1938 Rudolf and Hanna Kroeger Engagement
After getting her degree in nursing, Hanna became a village nurse where she went from house to house to change bandages, care of the elderly, dispense drugs, and help people prepare meals. She quickly became bored with the work and felt she needed to learn more. She wrote a letter to Dr. Alfred Brauchele who ran a homeopathic hospital in Dresden, and asked if she could study there.
Hanna wrote about why she wanted this: Since childhood I had seen Mother go pick herbs to make compresses, to brew herb teas, to dress the wounds and to clean the sores and make gruel for diarrhea and compresses for fever. And it healed. I had learned to dispense drugs and I had not felt the great satisfaction and terrific results my mother had. So I applied and the answer came with a return telegram, “Welcome.”
1947 Rudolf Kroeger (Right) with friend at Russian Concentration Camp
After three years at Dr. Brauchele’s hospital, she met Rudolf Kroeger, a young man who had just finished his engineering studies. They married three months after their first date. She had a difficult choice to give up a career she loved, since at that time a woman had to give up her job when she got married. But Hanna had fallen head over heels in love, and was ready to start a family. They had two children when Rudolf’s father gave them the down payment to a house and they moved to a small house surrounded by fruit trees, berry bushes, asparagus beds, and a place to grow potatoes, cabbage, and turnips. This property kept them alive during and after the war when they witnessed the starvation, brutal crimes, mind-shattering sadness, and traumatic hostility that are the result of war. Rudolf was drafted in March 1945, two months before peace was finally declared. He was sent to defend Berlin from the Russians, and was captured and enslaved to work in a coal mine in northern
1950 Family Portrait of Rudolph Kroeger and Hanna Kroeger 6 months after Rudolphs Return from Captivity
Russia for nearly five years. He was finally released in December 1949 because he was too ill to work in the mines. In the meantime, Hanna had to take care of 4 young children by herself with little food, little clothing, and very little fuel for heating and cooking. When Rudolf finally returned, they agreed that they must start a new life in a new country and started preparations to come to America.
