julia Brookins.

At this year’s Texas History Forum, Julia Brookins was announced as the winner of the second Elaine B. Davis Research Award. Ms. Brookins is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Chicago; the award will enable her to conduct research for her dissertation, Immigrant Settlers and Frontier Citizens: German Texas in the American Empire, 1844-1898.

In her application for the Davis award, Ms. Brookins described her project and the significance of accessing materials, particularly unique archival collections, at the DRT Library.

My doctoral research focuses new attention on the relationship between two central narratives of the nineteenth-century United States: continental territorial expansion and the integration of mass migrations from Europe.

Throughout the decades of mass immigration to the United States, the nation consolidated its authority in the new territories of the West and the Southwest. The United States worked to bind these lands to the national core. How did this expansionist project influence the way that European immigrants understood American society and adapted to it? To answer this question, I am focusing on the experiences of Germans in Texas, which was a new state in 1845 and one that played a critical role in America’s conquests…

In studying [the period] from Texan statehood in the 1840s until the frontier ‘closed’ and U.S. imperialists redirected their energies overseas in the 1890s, I concentrate on two important aspects of immigrant acculturation: the experience for the German migrants and the consequences for others [i.e. racial minorities such as Tejanos, Mexicans, African Americans, and American Indians]…

The completed dissertation will not only contribute to Texas history; it will also provide a unique yet feasible case study of a process that unfolded throughout the United States in the nineteenth century, as Europeans became Americans in lands that were themselves just becoming parts of the United States.

I visited the DRT Library at the Alamo for a short time this winter, and the funds from the Davis Research Award would allow me to return to San Antonio and examine a number of specific collections, documents, books, and visual materials I was unable to study before. I located a number of rare and unique items there which would add considerably to the depth and scope of my dissertation, including the Eugen Staffel letters, the Herff and Duerler families papers, and the [George Frederic] Oheim papers. I look forward to the possibility of incorporating more of the Library’s lively and important collections into my doctoral dissertation.

The Elaine B. Davis Research Award, endowed by the 2007-2009 DRT Library Committee chaired by Connie Impelman and sponsored by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, is awarded to bring scholars to San Antonio, Texas, to work with the unique materials housed at the Library. Mrs. Davis served as Director of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library from 1998 until 2008.

DRT Library Receives Donation of Beckmann Family Papers

Archivist Caitlin Donnelly with donors David and Myrna Langford.

On December 31, 2009, Library Director Leslie Stapleton and Archivist Caitlin Donnelly were pleased to receive a collection of archival materials relating to the Beckmann family of San Antonio. The collection was donated by David and Myrna Langford of Comfort, Texas.

The sizeable collection complements several other archival collections at the DRT Library, namely

• Beckmann family materials donated between 1999 and 2001.

• Collections such as the John Herndon James papers and the Ernst F. Schuchard papers that document the histories of families and individuals related to the Beckmann family, usually through marriage.

• Materials that document the history of Germans in San Antonio; such collections include the records of the city’s German-English School as well as a letterpress copybook and register of visitors maintained by the Casino Association.

A portrait of members of the Guenther, Beckmann, Schuchard, Pape, and Wagner families, 1893.

 

Based on an appraisal report and a preliminary assessment, it appears that the majority of items in the collection are to, from, or about Adolph Guenther Beckmann and his wife Mary Milby Giles Beckmann, Mr. Langford’s maternal grandparents. Adolph Beckmann’s grandfathers were John Conrad Beckmann and Carl Hilmar Guenther; his father was Albert Felix Beckmann. Milby Giles was the daughter of San Antonio architect Alfred Giles; her maternal grandfather was John James. The collection contains information about other members of the extended Beckmann family, particularly their Guenther relatives, as well as their friends, social acquaintances, and business associates.

A page from John C. Beckmann's business ledger showing blacksmith work undertaken for and payment owed by Drs. Ferdinand Herff and Adolphus Schloemann (also Schlomann or Schloman).

The collection contains a variety of materials including personal correspondence and cards, financial records, scrapbooks, art, certificates and diplomas, architectural plans, newspaper and magazine clippings, books, and genealogy charts and reports. One of the oldest and most interesting documents is a ledger book maintained by John C. Beckmann to document business he conducted at his blacksmith shop between roughly 1859 and 1866; the shop was located on the Alamo grounds where the DRT Library now stands. Additionally, the collection contains a large number of photographs that roughly date to the late 1800s and early 1900s. While some of the photographs document San Antonio’s built landscape – particularly Pioneer Flour Mills – the majority show members of the Beckmann and Guenther families. Almost all of the individuals shown in the images have been identified. One striking image shows a young Ernst Schuchard (whose mother was a Guenther). He is standing with an unidentified woman and a young girl identified as Mietze; she is believed to be his younger sister, Mary (or Marie).

