Family Files February 2022 - Person Sheet
Family Files February 2022 - Person Sheet
NameCarl BROCKMANN 
, M
, MBirth17 Sep 1880, Celle-Neuenhäusen, Celle, Niedersachsen, Germany
Deathca 1965, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
FatherGeorg August Wilhelm BROCKMANN , M (1849-1935)
MotherJohanna Elizabeth SPECKHAN , F (1852-1885)
Misc. Notes
I have seen Another address seen is 10 Minein St. Hamburg (unable to locate this) unknown if this is same Carl
220 Took me a while to figure it out, but this address does not refer to a proper street - it refers to a so-called Kleingartenverein or allotment garden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening)
Regarding the location of Jenfelder Geest allotment garden; based upon data from the addressbooks of Hamburg in 1954 (they name two streets, Kuehnstrasse and Schiffbeker Weg) and some search results for Jenfelder Geest in the Hamburg State Archive I think the location was in the corner between Kuehnstrasse and what is today Jenfelder Allee. There is a school there named Otto-Hahn-Schule that they started making plans for in 1960 and finished building in 1968.
After WWII, lots of people ended up living permanently in these allotment gardens. Large parts of Hamburg had been bombed to rubble and many houses were destroyed. Add in the refugees from the East in what is today Poland and Russia and you had a housing crisis of massive proportions. The gardens provided food when lots of people were starving and the small toolsheds were quickly converted into makeshift homes.
Looks like your relative was living there permanently as well. The first year I can find him in in the adressbook is 1954, and the proper full adress was Carl Brockmann, Kleingartenverein Jenfelder Geest, Parzelle 28, Hamburg Wandsbek 1, Germany. He was a pensioner, so he must have been at least 65 years old in 1954. Thus his birth would have to be before 1889.
http://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de/subhh-adress/digbib/start
Carl Brockmann continued to live at this adress until about 1959. In 1960 the Pensioner Carl Brockmann living in the allotment garden Jenfelder Geest is no longer there.
I don't know what happened to him, but instead we have a Carl Brockmann, Pensioner, living at Lorichstrasse 30. This might be related to the fact that in 1958 the Federal Governement of Germany passed a law that made permanent living in allotment gardens illegal. Plus he was an old man, and living in an allotment garden year round is no life for the elderly and infirm. It is freaking cold in winter and using a wooden outhouse and washing yourself and your clothes with ice-cold water from the pump sounds more romantic than it really is. Or he heard about plans to built a school there, could even be that he was in the Vorstand of the Verein responsible for running the allotment garden Jenfelder Geest (think of the Vorstand of the Verein as a combination of HOA, membership club and owner, just for an allotment garden); in this case the city might have struck a deal with him. Sign and we make sure you can get a nice flat.
I took a look at the buildings in Lorichstrasse 30 and the architecture is consistent with social housing projects from the early 1960s.
I continued to trace Carl Brockmann the pensioner through the Hamburg Adressbooks, and there was an entry for Carl Brockmann living at Lorichstrasse 30 up to 1965. In 1966 (the last year an adressbook was published) he is no longer there, making me believe that he most likely died in or around 1965. The plot 28 at the Jenfelder Geest remained empty according to the adressbook, nobody lived there permanently. Could be that he still made the trip with a bicycle or that a relative took over the garden.
Working on the assumption that Carl died in 1965, I checked the Generalregister, which is online.
https://www.hamburg.de/bkm/digitalisate/332-5-standesaemter/
I found the death of a Heinrich Friedrich Carl Brockmann in 1965. Standesamt (registrar office) is given as "Ei" (=Hamburg-Eimsbüttel) and the entry number as 1018. Date of death is 2nd Nov 1965. Working on a hunch I searched ancestry and I found a matching birth certificate. To father brickmason Heinrich Rudolf Friedrich Brockmann, living at Hamburg, Norderstraße 85/3, and mother Metta Catharina nee Schmidt a male child born 05th April 1894 named Heinrich Friedrich Carl. This birth entry has a remark in the margins that said child died 02nd Nov 1965, StA Hamburg-Eimsbüttel 1018/1965. So it is definitely the guy who died in 1965. I also found a family tree with him on ancestry.
https://www.ancestry.de/family-tree/person/tree/115767084/person/180172268378/facts
Sadly I cannot find any trace of Celle in that tree.
