Siblings Herbert und Gertrud Ihle from Hamburg, Germany

I love finding old photos of strangers from my home city of Hamburg! It’s a curious feeling to know I’m walking the same streets that they did, some of the building stood already when they lived, and yet so much of the city has changed and I wonder what those strangers from the past would think of that.

There is not just one, but two photos in the PWF photo collection of the siblings Herbert and Gertrud "Trude" Ihle from Hamburg! Both were gifted to someone as a New Year’s greeting.

The first photo bears the date December 31, 1897:

While the second photo shows the siblings five years later on as the photo was gifted to someone on December 30th, 1902:

I know the street Steindamm that the photo studio was located on. I lived in the same street that the siblings home stood 120 years ago.

I also love that the Hamburg Archives have done an exemplary job with digitising old records. Having access to them helps me reconstruct the story of this family for you – so let’s go!

Th siblings’ father Hermann Richard Ihle, born in 1849 in Chemnitz into a weaver’s family, moved to Hamburg around 1879 as a representative of a freight company from Dresden.

By 1880, he had established his own freight company in Hamburg which grew exponentially over the next decades.

He had a son Richard Ihle, born in 1880, with his first wife Louise Clara née Wilcke. She died in 1886.

In July 1888, Hermann Richard Ihle married Eleanore Therese Helene née Süss in Dresden, the daughter of the architect August Leberecht Süss from Dresden. Eleanore gave birth to Alfred Herbert Ihle on July 11th, 1890, and to Gertrud Helene Therese Ihle who was born on February 26th, 1895. The family moved into a house in Lübecker Str. 21 which was about a kilometre away from the photo studio. I know the street very well, as a matter of fact I used to live in that same street for a couple of years and I pass it weekly. Sadly, the house of the Ihles does not stand anymore as that side of the street was heavily bombed in WWII and the ruins were replaced by ugly looking 1960s apartment houses. But when I look at the few end-of-the-19th-century buildings that survived WWII on the other side of the same street, I can imagine that the Ihles’ home probably looked similar to this:

By 1890, the Ihles had a phone connection installed to the offices and the apartment at Lübecker Str. 21, a novelty but a growing necessity in a city that had one of the largest ports in the world and referred to itself as “The Gateway to the World”.

Richard’s oldest son Richard Jr. was involved in his father’s international business. He was travelling the world and I find him on passenger lists of vessels going to the East and the West Coast of the USA, or to the West Indies, Haiti.

Father Richard Ihle died in October 1916 at the age of 67. The death was reported to the authorities by his daughter Gertrud.

I don’t know if Herbert Ihle was involved in his father’s business, like his older half-brother Richard, or if Richard took over the management alone. In fact, I find nothing else on Herbert. Only that he died in Bargteheide, not far from Hamburg, in 1955.

Gertrud Ihle married Heinrich Martin Gehrckens in April 1920 in Hamburg. Gertrud’s father-in-law Heinrich Martin Gehrckens Sr. was a ship broker and a shipping company owner. Heinrich Jr. was listed as “tradesman” on the marriage certificate, later as shipping company owner. I have come across quite a bit of information on the Gehrckens family and their shipping business on the internet. You can read about the company H. M. Gehrckens on Wikipedia.

Gertrud and Heinrich had 3 children:

• Ursula Johanna Helene Hansen née Gehrckens, born on 08.05.1921, 1st marriage in 1943 in Blankenese, 2nd marriage in 1948 in Uhlenhorst

• Hannelore Gertrud Gehrckens, born on 05.06.1922, married in 1947

• Heinrich Martin Gehrckens V, born on 25.09.1923, married in 1951 in Winterhude,

  
  

Gertrud died in September 1989 at the age of 94 and was buried at the Nienstedten Cemetery in Altona, Hamburg.

FindaGrave.com

If you know anything else about the Ihle siblings from Hamburg or you are perhaps related to them, please contact me! I would love to return the two photos to the family.