Relatives in Germany

Christine and JAL Hein were only two of at least 12 known siblings, but the only two to come to Australia. Most of the others died young or have not been further traced, but Peter Taylor (with further work by his sister Susan, who found some state records on the internet) has found the following information in Hamburg records.

Children of Georg Friedrich Hein and Maria Augusta Christine Louise Schnell

1. Louise Ernestine Maria, b. 1830. There is no later record of her in Hamburg, which indicates she may have grown up and emigrated. But we can not find evidence of her in Australia. She is the only known sibling about whom there might be more interesting information somewhere.

2. Daughter, whose birth record no one can find. Christine described herself as the third daughter and this is where the gap is. If so the most likely scenario is she died before being able to be christened.

3. Johanna Christine Samuelline, b. 1833. This is Christine.

4. Gustav Ulrich Friedrich, b. 1836. This boy was christened but died at the age of about 6 weeks.

5. Julius August Louis, b. 1837. This is JAL Hein.

6. Johanna Sophia Minna, b. 1839, d. 1859. This girl died at the age of 19 in St Georg Hospital, which is still one of Hamburg's main general hospitals.

7. Johannes Carl Christian, b. 1840, d. 1841 aged 3 months.

8. Johann Christian Rudolph, b. 1841. In 1867 he married Auguste Amalie Baumgärtel in the St. Michaelis church. She was from Schönheide in Saxony (near the Czech border), and then lived in Hamburg as a housemaid. They had 6 children by 1875.

He had died by 1912 but had two grandsons, both born in November 1893, first cousins to each other, who both fought in World War 1 on the Western Front in the infantry regiment known as Infanterie-Regiment Graf Bose (1. Thüringisches) Nr. 31. The Regiment's badge is shown above. Both were at different times wounded and died afterwards in military hospitals, the first, Vice-Sergeant Rudoph Hertel in Gits, Flanders, Belgium on 26 September 1917, the other, musketeer Johann Ellerbrock in Lille, France, in May 1918. Their mothers were sisters, daughters of Johann Hein, and both had married railway workers in Hamburg.

From the history of this regiment written by a German doctor or academic in 1926, who had been a captain in the regiment, it was deployed in a major campaign in Flanders between 15 September and 12 October 1917, against a British and a French Division, during which it lost 29 Officers and 91 men, with a particularly heavy action on 26 September, the date on which the first cousin died. Later was the noted Spring Offensive by the German Army which led to it advancing back into France, near the Somme, where this regiment was deployed in heavy warfare, referred in German as Große Schlacht (Great Battle), between 21 March and 18 May 1918 before been repulsed by allied forces. This regiment lost 11 officers and 259 men during this deployment and this other cousin died on 10 May.

The Germans did not capture Amiens, which had been their main immediate target, but did recapture Villers-Bretonneux. In the second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, 24 to 27 April, Australian troops were instrumental in recapturing the town and finally turning the Germans back. The Graf Bose Regiment engaged Australian troops on the streets of Corbie, a town immediately north of Villers-Bretonneux in the days following, specifically between 6 and 18 May, and it seems the second cousin died as a result of this encounter.

A rather grand monument to this regiment was erected in Altona, Hamburg and shown above (photo from the book by Studt). The monument still stands. See recent images here.

There was also a great grandson Hans Rudolf Salomon who was a rifleman in the 399th Infantry Regiment forming part of the Siege of Leningrad in World War 2. He died three days after the Soviets started the Sinyavino Offensive in 1942 in attempt to lift the Siege. For more information on this Offensive scroll down to this heading on the Wikipedia page on the siege here.

9. Theodor Ferdinand, b. 1843, d. 1844, aged 12 months.

10. Franziska Johanna Maria, b. 1845, with parents still living in Springeltwiete. She had a first "marriage" in 1867, to Joachim Friedrich Peemöller (b. 1841) proclaimed in the records of the civil registration office, but the document says that they did not marry within the legal period. At the time of proclamation they already had a daughter (1 year old). We could not find more information about what happened to them. Perhaps they finally married in another place, because Joachim Friedrich Peemöller was born in Mölln and seemed to live in Lauenburg, but was in Hamburg only for professional reasons. In 2015 we discovered her death record and that of a later marriage, to Johann Heinrich Friedrich Ludwig Ehrhard, with several children resulting. She died in 1926 in Hamburg, aged 85.

In addition to the daughter of the first marriage, we can find records of 6 children, born between 1874 and 1888 and 4 grandsons, three of whom died as infants, but the fourth, Helmuth Herbert Ludwig Ehrhard, b. 1907, Hamburg, is of much interest because there is a military death record of him. It seems he died in 1941, on the eastern front as a German soldier in Jeziornica (in German, but locally known as Ozernitsa), Belarus, shortly after Operation Barbarossa (German invasion of USSR) had started on 22 June 1941. He was by trade a locksmith, not married, a Lance Corporal in the 29th Motorised Infantry Division, also known as the Falke-Division (Falcon Division) and one of whose commanders had ordered a massacre in Poland and which had later been part of the invasion of France. See Wikipedia.

11. Johanna Maria Louise, b. 1846. In 1879 she married in Hamburg Georg Heinrich Wilhelm Westphal (b. 1849 in Warsaw, d. 1935 in Hamburg), who had a previous marriage in 1876). They later divorced. She died in 1928 in Hamburg, aged 82. We can find a birth record of one daughter, born in 1880.

12. Auguste Maria Christine Emilie, b. 1849, d. 1854, aged 4 years.

In addition to this information about siblings, there are records of births of some siblings of Georg Friedrich Hein, who seemed to move to Hamburg at about the same time as him after his father's death. Friedrich Hein's brother August Ludewig had one great grandson who migrated to the US, Chicago, and fought for them in WW 1 and was registered for the US Army in WW2.