An odd fellow-missing World War I

World War I trench warfare
photo credit: www.anunews.net/blog

Last week’s photos pictured Josef and Lisi Gartz, with their two young sons, Friedrich and Wilhelm happy and healthy in Chicago about early 1916 (see below) and again in the summer of 1918. (See Family and Dead Dog).


These family photos were taken at the same time that Europe was engulfed in the nightmare of World War I, and most young men of Josef's age (25 in 1914)  would have been covered in lice, crouching and rotting in some trench, being blown up or blowing up other young men. 


My grandmother’s brother, Samuel, was one of those young men (See The Fallen-Part I).

Gartz Family ~ 1915-1916
L-R Lisi, Will, Fred, Josef

Let’s jump back four-six years before these family photos were taken, 100 years ago, to the spring of 1912. Josef and Lisi had married five months earlier and were both working seven days a week, Josef for fourteen hours a day, Lisi for twelve hours a day. They were barely getting by, but they had jobs.

Military Draft Notice, Josef Gartz
Austro-Hungary

Josef most certainly could have been among the dead had he stayed in Siebenbürgen (Transylvania). (See Drafted 100 Years Ago, where Josef's draft notice is translated to English).


But the first year after Lisi and Josef had married in Chicago, my grandmother’s former employer, Mrs. Jickeli, saw only youthful indiscretion in their decision to emigrate to America. Two months after Lisi and Josef married in Chicago on October 13, 1911, Mrs. Jickeli had written Lisi Ebner a letter expressing her dismay at Lisi's hasty departure to join her love, Josef Gärtz. She had chastised them both for their impetuous behavior and a host of issues, even declaring their marriage wouldn't be  considered valid in their homeland Siebenbürgen (because it hadn't been announced in the church).

She reiterated her concerns in a second letter, three months later, in what today we might say was “beating a dead horse," even if a stick of a slightly different length!

Merchant's wife, Berta Jickeli
born Henriette Albertine Krasser

March 15, 1912 

My Dear Lisi, 

Are you satisfied with your home (apartment)? Have you been employed long and how does Gärtz like the cooking spoon? [Josef was working in a restaurant when Lisi arrived]. That you live in peace makes me happy. I have certainly never doubted that Gärtz seems like a good man (Mensch). I have always considered him to be a good and respectable/honest/decent man, but a bit of an odd fellow.
 
But you also know that I am too old and have seen too much of life to scream “Hurrah!” A happy marriage is very rare in life and to be sure, even more rare because no one holds his fate strictly in one’s own hands and no one knows what tomorrow brings. Besides that, marriage seems different after 10-20 years than in the first year. That you will experience, just as everyone has. For you and Gärtz it’s just that you went into your marriage so fast and with such impatience. 

You will have to go through double the work and sacrifice and homesickness than you would have endured if you had waited one more year. Even our Lord God cannot reverse your fate. First Gärtz will have to comply with his military duty if nothing changes. Without you coming here, for the time, then the second thing that has to be is that your marriage must also be declared binding here. This is the only way a later happiness can bloom.

Mrs. Jickeli ends her letter with a few paragraphs of local news and heartfelt wishes, for after all, she was like a second mother to Lisi, and sincerely worried for her. 

And now, dear Lisi, I wish you both very well, and don't grow tired before you again have a strong foundation under your feet. We all greet you both from our hearts, and I remain for all time––Your old mother
Berta Jickeli


Berta Jickeli was right in one regard: people certainly don't have complete control over their fates, as all those who've been caught in war know so well. Yet Josef had influenced his fate, and the fate of his family, through his determination to get to America. The letters make it clear that friends and relatives back in Siebenbürgen/Transylvania expected he and Lisi would return. They didn't know Josef very well.

So when another serious problem emerged back in Transylvania after Josef left for America, his swift decision to leave his countryland again appeared to those back home to have been foolhardy. Apparently some local person had taken advantage of Josef’s departure, perhaps in cahoots with a local official, and co-opted from Josef his home and land. Both Lisi's father and Mrs. Jickeli weighed in on what had happened. Coming up next time at Family Archaeologist.

Family poses with baby on dead dog!

Growing Family: Lisi and Josef Gartz with sons,
Wilhelm, standing; Friedrich on dad's knee.Late 1915 or early 1916. 

Last week I posted photos of my mother taken in 1918, showing the dual sides of her personality. . On this page are are family photos of the Gartz family, the one below taken about the same time as my Mom's photos. Lisi, my paternal grandmother made sure the family had regular formal portraits taken, sending copies back home to both her and Josef's families in Romania. I have many letters thanking her for the pictures.

If you've been following along, you know this blog started with the postcards and love letters from Josef Gärtz to his sweetheart, Lisi Ebner (see Can Love Last 100 Years?), many of which were written as he made way toward America from Transylvania. You can read more of  Josef's diary recounting that harrowing trip, including Terror Atop the Train, if you scroll down on the right side of this page, to "Blog Archives," and click on "December, 2010."

In the photo above, my dad (I'd say he's about 12-14 months old)  is standing on his father's knee. 

Below is a photograph that hadn't been part of any family album, and I only recently discovered it.  Maybe the full content explains why. 

My grandparents, Josef and Lisi, are on the left, and their sons, Wilhelm (nicknamed "Helmie" as a little boy) and my dad, Fred (left) are seated. I don't know the other two adults on the right, but the baby must be theirs. 

They're all posing in front of a typical West Side Chicago back porch. It seems to be a special occasion based on the clothing. Perhaps it's the Christening of the baby, center. But what's with posing the baby on a stuffed dead dog! 

I'd love to crop the photo to see just my Dad and Uncle Will, but scroll down to the bottom to see what I'd get! The dog's very dead head comes with the close-up. What would you do? 

Josef and Lisi Gartz, Left; Fred and Will Gartz seated. About 1918

Friedrich Samuel (called "Sam" by his family), left  and Wilhelm
("Helmie" or "Will"), right. Dog's name unknown!

A May Wedding, 1916

Wedding--May 16, 1916
Louise and John Koroschetz- Chicago, IL

Did they meet at one of the German concerts Louise Woschkeruscha was fond of attending on her weekends off  from the dressmaking shop that created Parisian fashions right here in Chicago? Perhaps through mutual friends at the German cinema?

Louise was self-conscious about her appearance because of the pox scars that pitted her face after she contracted smallpox as a little girl. The disease had killed her sister. Somehow, somewhere in Chicago, she met John Koroschetz, an intelligent, talented machinist, carpenter, and tool and die maker, who had his own disfiguration: two fingers on his left hand had been lost in a machine shop accident when he was twenty-two.

Perhaps his truncated fingers had given my grandmother confidence that this was a man who could understand physical disfigurement and would love and accept her despite the scars she bore; that she could trust his love. They married on May 6, 1916, almost 96 years ago.

Two photos memorialized the event. No fancy wedding or wedding dress for Louise, just an elegant outfit she undoubtedly had designed and created herself. A black hat with white feathers crowned her head. John wore a dark, brimmed hat, a light coat, gloves, and tie knotted neatly into a high collared shirt, stylish at the time.  
If you look closely at the photo below, in which John and Louise have removed their outer garments, both regard the camera with confidence. John rests his left hand on his thigh, unself-conscious of his two damaged fingers, visible for all posterity. About a year and a half after their wedding, their first and only child, my mother, Lillian, would be born. She was a go-getter from the start. 

I'll introduce you to her through two baby pictures that capture Lillian's dual, complex nature.

Wedding––Louise and John Koroschetz,
my maternal grandparents - May 16, 1916.