I bought these two photos together at a local antique market in Hamburg. They were taken by the same photographer in Freiburg, Germany. Only the one of the gentleman is labelled:
“? Otto Kretzschmer ?, father of Andreas Kr., in Mittenwald”
I can only assume that the two photos are related. Perhaps father and his two children? Perhaps the boy in the second photo was the said Andreas Kretzschmer? And we cannot ignore the two question marks before and behind the name Otto Kretzschmer. Whoever labelled the photo apparently wasn’t 100% sure themselves.
All I have is speculation, and a couple of facts to back it up.
I could find one Otto Kretzschmer in the Freiburg city directory of 1905. I wonder if “Privat” behind his name means Privatier (“a man of independent means”)? He lived at Mozartstrasse 17 in Freiburg at the time. He lived in the same address a year later as well.
But by 1907, he had passed away and the 1907 Freiburg city directory only mentions Mrs. Otto Kretzschmer, his widow. We also learn that her maiden name was Errock.
She is listed in the Freiburg city directories between 1910-1912; then for a while not, but reappears in the 1930s. This time, they also state her first name, Annie:
So I now looked for any connection of the names Otto Kretzschmer and Annie Errock and found an incomplete family tree on Ancestry for Annie Kretzschmer neé Errock and her husband Johann Georg Wilhelm Otto Kretzschmer. According to another tree on Geneanet, Annie and Otto got married in 1890 at the Anglican Chruch in Moscow! Annie had been born in Ardwick, Lancashire in England. Apparently, Annie’s father had moved the family from England to Moscow in about 1869, shortly after Annie’s birth in 1865. I don’t know what brought Otto to Moscow, where the two met and married.
The Ancestry tree doesn’t give us any other dates regarding Otto. We learn that Annie died in Freiburg in 1942.
Next I found a marriage record for one Mary Sarah Helena Kretzschmer, daughter of Otto and Annie Kretzschmer. She married Hermann Ferdinand Lüders in October 1919 in Berlin. By the time, her father Otto was diseased. The marriage record also gives us Mary's birth date: September 10, 1897. Perhaps she was the girl in the second photo?
I find nothing on Andreas Kretzschmer. The description on our second photo mentions Mittenwald, a place in Bavaria. Could he have lived in Mittenwald later on in life?
I have already written a blogpost about another family of Kretzschmers from Berlin. Now I’m wondering if these photos are in fact related to one another. I bought the two sets of photos at the same antique market in Hamburg about 6 months apart, but I can’t recall if from the same seller. I wish we knew more!
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