My Parents' Germany

My Parents' Germany 1900 - 1940


My maternal grandmother, Ida Louise Albrecht née Scheyzky, in the early 1900s.	My maternal grandfather Johannes Reinhold Wilhelm Albrecht in the early 1900s.	My maternal grandmother holding my mother in 1914, the year of my mother’s birth.	My mother Gisela Albrecht with her younger brother Karl in the mid 1920s.
My mother as a young woman, surveying the beautiful East German countryside, around 1930.	My mother showing a dramatic flair in the walled garden of her childhood home, in the early 1930s.	My mother showing off her gymnastic skills. In her early twenties she moved to Berlin, where she offered lessons in Deutsche Gymnastik (German Gymnastics).	Another photo of my mother in her twenties, enjoying ice cream as Germany tottered towards war.
Judging from the hat and my mother’s youthful face, this photograph must have been taken around the end of the 1920s.	A beautiful studio portrait of my mother Gisela, taken circa 1930.	My mother at the age of eighteen, sporting a daringly short haircut.	Gisela in dance attire demonstrating another graceful pose.
Gisela as a young woman. The daughter of the mayor of Güstrow, she enjoyed a cultured life before the War.	My parents on their wedding day in 1937.	Born in 1903, my father was just under forty years old in this photograph.	My mother with her first child, my brother Gunther, born in 1938.
My older brother Gunther’s christening. By the time I came along in 1944, the world had drastically changed.	Gunther in his pram. Such luxuries would soon disappear.	My parents around 1940 on the beach at Danzig (now Gdańsk) with my older brother Gunther. The full impact of the War was still in the future.	My maternal grandparents under the walnut tree at their home in Güstrow, before the East German state appropriated the house.
My maternal grandfather, Johannes Albrecht, former mayor of Güstrow. He would live to see his home confiscated by the East German State.	My father’s childhood home in Berlin around 1910.	My mother looking very fashionable in the 1930s.	And my father in his typical Fedora hat and warm scarf.
My mother’s younger brother, Karl, in his Luftwaffe uniform. He was shot down on the Eastern Front and did not survive the war.	My father about to light a cigarette under the walnut tree at my mother’s childhood home. When I visited Germany in the 1990s, the tree was still standing.	Another view of the walnut tree, scene of many happy gatherings. The house was eventually converted into apartments by the East German state.