She went to West Berlin in a summer dress, with just her handbag, and never came back
Stáhnout obrázek
Sieglinde Birke was born on 7 July 1934 in Teplice nad Metují as the second oldest of five children. Her father Stefan Branse worked for the railways and her mother Gisela Branse was a housewife. Daddy was conscripted into the German army in 1939 and served as an interpreter into Hungarian. Mother‘s uncle Heinrich Purmann owned a shoe factory and served as mayor of the village from 1919 to 1932. She experienced the savage removal at the end of May 1945. She spent three days and nights waiting in a coal wagon at the Czechoslovak-Polish border before the Poles sent them back. In July 1946, they had to board a camp in Mezimesti and were sent by cattle cars to what was then the eastern zone of Germany. She finished primary school there and trained as a grocery shop assistant. In 1953, she took a tram to the western part of Berlin and, via several refugee camps, followed her uncle to Solingen in West Germany, where she worked as a saleswoman. Later, the rest of the family emigrated with her. In 1959 she married Gerhard Birke, a Sudeten German, and they had two sons, Odo and Reiner. She travelled the world with her husband and often went to Teplice nad Metují. In 2025 she lived in Hüttenberg.
