Karlsruhe – Hometown of the Reutlinger family.

I had been looking forward to visiting the State Archives in Karlsruhe to research my Grandfather’s family about whom we know very little but we got into a 4 hour traffic jam and when we finally got there, all the people who could have helped with research had left for the day. We drove a diesel car (that we loved) but the engine would shut each time we idled and the air-conditioning would turn off. Not fun in 94 degree heat. What should have been a 2.5 hour round trip took us 6 hours, with no air-conditioning .

We also unfortunately missed the gravesite of my great-grandparents because Judi wanted to get to Strasbourg for the summer solstice music festival. I really missed the chance to pay respect to my great-grandparents, ancestors and the chance to leave a stone on their grave site.

We did get to visit the apartment house where the Reutlinger family had once lived at #10 Kreuzstrasse, in Karlsruhe. Like my grandmother’s family in Offenburg, the house was in a square, which is now a cafe on the street level. The surrounding area was nice. In the center of Karlsruhe there is a huge, beautiful castle and we had lunch outdoors in a café with a view of the castle.

I remember from my grandfather’s memoirs that in 1935, right after their wedding, my grandmother had to go to Karlsruhe to fight to appeal my grandfather’s arrest. He had been arrested twice for dating a non-jew.

After our visit to Karlsruhe, which was a big disappointment for me, we drove straight to the Strasbourg Music Festival, which indeed was wonderful with music playing on every street corner throughout the beautiful old city. The city was packed with people – smiling, dancing and enjoying themselves.

Luckily, we returned to the parking lot just when it was closing for the night (stuck in Strasbourg without a hotel could have been a disaster… ). Note to self – before leaving a parking garage, check when it closes! We got back to the hotel at about 11:30pm – again with no time to get organized for the next day, or write in our journals :/.

We stayed 5 nights at the hotel EHM – a modern, centrally located hotel.

UPDATE: November 2018

During our visit in 2018 we visited the Jewish Cemetery in Karlsruhe to search for the gravesite of my mother’s paternal grandparents, Leopold and Bertha Reutlinger. We were pleasantly surprised at the good condition of the cemetery and the gravesite and we paid our respects.