So back to the drawing board. I started checking the Generalregister for male Brockmanns who died in Hamburg from 1959 to 1971. While I could cross-reference a few of them, I was left with too many potential entries who could be your relatives, nevermind the problem that we currently don't know how many siblings Dora had aside from Karl.
Here is what I would do if I was you:
1) Request documents from the so-called Melderegister of the municipality where the person in question lived. The Melderegister is a German speciality. Every person in Germany has to register their address with the local authorities. They state their data and place of birth, their adress, their marital status to the municipality where they live. The office handling this is also responsible for issueing ID cards (aka Personalausweis), passports and for getting people the papers they need in order to vote. This makes the Melderegister similar to the voter's register or the DMV records in the USA, except that registering is mandatory and includes small children and every person living at the address. The data derived from the Melderegister is similar to the data derived from the US census - which is one of the reasons why Germany does not have a census.
Melderegister data for Hamburg spanning 1939 to 1968 is stored at the State Archive in Hamburg.
What you want / need is a copy of the Hauskarte of the Parzelle (=plot) 28 at the Kleingartenverein Jenfelder Geest. This is the relevant signature from the Hamburg State Archive (copy+paste into your email):
332-8_A 51/1
Kleingartenverein 525 Jenfelder Geest Parz. 1-58, Meldestelle: Bezirksamt Wandsbek (zu bestellen unter: 741-4 Fotoarchiv, K 2461)
You know that this should be the correct family since your grandmother was communicating with them, so whoever lived there is most likely related. (Unless this was a case of mistaken identity, like your grandma sending letters to pretty much every Carl Brockmann living in Hamburg at the time.)
Try sending an email to the state archive and request a copy, signature 741-4 Fotoarchiv, K 2461, Kleingartenverein 525 Jenfelder Geest Parz. 28. It is likely that they will refuse, but it cannot hurt to ask. Their email is office-staatsarchiv@bkm.hamburg.de
Normally the staff of the state archive are happy to copy files as long as you give them the exact signature, the problem here is that the info you seek is on microfilm. This means somebody needs to put the microfilm into a reader, scroll to the right record and push print. This is something they generally don't do and you might be asked to hire a professional for this task. (Yeah, stupid.) Best play dumb and just ask nicely.
If they do it, expect a bill of around 15 EUR. If you need to hire a professional researcher, you should not pay more than 50 EUR because that is really a task that takes 15 min max and most of the money will go to cover travelling time / cost of the researcher.
If you do hire a professional, consider having that professional check out Signatur: 231-10_A 1 Band 83, Titel: Vereinsregister Nr. 4937-4980 Kleingartenverein Jenfelder Geest e. V., Nr. 4966. This would tell who was head of the Verein responsible for the allotment garden Jenfelder Geest. There is a small chance your Carl Brockmann might pop up in those records, bc getting engaged in these matters is a typical past time for pensioners.
A woman named Johanna Speckhan is witness to the baptism of Dora Heindorf in 1876, this woman is labelled as "ledig", unmarried. I assume that this is your greatgrandmother who later married Wilhelm Brockmann. Based upon this it is verly likely that the marriage took place in Celle between Nov 1876 and 1879. I won't be able to go to Celle until about mid- to late November, so you could send an e-mail to stadtarchiv@celle.de if you do not wish to wait. I expect the costs for that to be in the range of around 15 EUR. Don't worry, I will still search the bmd records for Celle. For example, I have a hunch that Wilhelm Brockmann died in Celle, this would be something to look into, but to narrow down the year I need the addressbooks of Celle first - which are of course stored at the town archive of Celle. Ditto for bmd records of other siblings, this is a search best done in person.
My hunch is that Hans W. F. Brockmann is another child of Wilhelm, making him a sibling to Dora Brockmann. Or he could be a first cousin to Dora Brockmann. I know that she referred to Carl (who could be a son of Hans W. F. Brockmann) as her nephew, but you need to know that in German a first cousin once removed is known as a "nephew second degree".
