My mother-in-law, Jutta Engelhardt, was born Jutta Frieda Luise Auguste Linnenkohl. At least, that is what her birth certificate says. According to this photo album inscription, the intended name was Frida Luise Auguste Annemarie Jutta Linnenkohl, but for some reason, Jutta’s father, Wilhelm, got this wrong. I suppose with so many names, Annemarie just slipped his mind. He also made a mistake with Jutta’s birthday. She was born in 1935, not 1936, in Magdeburg, Germany. Regarding all these names, Frida is Jutta’s grandmother, Louise and Augusta are both Wilhelm’s sisters and Jutta’s aunts, and finally, Annemarie was Jutta’s godmother.

During these past 21 days, I’ve been staying at her old apartment, I’ve been trying to bring order to the many things Jutta collected over the previous 85 years. Among her possessions are hundreds of old photos, some with information about who is in them and when they were taken, while others are images of people and places I can’t identify. Over the next couple of days, I will be sitting down with Jutta to see what we can figure out. The images in this post were easy as there was a photo album dedicated to her first five years. These are only some of the photos, hopefully enough to tell a story.

An innocent baby who was born unable to comprehend that the country she was brought into would be tossed into one of the greatest turmoils in recorded history. In the years I’ve known her, Jutta has often struggled to smile, but this is evidence that deep in her nature is the ability to do just that.

On the left is Jutta’s maternal grandmother, Frida Vespermann; behind her is her brother Friedhelm, born Friedrich Wilhelm Georg, and behind him, their mother, Helene Linnenkohl in Magdeburg around the end of 1935. Frida was born 28th of April 1870 and passed away just before Christmas on 23 December 1938. Jutta’s brother Friedhelm was about ten years old in this photo; he was born on 23rd September 1925.

This is the second-floor flat owned by the Linnenkohl family in Magdeburg. Jutta is being held by her mother, Helene, with brother Friedhelm looking on in the Herrenzimmer (Gentleman’s room).

This photo from 20 August 1936 was taken in the Linnenkohl’s garden. From left clockwise is Friedhelm, Jutta’s father Wilhelm, grandmother Frida, Helene, and, of course, Jutta. Wilhelm was born 9th of August 1891 in Stötterlingen but grew up in Quedlinburg.

Jutta in her crib. Dated 1936.

Summer 1937 in Bad Oeynhausen, visiting grandmother Frida Vespermann and Jutta with a toy she remembers fondly. She shared with me that the swan’s head moved back and forth when you pulled it.

Friedhelm, Jutta, and their mother, Helene Linnenkohl, in August 1937, sat with a professional photographer to make a portrait to give to Wilhelm. Jutta just remembered that her father referred to Helene as “Lenchen,” which was the name everyone used for her.

Important to note in this family photo is the cabinet you can see on the left and the small round table next to it. Jutta owns these to this day, and they both sit in her room. By the way, the small round table was called a Rauchtisch or “smoking table.”

Here’s Jutta 85 years later with the same cabinet, smoking table, and the chair she’s sitting in was her father’s writing chair.

The date on the photo says 1939, so Jutta is probably approaching her 4th birthday in this photo. Back in the day, her hair-do was all the rage, a Hahnenkamm or “cockscomb,” a sort of faux-hawk for girls.

Summer 1939 in Braunlage in Harz east of Magdeburg. Friedhelm is in back, Jutta in the middle, and Wilhelm is on the oars wearing knickerbockers.

In late 1939, Wilhelm was in uniform. Not only did he serve Germany during the war, but he also served in World War I. He was trained as a veterinarian and served in the military as an Officer in Reserve, taking care of the many military horses left in service. Some families might not want to acknowledge a dark spot in their history, but obviously, millions of Germans were part of a cause that ultimately proved ruinous.

In early 1940, Friedhelm is seen here for his confirmation posing with Jutta. Jutta still remembers paving his path with flowers as he returned home after receiving the sacrament.

