Ruth Noerdlinger Blossfeld was born September 16, 1916.
Her father was Dr rer nat Ernst Noerdlinger, a chemist who was a Jew and who studied for a time with Albert Einstein. Ruth had common ancestors with the Frank family, and remembered a family party in which she patted the baby Anne Frank before the family went to Amsterdam.
Her mother was Barbara Busch, born to the Roman Catholic family that produced the beer family that started the Anheuser-Busch industries.
Ruth Noerdlinger was classified as a half-Jew in Nazi Germany. She became Ruth Blossfeld on May 9, 1945, the day after Germany lost the second world war. The first day that a German could marry a Jew in Germany.
Ruth was the wife of Lothar Gilbert Blossfeld, and the mother of inventor Ernst Lothar Blossfeld Dipl.Physik. She was my mother-in-law and the German grandmother of Patience Caroline Blossfeld Dodgson and Allister Michael Dodgson Blossfeld.
At the end of her life, Ruth lived in a house that her husband built on land that had belonged to her father. The lots on either side of the house belonged to rose farmers. So every side window of the house looked out on rose fields.
Listen to the story of Ruth written in short verse, in 17-syllable haiku. Click on the music sign and listen to Roses for Ruth. About 20 minutes long.
Roses for Ruth (c) 2002, Susanna J Dodgson.