This is why I the marriage certificate of Wilhelm Brockmann and Johanna Speckhan would be so important, it would confirm their dates and places of birth along with the names of their parents and possibly even the birth dates of their children if the registrar officer bothered to add them in the margins.
220 Took me a while to figure it out, but this address does not refer to a proper street - it refers to a so-called Kleingartenverein or allotment garden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening)
Regarding the location of Jenfelder Geest allotment garden; based upon data from the addressbooks of Hamburg in 1954 (they name two streets, Kuehnstrasse and Schiffbeker Weg) and some search results for Jenfelder Geest in the Hamburg State Archive I think the location was in the corner between Kuehnstrasse and what is today Jenfelder Allee. There is a school there named Otto-Hahn-Schule that they started making plans for in 1960 and finished building in 1968.
After WWII, lots of people ended up living permanently in these allotment gardens. Large parts of Hamburg had been bombed to rubble and many houses were destroyed. Add in the refugees from the East in what is today Poland and Russia and you had a housing crisis of massive proportions. The gardens provided food when lots of people were starving and the small toolsheds were quickly converted into makeshift homes.
Looks like your relative was living there permanently as well. The first year I can find him in in the adressbook is 1954, and the proper full adress was Carl Brockmann, Kleingartenverein Jenfelder Geest, Parzelle 28, Hamburg Wandsbek 1, Germany. He was a pensioner, so he must have been at least 65 years old in 1954. Thus his birth would have to be before 1889.
http://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de/subhh-adress/digbib/start
Carl Brockmann continued to live at this adress until about 1959. In 1960 the Pensioner Carl Brockmann living in the allotment garden Jenfelder Geest is no longer there.
I don't know what happened to him, but instead we have a Carl Brockmann, Pensioner, living at Lorichstrasse 30. This might be related to the fact that in 1958 the Federal Governement of Germany passed a law that made permanent living in allotment gardens illegal. Plus he was an old man, and living in an allotment garden year round is no life for the elderly and infirm. It is freaking cold in winter and using a wooden outhouse and washing yourself and your clothes with ice-cold water from the pump sounds more romantic than it really is. Or he heard about plans to built a school there, could even be that he was in the Vorstand of the Verein responsible for running the allotment garden Jenfelder Geest (think of the Vorstand of the Verein as a combination of HOA, membership club and owner, just for an allotment garden); in this case the city might have struck a deal with him. Sign and we make sure you can get a nice flat.
I took a look at the buildings in Lorichstrasse 30 and the architecture is consistent with social housing projects from the early 1960s.
I continued to trace Carl Brockmann the pensioner through the Hamburg Adressbooks, and there was an entry for Carl Brockmann living at Lorichstrasse 30 up to 1965. In 1966 (the last year an adressbook was published) he is no longer there, making me believe that he most likely died in or around 1965. The plot 28 at the Jenfelder Geest remained empty according to the adressbook, nobody lived there permanently. Could be that he still made the trip with a bicycle or that a relative took over the garden.
Working on the assumption that Carl died in 1965, I checked the Generalregister, which is online.
https://www.hamburg.de/bkm/digitalisate/332-5-standesaemter/
I found the death of a Heinrich Friedrich Carl Brockmann in 1965. Standesamt (registrar office) is given as "Ei" (=Hamburg-Eimsbüttel) and the entry number as 1018. Date of death is 2nd Nov 1965. Working on a hunch I searched ancestry and I found a matching birth certificate. To father brickmason Heinrich Rudolf Friedrich Brockmann, living at Hamburg, Norderstraße 85/3, and mother Metta Catharina nee Schmidt a male child born 05th April 1894 named Heinrich Friedrich Carl. This birth entry has a remark in the margins that said child died 02nd Nov 1965, StA Hamburg-Eimsbüttel 1018/1965. So it is definitely the guy who died in 1965. I also found a family tree with him on ancestry.
https://www.ancestry.de/family-tree/person/tree/115767084/person/180172268378/facts
Sadly I cannot find any trace of Celle in that tree.
