Above right: Reinoud Boers and HK during a school outing in 1961. It was at Giloolee's Farm. The girls in our class are, in front: Marlene Venter and Gretel-Marie Rheme. Behind them Margaret Berger, Rika Blaas, Therese Winde and Gerlinde Seidler.
I think: Standard 1, 1953, German School Hillbrow. The class teacher was Fräulein Marx.
Back right next to Marx am I, then Peter Schadlich, Günther?
Middle: ??, Alex Richter, Rudi Wolter, Heini Ludwig, Wolfgang?, ??, ??, ??, Marlene Venter, Valesca Baumann.
Front: ??, Uschi Fellinger, Dorothea Thompson, Rika Blaas, ??, Erna Wolleschak, ??, >?????
The photo was torn in half by Mrs Marx because I passed it on to others during class.
Back right next to Marx am I, then Peter Schadlich, Günther?
Middle: ??, Alex Richter, Rudi Wolter, Heini Ludwig, Wolfgang?, ??, ??, ??, Marlene Venter, Valesca Baumann.
Front: ??, Uschi Fellinger, Dorothea Thompson, Rika Blaas, ??, Erna Wolleschak, ??, >?????
The photo was torn in half by Mrs Marx because I passed it on to others during class.
Above 1: 1948, Vati, Horst and Immo at the beach Swakopmund.
Above 2: 1946, Opa Hermann Jatow with infant Horst on lap and Vati in Swakopmund park. Opa had recently been released from a detention camp he was imprisoned in since 1939. He was given special permission to visit SWA (Namibia) from South Africa - a condition of his release pending deportation to Germany. In 1948 the new Nat (Nationalist Party) government gave him and others the right to remain.
Above 3: ca 1962, Horst and Immo ready to go on a weeks hike with the Peter Horn youth group named Kurjak. This is outside our home in Highlands North, Johannesburg.
Above 2: 1946, Opa Hermann Jatow with infant Horst on lap and Vati in Swakopmund park. Opa had recently been released from a detention camp he was imprisoned in since 1939. He was given special permission to visit SWA (Namibia) from South Africa - a condition of his release pending deportation to Germany. In 1948 the new Nat (Nationalist Party) government gave him and others the right to remain.
Above 3: ca 1962, Horst and Immo ready to go on a weeks hike with the Peter Horn youth group named Kurjak. This is outside our home in Highlands North, Johannesburg.
Opa Gerhard Kleinschmidt ca 1949. Born 1883 in Otjimbingue. Died in Karibib 1949. Devout Christian. Would not associate with the NSDAP when many Germans in Namibia did so after 1933. Learned to be a farmer - and was deputy at the mission farm at Ghaub. Ghaub was also where the last battle between German and SA forces took place in 1915. He was a PoW in the south at the time, having been drafted into the Schutztruppe in 1914. It is alleged that he and others 'defended' DSWA near Rietfontein in the south. They were mistaken - they were in fact on SA land, were defeated and imprisoned. He was released in 1915 after cessation of hostilities. He went back to Ghaub where he found the wrecked farm, his wife and two sons, one of them my father Wilhelm, born in 1914. Opa used the army debris to rebuild house and fences but was arrested under martial law for tampering with enemy and other property left behind from the battle. Many of his colleagues testified in his defence but nothing came of the matter until 1921 when SWA became mandated territory under the League of Nations - charges against him were dropped. By then the Mission in Germany that funded Ghaub had to end its subsidies and he was retrenched. Being of German descent he could not get work in SWA now - nearly all jobs went to SA poor whites, a way in which SA solved its 'poor white problem'. The family moved to Karibib where he started an ox-wagon repair shop. They remained poor and by 1930 had to take their 3 children out of school - to find work. That is how dad became the assistant to a travelling salesman, a Mr Beckurts. In 1933 he recruited my father into the Windhoek NSDAP. It was soon outlawed by South Africa but carried on in secret. Left: Horst, six years old (1951), his first year at school at the German language school in Johannesburg. Behind him Alex Richter and Richard Müller. The photo was taken by my mothers friend Doris Nickel.
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Above: Growing up in Sneddon Street, Sydenham, Johannesburg, in the mid 1950's. I hated having to wear Lederhosen and braces. My mother said it saved washing, ironing and patching. The company car, father worked for Taeuber & Corssen, is a 1949 Chevrolet Fleetline.