my ancestors: Johann Jakob and Auguste Busch

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my greatgrandparents: Johann Jakob Busch and Auguste Dührkop

Johann Jakob Busch
May 3, 1880 - February 5,1922
parents:
father: Carsten Busch
mother: Catharina Busch nee Meyer

ring

May 21, 1905

Auguste Busch nee Dührkop
April 23, 1882 - May 2, 1950
parents:
father: Johannes Marcus Friedrich Dührkop
mother: Doris Maria Magdalena Dührkop nee Dührkop

children:
daughter: Martha zur Linde nee Busch (Dec 22, 1906-1999, married with Friedrich zur Linde)
daughter: Anita Korn nee Busch (March 22, 1920 - December 9, 1995)

Johann Jakob grew up on the farm in Rübke (altes Land close to Hamburg). His mother died when he was only 8 years old. She had been the 2. wife of his father. He had 2 elder half brothers, Carsten and Hinrich, an elder brother Diedrich, a sister called Metta and two younger brothers, Johannes and Wilhelm.
He was attracted by the big city of Hamburg not far away and also an ambitious young man. So he apprenticed in a grocery store in Hamburg St. Pauli and then worked for a while in another grocery store to save up money to open his own. Finally he opened his grocery store where he also sold overseas products like tea, coffee and chocolate in Altona (now part of Hamburg).

Auguste grew up in Gross Barnitz in Stormarn as the eldest of 3 siblings. Her father was a butcher. Some of her relatives had already left for Hamburg as the lure of city life was big in those days. A brother of her father had a grocery store in Altona and probably she got to know Johann Jakob through them during one of her visits.

They fell in love, got married and she moved to him to Altona.

Soon their first daughter, Martha was born.

After Auguste's parents had died her sister Meta came to live with them. Eventually Meta married Johann Jakob's youngest brother Wilhelm. Wilhelm had also opened a grocery store in Hamburg but in a different neighbourhood. They had a son called Willy. Then world war I started and Wilhelm fell in the battle of Pozières in France. For a while Meta and Willy moved back in with her sister Auguste. Her younger brother Johannes Wilhelm Fritz also fell fighting in Russia.

1920 their second daughter, my grandmother, Anita was born.

And then only 2 years later, in 1922 Johann Jakob died after a short and unexpected illness. It was a hard and difficult time for Auguste. But she was a strong woman and so successfully continued the grocery store and Martha and Anita could have an otherwise relatively normal childhood. The girls learnt how to swim and had piano lessons. She courageously mastered difficult economic times and hyperinflation.

Her daughter Martha got married in 1929 and moved first shortly to Berlin and then to Stettin with her husband Fritz. Martha and Fritz had 4 children (3 girls and 1 boy) and Auguste was a proud grandmother.
In 1939 world war II broke out.
In 1942 her daughter Anita got married.

And then in 1943 disaster struck again when her shop and apartment were bombed out. She and Anita only got out seconds before the house turned into rubble.
First they fled to Martha but Stettin wasn't safe either. Anita had already returned to Hamburg in November 1943. Together with Martha and her family Auguste fled again this time to Lokfeld in Stormarn where Auguste's mother had grown up. There she stayed until her death in 1950. Her daughter Martha and her family moved back to Hamburg shortly after the war had ended and Martha and Fritz stayed there for the rest of their lives.

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