Fred Wettig (546) and his Family in California and Germany

Numbers in parentheses refer to the individual's reference number in the genealogy files. The Bold number at the beginning of a paragraph refers to the generation from the first known member of a family. Most photos are enlarged when you click on them.

The story of the Gottfried Wettig Family was told in the first edition of the Wettigs of Amerika, published in June 1993, and also in the fourth edition in July 1995. These stories recounted the visit that Erin and I had with Fred and Kathleen Wettig in Escondido, CA., and the visit made by Kathleen, Fred, Volker and Anna Rose to our home in Arizona. Fred, you remember, came to the USA at age 13, to live with his Aunt Elizabeth (Wettig) Moennig in La Mesa, CA. This printing is a first draft of his story.

Fred gave me copies of a set of family pictures from the early 1900's and official documents concerning the family. For the Wettig Family readers in the United States it may be interesting to know that this information was collected by one of the Wettig Family who was to be married, and had to prove there was no Jewish background in the family of the bride. The information collected was great for the genealogy, but stopped just a generation or so too soon. We have not yet been able to complete the connection of this family to the larger family in the Hannover/Neustadt am Rübenberge areas. When I first read through the documents, I was shocked to find one official piece of paper, which related to the parents of Ernestine ((Reinhardt) Wettig, with the statement "Heil Hitler" above the official seal. I guess I had always thought that this was something dreamed up by the movies and the newspapers of the era. Click on the document at the right for a better view.

1 Gottfried Wettig (578) was born on 8 February, 1790, in Kleinneuhausen in what is now Germany. The Wettig family was an active part of the Evangelisch St. Georg Church of the Parrish, Grossneuhausen. We don't have information on the Eltern Wettigs of the family. Brothers, sisters are not known. We do know that when he was 32 years of age, Gottfried married Johanna Maria Jäger (579), age 18, who was born in Kleinneuhausen on 6 January 1804. They continued to live in Kleinneuhausen and had a son, Friedrich Reinhold, after 20 years of marriage. It may be that there are other children that we do not know about. Gottfried died on 18 August 1854, at the age of 64. Johanna Maria followed him in death eight years later on 11 February, 1862. They were both buried in Kleinneuhausen.

2 Friedrich Reinhold WETTIG(577) was born on 11 March 1842, in Kleinneuhausen. He became a Shoemaker and moved to Arnstadt in the Province of Thüringen. He married Ernestine Wilhelmina Henriette Caroline REINHARDT (586), who was born in Heichelheim in the Province of Weimar, on 21 February 1849. They were Evangelisch.

Ernestine's father was Johann Karl August Reinhardt (587), born 9 March 1825, and christened in the Kirche zu Grosskronnendorf on the 13th of March, 1825. He was an Attorney, and a Judge. He died on 27 September 1888, in Heichelheim in Weimar. Ernestine's mother was Friedericke Stolze (588), born 6 April 1823, in Schöndorf in Weimar. She died 22 May 1886 in Vieselbach.

Fred Wettig remembers that his Aunt Elizabeth told him stories about her Grandmother Ernestine, who used to sit quietly and knit special things for all of the family. She was remembered as a very kind and caring matriarch of the family.3 Ernestine and Friedrich Reinhold had a son, Max Albrecht Willy August WETTIG (552), born on 25 June 1872. He was christened in the Evangelisch Church of Arnstadt on the 21st of July in 1872, with his Grandfather August Reinhard of Vieselbach, Albert Henne of Weimar, Frau Sophie Mönch and Frau Haubold of Arnstadt as Witnesses. Max Albrect married Lina Emilie Therese THAUWALD(584), who was born in Apolda, on 24 April 1875. She was christened 2 May 1875, in der Evangelischen Kirchgemeinde Apolda. Willy died at an early age of pneumonia, but not before they had three Children, Elizabeth, Willy and Max Erich. After his death, Lina remarried a Melzer, and they had a daughter named Lotte. Lina's father was Gottfried Thauwald (589), born in Gefell.

In the late 1950s, Elizabeth returned to Germany from her San Diego home in the United States and a picture was taken of Lina with her three Wettig Children. Seated is Lina on the left, with Elizabeth, Willy and Max Erich. Standing in the rear is Lotte, Lina's daughter by a second marriage, and Athene, the wife of Willy's son, Gerhard.

