~ Continued ~


       In 1922, after the defeat of the First World War plunged Germany into political and economic chaos, my father decided to emigrate to the USA. Several others of his hometown contemporaries, both young men and young women had already done so and others would follow in the years to come. Among those later arrivals was his childhood sweetheart, my fritz2 mother. They soon married and shortly thereafter, they moved to Richmond, Virginia where my father worked in the meat-packing business until his retirement. Richmond is also where my brother and I were born and grew up.

       Artistic and literary talents cannot be extinguished for long. In his later years, my father's talents resurfaced and blossomed. He filled my childhood home with soapcarvings, woodcarvings, paintings and folkart. He even painted his entire hometown on the side of his garage, allowing his grandchildren to add their own ideas by painting specific parts of this huge undertaking. When the paint finally flaked off the brick garage, he repainted the complete landscape on two long sheets of asbestos board and hung it the length of the garage!






       Now that you have "met" my father, I want to invite you to continue to explore this area of my website. You are in for a treat for the following vignettes of life in the early years of the 20th Century were taken from the memoirs of my dear father. The accompanying folk art with which I illustrate these pages are also the work of his hands. I share them with you not only as a loving tribute to this self-taught and talented man, but also because I consider them to be another valuable resource to add to the growing body of work describing German life in that simpler era.






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