Dennis,
an elegy for a husband and father/uncle, written by someone who was not very good at writing and spelling, probably a farm labourer.
ambiguous in places , but this is what I make of it:
Das ist Dein Onkel unser lieber Vater mit sein(em) Jagdherrn Schmidtker.
Da hat er den letzten Hirsch erlegt im Jahre 1915.
Da kannst Du ihn Dir noch ein bisschen vorstellen, jetzt ist er ganz zusammengebrochen.
Was Gram um mich und den Liebsten (der ewig ruft)!
Wie oft ist er doch gekommen wie ich so schwerkrank lag, dass ich nicht sterben sollte, dann hat er doch keinen mehr.
This is your uncle, our good father together with the hunt-master Schmidtker as he shot his last stag in the year 1915
Here you can still recognize him; now he is taken by his illness and completely collapsed.
What grief for me and the dearest.... (who eternally calls...) !
How often did he come when I was gravely ill in bed; pleading I should not die: if you go then I have no one left.....
regards
Günter
NRA Life 1974
Ja, danke Gunter-! How interesting that this occured in 1915, when Germany was embroiled in the early stages of WW1, thrust into that later to be war of four years of attrition and brutal trench warfare, following the death of the archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914-- so many young men lost on all sides, no winners, and I too wondered if maybe some of the traditions of St. Hubertus were by-passed during the war years in Germany, as common Volk sought to survive and feed their families. Clearly the phrasing, penmanship and structure in this piece of European and World history, 98 years later now discovered, is not reflective of that of a Graff or a Ritter or a Von prefix to the family surname- but very telling, at least to those of us who are amateur students of World and European History.
