Das Rote Kreuz (the Red Cross)

     Yesterday, I posted some photos, including this one of my grandfather in his "Samariter" uniform—at least, that's what my dad insisted Grandpa is wearing.
     "Yeah," I said, "but what about the crosses on his uniform?" My dad didn't know about those.
     My mom confirms that, at least by the 30s, throughout Germany, there were local volunteer organizations that provided "first aid" services—for Fußball games, athletic competition, and whatnot. They were somewhat like volunteer fire departments, but they put out wounds and injuries, not fires. It was a very different world back then, a smaller, slower world.
     It appears that, at least in the little town of Böblingen, the local group was called the "Samariters," at least into the thirties.
     I did some checking, and there was indeed an organization by that name—the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund—which was founded in 1888 and was shut down in some sense in 1933. (It has reappeared in 1945 and is again prominent.) Grandpa —"Opa"— was likely a member of the ASB and he ipso facto became a member of the German Red Cross (the Rotes Kreuz), which absorbed the ASB at about that time (I'm not entirely sure about this; some sources say that ASB became "affiliated" with the RK in '37). My dad remembers that Opa greatly disliked the new administration of the organization—now the Rotes Kreuz—and, according to what I've read, that likely concerned its increasing Nazification, culminating in an action in about 1938 that officially and unambiguously made the Rotes Kreuz  an arm of the Nazi Party. (It was an "illegal" organization in the American sector immediately after the war. By 1952, it was welcomed back to the international community.)
     Opa hated the Nazis, though my dad warns that, "Well, he pretty much hated anybody with authority. He was a big hater." As you know, Opa's older brother Karl was an active Communist, and it is clear that Opa hung around with that crowd quite a bit, at least up through the early 30s. He was also quite the Nature Boy, being an avid hiker and amateur naturalist and member of the German equivalent to the Sierra Club (the "Friends of the Forest"—something like that).
     It seems pretty clear that, in the above photo, Opa is wearing the uniform of the Rotes Kreuz, of which my grandmother was also a member. And that kinda jibes with my dad's remembering the organization as the "Samariters." Likely, people continued to refer to the "Samariters" long after the ASB ceased actually to exist, with remnants operating loosely under that name--until 1937.

From an old German dictionary, published in 1931; "Red Cross" entry

     My mother remembers Opa's love of nature. Today, she told me that, when we moved into a new house near Villa Park in 1961, Grandpa and Grandma suddenly showed up and declared that they would be living with us. My mom's eyebrows arched skyward. She huddled with my dad and counter declared, "No frickin' way." The arrangement lasted a few months.
     Opa insisted on doing the landscaping for our new home, something my mom looked forward to doing herself. "I do it," he commanded. Being Nature Boy, he'd always go for long walks (at the time, we were surrounded by orange groves and stands of eucalyptus trees, and we were very near the edge of the Santa Ana Mountains). After a while, Opa started coming back from his walks with increasingly large and absurd plants and trees. At one point, he brought home an enormous walnut tree (the way mom remembers it, he dragged the thing for miles) and insisted on planting it in front of the house.
    "Yes, Opa, it is wunderbar, but it will become too big and take over," my mom complained. "Don't be silly," snapped Opa. Opa pretty much did what he wanted to do. He was always that kind of guy: decisive, uncooperative, naysaying.
     Sure enough, the dang thing grew to a monstrous size and destroyed the sidewalk and curb. We had to tear the thing out. When Opa discovered this, he was furious.
     Opa also insisted on planting a lawn, which was great, but my parents planned to put in a sprinkler system first, and none of that had yet been worked out. "Don't be silly! You don't need dat!" barked Opa in his comically bad pidgin English. So he planted the grass. It looked great. He seemed to hug it every morning. But watering it was a drag, and so, a while later (my mom had kicked Oma and Opa out of the house by then), my dad dug it up and put in a sprinkler system. That left a slight "scar."
     Opa was again furious. Heimatland!
     There are many such stories. The most colorful stories, however, concern my grandmother, "Oma." That'll have to wait.

     Here's yet another "mystery" photo. That's Opa on the right. At least three of the people in this photo are wearing party hats of some kind. The quarters seem unusually cramped. There's a map on the wall. What on Earth is going on here?