Ernst and Mietze Schuchard as children.

The new acquisition will be made available to researchers upon the completion of processing by library staff.

Thank you, David and Myrna, for your generous donation to the DRT Library!

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Volunteer Improves Access to German-Language Materials

Volunteer Lore A. Senseney.

For the past year, Lore A. Senseney has been volunteering at the DRT Library with Assistant Director Martha Utterback and Archivist Caitlin Donnelly, working to translate German-language materials held in the library’s archival collections into English. Thus far, Ms. Senseney has translated almost 200 documents, primarily letters, in the Beckmann family papers and the general correspondence series of the Conrad A. Goeth papers. The translations are being filed with the original document so they will be accessible to researchers. Lore will next be translating documents in the Frances Drennon Shaughnessy family papers.

Translating the documents requires a special and rather unique skill: the ability to read the old Sütterlin German script that is no longer used. Today, Germans cannot read this script. However, Ms. Senseney, a native of Germany, learned it during her first two years of school, as Sütterlin was commonly taught in German schools during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The first page of a letter to John C. and Regina Muller Beckmann, presumably written by Felix Muller, Regina's father.

Lore's translation of the above letter, which Felix Muller began by writing "I have waited for seven years for (a response from you) in vain, and had given up all hope to receive a letter from you ever again."

The rest of Lore's translation of the above letter.

Lore’s journey to San Antonio was an interesting one. She started learning English in 1945 when school resumed following the end of World War II. Three years later, she escaped from East Germany with her mother and joined her father in Frankfurt, West Germany. There, Lore continued her English studies as an apprentice; a student at a school of business for industrial merchants and banking; and a student in the last class of industrial interpreters at the Berlitz school. Ms. Senseney arrived in the United States on August 5, 1959, landing in New York on the USS Buttner with her husband – a career non-commissioned officer (NCO) in the U.S. Army who had been stationed in West Germany and was newly stationed at Fort Sam Houston – and their two-year-old daughter. Lore and her husband later had two more children and at various times lived in San Antonio and Germany.

Ms. Senseney has been a member of the San Antonio Needlework Guild (SANG) and the Embroiderers’ Guild of America (EGA) since 1976. She has been particularly interested in whitework embroidery, a technique in which the stitching is the same color as the foundation fabric, traditionally white linen. Lore researched this type of embroidery during trips to Germany and began teaching about the technique in San Antonio. Since 1982, Lore has been volunteering at the Witte Museum, using her expertise to help in the conservation of its textile collection.

Throughout her time at the Witte, Ms. Senseney has periodically been asked to translate German texts. Her skills have been increasingly utilized since 2006, when she began undergoing treatments for breast cancer that left her hands numb, making it difficult to hold a needle and continue her textile conservation work at the Witte. However, Lore has found the work of translating historic documents to be equally rewarding, stating “I love it. It is something I can do that I enjoy and is as much fun as restoring an old textile, so it can live another 100 years.”

Of the letters she has worked with from the DRT Library’s collections, Lore writes that they have had “the most diverse content and challenging handwriting styles.” In the course of the project, she has also “researched and learned about the Germans who arrived in Texas in the 1840s and founded a lot of the businesses in San Antonio.”

Thank you, Lore, for all of your hard work!

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“How Old Man Henry and His Family are Getting Along in America”

On October 13, 1856, Henry Baumberger, a recent immigrant and resident of San Antonio, wrote to family and friends in his native Switzerland. The document is part of a collection of eight lengthy letters written by and to Baumberger between 1856 and 1867. Written in an older Sütterlin German script that is no longer used, the letters have been translated into English.

The first page of Henry Baumberger's letter of October 13, 1856. "On this here letterhead," he told his family and friends, "you see some views etc. of our City of San Antonio."

