Two Grandfathers & Two Incidents

Having researched my family history for over ten years now, I have compiled many facts and anecdotes about people whom I have never met but feel a close bond with. My two grandfathers shared a similar incident during the same time frame while being hundreds of miles apart.

My paternal grandfather, Jakob Fogt, was the first born of ethnic German parents in the province of Lublin, Poland in 1887. He moved to the Courland (Kurland) region of Latvia circa 1908 and began his adult life as a valet to a Baltic German Baron. He married, raised a family of three, and all was well until 1939. In that year the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact caused the repatriation of all ethnic Germans living in this region of Eastern Europe. The family was resettled into a region known then as the Warthegau, which was part of Prussia prior to World War 1, and currently part of Poland. His three sons entered military service and he started anew in his own landscape/gardening business near Posen. One day while riding his bicycle en route to work, a small NSDAP parade was taking place in the town of Wreschen. My grandfather made the mistake of proceeding on without showing the "proper respects" to the passing flag and in return was knocked off his bicycle and interned in a local holding cell. My grandmother, upon hearing this, promptly marched down to the location and began berating his captors, shouting, "He has three sons fighting on three fronts!" You would have to know my grandmother to appreciate this. They relented and my grandfather was released with a stern warning.

Within the same time frame on the other side of Germany, lived my maternal grandfather Wilhelm Hoeffgen. Wilhelm Hoeffgen was born in Elberfeld in 1899 and spent his life in the Westfalen region of Germany. He served in World War 1 and raised a family in Mettmann, Germany. He was called into the reserves in the beginning of World War 2 and after being discharged continued his profession as a tool and die maker. He was en route to work aboard the S-bahn (Streetcar) in Duessseldorf and would see on a daily basis the destruction that occurred from the daily bombings. He made the mistake one day of saying out loud, "All this destruction and for what? It's already over!" The next day he received "a visit" and was taken into custody. (In 1985 while on assignment with the USAF I visited the location of his internment on Breite Street - Breite Strasse in Mettmann, Germany. An Italian restaurant now occupies the first floor). My grandfather's older brother, also a WW1 vet, went to plead his case. He reminded these people of my grandfather's service in the first war and the Polish campaign and of his children at home. He was allowed to return home, slightly bruised, a few days later. He didn't speak his mind for the remainder of the war.

If we, as Americans in the year 2001, can learn anything from this short story, it is that we must certainly appreciate the amount of freedom and free speech that so many of us take for granted.

  Roland Fogt's website has more on his family genealogy