Hermann Enters, my great-grandfather, was born in Barmen (now part of the city of Wuppertal, but still famous as the site of the Barmen Declaration) in Germany on August 2, 1846, and died on July 25, 1940 in Milwaukee, USA at the age of 94, survived by his children Emma Kranzfelder, Meta Doyle, Anna Palmer, Elfriede Rosenheim, Bessie Williams, Hermann R. Enters, Paul Enters, and Ulbin (Alvin) Enters.
Top row from left: Herman R., Hermann Enters, Edward (Ewald, Eddie), Augusta, Emma, Augusta Leckebusch Enters, Paul.
Bottom row from left: Meta, Anna.
Not yet born: Elfrieda (Ella), Alvin (Ollie) George, Bessie (Helen),
Top row from left: Herman P. Enters, Anna Palmer, Meta Doyle, and Edward (Ewald, Eddie) Enters.
Middle row from left: Ella Rosenheim, Paul Enters, Augusta Luschinger, and Alvin (Ollie) George Enters.
Front row from left: Emma Kransfelder, Hermann Enters, Augusta Enters, and Bessie (Helen) Williams.
Hermann Enters provided us with the best firsthand account of life in the early industrial period of the Ruhr through a book-length letter he wrote to his siblings to explain his decision to emigrate from Germany to the US in 1882. He wrote several versions of this letter, at varying lengths. The first version was sent on April 24, 1922 to his sister Emma who received it in Barmen. Hermann continued work on the book after sending the copy to Emma, and I currently possess a longer version, along with an English translation by Christel Kottmann with an introduction my aunt, Cloe E. Doyle. The letter has been published as a book in several editions beginning in 1970 by Professors Klaus Goebel and Günther Voigt, accompanied by some short historical articles, and enjoys wide reading in the Wuppertal area, where it has been used as a standard school text.
Klaus Goebel and Günter Voigt, 1985. Die kleine, mühselige Welt des jungen Hermann Enters: Erinnerungen eines Amerika-Auswanderers an das frühindustrielle Wuppertal (The Small, Troubled World of the Young Hermann Enters: Memories of an American Immigrant of the Early Industrial Wuppertal Region). Fourth Edition (a fifth edition is to appear soon), Wuppertal: Born-Verlag Wuppertal, 98 pp. ISBN 3-87093-018-7.
In honor of this contribution to the history of Barmen and the Wupper valley, the city of Wuppertal named a small street in his honor (Hermann-Enters Straße), placing him in the company of Wuppertal's more famous son, Friedrich Engels (who has the main street named after him) and other famous Wuppertal personages.
Continuing in this literary tradition, several members of the Enters family have gained some distinction in literary and cultural affairs in the US. These include the author/mime/dancer/composer Angna Enters, the Broadway theater director Warren Enters, and the poet Lynn Doyle.