4 Willi Wettig (964) was the oldest of the three children born to Lina and Max Albrecht Willy Wettig. He was born in 1898 or 1899. He worked in the Bank of Thuringen with his sister, Elizabeth, prior to WW II.During the War years he was an officer in the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe. He was not a pilot, but an administrative Officer. He was married in Apolda, on 18 Nov 1922 to Dora. They had one son, Gerhard who married Athena. This union gave them one Granddaughter, Sybille Wettig.

4 Elizabeth WETTIG(585) was born in Apolda, 15 April 1900. We know little about the early years of the family. We do know that they had a good education. Elizabeth and her brother, Willy, worked for the Bank of Thuringen, Germany, in the Apolda Branch. Both Elizabeth and Willy are in the picture of the Bank employees. I have shown this picture to just a few who are familiar with Wettig Family members. Without exception they have been able, within just a few seconds, to point to Willy and say "Here is the Wettig!" Elizabeth is just to the front and on Willy's right. If you have difficulty in finding Willy and Elizabeth, write to me.

In the early 1920s Elizabeth emigrated to Chicago, in the United States, with the help of an Aunt Emma, probably an Aunt on the maternal side of the family. ( It is probable that Aunt Emma returned to Apolda, where she lived the rest of her life.) Elizabeth worked as a Nanny for a very well to do family, probably in Hubbard Woods near Chicago. There she met Fank Moennig, who was working as the Head Gardener for another family in the same area. Frank had made the move from Germany at about the same time as Elizabeth. They were married in Chicago They had some German friends in Chicago. Among these was a family named Kleinsorge who moved to San Diego to operate a Nursery business. Elizabeth and Frank visited them, on a Christmas Holiday, and they loved the San Diego area. They decided to move there and get away from the Chicago winters. This move was probably in the early 1940's.

They bought a home in the Point Loma area and also 1.5 acres of land in La Mesa, where they opened the Moennig's Nursery. They had planned to build a home at the nursery site, but the shortages of building materials during the war years made this impossible. They were able to build an "Office" for the Nursery and to make this into a comfortable home. They sold their home in Point Loma. The war also brought other problems for them, as for many people in this country with a German name. They were interrogated by the FBI at one point because it had been reported that Frank was planning to sabotage the Convair/Consolidated factory in San Diego. (Editor's note: My father, Harry Wettig, a second generation citizen of this country and a leader in Community affairs in Wilmington, NC, for more than 20 years at the time of WW II, was also reported as a probable German Spy. He got a great kick out of that, since he had a pretty good idea of the person responsible for the report.)

After the end of WW II, Elizabeth and Frank made arrangements for her oldest nephew, Horst Helmut Siegfried Wettig (that's Fred), age 13, to come to San Diego to live with them. This was 1951. Fred remembers that Elizabeth loved opera and Frank hated it. Frank and Fred would go into the nursery to work while she listened to the Longene's hour on the radio every Saturday afternoon. Her cousin, Walter Meyer sang in the German State Opera Company in Berlin prior to WW II. Fred also remembers Elizabeth as a health food fanatic. She made "lots of food from the blender with 12 different vitamin pills on the side!" "Frank and I would sneak away once in a while for a hamburger and a shake at Jack-in-the-Box!"

Elizabeth was an excellent letter writer. They were interesting and full of news. She kept in touch with a lot of old friends and family. She also sent big packages with clothing and food to all of the relatives in Germany after the War. They were wrapped in old, white bed sheets and sown together. Fred says, "We were always happy to receive those packages. The postman would come by to tell us that there was a package from America, and I would go to the Post Office with my little wagon to pick up what she had sent."

Elizabeth died in San Diego on 16 September 1990. Frank Moennig, was born on Sept. 25, 1901 in Langenberg, Germany and died on Oct. 6, 1975 in La Mesa, Calif. They had no children.

