Irmi's parents

Gera, Germany  (June 10, 1949)

Left:  Rosemarie Henny (Schulze) Scharna  (1928)

Right:  Herbert Günther Scharna  (1924-1973)

Herbert served on the Russian front during World War II and became a prisoner of war there in

January, 1945.  As a POW, he lived mostly outdoors, in damp conditions, where his legs retained

too many fluids and ballooned in size.  In May, 1945, Russian authorities released him on medical

grounds; and he rejoined his family in the city of Gera, in the German state of Thüringen, where

it took nearly a year for his health to return.  In Gera, he met and married the former Rosemarie

Schulze, daughter of a local butcher.  Meanwhile, Herbert had obtained a position as department

head and chief customs inspector for the nearby city of Greiz.  In the coming years, Herbert and

Rosemarie gave birth to four daughters: Marion (1950-1981); Elisabeth (1952); Adelheid (1953);

and Irmhild (1956).  In 1953, communist authorities fired Herbert, because a religious brochure,

left behind by a local priest, had been discovered on a countertop in his department.  No longer

eligible for state-sponsored employment, Herbert found work in the offices of a large brewery,

supervising deliveries and other transportation requirements.  When that job ended, he performed

menial tasks around town until, in 1960, he and Rosemarie decided to flee to the West.  In order

to accomplish this, the youngest daughter, Irmhild, was secretly sent ahead to Rosemarie's Uncle

Ernst in West Berlin.  Three  weeks later, believing the story that Irmhild had remained behind in

Gera with her grandparents, border authorities allowed Herbert, Rosemarie, and the three other

daughters to cross into West Berlin.  There, Irmhild rejoined them, and the family continued its

journey westward.  For two long years, they moved from one refugee camp to the next, settling

eventually near Stuttgart, in the small city of Gerlingen, where Herbert's brother, Lothar, had

previously established residency.  There, Herbert worked as head of the finance department in

City Hall, and the Scharna family blended into the local community.  In 1973, at the age of 49,

Herbert succumbed to a heart attack.  Rosemarie then took a job at City Hall and worked there

twenty years herself, finishing the job of raising their daughters alone.