I was born into the “Kompanie Ábeles and Popper,” and it was only long after we had to emigrate that I came to realize how unusual our Kompanie was. It was as important to me as my family. The Kompanie came about long before I was born. In 1887 my grandfather Richard Ábeles from Vysoká Libyna/Hochlibin near Královice, married Mina Popper from Rejkovice, a Chodish village near Domažlice. The Chodové were a Czech tribe who lived near the German border, spoke a distinct dialect, and had preserved many colorful folkloric traditions. This date is engraved on my grandmother’s wedding ring, which is now my wedding ring. My grandparents lived with my grandfather’s parents in the village square of Vysoká Libyna, in a house that is still standing. Soon after their marriage, my grandmother wrote her parents and siblings that she was lonesome for them, and so her brother Pepi (Josef) made a magnanimous offer. He offered his less well-off brother in-law a partnership: everything would be owned jointly by the two families. Richard and Mina agreed, and moved to the Hamr farm, not far from the Poppers, where their first child Olga was born.
While each partner was in charge of a separate farm, all major decisions were made jointly. The partners shared the same values, were thrifty and industrious and supported poor relatives, and wasted nothing. Fortunately the two families grew symmetrically: each had a daughter who had to get a dowry, and two sons to whom to pass on the farms.
Before my father’s birth in 1896 the Kompanie rented the farm Lazce/Hlas from the town of Horšovský Týn/Bischofteinitz. My father and uncle Leo were born at the farm, which was two miles from the town. The day my father was born, my grandfather gave his workers the rest of the day off and treated them to a barrel of beer. I remember a coffee mug with a German rhyming inscription celebrating my father’s first birthday.
My grandmother Mina was remembered in our extended family with affection and respect. Three of her granddaughters, I among them, and one grand niece were named after her. When she was diagnosed with tuberculosis in about 1903, she frequently went to spas such as Karlovy Vary and Merano, and as a result her children were sent to live with relatives. Aunt Olga was raised by relatives in Horaždovice, and at the age of ten my father and his brother Leo were sent to live with uncle Siegfried in Prague. Four years later my father entered an agricultural high school in Kadaň/Kaaden that was to prepare him for university. In 1919 Kadaň was the scene of deadly clashes between police and German nationalists.
My father was the first of the sons of the Kompanie to marry. In the chaotic immediate post-war period, he smuggled my mother across the Bavarian border. About a year later his cousin Hugo Popper married my mother’s sister Martha, and my father’s brother Leo married Ida Eckstein from the neighboring village of Blížejov/Blisowa. The last to marry were Alois Popper, Hugo’s brother and Hedda Eckstein, Aunt Ida’s sister. The marriages again resulted in symmetry. Each of the four couples was responsible for one farm, but everything was owned jointly. Generally this arrangement worked well, although sometimes one could detect a division between the Eckstein daughters and the Ornstein daughters. My father made all major decisions, but there was never the slightest suspicion of favoritism.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 1