So back to the drawing board. I started checking the Generalregister for male Brockmanns who died in Hamburg from 1959 to 1971. While I could cross-reference a few of them, I was left with too many potential entries who could be your relatives, nevermind the problem that we currently don't know how many siblings Dora had aside from Karl.
Here is what I would do if I was you:
1) Request documents from the so-called Melderegister of the municipality where the person in question lived. The Melderegister is a German speciality. Every person in Germany has to register their address with the local authorities. They state their data and place of birth, their adress, their marital status to the municipality where they live. The office handling this is also responsible for issueing ID cards (aka Personalausweis), passports and for getting people the papers they need in order to vote. This makes the Melderegister similar to the voter's register or the DMV records in the USA, except that registering is mandatory and includes small children and every person living at the address. The data derived from the Melderegister is similar to the data derived from the US census - which is one of the reasons why Germany does not have a census.
Melderegister data for Hamburg spanning 1939 to 1968 is stored at the State Archive in Hamburg.
What you want / need is a copy of the Hauskarte of the Parzelle (=plot) 28 at the Kleingartenverein Jenfelder Geest. This is the relevant signature from the Hamburg State Archive (copy+paste into your email):
332-8_A 51/1
Kleingartenverein 525 Jenfelder Geest Parz. 1-58, Meldestelle: Bezirksamt Wandsbek (zu bestellen unter: 741-4 Fotoarchiv, K 2461)
You know that this should be the correct family since your grandmother was communicating with them, so whoever lived there is most likely related. (Unless this was a case of mistaken identity, like your grandma sending letters to pretty much every Carl Brockmann living in Hamburg at the time.)
Try sending an email to the state archive and request a copy, signature 741-4 Fotoarchiv, K 2461, Kleingartenverein 525 Jenfelder Geest Parz. 28. It is likely that they will refuse, but it cannot hurt to ask. Their email is office-staatsarchiv@bkm.hamburg.de
Normally the staff of the state archive are happy to copy files as long as you give them the exact signature, the problem here is that the info you seek is on microfilm. This means somebody needs to put the microfilm into a reader, scroll to the right record and push print. This is something they generally don't do and you might be asked to hire a professional for this task. (Yeah, stupid.) Best play dumb and just ask nicely.
If they do it, expect a bill of around 15 EUR. If you need to hire a professional researcher, you should not pay more than 50 EUR because that is really a task that takes 15 min max and most of the money will go to cover travelling time / cost of the researcher.
If you do hire a professional, consider having that professional check out Signatur: 231-10_A 1 Band 83, Titel: Vereinsregister Nr. 4937-4980 Kleingartenverein Jenfelder Geest e. V., Nr. 4966. This would tell who was head of the Verein responsible for the allotment garden Jenfelder Geest. There is a small chance your Carl Brockmann might pop up in those records, bc getting engaged in these matters is a typical past time for pensioners.
A woman named Johanna Speckhan is witness to the baptism of Dora Heindorf in 1876, this woman is labelled as "ledig", unmarried. I assume that this is your greatgrandmother who later married Wilhelm Brockmann. Based upon this it is verly likely that the marriage took place in Celle between Nov 1876 and 1879. I won't be able to go to Celle until about mid- to late November, so you could send an e-mail to stadtarchiv@celle.de if you do not wish to wait. I expect the costs for that to be in the range of around 15 EUR. Don't worry, I will still search the bmd records for Celle. For example, I have a hunch that Wilhelm Brockmann died in Celle, this would be something to look into, but to narrow down the year I need the addressbooks of Celle first - which are of course stored at the town archive of Celle. Ditto for bmd records of other siblings, this is a search best done in person.
My hunch is that Hans W. F. Brockmann is another child of Wilhelm, making him a sibling to Dora Brockmann. Or he could be a first cousin to Dora Brockmann. I know that she referred to Carl (who could be a son of Hans W. F. Brockmann) as her nephew, but you need to know that in German a first cousin once removed is known as a "nephew second degree".
This is why I the marriage certificate of Wilhelm Brockmann and Johanna Speckhan would be so important, it would confirm their dates and places of birth along with the names of their parents and possibly even the birth dates of their children if the registrar officer bothered to add them in the margins.