Irmi's maternal grandparents

Großenstein, Germany  (February 2, 1912)

Left:  Johanna Christiane Henny (Winter) Schulze  (1892-1970)

Right:  Walter Schulze  (1886-1959)

Walter and Henny were married only two years before the outbreak of World War I clouded their plans for the future.

Conscripted into the army, Walter left his young wife behind and served on the front lines for the duration of the war,

from 1914 to 1918.  He received at least one furlough during that time, however, as evidenced by the birth of a son,

Ernst Walter, in 1916.  After the war, Walter returned home and entered into an apprenticeship, eventually earning

the coveted professional designation of "master meat cutter."  Several years later, in the early 1920's, Walter and

Henny opened a small butcher shop in the town of Gera, in the German state of Thüringen.  The two worked hard,

he toiling in the back room preparing meats, while she manned the front counter.  For deliveries, they purchased a

crude horse-drawn wooden wagon.  In 1928, a second child arrived, a daughter which they named Rosemarie Henny.

The early 1930's brought modest prosperity, and, by 1936, Walter had saved enough money to purchase a new car,

an "Adler Trump Junior," which the family picked up from the dealer in Berlin and drove home to Gera.  In May 1938,

young Rosemarie received a shiny new bicycle as a gift for her tenth birthday -- a popular model called "Wanderer,"

painted black.  As World War II broke out, Walter and Henny remained at home, laboring in their butcher shop, and

there they stayed throughout the conflict and beyond.  In 1949, four years after the war ended, the occupying powers

divided Germany in half, resulting in two separate countries: the Federal Republic of Germany (Western half) and the

German Democratic Republic (Eastern half).  The state of Thüringen, where the Schulze's lived, fell under jurisdiction

of the eastern zone.  Soon thereafter, communist authorities confiscated Walter and Henny's butcher shop, declaring

that the Schulze's were "capitalists."  Stripped of their life's work, Walter and Henny quietly entered into retirement.

Walter died within a few years, but Henny lived long enough to see both her children escape the East and establish

prosperous new lives in free West Germany.