Contacted by a Kleemann descendant
The recent Paechter discoveries that showed us related to the Australian Peter Nash has netted another interested genealogist, and a further story that may expand our knowledge of family life in Danzig in the early years of the 20th century and in Berlin during the terrible 1930s.
Sue Key, who was tipped off about our Paechter information by Peter Nash, is another Berlin refugee, born Susanne Feidt, who was sent to England in 1939 at two years of age to join her parents who were already there. She has recently authored her memoir and social history, titled Another Time, Another Place, which I have ordered in paperback and will be writing about in the future.
Sue is interested in the Paechter story because she is related to the Kleemann family from Danzig. Jakob Kleemann, a Danzig importer of tea and coffee, was the husband of Rosa Paechter. Jakob's sister Emilie Kleemann married Hugo Lewi, and that is the branch that Sue comes from.
The Lewi family produced some remarkable offspring, including a composer, painter and mathematician, all of whom were persecuted during the Nazi regime. Sue's grandmother Rosa Lewi Feidt, who also went to England, is the only one of the Lewi siblings who survived.
Even though Sue is not a direct relation, her Kleemann-Lewi family were in-laws to our Paechter-Wohlgemuths. The two families' experiences exactly overlapped in Danzig and in Berlin. I expect to learn quite a lot from Sue's book that will give context to our family story.
