Dear Ellie, I think I can give you a little information about your Grandmother’s family.
Your grandmother was the daughter of August Saarbach. He was a successful wine-merchant in Mainz, Germany, but changed his trade to newspaper marketing in 1887 He founded the first press marketing agency in Germany and was very successful with that, too. The company still exists today:
www.saarbach.deAugust Saarbach and his wife Jenny, born Gutmann, were of Jewish origin and had six children: Hedwig, *1885, Willy/Wilhelm Eduard, * 1887, Anna, *1888, Elisabeth, *1891, Max,*1895, and Ernst, *1897.
The family lived in a large flat in the most famous boulevard-like street in Mainz, the “Kaiserstraße”, number 32. The house does not exist anymore, it was destroyed by bomb attacks in the Second World war. In the summer, the family moved to a country-house near the suburb Gonsenheim, very close to a forest. The adress is Heidesheimer Str. 45, the house is still existing.
The three girls were educated in the Höhere Töchterschule in Mainz (“Higher Daughters School”), [by the way, this is still existing (under the name: Frauenlob-Gymnasium,
www.frauenlob-gymnasium.de) the very school, where I am a teacher now].
In the year 1910 Anna’s brother Max died of Meningitis in the age of 15. To commemorate him his parents had a memory stone erected, shaped as a art-nouveau fountain, which is also still to be seen in Gonsenheim.
August died in 1912, his son Willy (W.E.) herited the company and moved it to Köln.
Jenny, Anna’s mother, stayed in the Gonsenheim villa until she died in the 1940s, shortly before she should have been deported to the extermination camp.
Hedwig, Anna’s eldest sister, married in 1907 a composer and conductor, Marco M. Großkopf, with him she had two sons, Heinrich Siegrfried Großkopf (*1908) and Max Eugene Großkopf (*1913), who lived in the Netherlands later on. About the further remains of Hedwig’s family I do not know.
Willy led the company under the name “W.E. Saarbach” in Köln and survived the Nazi era (I do not know, how). After 1945 he continued to lead the company, gained the title of a “Konsul” and retired in 1960. Willy, Anna’s brother, died in 1970 in Köln.
That is, in short, all I know. If you want to contact me to get further details or to give me more information about Anna Saarbach, please contact me under:
Johannes.hilgart@web.deRegards
Johannes