Kattau Family History
Our journey through times & centuries
Born in 1848, the same year his father Gottfried died of cholera. After an apprenticeship as a miller, Leopold married in 1877 the farmer's daughter Wilhelmine Hohmann. They had 7 children, 2 of whom died early. In the German-French war (1870 to 1871) Leopold was drafted, his unit was to be transferred from Könisgberg to France. Halfway through the war, however, it was already over and he went home again. Leopold died in 1919 in Preußisch Holland.
Wilhelmine was born in Pomehrendorf in 1855. The family later moved to Campenau. Her father Abraham Hohmann drowned in a ditch near his own house in 1897. She died in 1927 in Elbing/East Prussia, 9 years after her husband Leopold.
Clara came from an old-established West Prussian peasant family, the Kikuts from Kalwe. She remained in Wetspreußen in 1945 and died in Pleplin/Poland in 1954. Her nephew Herbert Kikut, who also returned to Kalwe in 1945 after the war, left for the Federal Republic in 1958 due to reprisals by the Polish state. Thus ended the story of the Kikut family from Kalwe after 189 years. Herbert, who died in 2002, recorded all this in his "Chronik der Familie Kikut aus Kalwe" (Chronicle of the Kikut Family from Kalwe).
Bernhard Paul Aloysius was born in 1870. He was the owner of various estates, including briefly the owner of the knight's manor of Adlig Renkau, which he sold again after disputes over further leased land. He then acquired the Gremblin estate with his wife Clara, whom he married in 1900. He died of a stroke as early as 1922 at the age of 52.
This page is the result of many years of research by Carsten & Uwe Kattau on our ancestors in general and in particular on the origins of the Kattau's from West and East Prussia. Our ancestors the "Kattaus" lived until the end of the 2nd World War in West and East Prussia and adjacent regions. This is extended to descendants and their families, detached from the geographical origin. You can navigate directly to some families via "Quicklinks" above. We hope you as a visitor will find much interesting and worth reading on this page. We are always grateful for suggestions of any kind. Access for guests is not restricted except for a few contents (e.g. on living persons, deposited media etc. as well as the data export). Have fun!
On Mother's Day 1936
Broadcasting in Güldenfelde...
On Mother's Day 1936, the radio visits mother of 21 children
Person of the Week
Bernhard Johann Thiel
1901 - 1945
Died of typhoid and hunger in internment camp in Danzig.
His wife and 4 children were deported to the GDR....
Gustav and Hedwig fled with their children from the Red Army in 1945 and never saw their homeland again. Only in 1947, after 2 years of internment in Denmark, they were able to leave for West Germany...
Born in Volhynia, resettled in Warthegau in 1940, then joined the Wehrmacht as a Volksdeutscher. After the war and imprisonment, he was stranded homeless in southern Germany, and in 1955 he left for a new life in Canada.
Born in 1874 in western Russia (Congress Poland), he lived with his wife Anastasia Jablonski in Danzig. Here he was shot by Russian soldiers in 1945 while trying to protect his house and family.
Born in 1868, he married Anna Maria Nüssle in 1896. They have 4 children, Wilhelm, Georg, Marie and Magdalena. Georg and Marie later emigrate to the USA. Magdalena and Marias share their fate in death in the bombing.
in every family there is at least one who wants to know more about the family past. How and where they lived, what determined their lives, what happened to them. He asks, even if he becomes annoying, to put flesh on the bones, so to speak, and bring them back to life. To tell the family story and feel that somehow you know them and everything goes on. Doing genealogy is not simply collecting facts, but breathing life back into all those who have gone before us. We are the storytellers of families. As if we were called by our genes not to forget them and their lives. So we do. By looking for them, we somehow find ourselves. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It's also about who we are and why we do the things we do.
We strive to document all of our sources in this family tree. If you have something to add, please let us know.