4 Max Erich WETTIG(549) was born in Apolda, on 27 November 1901. He married Hedwig Karolina MATHEI (576) on 16 November 1935 in Stockheim, Germany. She was born in Stockheim, Rhön, Germany, on 11th of February 1905. She is still living in Germany. Max Erich died in Wiesbaden on 28 July 1975. They had three sons. Horst Helmut Siegfried, born 19 October 1937; Günter Horst, born 14 August 1941; and Volker, born 12 May 1944. Volker and Günter Horst still live in Germany.

Little is known of the life of Max Erich prior to World War II. We know that he worked in fabric manufacture as a knitting maching operator when he was a young man in the city of Apolda. He was active in community affairs and the political life of the day.

Max Erich served in the German army. Because of a problem with his vision he was assigned to clerical duties behind the front lines. He was assigned to the Eastern Front for most of the War years but was reassigned to the Western Front shortly before the end of the War. He surrendered to the French and was interned until his discharge from service on 10 May 1947. The picture of Max Erich and his sons was taken in Stickheim at Easter of 1948.

After the war he did not go back to the little village of Stockheim because there was no work there. He lived in Wiesbaden where his brother, Willy, was in the knitting business. Max had learned that trade early in life in Apolda. He was not able to move the family to Weisbaden because there was no place to live. Many of the homes had been destroyed during the bombings of the war years.

5 On June 23, 1951, Horst Helmut Siegfried WETTIG (546) sailed on the SS Washington from Hamburg, Germany for New York where he was met by his Aunt and Uncle, Lydia and Fred Mussmacher, who lived in Natick, MA. Lydia was his mother's sister. He was 13 years of age, and under the sponsorship of his Aunt Elizabeth Moennig and her husband, Frank, who lived in La Mesa, California, a suburb of San Diego. He changed his name to Fred when he became a citizen of the United States in 1956. He worked for many years for Pacific Bell Telephone Company in Escondido, California, and is now retired to their new home in Sedona, Arizona.. Fred and his wife, Kathleen Marie (MORRILL) (835), have two sons, Dave and Alan, who live in California.

Fred remembers the years of World War II in Germany. "We had a nice apartment up on the third floor in the city of Weimar. My father, Max Erich Wettig, was away at the war, so my mother, Hedwig, had to raise us three boys. Günter, Volker and me. Toward the end of the war the air raids were almost constant. The Americans by day and the British by night. Even though they did not bomb Weimar directly, we were in the flight path of the bombers, and we had to be prepared to take shelter with each bombimg run.

"We spent most of our time in the air raid shelter which was down in the basement of our apartment complex. If the air raids lasted beyond midnight, and they usually did, we had no school the next day, This was the one thing that we school kids liked.

" This was a very stressful time for our Mom and for us. It was difficult to do the grocery shopping and to prepare meals because of the continuous bomb runs. Just a week or two before the end of the war, as the Allied Forces were moving towards Germany, my mother decided to leave our apartment in Weimar and go back to Stockheim/Unterfranken, which was her original home. There she had sisters that we could live with.

"Just a week before this move, I was put on the train for the forty five minute ride to Apolda to live with my Grandmother, Lina, My mother and my brothers, Günter and Volker (Völker was about three months old at that time), with the help of a train conductor, were able to get on the last train from Weimar to Meiningen, then on to Mellrichstadt. They walked the last 4Km from Mellrichstadt to Stockheim. Her plan was to return to Weimar once everything settled down, but that was niot to be.

"The Allies divided Germany into 4 zones. The American zone included Stockheim, but the Russian zone included Weimar. A Russian Officer moved into our apartment in Weimar. My Mother made one attempt to get some of our things from the apartment in Weimar, but was not able to do so. I spent one year in Apolda, before rejoining my family in Stockheim in the spring of 1947. I was ten years old at that time.

"The three of us attended school in Stockheim. It was a small school with very strict rules. In the picture it should be easy to find me. I am the one wearing clothes from the USA that our Aunt Elizabeth had sent over.

"When it was decided that I, the oldest of the three boys, would come to America, I had visions of the old west that I saw in the movies. I expected there still would be Indians roaming the country side. California was about as far west as one could go, and back in Germany we saw Hollywood's Western movies with German sub-titles. The only Indians I saw back in 1951 was when Elizabeth and Frank drove me to California from Chicago. Somewhere in New Mexico or Arizona, on Route 66, I saw some Indians selling rugs, pottery and jewlery. What a disapointment.

