Irmi's aunt and uncle

Gerlingen, Germany  (1961)

Left:  Margarete (Staiger) Scharna  (1931)

Right:  Lothar Siegfried Scharna  (1925)

During World War II, Lothar served in France and became a prisoner of war there from

August, 1944, through April, 1949.  During his interment, the geographic landscape of his

native Germany had changed drastically.  His home of Forsthausen and the whole of East

Prussia had been transferred to Polish control; and Gera, where his family had fled, now

fell under the control of a communist East German regime.  Neither location appealed to

Lothar; so, once the French authorities released him, he traveled to West Germany.  Soon

after his arrival there, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent a year recuperating

in a hospital in Fürth, near Nürnberg.  Once he had regained his health, Lothar applied to

several universities, hoping to become a teacher like his father; unfortunately, due to his

history with a contagious disease, the bureaucracy forbade it.  From 1952 through 1955,

he studied at a small college in Dortmund and became a social worker.  Lothar's first job

as a social worker brought him to the city of Stuttgart, in Baden Württemberg, where a

colleague, Margarete Staiger, found a room for Lothar next door to her parents' home in

nearby Gerlingen.  Lothar and Margarete, a social worker herself, spent days together at

the office and most evenings socializing, as well.  Inevitably, they married in April, 1961,

and raised two children: Ulrike (1962-2004) and Hans-Joachim (1963).  Margarete gave

up her job to remain at home with the children, but Lothar remained a social worker for the

city of Stuttgart until his retirement in 1990.  In early spring of 1992, Lothar did, albeit

on a modest scale, achieve his dream of becoming a teacher.  From his father, a country

schoolmaster, Lothar had gained a clear understanding of the complex structure and often

convoluted rules associated with German grammar; and this he generously shared with his

niece Irmhild's American husband every Wednesday afternoon for a year-and-a-half, as

the bewildered younger man struggled to comprehend the vagaries of the Teutonic tongue.