In the letter of October 13, Baumberger described life in Texas in great detail for loved ones living very differently in Europe. “The way people live here is strange,” he wrote. “You hardly will believe me if I tell you the truth and I am telling you nothing but the truth.” On one hand, Baumberger found much to criticize in San Antonio:

An enormous rudeness is generally prevalent in this country. Nobody cares about enlightenment and education. Nobody lived intellectually. Everybody strives for money and for money only. Money is the idol that is worshipped. The officers are not in the least interested in public welfare…Every day on the streets you can see loafers by the dozens, carrying knives and pistols. They are looking for trouble and stab or shoot, as they please. Every week some people are killed in the public street. And as the officers are mostly people of the same kind, usually nothing is done about it. Every night horses, mules or cattle are stolen. In the beginning all this seemed terrible to me and I was afraid of these rascals but not now any more.

On the other hand, however, Baumberger also described circumstances in Texas that he believed and observed to be an improvement over conditions in Switzerland. He explained ways in which American women enjoyed more legal rights than their European counterparts; praised laws that protected debtors from losing all of their property and belongings as payment to creditors; and described the “very happy life” enjoyed by Texas farmers, even though they were “sometimes raided by wild Indians.” Despite his mixed feelings about life in Texas, Baumberger ultimately wrote that “in general I am doing pretty well and so far I never regretted that I have emigrated [sic] to America.”

A detail of the last page of Henry Baumberger's letter, which he closed by asking that his loved ones "don't forget" him, "now in a far away country."

Based on evidence in the letters, Henry Baumberger (born circa 1823) and his wife, Anna Weiss Baumberger, immigrated to Texas with their two daughters, Anna (born circa 1852) and Eliza (born circa 1855). In his letter of October 13, Henry marveled that his young children could “already babble [in] English.” In the same letter, he happily announced the birth of his son, Henry, and explained that the “little fellow is already now an American citizen, because everybody born here is as a matter of course a citizen of this country.” Sadly, in a letter dated July 18, 1857, Baumberger informed his relatives and friends that baby Henry had died from a fever. “God has called him away,” he wrote, “and the hearts of the parents are struck again, because this is the third boy we had to see leaving us…I had trusted to have at last a male offspring. But it was not so to be.” However, by 1867 the Baumberger expanded to include two additional children: Paulina (born circa 1858) and Charles (born circa 1863).

While Henry Baumberger had worked as a teacher in Switzerland, his letters in the DRT Library document the variety of jobs he undertook in Texas: at different times he worked as a merchant, a beer garden owner, and an owner of shipping business that transported freight by wagon from San Antonio to Mexico or Port Lavaca. The 1870 census listed Henry as a member of the San Antonio police force and the 1880 census stated that he was once again working as a teacher.

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Was a Texan the First Man to Fly in an Airplane?

It is believed that this glass plate negative shows Jacob Brodbeck's airplane after it crashed in 1865, although this information has not been verified. (SC14120)

One often repeated story of Texas history claims that German immigrant and Hill Country resident Jacob Brodbeck was the first man to fly in an airplane. Although accounts vary, the event allegedly occurred on September 20, 1865, approximately five months following the conclusion of the Civil War and almost four decades before the Wright brothers’ flight experiments on North Carolina’s Outer Banks between 1900 and 1903.

According to the Handbook of Texas Online, Brodbeck’s “aviation achievements remain shrouded in doubt.” This is primarily because documentary evidence is largely lacking, as Brodbeck’s drawings or blueprints for his airplane have not survived and descriptions from eyewitnesses (e.g. letters, journal entries, or newspaper reports) have never been found.

However, materials at the DRT Library do appear to suggest that, despite uncertainties about whether Brodbeck ever actually flew his airplane, he was working on a project aimed at accomplishing this feat.

A republished copy of Jacob Brodbeck's notice, which appeared in the Galveston Tri-Weekly News on August 7, 1865.

In her work Jacob Brodbeck “Reached for the Sky” in Texas, descendant Anita Tatsch includes a photocopy of an article written by Brodbeck that was printed in the Galveston Tri-Weekly News on August 7, 1865. In this article, Brodbeck wrote, “For more than twenty years I have labored to construct a machine which should enable man to use, like a bird, the atmospheric region as the medium of his travels.” Brodbeck’s main purpose in writing the article was to attract funding for the construction of a large “air-ship,” the design of which he intended to patent. “I have therefore concluded to collect subscriptions,” Brodbeck wrote of his financial plans.

