A short history of the Brandenburger and Ross families

Author: Meta Brandenburger

In the following, everything that we, and Papa, know about our ‘ancestors’ – as you will see, it is not much.

First the Brandenburgers: Papa didn’t know his grandfather. The grandmother, Leopoldine Werner, came from a bourgeois family in Dessau. Her husband died very young, probably before their son Karl was born, with whom she then lived with her brother, Anton Werner. He was a very respected man in Dessau, a master painter. He was still alive when I was on our honeymoon in Germany with Papa, an 80-year-old, like a patriarch among his children, who all lived in Dessau with their families. We were received very nicely by all of them. The old uncle, who lived in a small house with his only unmarried daughter who was blind, had arranged everything down to the smallest detail: we ate lunch at his place, stayed with one of the daughters who had a nice, large guest room, and in the afternoons were invited in turn by the other families or taken out. The old man paid for all theatre and opera tickets etc. When we left, he gave us 50 marks – with it we bought the silver sugar bowl that you know - we ordered the cream can later when Uncle Willy went to Berlin. And so it came that Karl Brandenburger, your grandfather, was brought up by this uncle Anton Werner, and probably learned something technical, because when your father saw the light of day, he was the manager of a tiny little gasworks in Suhl in Thuringia. His wife, Marie Oberländer, came from Dahme in der Mark. She too came from a bourgeois family; her father was a master carpenter. I also got to know him on my honeymoon - a son was already running the business back then - the old father lived on the upper floor by himself. I didn't particularly like the Oberländers. It was a somewhat petit-bourgeois Obstanovka (NOTE: Russian ‘situation’) - the old man was hard on himself and on his family - but it may have been different when his wife was still alive. Papa has many good memories of the grandparents' house and the large garden - his mother was often there to visit with her many boys - there were fantastically large cauldrons full of plum jam and other wonderful things.

And now Karl and Marie: they were fertile and multiplied. Her eldest child, a boy, was called Ernest, he died very young. Then came: Richard, Karl, Franz, Willi, Walter and Hans - I remember it so easily since it rhymes. In the meantime they had moved from Suhl to Schönebeck on the Elbe and from there to Hagen in Westphalia, always to gasworks, which gradually got bigger. When they had 6 boys, they moved to Warsaw, where there was a very large gas works. Here Karl Brandenburger was the assistant to the technical director. In Warsaw, 3 sons, Karl, Franz and Walter, died of scarlet fever within 2 weeks. The other three were also sick, but they recovered. However, Willi had permanent damage - for example his ears, and his intellect had also suffered. As a consequence it was impossible for him to study, which is why he was later sent to Germany to do an apprenticeship and learn locksmithing. Karl and Marie then came to Kronstadt with Richard, Willi and Hans. Papa was probably about 12 years old at the time. Hans also died young, but Grete, Ella, Frieda, and finally Erich, who was the 12th, were born in Kronstadt – Papa was already a student. Yes, in those times there were still large families. The father of this large family died quite suddenly from an illness whose cause is still little researched today. It is called anemia perniciosa, malignant chlorosis (the blood decomposes). Erich was only a few years old. Your father had to leave the university, where he still had six months to pass the state exam, to support the orphaned siblings and his mother who had completely broken. The management of the gasworks gave him his father's position. Oh, natural science was his passion and he didn't want to become a gas specialist at all, - and in endlessly difficult, harsh years he fought his way through. In addition to his responsibilities at the business, which was in very poor condition at the time and which he had to familiarise himself with, he continued to work on his studies at home and a few years later he passed the state exam. He had Willi come back from Germany and made him his assistant. Papa had already put the most difficult things behind him when in the autumn of 1895, I came to the Hielbig house as governess and we both got to know each other. His mother was healthy again, his siblings were growing up, and he had worked his way into the business. We got engaged in the summer of '97 - I left the Hielbig house and spent the winter with my parents in Reval (NOTE: Talinn). We got married on February 24 in 1898.-

