Our Berg Ancestry
The Bergs in Germany

Our great-great-grandfather was Leopold Berg. He was born in Holland and migrated to Wuppertal to work in the coal mines. Wuppertal is an industrial town on the Wupper River, east of Dusseldorf. He lived to be 90 years old. His wife was Ida Hoesterey, from Dusseldorf. One of their sons was Maximillian Leopold Berg (November 5, 1883, to March 5, 1931; our great-grandfather).  Maximillian Leopold had fought in WWI in Russia and died of malaria a year before our mom was born. 

Alan: I believe mom said he had a metal plate in his head from an injury while fighting in WWI.

Maximillian married Anna Marie Hagen from Wuppertal (October 14, 1884, to October 28, 1941). Her parents were Lambert Hagen, another immigrant from Holland, and Josephine Hilgers of Dusseldorf. Our mom had nice memories of her grandmother (Anna Marie Hagen) because she often stayed with her while her mother worked, and her father was away during World War II.

Maximillian and Anna Marie met in the steel factory they both worked in. Friends called them “The handsome Max and the beautiful Maria.” Max was Catholic, with light hair and blue eyes. Maria was Protestant (Lutheran), with brown eyes and curly hair. They had 10 children, one of whom was our grandfather, August Berg. In order, they were:

1.   Ida (6/01/1907 – 2/9/1994) she was Juliane’s mother; our mom said Tante Ida was like a second mother to the younger siblings; her husband was Unkle Fritz (Friedhelm Gottfried)

2.   Lambert (2/24/1909 – 6/1/1955) he was a “free spirit”; joined French Foreign Legion to get away from all the siblings, but caught syphilis in Africa

3.   August (1/24/1911 – 6/21962) our mom’s father and our Opa

4.   Peter “Uncle Bob” (4/5/1913 – 8/6/1987) his wife was Tante Lisbeth; Alan met her and their son, Manfred, in 1989

5.   Petranella (who died at age 4)

6.   Maria “Tante Mitze” (8/6/1919 – ??) she moved to Australia

7.   Margareta “Tante Marga” (2/27/1924 – 20??) she married a British soldier and moved to Aldershot, England; Alan and Mable visited them in June 2000

8.   Willie (6/14/27 or 28? – Spring 2008) our mom sponsored his migration to Sacramento in January 1961; our Aunt Marianne came to Sacramento to marry him on September 26, 1966; their son, Andreas Berg, was born July 18, 1971

9.   One sibling died at birth and another at 6 months

Despite so many kids, there were few Berg cousins in our mom’s generation. Juliane (Gottfried) Carlitz is the cousin our mom knew best and kept in contact with through the years. A few of them died young. One of Uncle Bob's sons died in a car accident when he was a teenager. His other son, Manfred committed suicide after his father passed away.

Alan's middle name is "August", named after our grandfather, August Berg (our Opa). Our mom deeply loved her father (our grandfather). She said he was handsome and fun to be around, and he made her feel special. He was soft-spoken and would often take her on weekends to museums and to visit the aunts and uncles. He also sang in a men’s group at local restaurants in Dusseldorf. During WWII, he was in the SA (known as “Storm Troopers” in the West) and mostly drove trucks to the front lines in France and Italy.

Our mom said he was more conservative than his older brother, Lambert. She said she felt like his twin. They had a similar personality, looked alike, and felt like they could read each other’s thoughts. On Sunday mornings, they would get all dressed up and go to a restaurant where he would meet many friends who gave her lots of attention. He was proud of her, and she was proud of him.

She also wrote that he did not want to marry our grandmother (our Oma). She was 2 years older than him, they had a "fiery" relationship, and he felt he was too young to get married. But eventually our Oma and Tante Ida (above) convinced him to marry her.

Our Oma's Family

Looking at our grandmother’s (our Oma) side of the family, her father was Gustav Adolph Windhoff, probably born in 1876. He was from former East Germany and migrated to Dusseldorf. He met his wife, Anna (last name unknown) in the Holland area of the Netherlands. They married in 1904, were Protestants (probably Lutheran), and settled in Dusseldorf-Bilk.

They had 4 sons and 1 daughter—our Oma. Gustav had all his kids learn an instrument. Uncle Adolph, the oldest, became a violin teacher in Milspe, Westphalia, Germany. He and Tante Lina had 3 or 4 kids about our mom’s age. Uncle Fritz (Friedrich) was a watch and clock maker. He tried to teach the zitar to our mom, but she did not like it. He and Tante Paula had no children. 

Uncle Franz worked for the city of Dusseldorf and played the clarinet and horns. He would take our mom on his fancy motorcycle to motorcycle races in Nurburgring. He and Tante Kathe had no children. Our Oma was to learn the accordion but quit at a young age. Uncle Karl was the youngest and played the flute. He lived in Dusseldorf and had one daughter with Tante Anni.

Gustav Windhoff, himself, played the piano and lived until he was 89 years old (to 1965). Our mom remembers he tended a small garden, had red hair, and was very healthy for his age. His wife, Anna, died much earlier, in 1919, when our Oma was 10 years old.

