Preface
By Heinrich Lietz

Charlotte Lietz, born 1848, died 1937 wrote her memoirs in Riga in the year 1926. Through these some of the mistakes in my own family history have been corrected, but especially in a wonderful way supplemented. Between 1923 and 1935, Aunt Charlotte lived with my sister Erna in their combined household, the last two years she lived in the old folks home Bergengrun. It was a lonely life that she led, the most common lot of older people. My son Hellmut gave her some joy, when he called out, while banging loudly on her door: “Schlotte, Schlotte”, demanding entrance, so that he could join her at her afternoon-meal fake coffee with “Brockei”. He did that often as a three or four year old and also later was the always happy child often company for her. We adults did know Aunt Charlotte only as an older woman, since at my birth she was already fifty years old. We always stood in awe of her. Quite different from Aunt Mila, her sister, who we loved very much, Aunt Charlotte herself was always aloof and reserved. She did not show tenderness towards children. For a woman of the middle class of the time she was relatively well educated and played the piano remarkably well. She also must have had a very good character, since some of her friends staid with her into their high age. She survived all of them and therefore she was all alone at the end. In case of her death she had written down a few intentions, and shortly before her death she had written with difficulty the following lines with pencil on a little piece of paper:

“A few years ago I wrote the following, and still death will not take me home. The strength for living is fading. Such a great decline of all strengths, the eye does no longer see, teetering and groping do I move and I often I lose my balance and fall down an incur more damage. My God, when is the end coming. I pray and wrestle with him, the dear God, and he does not answer me. Am I worse the many other beings, who are mowed down as punishment for their sins. So many young and strong people are being called by death, but he passes me by, although I often stretch out my hands to him. Puzzling is this life, and so difficult to endure, when one has reached the high age of 86 years. Now one has no wishes or hopes anymore, only one thing do I always plead for: End, oh Lord, end all this suffering.”

Aunt Charlotte lies in the old cemetery in Riga next to her parents and sister who had died earlier.