Notes for Bertha Emilie Minna Schulz
[MargrafJM.FTW]
Bertha moved her family to America in 1907, after her husband died in 1902. She paid for the trip by signing her son Kurt Otto Willie to work as a cabin boy on the ship. He was 14 years old the year he began the job and traveled across the Atlantic 6 times. The family left from the port of Bremenhaven, Germany. Bertha, Oscar and Kattina went back to Germany after Kurt arrived. Kurt stayed in the U.S. and settled in Indiana.
From the family records of Kurt Otto Shelle, Jr:
Bertha was the daugther of Schneidermeister (master tailor) Friedrich Schultz and his wife, Auguste Ernestine Wilhelmine Deixler. Bertha was born in Guben, which is now partly in Germany and in Poland. As we might expect she was trained to be a seamstress and supported herself with this skill in her later life. She had two sister, one was Martha Schulz who became a clothing designer and buyer for the Fair Store (now merged into Carson Pirie Scott in Chicago) and the other was Elisabeth Schulz, who married Piet Brickner and lived in Baltimore.
In 1907 Bertha, upon her sister's urging, sold everything and came to America with her three children. She had to get special permission for young Kurt to leave the country because he was nearing the age for compulsary military training. So, armed with a widow's exemption based on the need for her oldest son's help in supporting the family and a few personal belongings they sailed to Baltimore on the small Bremen (not the large well known Bremen). In Baltimore she lived near her sister, Elisabeth. As an aside, she got young Kurt a job on the Bremen as a cabin boy. Kurt saided seven times between Bremerhaven and Baltimore, before staing in the USA. Perhaps his service aboard the Bremen paid for all of their transportation to America.
In 1909 Bertha became so homesick she decided to return to Germany. Young Kurt did not greet this decision with great enthusiasm. So we can imagine her surprise when she thought her family was safely aboard ship and she was stating at the railing waving goodby as the ship pulled away from the dock and she saw her oldest son on the dock waving goodby to her. She fainted. Bertha took Erich and Katharina back to Cottbus. They didn't stay very long there with the Koch family. They next moved to Berlin where Martha (Bertha's sister) bought her a small home in the Berlin suburb of Hermsdorf. This is where she reared Erich and Katharina. Kurt did send money home to help until communications broke down during World War I.
According to cousins found in Berlin in the 1970s, Bertha supported herself, was quick to help others, and never quit worrying about what happened to her eldest son. In fact, at one time she hired an agency to find him but they were not sucessful. She died a few days before her 82nd birthday in 1950.
Kurt's last letter to his mother was mailed in 1913 and didnt arrive in Berlin until 1915. IN the meantime he didn't realize the mail might not have gotten through and instead thought his mother had "cut him off". So, he became somewhat bitter and just gave up trying to write her. It is also sad we never had the opportunity to know Bertha. My father (Kurt Otto Willy Schelle) also managed to loose contact with the Brickners in Baltimore and his Aunt Martha after she moved to Los Angeles.
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