By Hank Nuwer, written for my Cordova Times (news outlet of Alaska) column
German soldiers captured Army scout Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in December of 1945 during the Battle of the Bulge. His captors, taking note of his last name on his dog tags, asked why he made enemies out of his German brothers.
Searchable Nazi Party membership records from the U.S. National Archives reveal that by the time Kurt was a teenager, at least three of his relatives, by marriage or blood, had enrolled in the Nazi Party by 1933.
The records do not specify why they joined the Nazi Party or the extent of their involvement, and I do not presume to judge their motives. Their reasons died with them.
The records, examined with a DIE ZEIT search tool, also identify about 14 other Nazi Party members living in Germany with the Vonnegut surname.
No evidence exists that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. fully explored his relatives’ Nazi Party involvement. Biographers can only speculate whether his mother, Edith Lieber Vonnegut, knew of these memberships prior to her death in 1944, months before her son was taken prisoner.
Vonnegut later made several ironic comments noting his parents’ reluctance to train him in German customs and language. He apparently never considered his German captors to be his brothers.
My first database hit identified Rudolph (Rudolf) Lieber, the brother of Albert Lieber, Edith’s father and Kurt’s maternal grandfather.
Rudolph was born February 7, 1874. He and Albert were two of the sons of German immigrants Peter and Sophia Andre Lieber.
The database confirmed Rudolph Lieber joined the Nazi Party on April 1, 1933. His birthplace was recorded as Indianapolis. His residence was recorded as Dusseldorf. His Nazi Party entry number was 1.779.255.
Family patriarch Peter Lieber, a brewery owner, amassed a personal fortune in America, but his heart was always with his German homeland. He and his wife Sophia Lieber departed Indianapolis in the late 1880s, and Peter put his businesses in son Albert’s hands.
Rudolph Lieber departed America as a teen in 1888 and studied in Germany. He enlisted in 1894 in the service of German Emperor William II.
A captain at the start of World War One, prior to America’s involvement, Rudolph Lieber “engaged in drilling a regiment of Uhlans” for service on the front in Russia or France, according to the Indianapolis Star of November 15, 1914.
A second Nazi Party relative by marriage of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was Erwin Herber, christened as Adolf Maria Erwin Herber. Erwin was born in Dusseldorf on October 25, 1874. The database confirmed Erwin joined the Nazi Party in Dusseldorf on April 1, 1933. It listed him as member number 1.779.249.
Erwin Herber was the husband of Edith’s Aunt Emma Lieber Herber, the sister of Rudolph and Albert Lieber.
Erwin Herber fought in combat for Germany in World War One. On August 5 and 6, 1914, headlines in blazing black fonts announced the attack on neutral Belgium by the orchestrated German army against a stalwart Belgian defense.
France dispatched reinforcements to the bloody Liege battleground to aid the Belgians after Germany destroyed two military forts in Belgium. Herber was in the advance military units stationed at the front in Liege.
Of 300 soldiers that had commenced firing in the battle waged on August 5, only Herber and 14 of his men survived, reported the Indianapolis Star on November 15, 1914.
“Captain Herber, terribly wounded, lay in a trench half filled with water for five days and nights before he was discovered, his dead men piled in heaps all around him,” the Indianapolis Star reported. “He was barely alive when taken out, and was taken to a hospital in Liege.”
When the disturbing news reached Emma Lieber Herber, she drove to the front at considerable risk with a military escort. She rushed into the hospital’s ward for the wounded and raced back with the escort and her man to Dusseldorf for medical care, with artillery shells exploding in the background.
After Erwin Herber recovered from his wounds, he participated in a then-controversial documentary propaganda film, “On the Firing Line with the Germans.” The film’s creator, Wilbur H. Durborough, filmed real combat scenes, along with staged battle scenes.
Captain Herber drove the director into perilous battles along the front. He also stopped German authorities from requisitioning the director’s Stutz Bearcat.
The United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. During the war’s duration, Edith Vonnegut and her father Albert Lieber lost all contact with all relatives then in Germany, including interned Sophia Lieber and (Albert’s son) Rudy Lieber.
The third identified member of Kurt Vonnegut’s family was in-law Robert Adolph Kurt Lindener, known as Kurt Lindener. A German officer during World War One, Kurt Lindener was born June 29, 1890, the son of Franz Emil Arthur and Auguste Emma Margaretha Lindener.
The database lists Kurt Lindener and his birthdate as Nazi Party member number 3.038.347. He joined the Party on May 1, 1933.
Following Germany’s defeat in World War One, Kurt Lindener made a prosperous living as the proprietor of multiple coffee and sugar plantations in Guatemala.
He married Irma Vonnegut Lindener, the senior Kurt Vonnegut’s kid sister, in Hamburg, Germany on August 18, 1922.
Irma was born in Indianapolis on June 29, 1890, the daughter of renowned Indianapolis architect Bernard Vonnegut and his wife, Nanette (Nannie) Schnull Vonnegut.
Kurt Vonnegut Sr. and Edith Vonnegut, pregnant with Kurt, Jr., could not attend the wedding but did travel to Hamburg with son Bernard and daughter Alice (but without toddler Kurt Jr.) for a visit abroad in 1924.
In turn, Kurt and Irma Lindener visited Indianapolis in October 1924, to introduce their son, Arthur Erich Lindener, born in Hamburg on August 11, 1923.
