Sunday Special: Lutheran Confirmation

As young people are getting ready for their confirmations this spring, I wanted to share this story from David Glawe.  I told my Dad about this story and I know he's shared it with friends.  What a different time..

Otto’s story and the changing of attitudes.  For Lutheran’s Confirmation has always been a time of celebration.  It has also been a time of transition.  In one way it is seen as the time when the child takes responsibility for their own baptismal vows.  It is a time of becoming an adult.  Supposedly,  When Otto was confirmed his parents’ confirmation gift was a carton of cigarettes.  They the told him that he had to buy his own from then on. 

 

Confirmation in our part of the family was a time of transition.  It was the time when you graduated from the children's table to the adult table at family celebrations such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. It was also the time when you could have one drink before dinner and a glass of wine with dinner. 

 

Thank you David for putting a smile on many a face...

Military Service Of Otto Krausman

Even though Otto Krausman isn't a Brueggeman, many of his descendants  are and read this blog.  I had been told that Otto had been gassed while in Europe, a fact that his grandson David Glawe confirmed:

While overseas Otto was sent to the hospital three times, twice because of mustard gas attacks, the second worse than the first, but both of them considered minor.  The third time because he was hit by machinegun fire.  Fortunately, the bullet hit him in his very solid infantry belt buckle and it only left him with a very large bruise in the abdominal area.   All three were considered minor and he was only off the front lines for a few days each time.  Otto’s war experiences, especially his talking with the German soldiers across the lines gave him a distaste for Germany and he refused to teach his children how to speak German, although for privacy sake he sometimes did speak it in the house to Louise. 

Otto died of stomach cancer in 1946.  Although he had been a smoker since he was 14, I believe that the root of his cancer was not the smoking as much as the gas attacks and bullet bruise.

From the book "Ohio Soldiers in World War I", Otto's Service Records:

Co A 323 Machine Gun Battalion to 29 July 1918; Co C 3 Machine Gun Battalion to Discharge Private, first class 22 Nov 1918. St Mihiel; Meuse-Argonne; Defensive Sector. American Expeditionary Forces 12 June 1918 to 5 Sept 1919. Honorable discharge 25 Sept.

passing through Saint Baussant in advance upon St. Mihiel Front

He sure had a lot of trouble given that he was in the service for such a short time.
Here is his registration card.  It has a contradictory birth year.  I have records that his birth year was 1894 and 1896.  This record indicates 1895.