Liebe Kück!: A German Soldier’S Story from the Great War

By Peter Lubrecht Sr.

One hundred years ago, the world suffered a brutal and destructive conflict. The Great War, World War I, or the War to End All Wars, by whatever name, cost the lives and the fortunes of millions of people. The modern world, now concerned with its own problems and conflicts, has pushed the memory of it deep into the recesses of collective memory. The veterans and the war dead are honored and memorialized annually; however, the ongoing destructive influence of this time on the personal lives, fates, and fortunes of individuals and families is forgotten.
Liebe Kck! A German Soldiers Story from the Great War is based on the letters Vice Feldwebel (Staff Sergeant) Alwin Ficke of the Seventy-Fourth Reserve German Infantry, stationed on the Western Front of the War, wrote home to his wife and family from August 1914 until his death in France in February 1915. Sergeant Fickes viewpoint was contrary to the popularized media reports of German military actions in Belgium and the Champagne Valley. This ugly war is best understood not through popularized media reports but as it is seen though the personal wars of soldiers and their families. His is the story of the journey taken from home to battle representing the struggles and turmoil in the lives of legions of others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503554696

Peter Lubrecht Sr.

Dr. Peter Lubrecht has a PhD in Educational Theater from New York University and a master’s degree in English and Drama Theory from NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Science. An avid researcher with an interest in historical theater, Lubrecht has been lecturing locally on the Civil War and Nineteenth Century American Theatre. Peter is originally from New York City, where he appeared in and was a part of an experimental theater program conducted by the New York Public Schools, under whose aegis he studied acting with Harold Jackson of the Harlem Renaissance. He was on NPR as a guest at age nine. Peter is an adjunct professor of English, Speech, and Theater at Berkeley College; however, he also was with Lehman University Graduate School and Lincoln Center (Performing Arts in the English Classroom) Jersey City University, Bergen, Morris, and Passaic Community Colleges. He has written two history books: The New Jersey Butterfly Boys in the Civil War: The Hussars of the Union Army (History Press, 2011) and Germans in New Jersey: A History (History Press, 2013).

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Copyright © 2015 by Peter Lubrecht Sr.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015904343

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5035-5470-2

                Softcover        978-1-5035-5471-9

                eBook             978-1-5035-5469-6

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Rev. date: 03/23/2015

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Contents

Preface

I: Introduction

II: Origins and Roots

III: New Family Ties

IV: Unexpected Dark Clouds

V: Reservists Called Up

VI: Vater ist im Krieg!

VII: To the Front

VIII: From Charleroi and Namur to the Marne

IX: Fighting on the Aisne

X: Christmas on the Western Front 1914

XI: A New Year: 1915

XII: The Argonne Souain, Somme-Py, and Perthes les Hurlus

XIII: Epilogue

XIV: Aftermath

Appendix I: Military Information and Operations Nineteenth Reserve Division German Army 1914–1915

Appendix II: Reserve Infantry Regiment 74 Casualties February 16, 1915

Appendix III: Alwin Ficke’s Kameraden

Appendix IV Alwin Ficke’s World War I Letters in English

Appendix IV Other War Letters

Appendix VI (Anhang) Alwin Ficke’s Erste Welt Krieg Briefe in Deutsch

Endnotes

Works Cited

For my Oma

Dedicated to the memory of those in our family who fought in the Great War:

Vice-Feldwebel Alwin Ficke, killed in action:

16 February 1915

Unteroffizier Wilhelm Ficke, killed in action:

8 May 1915

Unteroffizier Heye Meyerhoff

Leutnant Roelf Meyerhoff

Unteroffizier Hans Ehlers

Unteroffizier Julius Lubrecht, killed in action:

September 10, 1917

Captain Charles A. Lubrecht, MD:

US Army Medical Corps, 1918

Because none can ever wholly feel what another suffers—

is that the reason why wars perpetually recur?

—Eric Maria Remarque

Preface

I grew up in the Inwood Section of Manhattan in New York City during the post–World War II period, when the public schools supported the veterans of World War I living in the Kingsbridge Veterans Hospital in the nearby Bronx. All I knew about the conflict was that my German grandfather had died fighting in it. I learned, in school, that the Germans, under the kaiser, lost to the French, the English, and the Americans during a three-year period from 1914 to 1918. My father, who survived the war in Germany, never spoke of it, and my mother, who was too young to remember all but her father’s death, knew little or nothing about it. After my grandmother died in 1981, I found that she had saved my grandfather’s World War I letters for me. They were written in the Alte Schrift¹—some in pencil, hastily scribbled, and some were illegible. A wonderful translator, Ilse Baker, was able to transcribe the old letters and put them into idiomatic English. A tragic house fire took all of my family possessions and heirlooms; however, the original letters from the German front were spared when a plastic loose-leaf binder fell and shielded them from the fire and the water from the fire hoses. The translated transcriptions, on a disk in my teaching bag, were in a briefcase in my car and were also saved. These fortunate miracles led me to believe that I was destined to tell this story.

