Hallo Reddit!

I’m looking for some native/knowledgeable expats to help me figure out a mystery. My grandmother was born in eastern Germany in 1946. The horrors of the war she and her family experienced were passed down in stories. I can only imagine their pain and suffering.

She immigrated to America at a young age. As the youngest, she was less traumatized than her older siblings, and as such she was able to begin her life anew in the US. Her siblings were less fortunate in this aspect. She did her best to forget her past. She loved Oktoberfest and would occasionally claim heritage, but overall she forgot her German. This is despite her parents and siblings speaking German almost exclusively in the household. She married at 17 and quickly began a family with her American husband.

Fast forward to me being 16, and telling her that I was selected to be an exchange student in Germany! She was terribly upset, noting how dangerous it could be and how archaic it was compared to the United States. I told her that it was a progressive country! The walls were gone and the Soviet dissolved. She was still disapproving.

I went! Learned German! And despite her being born there, I ended up speaking more fluently than she.

Years passed. I grew up. Lost some of my German. Retained some. Oh how practical it is to learn a language young.

My grandmother gets sick. Multiple strokes leave her withering away in hospice with poor cognition. I’m living in a neighboring state. Luckily flights are cheap! And in her final days, I’m flying down on weekends to see her.

The hospice staff say that she’s incoherent and mumbling gibberish. I go to her and she’s surely slurring, but she’s speaking German. She asks for water. Asks me if I love her. I give her everything I possibly can. My German translation skills are poor, but my pronunciation is okay. I read to her bible versus in German in her final days.

She passed. It almost destroyed me. I’m doing okay now, but some wounds always scar. I have some of her ashes, where a portion of them have already been spread in the US. But I kept a small portion for her homeland.

Can anyone help me figure out where she was born? I have a picture, but I can’t readily find a “Güßlov” on Google. I think maybe it was misspelled?

Thank you! And maybe you can help me figure out what I can’t discern from context clues!

Please help me find where my GERMAN grandmother was born so I can spread her ashes?
by u/klaur8876 in germany

11 comments

  6. The place you’re looking for is Gößlow, but you will have a hard time with german toll, if you want to bring human remains here, as it is criminal for non-morticians.

  8. Well… maybe it’s completely wrong but i found a town called “Gützkov”. It’s in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern which belonged to eastern germany / DDR.

  9. So many super Germans here, and that’s coming from a German. “The video is too shaky” “let me Google that for you” “It’s illegal you will never be able to do it”… What a bunch of assholes.

    The town you are looking for is probably Güstrow east of Schwerin, the missinterpretation of the t to l could have happened easily. When Germany overhauled it’s writing system a lot changed regarding the use of ß so that transformation us also likely. Similarly the ow ov is commonly used fairly interchangeably.

    When it comes to the ashes you should definitely do some research but overall this is your grandmother we’re talking about so bending a few rules for what, at least how I understood it, is only a fraction of here remains should be fine. If you compress them in the US so that they more resemble a stone you should easily get it into Germany and the emotional value remains the same.

    If you really want to do this for your grandma it will be possible and at the same time it will probably also be a carthatic experience. In other cultures it is common to do a pilgrimage for a recently deceased relative during which you remember them and at the same time get closure. I think it’s a beautiful idea and a worthy reason to slightly bend the rules. Everyone does it because otherwise, with all the rules we have here, nothing would get done.

  10. UPDATE:

    Hello! Please see comments below regarding German cremation laws! I think it’d still be great to try and learn where my grandmother was born! Thanks to all who’ve speculated where she could have come from regionally.

    There’s no debate/discussion to be had regarding the ethics of ash spreading! If you’re looking for interesting articles/discussions regarding this trend in Germany or just the practice in general there’s a lot of resources to be found within Google!

  11. But it says born in Perzanowo Poland what seems to be in Masuria northeast of Warszawa. No clue how rules are in Poland about ashes but would imagine quite similar,

Leave a Reply