Hildegard Josephine L. Wirtz Collection

The Hildegard Josephine L. Wirtz Collection includes one series with five folders, containing letters and postcards as well as photographs and slides. Most letters and postcards were written by Hildegard Josephine L. Wirtz and document her wedding with Ulric Hellmann and then follow her immigration to the United States. Photographs and slides show mainly the Wirtz family and document the wedding of Hildegard Josephine L. Wirtz and Ulric Hellmann.

In the first folder are letters from Hildegard Josephine Wirtz in Aachen to Hedwig Hillmann her future mother-in-law in Yonkers. In 1946 Hildegard told Hedwig who of the family had survived the war and had come back to Aachen. From 1948 on the main subject of Hildegard's letters are her emigratiuon to the USA and her wedding with Ulric Hellmann. In November 1948 Ulric Hellmann travelled to Germany to marry Hildegard Josephine L. Wirtz.

The second folder holds one letter from Ulric Hellmann to his mother, in which he reports about the status quo of the Wirtz family in Germany. Two more letters came from Agnes Wirtz, who had been in relation with Hedwig's brother Paul: He committed suicide during the war, when he was traumatized and increasingly lonely, after the Hellmann family had left and there was no more international mail service to stay in touch with his friends and relatives.

The third folder includes photographs of the Wirtz family between 1910 and 1968 as well as picture postcards of Hildegard Wirtz and Ulric Hellmann from 1960 until 1982. The fourth folder contains slides showing Manfred Victor, a relative of Joanna Maria Hubertina Wirtz, Hildegard's mother, as well as other slides taken by Ulric Hellmann, showing motifs of nature and the Statue of Liberty. The fifth folder contains envelopes with stamps to represent mail in Nazi-Germany.