These letters were written from one man’s personal point of view and often belie the images of the conflict that were presented to the public by the media. I have tried, therefore, to place the letters of the author’s personal war against the background of the public one.

Special thanks to my long-suffering wife who has read this manuscript and edited and suggested new material and to my family who have listened to all the stories—especially grandchildren Michael, James, and Jack who all now want to go to Germany to find their roots. A special thanks to my cronies at Germania Park and to the German Choir for all their ethnic input and discussion, and especially to Henry Froehlich for deciphering some of the old script.

I

Introduction

One hundred years ago, the world suffered from a brutal and destructive conflict. The Great War, World War I, or the War to End All Wars, by whatever name, cost the lives and the fortunes of millions of people. The modern world, now concerned with its own problems and conflicts, has pushed the memory of it deep into the recesses of collective memory. The veterans and the war dead are honored and memorialized annually; however, the ongoing destructive influence of this time on the personal lives, fates, and fortunes of individuals and families is forgotten.

Many soldiers wrote home; few women saved the painful series of letters that preceded the dreaded telegram telling of a loved one’s death. One woman did. Gesine Ficke carefully preserved them, tied in a lavender ribbon, in a wartime Christmas cigar box sent from the Western Front. She put them away along with memories of the first part of her life, journeyed to a new country, with a new husband and new problems, as she lived through an economic depression and another three wars.

The understanding of family experience helps the modern generation find its own place in the world. The current trend toward finding roots is part of the process of learning who and where we were and are in the world. This ugly war is best understood, with all the negative and jingoistic press coverage, seen through the personal war of one man and its effect on his family, because it is also the journey taken, from home to battle, of legions of others.

The press portrayed this war in terms of good and evil, of black and white, and of valor and cowardice. The image of the brutal Hun drawn as a monster on posters and cartoons in the newspapers haunted postwar German Americans. The popular belief was that the Germans wanted to conquer the world under Kaiser Bill, using violence, rape, and infanticide as the major methods of gain. Personal accounts, however, were very different. The average German foot soldier had been through required, conscripted, military service, and was sent off amid marching bands and victory speeches to what he thought would be a short six-month war. He had little knowledge of anything more than a nationalistic pride and dedication to the Fatherland. Most of the foot soldiers were not violent men by nature but felt that they were serving their country.

The letters of this soldier reflect one man’s observations and hopes and dreams, describing the march to war in terms that reflect personal honor, bravery, and compassion rather than brutality. These are the words of a caring family man who was thrust into a situation where survival was improbable. One hundred years later, they provide a picture of a nightmare endured by many and survived by few, which need to be set in a time and a place that shows prewar daily life followed by the upheaval and disasters of the war years.

II

Origins and Roots

Alwin Ficke was born January 4, 1884, in the tiny North German town, Bütel. The surrounding Dedesdorf area was originally settled by Celtic tribes. As the years passed, land was taken from the sea using seawalls that could be raised and lowered as needed, salvaging the Weser River salt marshes for agricultural use. In the twenty-first century, old redbrick houses, thatched roofs, and a windmill stand as they did hundreds of years ago. Viking raiders, Roman soldiers, farmers, and shippers had settled, lived, and traded on this windblown spot on the very edge of the North Sea.

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Alwin Johannes Ficke at about age twenty-three, circa 1907—possibly a wedding picture

Saint Laurentius Church was built in Dedesdorf in 1050, on an early Celtic religious mound, first as a Catholic church that was later converted to Lutheran during the Reformation. Gravestones in the churchyard stand as mute witnesses to the comparative wealth of the people living there during the earlier times. The Ficke family lived there for more than seven hundred years, and Carsten, Alwin’s father, from a family of shippers on the Weser River, often told his grandchildren that they were descended from the Vikings.²

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Saint Laurentius Lutheran Church Dedesdorf Germany—photo courtesy of the author

During the early eighteen hundreds Napoleonic rule interrupted shipping, farming, and trading in German countries. For tax purposes, the French government banned both patronymic family names and the traffic of the beloved black tea of the Northern Germans.³ In retaliation, tea smugglers—including the Ficke boatmen—began to traffic up and down the Weser River. The oldest permanent recorded name in family records is Fedde Ficke-Ficken, which is Plattdeutsch⁴ for the son of Friederich, or in modern terms, Freddy’s boy Fred. Unfortunately, it means far worse in modern German slang.

