Facade portrait: Rudolf Möschter
Rudolf Möschter
* 1908 in Hohndorf (now Górzyca, Poland)
† 1997 Bremerhaven
Immigration to Bremerhaven: 1945
When Erna Möschter arrived with her children on Christmas Eve 1948 at the end of their flight from the Soviet occupation zone in Weddewarden, she did not find her husband Rudolf there. He had gone to the train station to pick up his family and missed them. Rudolf Möschter’s youngest daughter, Anne Breitlauch, who was four years old at the time, recalls the moment: “The camp still had a guard and it had snowed a little. And this image, I have in my mind: that we approached this guardhouse, my mother said who we are. (… ) These are my first impressions of Bremerhaven.”
Rudolf Möschter had already been in Weddewarden since the summer of 1945, initially as a prisoner of war, then he worked as a housekeeper for the American forces at the local airfield. Until 1948, he had to reapply for his stay every two months.
Rudolf Möschter (right) 1948 with his son Werner
Rudolf Möschter could not return to his farm in Hohndorf – Silesia has belonged to Poland since 1945. For the family, this meant a prolonged separation after the war, as Erna Möschter had to stay on the farm with her five children to support the new owner. It was not until May 1947 that the family reached the camp in Rudolstadt in Thuringia via Saxony, from where they went to Meuselbach. Through a relative in Berlin, Rudolf Möschter was able to locate his family there. In the summer of 1948, Rudolf’s eldest son Werner fled to Bremerhaven with the help of smugglers. Although Rudolf was granted residence permission to Bremerhaven in the autumn of the same year for Erna Möschter and her four other children, the authorities of the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) prevented Erna Möschter’s departure, so she also fled from the SBZ in December 1948, aided by smugglers. The camp at Wurster Straße 298, where the family arrived on Christmas, remained their home for several years.
Unlike many other refugees, Rudolf Möschter was not a supporter of expellee associations that demanded the return of the former German eastern territories from Poland. For him, the loss of the farm was a consequence of Germany’s actions in World War II. He closed the chapter with his old homeland. This seemed to be easier for him than for his eldest daughter Christa, who longed for her childhood home for decades afterward. Christa also accused her father throughout her life for voluntarily enlisting in the military at just over 30 in 1941, thus participating in World War II – even back then he had a wife and four small children whom he left behind on the Silesian farm. The family today explains his voluntary enlistment as a soldier by saying that he could no longer cope with the pressure from the small village community.
New beginning in Leherheide
Anne Breitlauch and her husband report today that not everyone in Bremerhaven was open-minded towards the refugees. In particular, the claim for funds from the compensation program invoked envy. Rudolf and Erna Möschter also applied for these funds, which they were entitled to due to the loss of their Silesian farm. With the money, they began building a house in Leherheide in 1957.
The house in Leherheide was also a weekly gathering place for the family until Rudolf Möschter’s death in 1997. Erna Möschter baked Silesian sheet cakes for this occasion every weekend, and granddaughter Inga used Sundays to rummage through old ‘magic boxes’; the family photos from Silesia kept inside fascinated her. Thanks to Inga Herrmann’s ongoing interest in her family history, so much is known today about Rudolf Möschter’s life.