"When I arrived in America I could not speak, read or write any English. Even though, my aunt and uncle Elizabeth and Frank spoke and understood German they would not allow German to be spoken. I found that to be cruel and unusual punishment, but in retrospect, I know it helped me learn english faster. At first my thoughts were that I would never in my life learn english. My aunt would make up a new list of about 30 words every week for me to learn, these were mostly words of things around the house and body. Like face, mouth, eyes, nose etc. and room, wall, window door etc. Spelling of course was another matter, even to this day I have a problem. Example: Why do we spell label "el" and table "le" what is the the grammatik rule. Of course german has some humdinger of words like, Donauschiffahrtgesellschaftkapitaen, meaning Danube Shipping Firm Captain.

"In Germany I had completed my 8 years of Volkschule (public school) in a small country school. Normally I would have started an apprenticeship in a job such as carpenter, plumber, tool and die maker etc. and attend a vocational school in that trade 3 days a week for 3 years. I thought that something similar would be the case here. I would work in my uncles nursery and go to a school to learn more about plants. Instead I was enrolled as Freshman in High School (Grossmont High School) in La Mesa, Ca.

"There was a big difference between the small country school in Stockheim, Germany, with only 33 students for 2 grades, and the big high school campus, with about 2000 students, in America. In Germany, school was strict and the teacher was in absolute control. He would and did give out lashes across the hands for infractions. When you met the teacher on the street you had to greet him with "Guten Tag Herr Lehrer Hartmann".

"In America! What a difference! There were weekly pep rallies at lunch break, usually on Friday before the football game. The Pep Band would play and those good looking cheerleaders would perform! Many students drove their own cars to school. In the class room, the teachers were friendly and willing to help.

"When I started high school in La Mesa, I did not speak, read or write English. The first phrase that I learned was, 'I do not speak english.' One incident comes to mind on my first day at school. My uncle drove me to school and dropped me off at the counselor's office. My first class was english just down the hall from the counselor's office. I went to the class room and sat down. The first thing the teacher did was pass around a seating chart and you were suppose to write your name into the block for your seat. Well, when it got to me I just passed it on to the person behind me without writing my name into the block for my seat. Then when the teacher took roll call it got to my seat she said, pointing to me, 'What is your name?' Of course, my reply was, 'I do not speak english.' That of course started a big commotion in the the class room. The teacher had to get the Counselor who had to explain the situation. After that, the Counselor took me to the each class and explained the situation to the teacher . I found all courses were hard except Math, which was easy for me. Numbers are the same in German as in English."

There is much more to tell in this story of the Gottfried Wettig Family, and we hope that someone will do the necessary work to go back a generation or so. The story is being presented here in short form so that others may see how their part of the story fits into the overall picture of the family. I hope that many of the fasmily will volunteer to follow Fred's example and give me their story.

6 Alan WETTIG (548) is not yet married.

6 Dave WETTIG (547) has three beautiful boys, shown in the picture at the beginning of this story.

7 Jason WETTIG(986) is almost 12 in 1995.

7 Nicholas WETTIG (987) is 7 in 1995.

7 Wesley WETTIG (988) will be 6 on his next birthday on August 18, 1995.

5 (550) Günter Horst WETTIG, the second born son of Max Erich and Hedwig Karolina (Mathei) Wettig, was born in Germany in 1941. He is married and has four children.

6 (580) Corina WETTIG

6 (581) Martin WETTIG

6 Manuela WETTIG

6 Tanja WETTIG

5 (551) Volker WETTIG is the third son of Max Erich and Hedwig Karolina (Mathei) Wettig and was born in 1944 in Germany. He married Anna Rose and they live in Munich, Germany, where Volker works for the Bavarian Motor Works. In 1995 they visited his brother, Fred, in Escondido, CA. Fred and Kathy took them on a driving tour of the southwest and they stopped to see Erin and Harry Wettig in Leisure World, Mesa, Arizona. Volker is a mountain climber and has a goal of climbing a tall mountain on each of the continents. They have no children.

With a little more work we may be able to find a connection between Gottfried (578) and Jürgen (786) and tie these two families together back in the 17th Century.

If you have information about this family, please contact the Principal Researcher by eMail at

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