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Ursula Caspar, senior member of the German branch of the Lindley family, has died

Ursula Caspar, daughter of Beatrix Fanny Caroline (1907-1989) and Eduard Eberhard Caspar (1899-1977), grew up in the family home in Mannheim, where the eldest daughter of William Heerlein Lindley, Julia Fanny Elizabeth (1880-1943), used to invite to perform outstanding contemporary musicians. Her husband Robert Boveri (1872-1934), director of the Brown, Boveri & Co. branch in this city, a world-renowned power company, was a very talented pianist and a lover of classical music. 

Ursula and her family came to Mannheim from Hamburg just after Robert's death. The house in Mannheim was destroyed in 1943 in an Allied air raid and the ensuing fire destroyed all the family heirlooms.

The Caspar family survived the World War II in a village in the Black Forest mountains (Schwarzwald) in south-western Germany. After the war the family dispersed around the world. The elder brother died in Brazil, the younger one, a source of all knowledge about the Lindley family, died in Zurich, Switzerland.

In the early 1950s, Ursula Caspar went to the UK to visit family and worked part-time to earn her daily-bread and learn English. Later she used her skills teaching English while living in Spain. Eventually, she settled in Munich, where she took a job at Carl Hanser's publishing house, founded in 1928, one of the few existing medium-sized German publishing houses owned by the founding family.Ursula Caspar worked there until retirement.

In this publishing house, she came into contact with Polish culture, when in 1959 the first anthology of Polish poetry by Karl Dedecius (1921-2016), born in Łódź, the greatest translator of Polish literature into German, was published (under the title Lektion der Stille).

In 1980, he became the founder and first director of the Deutsches Polen-Institut (German Institute of Polish Culture) in Darmstadt, an institution that popularizes Polish art in Germany and contacts between the two nations. In 2002, my book The Lindleys.The history of the engineering family, was presented there and the first family reunion of the Lindleys from Great Britain, Germany and Switzerland also took place there.

Ursula celebrating her 90. birthday with friends, on her balcony in Munich

In 1997, while writing the aforementioned history of the Lindley family, the author of this memoir and his wife made a long-term friendship with Ursula Caspar. She visited Warsaw several times to admire the works of her great-grandfather. She willingly participated in family reunions organized in various European cities related to the works of William Heerlein Lindley.

Family reunion in 2006 in Warsaw. Ursula point at the commemorative plaque dedicated to W.H. Lindley on the Warsaw water tower.

Her death was caused by a combination of chronic diseases. She died in the Munich hospital. The funeral ceremony will take place on April 18 at 11.15 am at the Nordfriedhof Cemetery - Ungererstraße 130, Munich.

R. Żelichowski

Easter 2023

170 years ago William Heerlein Lindley was born

170 years ago William Heerlein Lindley was born, the first of four children of William Lindley and Julia Heerlein. His father briefly noted this fact in his diary: 30 January 1853 [Sunday] "William Heerlein Lindley (my first child) born at Hamburg, 50 Ferdinandstrasse 8 p.m."

We know from German sources that January in Hamburg was a relatively warm month and that day the temperature was still positive at 2 degrees Celsius.In the next two months, it dropped to about -3 degrees, which meant a mild and healthy winter.

On that day, European opinion was alive with the news of the wedding of the French Emperor Napoleon III Bonaparte (1808-1873) and Eugénie Maria, a Spanish-Scottish aristocrat (1853-1871 Empress of France).Their civil wedding took place on Saturday, January 29, in the Salon of the Marshals, in the Tuileries, and a church wedding a day later, in Notre-Dame Cathedral.

For William Lindley, the day of the birth of his firstborn son was the greatest reason to celebrate..He was 45 at the time.He made the decision to marry when he was 44, so he was mature and certainly dreamed of a successful future for his son.William Heerlein's baptism took place at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. James (St. Jacobi) on Wednesday, September 7 this year. The witnesses were William's siblings - sister Caroline and brother Joseph, and father-in-law Martin Eduard Heerlein.

Corner of Ferdinadstrasse and Gertrudenstrasse

The house at 50 Fedinand Street was located in the Old Town, near the of Inner-Alster Lake (a river of the same name, a tributary to the Elbe). It belonged to his wife's parents and was the mainstay of William's family during his European travels. His other children were born at this address. Currently, this house does not exist. At this point, the transverse street Gertrudenstrasse was pierced and part of the former residential house was occupied by a huge building of Hamburg's Hapag-Lloyd. 

Christmas and New Year 2022/2023

"Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection." Winston Churchill

Another difficult year is coming to an end. It is true that covid no longer disturbs the festive atmosphere, but we are overcome with sadness when we look at the fate of our eastern neighbors, brave Ukrainians.There are reasons to be happy, but we are also concerned about the news coming to us from this part of Europe. Let's remember at the holiday table those who are not given it.

Let's forget about the disputes that divide us for a moment, let's enjoy the moment and do good around us.

May this holiday, our dear friends, bring you a moment of oblivion, happiness and joy, and may the New Year 2023 make your dreams come true.

Societas Lindleiana

Alfons Grotowski (1833-1922), on the hundredth anniversary of his death.

Alfons Grotowski, chief engineer of the city, councilor of the city mayor, builder of the Praga waterworks and, above all, deputy chief engineer of William H. Lindley, died in Warsaw on November 18, 1922, at the age of 90, almost five years later than the two decades younger British engineer. He was famous for his punctuality and longevity. Until 1919, he worked at the Water and Sewerage Office.

He had a great sense of humor and a few anecdotes were remembered by posterity. One of them was quoted by Feliks Ornowski years ago. During a water ceremony, a visiting participant, seeing a gray-haired old man bustling about briskly, approached him and apologized for his audacity and asked about… his date of birth. At first engineer  Grotowski was surprised, but turning the whole thing into a joke, he replied: ‘Oh, there was no one in the world at that time’. Gentleman from the province continued ‘How about Adam? ‘But he was a gardener, not a man from our water supply branch, so he does not count’ calmly replied Grotowski.

Alfons Grotowski was born on February 23, 1833 in Żarnowiec, now a village in the Silesian Province. The future engineer graduated from the Gymnasium in Kielce and from 1850 began working in the Transportation Board in Warsaw. In 1868, he designed and built the Praga waterworks, which operated in the years 1869–1896. In 1875 he participated in the commission delegated to inspect water supply facilities in England. On the way back he visited Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main, where he got acquainted with the works of William Lindley. After returning to Warsaw, the Commission recommended that the city council commission the relevant projects by a British engineer. Grotowski was a member of the new Sewage and Water Supply Construction Committee. At the request of W.H. Lindley was nominated in 1888 as Deputy Chief Engineer.

He was a co-founder of the Hygiene Society and the organizer of the first hygiene exhibition in Warsaw. On May 31, 1906, on his way to work, he was shot by unknown perpetrators who blamed him for contributing to the arrest of the striking water workers, wrongly according to the domestic press. Engineer Grotowski survived this attack and lived to an old age.

In 1936, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Lindley's waterworks on pl. Starynkiewicza in Warsaw, a square named after him was created. Alfons Grotowski was buried at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.