I know very little about my great grandmother, Marie Neider.  She was born in Lampertheim, Germany to parents Christian and Elisabeth Neider on January 25, 1922.  She had three daughters, one of whom died at the age of one, and one adopted son.  She was married to Rolf Wolfgang Wölfert genannt Schmidt.  She died in November of 1993, when I was ten years old.

My only memories of Oma (Marie) are vague at best.  She and Opa (Rolf) flew here from Germany to visit for a while when I was about one and a half.  I remember walking with Oma and Opa down a sidewalk.  I remember stopping to smell the roses on the rose bush with them.  I remember them giving me Äpfel (apples).  I remember Oma laughing a lot.

Years later, in 1989, I remember waiting with my family in the kitchen for a while.  The Berlin Wall had just come down and we were waiting for her phone call.  I remember my mom and grandmother talking to her, but I don’t remember getting to talk to her.  Although, I was six, so I may just not remember.

I recently asked my grandmother to tell me about her.  I’ve heard stories, both good and bad, over the years, but I really wanted to know what she was like.  She told me that Oma was a very social person.  She loved to go to parties and her favorite thing to do was dance.  Whenever she danced, she was happy.

Gottfried und Marie tanzen.

There is much that I need to learn about her still.  I’m planning to take a class on German genealogy to learn how to find records over there.  My grandmother said that her sister has a book with information in it that she will see if she can get copies of for us.