Very late 1941 and probably the last photo of Jutta with her now 16-year-old brother. Friedhelm died fighting in World War II in Poland on the 29th of August 1944. Helene never forgave Wilhelm for allowing Friedhelm to forge his birth year in order to join the Wehrmacht.

Every morning, I wake up and either chat with Caroline or just call her, as I know it’s about 9:00 p.m. in AZ, and she’ll be home. The desk I’m sitting at with a handful of my change strewn about was once the desk of Hanns’ father, Christian Engelhardt. I believe there’s a good chance I’ll be the last person ever using it as it’s heavy and not in the best condition, but there is a lot of history to it and I’m happy to be putting it to use.

What we don’t see is as important as what we do see. I hadn’t noticed the candy dispenser at the eye level of kids in my last photo yesterday, but Caroline did. I don’t believe I ever saw the crews that wash sections of tram tracks, but I have now. The other night, there was a truck with lights and cameras underneath it that was examining the tracks it was driving over, and this morning a crew is power washing the various elements that make up the entry and exit of the subway. The two guys cleaning this tiny corner of Frankfurt are about my age, and after about 30 minutes, they move on to their next assignment.

At some time overnight, a crew moved down Bergerstrasse, where the open-air market takes place, and cleaned that area too. Last night walking up that street, evidence of the festivities earlier was strewn about, but by 7:00 a.m., the place was clean once again. I often see cleanup crews dressed in orange moving down streets with their long whisk broom pushing trash to the street that another crew will come along with their street cleaner to suck up. Sure, you’ll see graffiti nearly everywhere you look, but the environment is kept clean. Regarding pet waste, most people who own dogs are great about cleaning up after them. For how many of those four-legged creatures walk these streets of Germany, you see very little in the way of poop for people to step into. Though I’d bet a Euro that most Germans would say there’s still much too much poop around. I invite them to our apartment complex, where on any given day, there’s more poop distributed between the buildings than I see walking 10 miles a day on these streets of Frankfurt.

Another nice two-and-a-half-hour breakfast start of the day, now with another blog entry behind me. As I looked outside to begin the next part of the day, I had my first pang of anxiety that I’d be leaving all of this. There’s no doubt at all that I want to return to Caroline sooner rather than later, but I’ve often dreamed about just such a trip to another country where I could move from coffee shop to coffee shop, writing something that was longer in form and if I were lucky, part of a book I might want to publish. Instead, due to my family responsibilities, my day is dictated by schedules that are not solely my own. With that, I’m not able to fall into the flow I’d otherwise like to. So my compromise is that I write this travel diary in order for Caroline to share the day with me; hmm, have I written exactly that in the last week?

We all tell stories, with most of them lost to the passage of time. Some things persist, but so often, they are objects without context. Of the stories that survive, they are the histories of those that make history. The common person is lost in the anonymity that so many of us have existed, perished, and were simply forgotten; how could we possibly carry around so much information about the infinite details that would pile up if we recorded such things?

This then might ask the question, “Why are you doing this, John?” My answer is easy: it’s because this has never been done before in such detail. “How will it survive you?” That is the more difficult question to answer, but I hope to carve some time out of my life to put what I consider the more important things into a series of printed books that I can donate to a university library. Short of that, maybe this will survive intact on Archive.org, but who really knows? If it turns out that I’ve been on a fool’s errand, I will not have been the first nor the last.

Something I might like to investigate while I still have a sense of control over my mind is to ask an anthropologist what I am missing in this long multi-year narrative. On the other hand, what fun would this be if I were following a formula that would bring this into some kind of textbook of details? Opinions, attempted humor, fun, sorrow, discovery, and the mundane intermingle in this hodgepodge of musings where I hardly understand the thread that holds them together. Maybe there are not supposed to be threads but only the chaotic unfolding of one day to the next, with the narrator describing random bits that somehow made sense to the mind, sharing what it thought relevant.

Caroline’s maternal grandmother, Helene Linnenkohl nee Vespermann, was born on 16 November 1894. This photo is from 1959, when Helene would have been about 65 years old.

