Fonds NIII - Käte Husemann estate

180 VE

The archival records recorded in the present find book are the written and photographic remains of Käte (recte Kätchen Charlotte Alice) Husemann, née Schmidt (born 30.4.1914 in Tanga/German East Africa), who died on 25.12.1994 in Bad Salzuflen. The focus of the collection, which comprises 53 volumes of files and approx. 450 glass plates/photos, is on the legacy of the parents of the estate giver, the married couple Gottfried (1883-1920) and Frieda (1890-1986) Schmidt, née Kleböhmer. In February 1995 Prof. Dr. Hinrich Husemann, Lemgo, the son of Käte Husemann, donated the archives recorded here to the Bad Salzuflen City Archives.

Gottfried Schmidt came from a North German merchant family and after a commercial apprenticeship spent most of his time outside Europe, above all in the United States of America and in various German colonies in Africa. In 1912 he was appointed by the DOA Plantation Society, Charlottenburg, to head the rubber plantation Mwule in the district of Tanga/German East Africa, which belonged to him. On 1.5.1913 he married Frieda Kleböhmer, a native of Schötmar, in Tanga. One year later the daughter Käte was born, for whom the parents kept a diary. Gottfried Schmidt initially continued to manage the plantation during the First World War, which broke out shortly thereafter, but after the gradual occupation of the colony by the English in July 1916 he was taken prisoner and shortly afterwards shipped to the prisoner-of-war camp Ahmednagar/India. Here he spent more than three years, during which letters, diaries and other records have been handed down due to his busy writing activities. On the return journey to Germany Gottfried Schmidt died on 1.2.1920 of pneumonia in Port Said/Egypt. Half a year earlier his wife and daughter had returned to Germany after several years of internment in an English camp, where they had both resided in Schötmar (Bad Salzuflen) with short interruptions until their death. The diary-like notes made by Gottfried Schmidt, but also by his wife during her internment, as well as the letters and copies of the letters sent to him, arrived in Germany unscathed. The notes and letters of Gottfried and Frieda Schmidt give an impressive insight into the life of German settlers in D e u t s c h - O s t a f r i k a during the late period of this German colony or during the war. For local genealogical research, the genealogical legacy of the legatee and her husband, Wilhelm Husemann, may also be revealing, as these two documents of the Kleböhmer (Schötmar) and Husemann (Schötmar/Wülfer) families have been compiled.The photographic inventory of the legacy is very extensive. On the one hand there are photographs from the time in D e u t s c h - O s t a f r i k a , whereby a collection of glass plates with 104 photographs from the immediate vicinity of the Mwule plantation belongs to the most valuable. On the other hand, there are numerous photos of the family of the master watchmaker Ernst Kleböhmer and his social environment in Schötmar (club activities; Schützenfest; Bahnhofseinweihung etc.). Overall, the collection provides an excellent insight into the final phase of German colonial history and the situation of a German family of planters during the First World War at an almost unknown theater of war.

City Archive Bad Salzuflen

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http://www.archive.nrw.de/LAV_NRW/jsp/bestand.jsp?archivNr=200&tektId=17

Göke, Robert: Im langen Schatten des Kilimandscharo. Die Eheleute Gottfried und Frieda schmidt aus Schötmar auf einer Plantage in Deutsch-Ostafrika während der Endphase der Kolonialzeit. 2 Teile. In Jahrbuch Bad Salzuflen : ein aktueller und historischer Rückblick. 1997 2. 93, 1998

Bechhaus-Gerst, Marianne: 'Meinetwegen kann jetzt alles zum Teufel gehen' - Das Ehepaar Schmidt und der Erste Weltkrieg in Deutsch-Ostafrika. In: Beuke, Arnold und Wiesekopsieker, Stefan: Der Geschichte eine Stimme geben. Franz Meyer zum Abschied aus Bad Salzuflen. Bielefeld 2018 , S. 245-256.