Mod Shop Non Reverse

[ilan]

Talk about non reverse...

[uwe]

A most lucid observation, Ilan, everything leads to the ultimate core of things.

[amptech]

But sometimes a little good can still emanate from something awfully bad, without the Wehrmacht occupation of Norway from 1940-45, we would have never had her:



Frida's mother was Norwegian, her dad a Wehrmacht soldier stationed there, people are people,
but after the Third Reich's surrender, Norway, perhaps understandably so, wasn't a good place to stay for a single Norwegian mother with a Tyskerbarna daughter fathered by a German Landser. So the two moved to Sweden, stayed there and the rest is (another part of) history.

My wife's grandfather was a german officer stationed in Finnmark, way north. He was gone before the war was over, and was probably never mentioned again. The single mother stayed up there, but it's understandable why many left. Even today it's troublesome bringing it up. My wife is determined to find out if we have family alive in germany but all we have is a name and where he was stationed - not much to go on.

[uwe]

That can't have been easy - "tyske teusse" comes to mind. There were about 14.000 German-Norwegian children from the occupation. 18 million German men served in the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, they left a DNA trail all over Western and Eastern Europe in the years of occupation, via romance, rape and prostitution.

Has your wife tried this here:

https://www.bundesarchiv.de/EN/Navigation/Use/Using-specific-types/Military-Records/military-records-en.html



These guys are - since 2019 - the legal successors of the "Deutsche Dienststelle für die Benachrichtigung der nächsten Angehörigen von Gefallenen der ehemaligen deutschen Wehrmacht" (an authority which initially only informed families of fallen Wehrmacht soldiers, but which also provided info to the foreign children of German military personnel).

Not all the files are in Berlin, some are stored in Freiburg:

- Bundesarchiv, Abteilung Militärarchiv, Wiesentalstraße 10, 79115 Freiburg, 0761/47817-0, Fax 0761/47817-900, E-Mail: militaerarchiv@bundesarchiv.de

- Bundesarchiv, Abteilung Reich, Postfach 450569, 12175 Berlin, 030/18777-0, Fax 030/187770-111: E-Mail: berlin@bundesarchiv.de (u.a. Unterlagen zur SS, Waffen-SS, SA)

- Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), Eichborndamm 179, 13403 Berlin, 030/41904-0; http://www.dd-wast.de


There is also someone in Oslo she might turn to:

Knut-Erich Papendorf

https://www.jus.uio.no/ikrs/english/people/aca/knutp/

He's a retired criminologist, shares the ancestry of your wife's mother (his father was a German soldier too) and has written on the subject.

https://www.apollon.uio.no/artikler/2021/4_tyskerjentene.html

I would imagine him to have retained some contacts and useful hints from his own search for his father. Since he publishes criminology- and law-related articles in German too, he's probably fluent.

If you have your wife's grandfather's name, a location where he was stationed (and roughly when) plus the fact that he was an officer, then I believe they have enough to work on. The Bundesarchiv is not fast - an answer can take almost a year - but they are "fastidious and precise" (Freddie Mercury!) plus motivated by the fact that each query has a personal fate behind it. They still have several thousands of queries each year and try to answer them all. Good luck!

[amptech]

Thanks a lot, Uwe! My wife greatly appreciate it

[uwe]

See, you can now tell her that this forum is not just about old men and their anal sex obsessions!

[Chris P.]

Very cool info.

So a Gibson employee makes an untidy bass and because of that somewone might find her family back.

[uwe]

Butterfly effect. 

Chaos theory at work. I'm actually a great believer in that. I'm not a spiritual person at all (Hey, but didn't Uwe just write he's "a great believer" in something?!), but things happen randomly with surprising outcomes all the time with no master plan or supernatural guidance. That is apparently highly disconcerting to a lot of people, hence the enduring and ever rising popularity of conspiracy theories, there seems to lie quasi-religious comfort in them.

[amptech]

Chance is my favourite factor!
It would be great to find family in Germany, I have only pit-stopped in köln and kiel to buy beer and düsseldörfer mustard🙂

[uwe]

Pah, your Viking DNA is probably spread everywhere!