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.

If you love me...

If you’ve ever been young and in love, this post will take you back to those heady days.

I’ve been chronicling the letters I’ve found between my grandfather, Josef Gärtz, at aged twenty-one, (photo left), after he left for America on Christmas Eve, 1910 (see Terror Atop the Train) and my grandmother, Lisi Ebner (age twenty-three) who was still back in Transylvania. Josef was desperate to have Lisi join him, and he pulled out all the stops in a May 25, 1911, letter--exhorting her to come to him.

Lisi Ebner 1910

Unlike today, where instant communication is the norm, in 1910, Josef would have to wait a month to get her response. Would she commit to make the frightening voyage alone to meet him in Chicago? The anxiety in his letter is palpable.

Josef’s letter is clearly in response to a missive he’d received from Lisi, which I have not found in my collection. But I’ve found something else that I now know she sent along with that letter.

Left to Right: Katarina Gärtz (Josef's sister) Lisi
Ebner, Sara Reisenauer, Josef's cousin.

This photo on the left of Lisi (center) with Josef’s sister, Katarina Gärtz, and his cousin, Sarah Reisenauer, has been in our family collection for as long as I can remember. On the back my grandmother wrote the date: May 15, 1911. Katarina and Sarah wear traditional clothing from Neppendorf. My grandmother is dressed in the costume of her home town, Grosspold.

In a recent post, Spilling Secrets, I told you how my brothers and I discovered a copy of this iconic photo, 5,000 miles from our home, at the back of my grandfather’s church in a small museum devoted to Neppendorf (Josef’s home town) life.

The photo shows up again--this time referred to in my grandfather’s 5/25/1911 letter to Lisi. In all the years I’ve seen this picture, it was just a cool old photo. But the letter imbues it with special significance. Lisi had sent it to Josef from Transylvania when he was already in the USA, prompting the following letter he undoubtedly wrote right after receiving it. He had let nothing stand in his way to make it to America. That same single-mindedness fueled his determination to get his gal. (Sometime between sending the Easter post card on April 1, postmarked in Cleveland, and the date of this letter, Josef had moved to Chicago).

Chicago, May 25, 1911

Dearest Love, Precious Sweetheart, Darling Lisi,

I’m letting you know that I received your wonderful, love-filled letter with the greatest thanks. The photographs which you included made me as happy as if I had received the most valuable jewel.

Dear Lisi, I gather from your letter that you were hurt because you believed that I would leave you. How could I do such a thing? After all, didn’t I swear to be faithful? Do you still doubt me? Or has someone written something about me to you, and you believed it?

So don’t make me so crazy any more.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when I received the photograph [you sent] and saw my darling Lisi – with her hand reaching for my sister. What great joy I felt! Please trust me. Otherwise you bring me such sorrow. If you had seen me when I opened the photo, you would have certainly said I was a fool. [My] true, true Love, I swear to you with heart and hand until I die, [all that] I am.

Dear Lisi, I’ll tell you that I am in Chicago and also now have a better job. I am in a bakery and always have work and a better salary, and it is not so difficult. Naturally the first year it didn’t go the best in America, but it will come eventually. As I’ve written, I just trust in God.

My mother has written [to me] that I should make money and [then] come home. That is certainly nonsense. It is the thinking of an old woman. I can certainly say that she saw me for the last time Christmas Eve night.

Why should I go from the good to the bad again? Unless I become dissatisfied with what I have undertaken, I am not coming home. Anyone who looks with open eyes sees that whoever goes home, comes back here again. Here it is certainly a very different life. The men work little and the women not at all.

Therefore, dear Lisi, I think it’s better if you, and even my mother and sister, come here. You all would see that it is a different life [in America]. No one over there should wait for me, because it is my conviction that I’m not coming back. If you love me, I hope that you also will come here.

I would greet you with greatest joy and thankfulness, and take you in my arms. You certainly have no idea of the [difference] between the [economic] conditions in America and Europe. Oh, sweet Lisi, please understand me. I have to know where I stand. I really hope that you won’t be doubtful.

If you love me, then you’ll certainly come, even if as many devils as there are tiles on a roof stood in your way. If you come here, you don’t have to work any more. [This prediction was certainly wishful thinking. Both were driven workers throughout their lives.] I know that you can work very hard, but you will see for yourself.

There is no point in writing letters because we should be ready [to make a decision]. We are no longer so young and are of an age ready to marry--like ripe fruit. It can no longer go on like this.

If I would say I would come back [to Transylvania ] in three years, certainly you wouldn’t wait that long. Then someone would come along and my Lisi would change her mind [wouldn’t keep her promise] even though I have always been faithful. Now I hope and expect the sweet word “Yes!” I write [hoping for] only such an answer.

If you don’t want to come, then I also know that you don’t love me. Because if you loved me, then you wouldn’t do anything other than come here, just like Eva Koeber [Beer/Baer] from Neppendorf who is now here and leads a fine life with her darling. [This must be the Frau Beer/Baer who also wrote to Lisi in Josef’s January 29th letter, encouraging her to join Josef in America. See her glowing praise of Josef in the post, Love Finds a Way.)

She was only twenty years old, and he was eighteen when they married, and they are very happy. She has no regrets about [leaving] Neppendorf. Also your sister and brother-in-law—how often have they asked me, when I went over there for a bite to eat, [when he still lived in Cleveland, Ohio] whether or not you would soon be coming here? I avoid going there so as not to have to answer their questions. [Lisi’s stepsister, Maria Schuster, had gone to America before Josef and helped him settle in. Maria ended up staying in Cleveland her whole life].

And now I end my writing with best [wishes] and hope for an answer soon. With heartfelt greetings and loving kisses, I remain your faithful treasure. [Schatz=treasure; also used as "Darling or Sweetheart"]

Josef Gartz
1723 North Orchard St.
Chicago, Ill
North America


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