“These subscriptions I shall not ask as donations, but as shares, to be refunded together with a part of the proceeds of the sale of the patent right, or the sale of air-ships, as the case may be. I have put the price of one share at five dollars. Every shareholder will receive a certificate, securing to him a proportionate interest in the proceeds of the enterprise.”

A document contained in the library’s archival collections demonstrates and verifies the financial strategy Brodbeck outlined in the newspaper. The document contains four stock certificates, each for a quarter share of stock that San Antonio physician Ferdinand Herff purchased in Brodbeck’s airplane venture. Discovered by Herff’s son in 1924, the stock certificates were donated to the library by granddaughter Zelime Herff Simpson in 1966.

Ferdinand Herff's stock certificates, which helped fund Jacob Brodbeck's efforts to develop an "air-ship."

At the same time, Simpson also donated a final item related to Jacob Brodbeck’s “air-ship”: a six-page typed document entitled “Detailed specifications written by Jacob Brodbeck of an airship made by him.” A note attached to the end of the specifications indicates that the copy in the library’s collections is a transcription and translation of the original, the location of which is not known. According to the addendum, the specifications were “carefully prepared and written in the handwriting of the late Jacob Brodbeck prior to the construction of his airship which worked successfully as far as it would at that time. It was translated from German to English by his granddaughter, Miss Annie Brodbeck…in 1932.”

The first page of a translated and transcribed copy of Jacob Brodbeck's specifications for an "air-ship."

While these documents offer tantalizing evidence that Texan Jacob Brodbeck spent many years working to develop, construct, finance, and patent a means for mechanical flight, whether historians can accurately consider him the first man to fly in an airplane remains a mystery.

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Germans in San Antonio: Freie Presse fur Texas

On October 28, 1945, publication of the influential German newspaper Freie Presse für Texas ended eighty years after August Siemering issued the first edition in 1865. In addition to being a newspaper editor, Siemering also worked as a teacher, writer and journalist, and public official, and he was involved in the establishment of the San Antonio Express (now the Express-News). Under Siemering’s leadership, the Freie Presse “became one of the leading Republican newspapers of the South” following the Civil War. At various times throughout its history, the Freie Presse was issued weekly, bi-weekly, tri-weekly, and daily. Each edition of the paper contained numerous advertisements for San Antonio businesses as well as works of fiction and national and international news.

Top half of the front page, Freie Presse fur Texas, March 9, 1893.

The Freie Presse was one of many newspapers serving the large German population of San Antonio and Texas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The San Antonio Zeitung was first published in the 1850s, and, according to Glen E. Lich in The German Texans, “eighteen German newspapers were in existence by 1892.” The number of German newspapers continued to grow, reaching 29 in 1907 before declining. Lich states that “eleven papers ceased publication during World War I,” presumably due to anti-German sentiments. By 1941, when the United States entered World War II, only six German newspapers were still being published; “by the end of the war, four were left, and the last of these, Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, ceased publication in German in the 1950s” (126).

Top half of the back page, Freie Presse fur Texas, March 9, 1893

In his essay “The Function of the German Literary Heritage,” published in German Culture in Texas, Hubert P. Heinen quotes the recollections of his grandfather, a German Texan born in 1872 who as a boy became an avid reader of the Freie Presse für Texas when he worked herding sheep:

The only reading I had access to was the Freie Presse für Texas, a German weekly published in San Antonio, which, besides current news and correspondence, carried one or more serials of novels (Romane); also volumes of German magazines, such as the Die Gartenlaube, in carefully preserved Jahrgänge (one-year volumes containing fascinating Romane and short novels) were passed from one family to the other, and, naturally, I fell for reading these stories. Having lots of time on hand, I acquired the habit of “slow-reading” (not overcome to this day), but absorbed all and lived with and through the whole story. Meanwhile, as I was thus absorbed in reading, the sheep would drift apart in all directions, and I had to spend hours trying to get them together again (169).

The sizeable newspaper collection at the DRT Library includes twenty-eight editions of the Freie Presse für Texas dating from 1871 to 1938. Additionally, the library has many books, vertical files, manuscript collections, and photographs documenting and exploring the experiences of German families, organizations, businesses, and communities throughout the history of San Antonio and Texas. Some of these materials will be featured in future blog postings. You can locate additional resources about German Texans at the DRT library by going to our online catalog, which can be accessed from the menu on the right side of this blog. Select “Power Search” and conduct a subject search for “Germans Texas” and “Germans Texas San Antonio.”

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.