Grandfather's Youth

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"[Alexander Jacobi, my paternal grandfather,] was born in a small town in what was then Prussia called Schönlanke. It’s now Trzcianka in Poland. I don’t know that much about what his family life was about. I know that he had an older brother named Kurt, a number of brothers and sisters, all of whom did not survive the war—They left Schönlanke probably in the late ‘20s or early ‘30s and relocated to Berlin.

...he served in World War I. He was in infantry. [He came to Berlin after the war.] It was the capital of the empire at the time, and it was the place to be."