Messenger
Ft. Dodge, Iowa
Grandson of former resident Asks Help In Leaving Germany
Mayor J. M. Poole, whose mail almost daily includes letters from Germany asking variety of assistance, now hap at request from a man, who describes himself as the grandson and son of former residents, asking the? mayor's help in getting him and his family to Fort Dodge.
The writer identified himself as Dr. W. Kellner, grandson of William Kellner, who, he says, "helped build Fort Dodge and was a citizen there from 1848 to 1869."
His father, he writes, also named William, was born in 1861 in Fort Dodge. The father lived in Germany for a time, then returned to the United States and took part in the Spanish-American war. He died, the son writes, in a veterans* hospital in Dayton, Ohio, in 1923.
"My mother could not return to America, so I grew up in Germany," Dr. Kellner said.
He describes himself as a surgeon, who was owner of a "big private hospital" in Zwickau, Germany, from where he fled when the Russians came.
In American Zone
At present he is in the American zone in Germany. He lived for several years in Switzerland, and, he says, obtained a visa in 1925 to go to America but could not "emigrate at that time for family reasons."
His wife is Swiss and they are the parents of three sons, 24, 17 and 15, who are living and studying in Bern, Switzerland, the letter continues.
Dr. Kellner spoke of "financial security" from his brother-in-law,
America in 1848 and lounaea u'l business in Fort Dodge.
"My dear father rendered great service in the town's development. He also personally interested himself and worked for the foundation of German and English schools and for the building of an Evangical church."
whom he described as a professor at the University of Bern.
"It is very hard to be homeless but however I never should like to live and to work with the Russian occupation army," his letter goes on.
"And so I beg the administration of Fort Dodge with all my heart to receive again myself
my family in your town as citizens just as my father and grandfather had been.-- \p
He enclosed what he called "Li\e tie Remembrance" written by hit aunt, Emma Kellner Kohlrausch* who, he said, also was born in1 Fort Dodge.
She said her father
THREE
She spoke of the trips with her [parents to their farm where they j frequently visited on Sundays. They lived, she said, "in a lovely villa in the town and had a very big garden there."
When the Kellner family left in 1869, Fort Dodge had seven churches. A widow, the writer said
she lived in Hall£, Germany, until the death of ^her husband, a minister and church superintendent, when she went to Zwickau. World war I caused her family great financial loss, she wrote.
