Jim Nolan's Blog

Cabinet Cards: Heinrich & Wilhelmine Behn Brehmer

The grandparents of Natalie Brehmer Paul. Heinrich (1800-1872) was a Senator and Bürgermeister in Lübeck, Germany. My great-great-great grandparents. That's pretty great.

MS Kungsholm Postcard

 

A postcard from my mother, Christa Paul, to her grandmother Natalie Paul. Mom and Dad had just returned to America via the MS Kungsholm after their wedding in Stockholm. Natalie had moved from Berlin to Säffle, Sweden. I wonder if she had the bust with her. Her husband Adolf had been dead since 1943 and the money was gone, too. The card reads, "Dear Grandmother and Aunt Hedda, heartfelt greetings after a rather stormy crossing. All is well. Love, Christa." If you look closely after Mom's signature, you'll see a plus sign. She had meant Dad to sign the card as well, but he forgot. 

German Photo, 1905

My grandfather Bengt Paul, with his sisters Hedda and Tali, "the twins." They would both grow up to be painters. Bengt was a journalist. I believe the woman behind them was their mother, Natalie.

Grandfather

Adolf and Natalie's grandkids from their son Bengt (a.k.a. my grandather Benekiki) and daughter-in-law Hildegard Koenig. From left, Birgit Stolt, Heye Paul, Adolf, and Christa Nolan (a.k.a. my mom). Later in life Adolf's eyes became sensitive to the sun; that's why they're closed. I'm guessing this shot is from around 1939. He died in 1943.

John Münsterhjelm's John Hancock

Located on the side of Natalie Paul's bust. Would've been faster to simply use a Sharpie.

 

 

Busted Part III

Finnish sculptor John Münsterhjelm (1879-1925) in his studio. He lived in Germany from 1902-1911, according to Wikipedia. If you look behind him, you'll see the bust of Adolf Paul featured in the previous post.

Busted, Part II

My maternal great-grandfather, Adolf Paul. Adolf wrote plays and stories, none of which are well known today. His Wikipedia page is a stub, and it gets his birthplace wrong. He was not born in Bromma, Sweden, but Bromö, an island in Lake Vänern. The family moved from there to a 70,000-acre estate called Jokkis in what was then Sweden and is now Finland. It had a 20-kilometer railway. They just lived there; they didn't own it. Family legend says it was lost by the guy who did own it to pay a gambling debt. Adolf's birth name (January 6, 1863) was Georg Wiedersheim-Paul, but he changed it to Adolf Paul to annoy his mother and father. He died September 30, 1943 in Berlin. My mother says "I was in Sweden and remember my father writing to me with the news on very thick, black-rimmed stationary."

Adolf's bust, also sculpted by John Münsterhjelm in 1906, sits in storage in the National Museum of Finland.

Busted

My maternal great-grandmother, Natalie Paul, or "Tali" for short. The back of the photograph says "Okt. 19," which either means October 1919 or October 19th, her birthday in 1878. The marble bust was made by sculptor John Münsterhjelm in 1906 in Berlin, where Natalie and her playwright husband Adolf Paul lived. He was Swedish; she was German, born to a wealthy Lubeck family, the Brehmers. Adolf hung out with Jean Sibelius, August Strindberg and Edvard Munch, and spent all her money. Maybe that's why the bust looks wistful.