Our grandmother (“Oma” in German) was Anna Maria Henriette Josephine Windhoff. (Out mom said she did not know why her mother had so many names.) She was born in Dusseldorf on May 10, 1909. Her first name, Anna, was the same as her mom’s name, so they called her “Annekin” (little Anna). 

Our Oma grew up during World War I (1914-1918), which Germany lost. Because of the war, she was not able to attend school and there was very little food. After her mother died in 1919, her father made her stay home to cook and clean house until she was about 20 when she left home (against his wishes). Despite little formal education, she was successful in finding jobs and lived in the nicest part of Dusseldorf.

She met our grandfather, August Berg, when Uncle Bob and Tante Lisbeth introduced them to each other at a party in 1930. They won many prizes for their dancing skills at parties like that, which were popular at that time. August Berg’s father (Leopold) died in 1931 and, according to custom, our Oma could not see him unless they were engaged, which they did. They had a courthouse wedding in 1932, the same year our mom was born. They had a church wedding in 1933, which was a double wedding with Tante Ida and Uncle Fritz. Our mom said it was normal in those days to be married after the first child was born.

Our Mom

Our mom was the oldest of three girls. Her birth name was “Ida Berg”, named after her great-grandmother. But her father's older sister (her aunt) was also named Ida, so everyone called our mom, “Ingeborg”, or “Inge” for short, except apparently Tante Ida. In the US, our mom would usually tell people her name was “Inger” because that was easier for Americans to pronounce.

Tante Renate-Paula (Berg) Schroeder (1935-200?) was the next sister. Our mom said she was always slow in her physical and mental development. She saw Renate as the opposite of herself.

~~~

Alan Remembers 

I last met Tante Renate on a trip to Germany in 2002. I told Tante Juliane that I wanted to meet Renate because I had not seen her in a long time. She was surprised and said, “are you sure you want to meet her?” She arranged for Renate to come to Julianne’s house, and I realized why she said that. Renate talked non-stop, which would be hard for anyone to take for very long. 

~~~

Our mom’s much youngest half-sister is Karin (Huetzen) Binger. She was born 1946 (14 years after our mom) and still lives in Dusseldorf. Alan, Jurgen, and Monika met her in August 2012 in the Dusseldorf Altstat (old town), which is also known as the "longest bar in the world" because of 300 the street bars there. She is also on Facebook.

In 1970, our Oma visited us in Sacramento with our Tante Karin and her husband, Friedhelm Esser (they later divorced), and their two children, Yvonne and Hans Jürgen. Yvonne has a daughter, Sina Esser, and Hans-Jurgen has a a son, Daniel Esser and a daughter, Sarah Esser. Marita Esser is Daniel's mother, and they are all on Facebook. Sina graduated from high school in 2021. Our Oma also visited Sacramento in 1975, 1978-9, and 1981 with Tante Renate.

Our Oma passed away in May 5, 1989. Alan was a visiting lecturer at the Univers of Tubingen (near Stuttgart, Germany) at that time and was visiting Istanbul when he got the news. He visited her grave in June 1989 with our parents, Mable, Lauren, and Tante Renate. They also met with Tante Karin with her second husband, Dieter Binger.

Our Mom in World War II

World War II started in Germany in 1939, when our mom was 7 years old. During the war, her mother arranged for her to leave Dusseldorf for periods of time to protect her from the bombings. Dusseldorf was in the Ruhr River industrial area and was a prime bombing site in WWII.

Our mom loved traveling, which was the opposite of her sister Renate, who refused to leave her mother’s side. Our mom's memory about these years is not always clear and sometimes conflicting. This is the best as we can piece together from conflicting dates for her WWII travels:

• Hamburg 1938—6 years old—she stayed about 6 weeks on a rural “fairy-tale land” estate. (The war started in September 1939, and it is unclear why she was “evacuated” in 1938.)

• Poland 1939 to 40—7 to 8 years old—she went to a village for a year between Katowice (Kattowitz) and Gliwice (Gleiwitz), a heavy coal mining area in southern Poland. She said the air was always dirty with coal dust. She would herd the cows and goats of the family. When she returned to Dusseldorf, she spoke fluent Polish and less fluent German. (Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, which was the start of the WWII in Europe. Our mom was back in Dusseldorf by then.)

• Ulm 1940 to 41—8 to 9 years old—she stayed for 6 months with a rich farm family with many maids and servants. They owned a vacation cabin in Tyrol in the Alps (near Innsbruck, Austria), and she stayed with them in Ulm for 3 months and in Tirol for 3 months. It was a 3-hour hike to get to the cabin from the nearest road. Their cook took care of mom most of the time at the cabin. They had two kids of their own about our mom’s age and a nanny that looked after them all.