Arthur Lindener enlisted as a soldier for Germany in World War Two, and was captured by Red Army forces, but no records list him as a Nazi Party member. Arthur and his mother Irma, also not identified as a Party member, later were cleared postwar to live in the United States.
Newspaper records show that Irma filed for divorce from Kurt Lindener in 1950, but I found no evidence the couple finalized a divorce. Irma outlived Kurt Lindener.
Kurt, Jr., then a toddler, likely had no memory of the 1924 visit by his cousin and his parents. However, when Kurt, Jr. was a teen in May of 1936, Kurt Lindener visited his parents as a house guest, returning to Germany on the German dirigible Hindenburg.
Irma and Kurt Lindener were both skilled at tennis. Herr Lindener later served as a member of the Hamburg-based German championship tennis committee, according to the Western Mail of Australia of December 15, 1938.
Irma, like her nephew Kurt, Jr., loved impromptu swimming matches at Lake Maxinkuckee, Indiana, the family’s summer vacation spot. Years later, the Indianapolis news claimed the Nazi press had hailed Irma as a heroine. She rescued and resuscitated a drowning boy on the Lindener’s Hamburg estate, according to the Indianapolis News of July 19, 1935.
Kurt Lindener, at the start of World War Two, was officially designated an “enemy war trader” under Enemy Trading Emergency Regulations, 1939. He was one of numerous plantation owners to be classified as an enemy and to have his Guatemala lands confiscated.
I will continue to perform archival research to determine if any Vonneguts in the database were related by blood to Clemens Vonnegut, the paternal ancestor of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in his essays and novels like Mother Night and Slaughterhouse-Five, pondered topics such as moral responsibility by governments for the devastating consequences of war.
So it went.
Hank Nuwer, an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, has his long-ago interview with author Kurt Vonnegut published in Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, edited by William Rodney Allen. Disclosure: Because Nazi officials managed to destroy some Party membership records in 1945, surviving records are incomplete, according to DIE ZEIT.
Addendum:
Here are the names of persons named Vonnegut listed in the database as members of the Nazi Party. Occupations are included if known. “Gau” refers to a Nazi-era regional district. No names were listed under Funnegut, which Kurt Vonnegut said was his ancestors’ original surname.
Adalbert Vonnegut, Burgermeister; Also registered as Albert Vonnegut
Born October 17. 1865
Place: Munster
Gau: Westfalen-Nord
Member no.: 2.161.024
Entry: May 1, 1933
Casper Vonnegut, Burgermeister
Born: November 12, 1898
Gao: Westfalen-Sud
Member no.: 2.538.082
Entry: May 1, 1933
Dr. Felix Vonegut, Medical doctor, likely a gynecologist
Born: March 12, 1896
Place: Borken
Gau: Westfalen-Nord
Member no.: 591.433
Dr. Heinr. Ant. Vonnegut (Possibly Heinrich Anton)
Born: February 1, 1897
Place: Heelen
Gau: Westfalen: Sud
Member no: 2.933.413
Entry: May 1, 1933
Felix Vonnegut, Student
Born: November 8, 1911
Place: Bonn
Gau: Essen, Koln-Aachen
Member no.: 694.829
Entry: December 1, 1931
Felix Vonnegut, Student (Some information is different from previous Felix Vonnegut. This may be a misreading by database personnel reading membership cards).
Born: November 2, 1911
Place: Essen
Gau: Essen, Koln-Aachen, Mecklenburg
Member no.: 694.879
Franz Vonnegut, Locomotive (train) Engineer (same info listed twice)
Born: December 14, 1892
GAU: Westfalen-Sud.
Member no.: 5.048.719
Gertrud Vonnegut, housewife
Born: March 12, 1877
Place: Essen
Gau: Westfalen-Nord
Member no. 2.161.018
Entry: May 1, 1933
Heinrich Vonnegut, No occupation listed
Born: March 1, 1897
Place: Beelen
Gau: Westfalen-Sud
Member no. 2.932.413
Entry: May 1, 1933
Josef Vonnegut, Commercial agent; Gau department leader (listed twice in database)
Born: September 5, 1900
Place: Borken
Gau: Mecklenburg, Westfalen-Nord
Member no.: 478.546
Entry: March 1, 1931
Maria Vonnegut, Housewife
Born: August 23, 1874 (also registered as May 23, 1874)
Place: Essen-Bergenbeck
Gau: Westfalen-Nord
Member no. 5.413.211
Entry: May 1, 1937 and October 16, 1937
Paul Vonnegut, Student
Born: May 10, 1908
Place: Holzwickerde
Gau: Baden, Westfalen-Nord
Member no.: 2.161.019
Entry: May 1, 1933
Paula Vonnegut, Salaried worker
Born: November 25, 1915
Gau: Essen, Westfalen-Sud
Member no.: 3.015.261
Entry: May 1, 1933
Walter Vonnegut, Student (not to be confused by Vonnegut’s U.S. relative by that name)
Place: Holzminden/Weser
Gau: Baden, Westfalen-Nord
Member no.: 2.161.019
Entry: May 1, 1933
Publicity photo of Wilbur H. Durborough and Captain Erwin Herber
Link here to a review of And So It Goes by Charles J. Shields