Charlotte Lietz’ story ended with the death of her sister-in-law Julia Tiedemann in 1885, that left her brother Christoph with three children, Rudolph, Victor, and Erna. In 1890 he met and married his second wife, a French woman. They had four more children, Heinrich, Mary, Alphons, and Friedel, with Friedel being born in 1900.

Victor, my grandfather, first went to Moscow to work in a machine factory. There he married Gertrud Westphalen from Hamburg. Around 1902, Christoph and his partner bought out a syrup factory in Minsk, and put Victor in as the director. In 1904 my Uncle Joachim Lietz was born. The next story is the story of his and my mother’s childhood in Minsk in and around the syrup factory. When he talks about the “boys in Riga” he means the sons from the second marriage of his grandfather who were not all that much older than him.