The family and their friends
Brandenburger family
Edith Juliane Margareta Brandenburger was born in 1900, the middle child of three. The Brandenburger family lived on Kronstadt outside St. Petersburg in the years before the Russian revolution. Along with many ethnic Germans, they were forced to leave Russia, living for some time in Finland and Norway before joining many other Germans in exile in Germany.
Edith knew five languages, loved art, music and literature and must have been quite a bohemian. As a young woman in Norway she fell in love with a restless Norwegian named Sverre Eriksen. A love that never ceased and she joined him in Australia in 1929. There she had a daughter named Marie (1936-2023).
Edith’s mother Meta (1870-1955) was born Meta Johanna Caroline Ross in Tallinn, Estonia. Meta went to work as a governess in St Petersburg where she met her husband Richard Frank Brandenburger (1867-1949). Richard was born into a bourgeois Prussian German family. He worked as manager at a gasworks in St Petersburg, Russia, and later was Director (Gasverkbestander) of Larvik Gasverk in Norway.
Her older brother Leo (1899-1971) was a serious and hardworking man who became an electrical engineer with several patents to his name. He loved the piano and had an extensive music collection. Leo was married to Mucker and adopted an orphan girl named Anni after World War 2.
The youngest brother Paul (1907-1981) became a doctor who was conscripted in the German army and became Russian prisoner of war. In later life was head of medicine at a hospital near Bremen (Osterholz Scharmbeck) and active in politics. He was married to Inge, with whom he had two sons, Gerd and Ulrich.
Meta wrote a short history of the origins of the family which you can find in the letters section of this site.
Eriksen family
Sverre Eriksen was born in 1898 into a large, loving family in southern Norway. They were not great letter writers, but remained close throughout their lives.
Sverre’s father, Anders Magnus Eriksen (1866-1954), was born in Ornes in Sweden. His mother - Amalia Olava Olsen - died when Sverre was only 12. While he loved his stepmother, Maren Petrine Nilsen, he always felt the loss of his mother deeply.
By all accounts Sverre was a bit of a rebel among all the siblings (Olaf, Gudrun, Henrik, Magnus, Bjarne and Frida). Originally in training to become a train conductor, he ran off to sea at age 16, where he sailed on some of the last commercial sail ships, went whaling and saw adventure across the world. On his journeys he gained skills as a carpenter and settled in Australia in the later 1920s, where he was joined by Edith in 1929. He never intended to stay in Australia, and always longed to return to his family and beloved Norway.
And many others
The correspondence is rich in detail and includes descriptions of hundreds of people – family, friends, colleagues and many others. The list of names continues to grow and was last updated in August 2024. This is an extract from a list used to track who-is-who. Please use the feedback form if you would like more information about any person mentioned.