I didn’t have all day to lay out over 1,000 postcards Jutta saved over the years, but this would have to do. After she bought a postcard, it went into the void, and apparently, they were never sent to anyone.

Before the age of digital images, I didn’t bother to always keep notes about travels, and Jutta’s first two visits to America have always been a question mark in our memories. Well, due to my mother-in-law keeping everything, I came across these two things she saved that offered me help. Her first visit to America was in June 1996, and her second visit was in October and November 1997. Now, all I need to do is go through Jutta’s photo albums we made for her of those visits, and I can put a timeline back together of when we did what.

I’m away from the chore of sorting and removing and have stopped for lunch. My destination is Jutta’s, where I’ll try to get her to a doctor’s appointment. I say try, as there are a few moving parts to this operation I have to navigate, and as usual, my language skills feel inadequate. I’m sure I can push through this, and afterward, I’ll likely gain another gram of confidence that I’m able to maneuver the linguistic minefield that is German. With my carb-laden lunch out of the way, it’s time to hoof my way across town.

Oh really? Concerts are coming back. The Batschkapp as it exists now is not the Batschkapp of our 20s, and there’s really no interest in seeing the new location, but I do smile when I see their logo.

Some things are just cute.

Well, that took a huge left turn. I got to Lebenshaus, and since I didn’t believe they wouldn’t provide the service in-house that I was supposed to bring Jutta to, I asked, and sure enough, a lady comes by on Mondays to do exactly the procedure Jutta requires, which is a medical pedicure. So, come Monday at 10:00, this will be taken care of in a much more convenient way instead of getting Jutta in and out of a taxi along with her walker or taking trams and then having her walk uphill for 800 meters to the appointment. All I had to do was ask at the front desk, call, and make an appointment. So, while I didn’t have to juggle the movements, I did have to deal with my linguistic deficit and now feel better for having dealt with this in a much more efficient manner.

With that out of the way, Jutta and I celebrated with a walk over to the Main River again, where we planted ourselves for a solid three hours. Ice cream, Coke, and coffee were on the menu, along with Jutta and I doing our best Waldorf and Statler from the Muppets Show. Jutta dismissed the show as silly when her children wanted to watch it, so she had no idea what the reference meant. With a nice breeze and a bench in the shade, we were set up to just take it easy. Somewhere during our enjoying the river and the cast of characters passing by, I think I heard a bit of lament in her voice that she hadn’t spent so much time here in far too many years. I have to wonder if she’s ever been here or only considered it, figuring she’d do it another time.

I love these cargo bikes that people use for moving around children, dogs and going shopping. I’m surprised that they are about $2,000 to $3,000 with an electric assist in the more expensive versions, and yet I see them locked up on the street as though nobody would cut the lock and steal it. Oh yeah, this is Germany (Not Berlin) where the likelihood of theft is far less than the country I hail from.

Watching the clouds is never a bad thing.

After walking back to Lebenshaus with Jutta, I headed over the river to Sachsenhausen to Gaststätte Atschel, another local establishment serving apple wine and regional foods. I can admit that I’ve been mixing things up and moving into culinary territory that doesn’t include Grüne Sosse (green sauce), nor did I order Handkäse mit Musik (hand cheese with onion – the music comes from the combo of cheese and onion as the flatulence toots a little tune). While I’m certain I’ve shared why I’m so enamored with Grüne Sosse, I’ll share again. This Frankfurt specialty is made of precise herbs that I cannot obtain in the United States. These are chopped and mixed with something called Dickmilch, which is a thickened sour milk product.

Worked out that I should go somewhere tomorrow. My first inclination was to hit Munich, but the weather forecast includes a prediction for rain. So I looked northwest toward Koblenz, and the weather looked perfectly inviting. Now, if only the Deutsche Bahn app would let me buy my tickets. Drats, I just remembered that I have a scheduling conflict as I set up a time to take a long walk with Klaus tomorrow in the late afternoon. Maybe I should hit Koblenz on Saturday or be truly daring and just show up at the Hauptbahnhof in the morning after breakfast and get on the next train that arrives somewhere in more than ninety minutes and under two hours?