Alwin was from a shipper family. Grandfather, Carsten Ficken-Ficke was a commercial sailor who had traveled worldwide. His own father, Carsten, had started in the family shipping business at an early age. He met Alwin’s mother Juliana Henrietta Katerina Haase in the nearby seaport of Brake. They married and moved to the city of Oldenburg where he started a profitable fish business. In 1893, his brother-in-law Leo Wehdeking was named Kellermeister (wine master) to Duke Nicholas Friederich Peter (Peter II) of Oldenburg. The Wehdekings’ large house on Teichstrasse⁵ 6 advertised the role at the court with a cement frieze of grapes over the door.⁶ Carsten Ficke’s business, Nordsee Fisch Handlung, became the official fishmonger to the grand duke’s court through Leo’s influence. The store on 6 Gastrasse in Oldenburg was on the first floor of a three-story building where the Alwin, Wilhelm, Julius, Johannes, and Magdelene lived, and where daughters Gertrude and Kathe were born. A balcony overlooked the busy street, and chickens roamed the backyard.

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Grand Duke Friederich August (1900) and his family

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Grand Duke Friederich August and his son

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Carsten Ficke and the Gross Herzog (far right) of Oldenburg in the forest

Alwin was nine years old when the family moved to the city. He attended the Alte Gymnasium, preparing for the teaching profession. He developed an excellent bass voice and learned to play the piano, which was a requirement for all teachers. After graduation he began teaching as an assistant at the City Boy’s School in Wittemund and then in the schools of Elisabethfehn and Idafehn. He never passed his second level exam, going to work instead as a salesman for a peat collection and distribution, firm rising up the ranks to the level of general manager.

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Reserve Corporal Alwin Ficke

Alwin had to serve one year of mandatory military service during his twentieth year in October of 1905. The German Army had been restructured by Otto Bismarck in 1871. Service was divided into the active or standing army (two years or three in the cavalry and horse artillery), the reserve (five years, but four in the cavalry and horse artillery) for two years, followed by five years in the Landwehr (eleven years). During the later war years, the Landsturm was added, which included untrained men between seventeen and twenty years old, too young for service in the army, and trained and untrained men between the ages of thirty-nine and forty-five, who were over the ordinary military age. During the early years of the century, men proudly stood for family photographs and military studio portraits.

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Reservist Alwin Ficke and his sister Gertrude (Trudel)

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Wurttemberger family portrait of the Vohdens: far right Eugen Vohden (Vohdin), Reserve Infantry 119 (c. 1912)—courtesy of Richard Vohden

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Franz Xavier Ernst: Eisenbahn Batallion 2 Komp. Pioniers—courtesy of Carole Flatley

Alwin was a corporal in a Hanoverian Reserve Infantry unit until September of 1906. After finishing his military obligation, he began as an assistant teacher in a small school in Idafehn. His supervisor, Hans Ehlers, an Ammerlander from Oberlethe, took him to his hunting club, the Jaeger Verein, based in a Wirtshaus (inn) in Idafehn owned by the father of Hans’s wife (Maria), Hinrich Meyerhoff.

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Map of Ost Friesland (East Frisia) before colonization

Alwin stopped at the Meyerhoff’s Inn for lunch in the fall of 1906, while he was on a hunting trip for wild boar. Roelf, called Rudi, Meyerhoff was in the kitchen with his youngest sister, Gesine. They quibbled over who was going to wait on the lone diner in the next room. Rudi won the argument, and sixteen-year-old Gesine was sent to take the order and wait on the twenty-two-year-old hunter. Alwin turned to the tall, willowy, pretty young girl and said, I didn’t know that roses still bloomed in Idafehn at this time of year. Gesine was smitten by this tall, kind, mustachioed city boy who could raise one eyebrow in mock indignation or display a sharp satirical wit. They courted throughout that winter.

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Gesine Meyerhoff at about seventeen years old

Gesine Meyerhoff, the last of seven children, was the third but first surviving Gesine in the Meyerhoff family. Two sisters before her, Heigesine and Gesine, died: one passed away in infancy; the other drowned in the nearby canal. The new baby received the dead child’s name and was baptized Gesine Johanne Meyerhoff on January 20, 1890. Her father, Hinrich Meyerhoff, was a gentleman farmer and entrepreneur who held peat sales and, in the absence of a bank, was the local moneylender. He had been declared a governmental colonist when the West Canal, in Ost Rhaudefehn, was built in the late eighteen sixties for the transportation of peat or Torf from the region. His inn was built on the edge of the newly completed canal, enabling him to collect tolls from the passing commercial boat traffic.

