Childhood and Youth

This picture was taken during the "Farmers Help" in Bärental in summer 1938. The Hitler Youth go out to help the local farmers harvest their crops. Willi listed on the back the name of each but they are hard to make out unless the names are already familiar to you. They are:

Left to right: the forester, the teacher Füser, two boys with the last name Kraigher, Pepi, a Kraigher girl named Luze, Trude, Ilse, Anni, and Willi with the accordion.

Willi kept his 1938 train and bus schedule, which also contained maps of the city of Nuremberg and of the Reich Party Congress Grounds, as a souvenir of his participation in what he considered a truly unforgettable experience. He wrote:

Like all boys who emulate their fathers, it looks like Willi is playing teacher with his two sisters, little Gerhilde raising her hand and Gertrude on the right giving him her full attention. Trude is the one who did become a teacher.

Probably a school protrait when Willi was an upper Gymnasium student.

Willi on far right in this lineup of local boys. They all wore shorts, summer and winter.

Willi's father posing with his school class and other teachers. That is daughter Gerte standing to his left. You can see that many of the village children were quite poor, even barefoot, as Austria became a poor country following the war and the Treaty of St. Germaine.

Good friends: Willi, female admirer, Trude (Gertrude) and Gerte (Gerhilde).

From left: Willi, Father, youngest sister Gerhilde, and "Trude" playing with wooden blocks, perhaps.

Willi, standing, between his parents Ludwig and Maria Kriessmann, who is holding little sister Gertrude (named after a Valkyrie).

A healthy, well-formed boy, born on Oct. 11, 1919 at the state hospital in Klagenfurt.