Here Renate talks about the four sisters of the Greuling family. One of the sisters, Berta, was my great grandmother, She married Heinrich (Heiner) Schellhorn. Another was Fanny, of whom she speaks often. My Grandmother, Berta’s daughter, also spoke often of Fanny citing her as her favourite aunt.
The Greuling family originally came from a beautiful half-timbered house in the old town, which still exists today1. Later, my great-grandfather bought the artist’s house on Sonneberg’s main street. At the turn of the century, four girls grew up in it and became pretty young women.
In the front garden of the house, each of them grew a rose bush, with whose flowers she adorned herself on Sundays. The father gave his fledgling daughters a handsome dowry, and so in 18862 Berta married Heiner [Schellhorn], with whom she set up a factory for [the production of] teddy bears and dolls3. Emma followed a young inspector to Ingolstadt. The unforgettable Fanny teamed up with Oscar and worked all her life in his cardboard factory4, producing all kinds of packaging material for Sonneberg products.
Only Anne, the fourth girl, remained single. My brother and I first got to know her as a grumpy old woman who spent the whole summer collecting berries and mushrooms in the woods. She knew the best places where the coveted chanterelles and porcini mushrooms grew, and she was already finding red “Hölperle” as cranberries were called in Sonneberg when the other pickers were still looking in vain for ripe berries. In the evenings she often brought home a 10-litre bucket of wonderfully fragrant “black berries”. Blueberries have always been a staple food in Sonneberg. There was hardly a child among the poorer population who did not run around year in year out with blue smeared skin. Before winter came, Aunt Anna eagerly collected wood and brushwood5 in the wilderness and carried it home in a huge basket on her back in a deeply bent posture. While doing this my little brother once met her in the forest and was convinced for years that he had met a real witch. With all the wrinkles on her face and her bent forward figure, we could hardly imagine her much-vaunted former vesp waist and believe that she had actually once been the most sought-after girl in the country.
- “Today” was 1981
↩︎ - They were married May 21, 1895. Their first child, Gertrude, my grandmother, was born April 26, 1898. The second child, Otto, was born October 30, 1899, Rudolf, January 12, 1903 and Walter, May 31, 1908.
↩︎ - This factory was built in the local traditional architectural style that combined a residence. It was located a Bahnhofstraße 4 in Sonneberg.
↩︎ - This factory-residence was located just about 200 meters away from Bahnhofstraße 4 at Kirchstraße 15.
↩︎ - During the war years, collecting berries etc, and firewood were essential to survive limited rations for food and energy supplies.
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