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Hinrich Meyerhoff’s Inn (Landgasthof Lindenkrug in 2014) in Ost Rhaudefehn, Germany

Meyerhoff, or Opa, was a big gruff man with a loud bellow. Born in Rhaude, a tiny town to the west of where Gesine and her family eventually lived, he became known as the founder of Idafehn after the Grand Duke of Oldenburg named the new town after his own mother, Ida.⁷

Hinrich’s official title was shipper and hausman, one who sent the goods supplied by tenants out into the harbors and rivers of the area. He and both of his wives, Talke Fokken (who died in childbirth) and Johanne Janssen came from families that had worked the land in the moors of Northwest Germany for over four hundred years. Rarely, if ever, did anyone leave or travel out of the East Frisian area. The character of the people remained unchanged, however, throughout Viking, Danish, and French invasions, Napoleonic occupation, and the scourge of the Polish Army in late World War II.

Hinrich Meyerhoff had to serve in the military for three years. He chose the German Navy and survived a scare on board ship during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. He was lying on the deck with other casualties after being shelled by a French Naval vessel, apparently dead and waiting to be wrapped in a sheet and buried at sea, when one of his mates yelled Meyerhoff lebt noch! (Meyerhoff is still alive!)

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Hinrich Meyerhoff in the German Navy 1867

He was in the North German Confederation Navy on the North Sea from 1867 to 1871, and when discharged he returned to his birthplace and married (April 14, 1872) Talke Fokken, three years his elder, and settled in to farming life. They had two children, but sadly, his wife and son Hemmo both died during childbirth, leaving Hinrich with a two-year-old daughter, Etje. He remarried a year later to Johanne Janssen. They had four children (after seven pregnancies).

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Johanne Maria Oma Meyerhoff (born Janssen)

By January 20, 1890, when a midwife delivered the last child, Gesine Meyerhoff, there were five children in the family: half-sister Etje, brothers Heye and Rudi, Maria, and the baby, Gesine, seventeen years younger than her sister. Gesine attended the local Volksschule for five to eight years, where unlike her mother, she learned to read and write. She grew to be a tall, slim young woman who kept her long hair in a bun on top of her head. After her few years of school, she worked in her father’s Wirtshaus, waiting tables and cooking. As her brothers finished their compulsory military service, they became part of the family staff on the farm and in the kitchen.

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The Meyerhoff Family, c. 1897. Standing (left to right)—Oma, Roelf, Maria. Seated—Opa, Gesine, and Heye

Gesine and Alwin were engaged after a yearlong courtship, which in that part of the country was as legally binding as marriage. The church in Idafehn held services sporadically in the local school, and therefore, there were no church records of the marriage. They were probably married in a civil ceremony in nearby Barsel.

III

New Family Ties

Gesine gave birth to their first child, August 9, 1908—Juliana Henrietta Katharina, named after Alwin’s mother. She was baptized August of 1908 in Elizabethfehn, where Alwin was teaching.

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Gesine Ficke and her daughter Juliana—c.1909

The family first lived in Wittemund, and by the time of the birth of the second child in 1910, they had moved to 4 Rosenstrasse on the canal in Oldenburg. Alwin left teaching to become an accountant in a peat harvesting and distribution firm. Although coal was the main source for home heating in the cities, peat (or Torf) was used to fuel the railroads and homes in the rural areas, making it a lucrative business.

They moved again to a villa on the Dobbenstrasse (24). Alwin’s success in business made the rental of the lower floor of a bigger and a more prestigious house affordable. This gabled house (Giebelhaus), on property reclaimed from the marshes in the late eighteen hundreds, was within walking distance of his father’s fish business and the big three-story house belonging to Onkel Leo and Tante Helene Wehdeking (Teichstrasse 6).

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Dobbenstrasse 24 from the author’s sketch in 1959, now replaced by apartments

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Gaststrasse 6, formerly Nordsee Fischhandlung, today a market REWE KGaA, Photo courtesy of the author.

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The home of Uncle Leo and Tante Lene Wehdeking, Teichstrasse 6. Photo courtesy of the author.

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Professor Winter’s House next door to the Fickes, Dobbenstrasse 22. Courtesy of the Stadtmuseum Oldenburg.

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Professor Winter and family with the Ficke House in the background. Courtesy of Stadtmuseum Oldenburg.

Alwin and Gesine’s next-door neighbor was artist and photographer Professor Bernhard Winter,⁸ whose fresco portrait of his wife as a woman sowing seeds in a field covered the entire outer wall of his house. The Ficke children were frequently used as models for his paintings, the most notable being The Peasant’s Wedding. He also used Alwin and two of his friends as models for a World War I propaganda painting of a romanticized picture of a German Imperial Army charge.

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The artist and neighbor Bernhard Winter, self-portrait 1903

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Professor Bernhard Winter Painting, courtesy of the Stadtmuseum Oldenburg

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The Peasant’s Wedding by Bernhard Winter

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The Pied Piper of