Yes, and now the Ross family. My great-grandfather was a rich landowner, a real Count. He then married the girl with whom he fathered my grandfather Alexander off to a man on the estate whose name was Ross, who was not our progenitor, but who left the name to us. I still remember my grandfather as a proud, strict man. He was the manager of a very large estate that had brandy distilleries, cattle breeding and everything else possible - he was recognised and respected far and wide in the area. He probably spent his entire life on this property - I have never heard anything else, and after his death, his youngest son Theodor managed the same property for his entire life. It was called Sonorm and was a 3 - 4 hour train trip from Reval. Grandfather was married 3 times: from the first marriage he had Jakob and Johann, the boys were called "Jus" and "Jas" - from the second came Theodor and several sisters - the 3rd marriage was childless, he was already an old man then. All 3 Ross brothers became farmers: Theodor first as his father's assistant and then the manager of Sonorm - Jakob and Johann from the times I know about, tenant farmers, - in Estonia we called Arrendator,- for fairly large estates. Kedder, which Uncle Jakob managed for 25-30 years, was probably the larger one, but Pasick, where I grew up, cannot have been small either, because I know that we have 40-50 cows and a lot of horses, sheep, pigs, geese and all sorts of other fowl, as well as a number of servants and maids. But my father never did very well, while Uncle Jakob came to considerable wealth. He had 2 children, Adele (Tilla) and Alexander ( Sascha). They lived very well and prosperously in a large manor house, and Aunt Anette was, in contrast to the somewhat strict and harsh Uncle Jakob, kindness and love itself. My father didn't manage Pasick as long as Jakob on Kedder: the Noble owner canceled his lease after 12 or 13 years and then withheld his deposit in an unjust and dishonest way, so that my father got into real need and distress. He first moved into the city, to Reval, to look for something else, and here he and us 5 children (my parents were also fertile, they had 8 children in all, 3 died small) were hit with a bigger and even harder blow. Our mother died of pneumonia after only 5 days of illness. I was not quite 15 at the time, two brothers, Alexander (Uncle Ali) and Elmar, a bit older, two, Richard and Arthur, younger than me.

The time that followed must have been terribly difficult for our father. We were all so stupid - he had loved our mother so much - and he was without a job for a long time. Two years later, in 1885, he remarried, I think for our sake,- Jenny Christiansen, an aging spinster who was a teacher. Oh, he must have thought that this profession would make her particularly adept at raising us. It was a mistake. She was good, certainly, an honest, efficient person - but full of quirks and peculiarities, without any understanding for children’s spirits, sensitive and resentful, a real old maid. My poor father - he didn't have an easy life - oh, and I, especially I, the only daughter, of whom the Mama was jealous, had a very gloomy, joyless youth because of her. Only when I grew up and learned to understand and tolerate other people did I get a good relationship with her. And in the end she even loved me very much - you still knew her, she was a very kind and loving Grandmother to you. (My birth mother's name was Pauline Johannson. I never knew her parents, I don't even know what they were). Even before he got married again, my father got a job with the Reval city administration, which he held until his death. He was the municipal road construction inspector, i.e. he managed the construction and maintenance of roads, highways and roads. He was a respected man, recognised for his honesty. He was the best, most loyal father to us - I'm still sad today that we and our love for each other only ever was allowed to be furtive and secretly. "My beloved wife's only daughter" he once called me with shy tenderness. With the always depressed life in the otherwise orderly, and if extremely simple, but never poor parental home, all the cheerfulness, all youthful joy and all the cheerfulness of my young years came from the house of relatives in Kedder. I spent unforgettably beautiful holidays there with Uncle Jakob and Aunt Anette. Tilla, who is 5 years older than me, was a very dear sister to me. I was small and dark, she was tall and blonde and pretty as a picture - oh, nothing of that is left now! - but we have many, many beautiful, happy memories of the happiness we enjoyed together in our youth.

Typed transcription of original text in German