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Celebrate
Fritz Stäckler !
August
29, 2003 is Fritz' eighty- first birthday.
I have a
special place in my heart for Fritz,
auf
Deutche
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Fritz Stäckler was born on August 29, 1922 in Nieder-Liebersbach, Germany . Anna and Loni Wurth are his first cousins. Grandma Barbara and Fritz’ Dad, were brother and sister. We had the pleasure of first meeting Fritz in the 1980’s when he and his wife, Ilsa visited Loni and Anna.
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The three cousins: Anna, Fritz, Loni |
In 1987, the Whitakers enjoyed the hospitality of the Stäcklers in Nieder-Lierbersbach, Germany. What a wonderful opportunity it was to get to know Fritz and Ilsa during the week we spent at their home. They knew a little English and we knew a little German. It’s amazing how well we were able to communicate “mit händen und füssen" and dictionaries
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| My favorite time was adjourning to the living room after dinner to enjoy a liqueur and conversation. Marilyn, Michelle, David, Ilsa, Fritz. |
Here's Fritz with his little
grandsons. They are 16 years older now. It would be fun to have more recent pictures of them. |
Fritz gave us a wonderful tour of the countryside, in his Mercedes, which provided its own fun for us. We came to appreciate “die Schlösse”. We don’t have too many castles in the United States, but Germany has many which date back to Feudal Times. Here we are in Heidelberg.
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In 1995, Fritz gave us a surprise visit. He was hoping to do a cross-country trip and take Loni along for an English speaking guide. Unfortunately, Loni’s health was not good enough to make that kind of a trip. David was wishing he was already retired. He would have volunteered for the job in a minute. Fritz stayed with us for several days, and once again it was a wonderful relationship time.
This time, the dictionary he used was a little pocket computer. We learned some technical German because often the word he was searching for was “nicht in memory”.
Fritz was a tennis enthusiast, and at that time, the OTB in Schenectady sponsored professional tennis tournaments in Central Park. The week he was here, a German, Bernard Karbacher and a Swede, Thomas Engvist were matched in the final rounds. I took Fritz and Loni to the match. What an exciting event it was. The two played one tie breaker after another for an hour or so, as I remember it. Eventually, Engvist won the match. He was the lower seeded. Schenectady made the national news, riding on the coat tails of Engvist’s victory.
The next week was the US Open in NYC. We watched all the matches on TV and came to know all the tennis stars. David and I were grateful that Loni had introduced us to cable TV only weeks before, or all those matches wouldn’t have been available to us. Fritz introduced us to a sport, which we have continued to enjoy over the years. Since David has been retired, he has breakfast at Wimbleton every year, via Cable TV. One year, I even got up early to watch. It airs at 5:00 a.m. our time.
In the new millennium, I connected with our cousin again. I was doing a web page on family history, and I needed some information about our Stäckler roots. Fritz was just getting connected to the Internet. Before long, he sent me an e-mail with an Excel attachment summarizing his research on the Stäckler family tree.
He also had a story about Grandma Barbara’s brother, which Fritz translated from German Script writing. I remember learning Script in college when I took German. It's not taught anymore, even in German schools, so Fritz' translation made that story available to the younger generation. "Erste Klasse" is linked to the main Stäckler page..
Fritz sent me some of his own history. His grandparents died before he was born, so he remembers very little about them. He knew he had an aunt (our Grandma Barbara) in America and remembers getting presents from her. He was a young boy when Hitler seized power, and he served in World War II. "Those war years were not a pretty time."
Fritz married Ilse Klingele on April 5, 1947. They have two children, Ursula and Hans Jurgend, and four grandchildren. He had his own business where he assembled electronic components. The little factory was on one side of his home. Here is a picture of him and Ilsa and the sign for his company.
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I met Fritz almost 20 years ago, when he was the same age as I am now. It is a special experience to connect with a relative that you never knew and feel a familial closeness and compatibility so quickly. During these years, I have thoroughly enjoyed Fritz, and I look to him as a role model as I journey through the next two decades of my life.
I appreciate Fritz' contributions to the compilation of
our family history.
Visit this website for more information
Stäckler Family History
A special thanks to Angelika Berloffa, for the German translation of this page. Angie is an Austrian friend of Christine Palkovic. Visit Angelika's website.