• Wurzburg 1942 to 43—10 to 11 years old—stayed 1.5 years - Renate and Juliane also went to Wurzburg. Our mom stayed with a farm family with another girl from Dusseldorf named Klara, who became her best friend. Renate was with another family and would not stop crying because she was homesick. They finally sent her home (on a doctor’s orders).
  At the end of our mom's stay in Wurzburg, there was heavy bombing in the Dusseldorf-Oberlik industrial area, where her mother lived, and our mom lost contact with her mom. So, she left Wurzburg on her own. The Red Cross helped her get back to Dusseldorf-Oberbilk where Allied bombs had leveled her former apartment building. She learned her mom moved to Dusseldorf-Oberkassel, and she met a young man (her age) who knew her mom and helped her find their new apartment.

• Eibenstock, East Germany 1944 (near Dresden)—11 years old when she arrived in January 1944—Tante Ida (Juliane’s mom) arranged and took our mom and Juliane to a Hitler Youth League Dormitory in the Ore Mountains on the Czech border. It was like a military school with 40 girls. They arrived in early January 1944, about a month late because of heavy snow that year delaying the trains. She stayed there for 1 year.

• Bad Kissingen 1945 - with Oma and Tante Karin - a spa town in Bavaria, east of Frankfurt. Not sure how long she was there, as she rarely mentions this particular trip.

Our mom did not see her father much during the war. He joined the Germany army when she started school in 1938. She saw him shortly in 1941 when his mother (her grandmother) passed away. She saw him briefly again when he had a break from the war and visited her in Wurzburg in 1943. That was not a good time for him because our Oma divorced him when he visited her during that break and married Larry Huetzen (Aunt Karin's father).

According to our mom said our Oma liked all the Berg relatives but did not like our Opa much. They argued a lot, which is why she wanted a divorce. He still like her, though, and did not want a divorce.

Our mom did then see her father again until 1946 when he was released from an Allied prisoner of war camp. He had contracted tuberculosis by then, which he never recovered from. In 1958, after our mom became a US citizen, she tried to have her father come to live with her in the US. But the US government would not give him a visa due to his TB. He suggested that she sponsor our Uncle Willie instead, which she did. He arrived in Sacramento in January 1961.

It seems our mom did not seem to like her mother much, who she felt was self-centered. She said that when she came back to Dusseldorf early from Wurzburg in 1943, she surprised her mother. But instead of welcoming her back, her mother was upset because our mom's arrival had disrupted her plans to meet friends that day. 

At the end of the war, she and her mother (and probably Renate) were moving from village to village, trying to escape the Allied soldiers. Her mother would offer fortune-telling to the villagers for housing and food. Our mom said she thought her mother was cheating the villagers by pretending to be a fortune teller.

But she also said her mother was very outgoing, with many friends, and was never boring. She always protected our mom and her sister, but also allowed our mom to do whatever she wanted, so long as she behaved well and kept out of trouble. (Our mom mostly got in trouble for being stubborn.) Her mother always kept them safe and well fed during the war years. Family was also important to her mother, and she often organized family outings with all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. But she blamed her mother for divorcing her father.

Our mom was baptized a Catholic at birth, but her mother changed her to Protestant/Lutheran after she married Larry Huetzen in 1934. That meant she had to switch to a Protestant school instead of a Catholic one like Julianne attended. Our mom said she attended both Catholic and Lutheran churches growing up. She was not religious in the US, but occasionally attended church with our dad on Christmas, Easter, and sometimes on Sunday. She had some good friends who she had met through the Catholic school we attended.

Because of the war, our mom attended a half-dozen different. She was smart, always at the top of her classes. She went from 5th to 8th grade, skipping 6th and 7th grades. (Elsewhere she says she only skipped 6th grade.) She was also interested in photography and has a lot of photos from the post-war years in Germany before coming to North America.

After the War

Our mom's teenage years were after the war. Her parents divorced, and she mostly stayed with her mother. She liked to go on bike rides along the Rhine River with her cousin Julianne. She also enjoyed swimming and running. 

Our mom wanted to go to college, but they could not afford it. So, she went to business school for 2 years instead, graduating in 1950 at 18. She then worked as a secretary in bank processing checks in a bank, before going to Canada. She actually started working at the bank at age 17 and stayed there for 5 years. (Elsewhere she said she worked for an insurance company for 2 years before joining the bank.) 

The bank owned a hotel in Belgium that they would allow employees to stay at for a nominal cost in the winter. Our mom would often go there with friends. 

Our mom never learned to cook because they always usually out to eat due to the poor living conditions at home. She had a very active social life. Several young men were interested in her, but she did not want to get tied down because she wanted to go to the US. Before she left Germany, she agreed to pretend that she was engaged to our Uncle Rolf Carlitz (who married our mom’s cousin, Julianne). She did that to help Rolf out in some way, though we do not remember why. But she had no intention of ever marrying him.

A major reason they did a lot of things away from their home was because of the crowded living conditions in Germany after the war. She lived in an apartment in Oberkassel (west side of the Rhine River). Even though her mom and dad were divorced, they still lived together, along with her stepfather (Onkel Larry) and other relatives. She really wanted to get away from that. She especially wanted to come to the US, although Canada would also work.

After our mom came to the US, her father worked for a newspaper company in Dusseldorf. She tried to bring him to the US after she got her citizenship in 1958, but the US government would not give him a visa due because of the tuberculosis he contracted in WWII. He passed away on June 2, 1962.