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AutorenbildPhotos Without Families

Erich Sprengel from Harburg

Aktualisiert: 24. Mai 2023



This little babe was Erich Sprengel, 6 months old in the photo, which was taken in Harburg (near Hamburg) at Easter 1896.


I first checked when Easter was celebrated in 1896. Good Friday was on April 5th that year. So if baby Erich was 6 months old at Easter, his birthday must have been around September 1895.


I next came across a FindaGrave page for one Dr. Ing. Dr. Iur. Erich Sprengel, a director of a government institution, who passed away on May 21, 1960, and was buried at the Old Cemetery in Harburg. His birthday according to his gravesite was September 18, 1895. Was our baby Erich (or actually Ernst August Erich Sprengel with full name) the future engineer?


I found another photo from the same cemetery on another webpage which shows the whole Sprengel family gravesite. The old cemetery of Harburg doesn’t exist anymore, it has been turned into a park. But some of the old gravesites have been preserved; the Sprengel gravesite is one of them.



Zooming in on the second gravestone, I can read the following details:


Here lies medical doctor

Dr.med. Georg Sprengel

medical officer of the Marines

born in Schwarmstedt 14 July 1865

died in Harburg 12 December 1906

at the age of 41

and our dear mother

Elvira Sprengel

née Behrens

born in Lehrle 26 September 1865

died on 11 March 1933


These were Erich's parents. I also found the relevant death record of Dr.med. Georg Sprengel which confirms the details on the gravestone: Erich's mother Klara Elvira Johanna Sprengel née Behrens was widowed in December 1906. This means Erich was just 11 years old when his father died.


I also discovered that Erich was the oldest of 3 siblings. He had a sister, Auguste Luise Elvira, born a year later who unfortunately passed away in 1897. And Erich had a younger brother Georg Heinrich Herbert Sprengel (1898-1966), but I don’t know anything else about him, except that according to a comment on his birth record he got married in 1932.


The photo itself actually holds another clue that supports my findings – the photo was taken in the photo studio of one Carl Timm at 18 Lindenstrasse in Harburg. The Sprengels lived at 20 Lindenstrasse in 1896, so literally next door! The street was renamed Julius-Ludowieg-Strasse in 1950, and unfortnately little Erich’s childhood home no longer stands.

From the looks of it, Erich spent his whole life in Harburg. He worked for the city council of Harburg-Wilhelmsburg as one of the managing directors of the building house association. He was a lawyer and an engineer,




I don’t know if Erich was married or had any children. I will add the photo to FindaGrave. There is also a Geneanet page dedicated to the Sprengels. Hopefully I can make contact with someone who might appreciate this photo of baby Erich.



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