Siblings Franz, Victoria and Anita Brinckman from Harburg, Germany

You’ve heard me say this before – I love researching photos from my home city!

Harburg, where the photo of the Brinckman siblings was taken in 1900, is now an urban district of Hamburg. The photo shows Franz Brinckman at age 7, Victoria Brinckman at age 5 and a half, and baby Anita at 6 months old.

I’m excited to share that I found all three siblings in the Hamburg birth records:

- Franz Ludwig Adolf Brinckman was born on February 25, 1893, in Harburg

- Victoria Mathilde Carlota Brinckman was born on September 6, 1894, also in Harburg

- Anita Bertha Brinckman was born on August 29, 1899.

Their parents, Gustav Adolph Friedrich Brinckman and Victoria Anna Eleanora Rübke, married on April 27, 1892 in Altona, which is now also an urban district of Hamburg.

---

Franz Brinckman

Franz is the sibling I found the most information about - I even discovered a photo of him as an adult!

Records of the German Naval Personnel (1891-1918), which I could access on Ancestry, provide the following details about him:

“ First Names: Franz Ludwig Adolf

Surname: Brinckman

Date and Place of Birth: February 25, 1893, in Harburg

Father: Adolf, businessman, Harburg, Schlossstraße 3

Mother: Viktoria, née Rübke

Education: Primaner (senior high school student), Realgymnasium Harburg, Easter 1911.

Training Ship: Hansa.

Naval Academy: I. II.

Profession and Address: Businessman, Hamburg, Agnesstraße 45.”

A quick look on Google Maps shows that the building in Agnesstr. 45 in Hamburg still stands – it’s amazing that it survived the bombings of WWII on Hamburg.

Franz’s military career was well-documented:

“In the fall of 1913, he was assigned to the S.M.S. "Breslau". After the outbreak of the war, he was transferred in September 1914 to the Turkish battleship "Haireddin Barbarossa", where he served for a year. During his next assignment, with the U-boat flotilla in Constantinople, he remained there until February 1917 and took part in several long-distance voyages to the Black Sea. His command was interrupted from January to August 1916, during which time he was stationed in Mesopotamia as part of the Euphrates River Division.

In March 1917, he was assigned to establish the U-boat base in Beirut, Syria. In June 1917, he returned to the Euphrates River Division, where he remained until its dissolution in September 1918.

He has now dedicated himself to a commercial career and is co-owner of the company Förtmann & Behnke in Hamburg. Since May 5, 1920, he has been married to Mrs. Marianne Spaethe, née Meyer.”

Franz' wife Marianne Meyer was born on July 15, 1893 in Gera, Germany.

Another record from Ancestry provides additional details:

“Drafted in World War II, assigned to staff commands in Norway and the Southeast. After the capitulation: personally liable partner of the company Franz Brinckman K.G., Hamburg-Harburg, specializing in freight forwarding, transshipment, storage, and tug shipping. Married Marianne Meyer in 1920. Children: Marianne, born 1923, died in 1937”

I also found the couple on a passenger list for the steamship “Ubena” just a month after it was launched by the Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linie shipping company. The new ship operated on a newly established route, taking 21 days to travel from Hamburg via Rotterdam and Southampton to Las Palmas, and from there to Cape Town. They then continued via Port Elizabeth, East London, and Durban to Lourenço Marques.

Franz later moved to Switzerland and passed away in Vaz/Obervaz. I haven’t been able to determine when or why he moved there, or if he had any other children.

---

Victoria Brinckman

I couldn’t find much about the middle child in our photo, Victoria Mathilde Carlota Brinckman. However, a note on her birth certificate states that she passed away on March 24th, 1986 in Reinbek, near Hamburg. I don’t know if she ever married or had children.

---

Anita Brinckman

The youngest sibling, Anita Bertha Brinckman, married in February 1929 in Harburg, but I haven’t yet found her spouse. She lived a very long life - almost 100 years - and passed away on October 5, 1998, in Giforn, about 150 km south of Hamburg.

---

The Brinckman Siblings' Parents and Grandparents

I also uncovered some interesting facts about the children’s parents and grandparents.

The Brinckman siblings never knew their grandfathers, as both had passed away before they were born:

• John Friedrich Brinckman, a schoolteacher from Güstrow, and

• Franz Julius Rübke, a merchant from Göttingen.

Their maternal grandmother, Maria Mathilde (Rübke) Hector, née Wilson, remarried and lived in London, Australia, and later in Altona, near Hamburg, but also passed away before the siblings were born.

I believe their mother, Victoria, was born in Mexico City in 1867. Her parents had married there in the 1850s, and many of her older siblings were also born in Mexico.

Their paternal grandmother, Elise Brinckman (née Burmeister), lived about 200 km away in Güstrow.

The siblings’ mother, Victoria, passed away in 1938 and was buried at the Old Cemetery of Harburg. Their father had died three years earlier.

That’s all I have on the siblings for now!

I hope to uncover more in the future, especially about Victoria and Anita’s lives. If you have any additional information, feel free to share!