The text was translated using DEEPL. Please excuse any errors!

Part I: Family Days 1920–1939

1. Preliminary remarks and overview.

Our family association rests on three pillars.

• On the one hand, there is the archive containing the genealogical documents collected since the association was founded.
• On the other hand, there are the more or less regular newsletters published by thefamily association,
• and finally, there are our family days.

Today, I would like to shed some light on the spirit and radiance of the family days.
Looking at the list of family days, a few observations can be made.
In my opinion, the golden age of the association was the 1920s,
i.e. the period of the first eleven family days. From the founding of the association in 1920 until 1930, family days were held annually. They usually began on Saturday evening with a cosy get-together and continued the following day with lectures and the general meeting. The family day usually ended with a festive dinner. The day of departure was then Monday.

Originally, the association’s founding on 27 December 1920 in Berlin-Spandau was considered the first Family Day. Later, the counting was changed and they began with Family Day 1921,
which also took place in Berlin-Spandau. Later, the original counting was reinstated.
The following family days: 3rd Family Day in 1922 in Magdeburg, 4th Family Day in 1923 in Hanover,
5th Family Day in 1924 in Braunschweig, 6th Family Day in 1925 in Goslar, 7th Family Day in Hildesheim,
8th Family Day in 1927 in Soest, 9th Family Day in 1928 in Halberstadt and the 10th Family Day in 1929 again in Braunschweig.

The golden age of the family association came to an end in 1930. Due to the difficult economic and political situation in Germany, no family days were held for five years.
But then, between 1936 and 1939, there was a second heyday: invitations were sent out to four family days in Hagen, Westphalia (1936), Bad Harzburg (1937), Magdeburg (1938) and Hanover (1939).

Cousin Hans-Ludolf remembers one of these pre-war family days, when the men wore tuxedos to the festive dinner. In 1940, the family day was to be held in Bad Pyrmont. The turmoil of the outbreak of war put an end to these plans. There was a nine-year hiatus.
It was not until 1948 that cousins gathered in Düsseldorf for a family reunion under very difficult external conditions. Düsseldorf was the hometown of chairman Paul Schräder (- Küblingen) and treasurer Rudolf Schräder (-Königslutter), the father of our cousin Lieselotte.
For three consecutive years, 1948, 1949 and 1950, Düsseldorf remained the venue for the family days. The treasurer’s hospitable home made it possible to celebrate happy family days even under very modest circumstances. Cousin Lieselotte, who took over the treasurer’s office after her father died in 1965, still has very vivid memories of these family days in Düsseldorf after the war.

Between 1948 and 1954, family days were held annually again.
Then there were no family days for two years – 1955 and 1956. In 1957, the 23rd family day was held in Bad
Pyrmont, making up for the cancelled family day of 1940.
In 1958, the group met in Ratzeburg, the home of our archivist Carl Hermann. In the 15 years between the 24th Family Day in Ratzeburg in 1958 and the 29th Family Day in Bad Harzburg in 1973, there were only four meetings: in 1961 in Altenau in the Harz Mountains, in 1968 in Braunschweig, in 1969 in Goslar, and in 1971 again in Altenau.
In 1959 and 1960, 1962 to 1967, and 1970 and 1972 – that is, for a total of 10 years – no family days were held.
We have been celebrating family days annually since 1973. This means that 39 family days have taken place in uninterrupted succession since the 29th family day D973 in Bad Harzburg until the 67th family day in 2011 in Delft, Netherlands.

2. The beginnings

From the very beginning, there were influential figures in the family association. First, there was the first archivist, the legendary Richard Schrader (-Hornburg). He was responsible for establishing the entire system of our archive. He began researching his family history and networking with other Schrader researchers as early as the turn of the century. This is the only way to explain how the association came to have such a remarkable archive from the very beginning. Richard Schrader (-Homburg) was named the first honorary member at the family day in Berlin-Spandau in 1921.
Then there were the co-founders of the association, of whom only two will be mentioned here by name, because they met as a triumvirate with Richard Schrader (-Homburg) in the apartment of Dr Hans Schrader (-Thale) on that memorable third day of Christmas in 1920, on 27 December.
The third member of the group was Pastor Hermann Schrader (-Derenburg). Although he was one of the first to join, Martin Schrader (-Quedlinburg), a solicitor and notary from Quedlinburg, was not present in Berlin-Spandau.

The second influential figure alongside Richard Schrader (-Homburg) was the first chairman of the young family association, Privy Councillor Dr. jur. Emil Schrader (-Badeleben). He had been director of the Imperial and Royal Court Marshal’s Office of Prussia and legal advisor to the Royal Court Offices in Berlin.
Emil Schrader (-Badeleben) led the association from 1921 until his death on 9 October 1935.
At the 6th Family Day on 4 October 1925 in Goslar, he was appointed the second honorary member.
Emil Schrader (-Badeleben) suggested the creation of an association coat of arms at an early stage. In 1923, he also took on the newly created office of herald master.

Incidentally, in the early years, all offices were elected for only one year. Reports from the 3rd Family Day in Magdeburg indicate that some members had to leave early due to the “train situation”.
Apparently, the trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn were not very reliable at the time. But we know that from the Deutsche Bahn as well. In the Netherlands, the situation is probably quite different.
Incidentally, the parents of our cousin Klaus, Groß-Gleidingen clan, member of the advisory board, are among the oldest active members of our association. His father Kurt Schrader (1871-1948), director in Hagen, already played an important role in the 1920s. He chaired the 11th Family Day in 1930 in
Bremen in 1930 because the chairman, Emil Schrader (-Badeleben), was unable to attend, as he had been the previous year. Klaus’s mother, our esteemed former chairwoman, cousin Anneliese Schulte-Schrader
(-Eilenstedt), also took part in the family days in the 1930s as a young woman, where she met her husband.
Between 1922 and 1924, a total of 110 people joined the family association, which reached its highest and never again achieved membership of 181 people in 1926.

In the past, we have often discussed the nature of our family days.
I have always emphasised that we are primarily an association of family researchers and not a club for people with the same surname to socialise. It goes without saying that social interaction and enjoyment should not be neglected. It follows logically from this fundamental principle of our association that our family days should focus on lectures that describe the lives of Schrader families over several generations or trace the lives of individual personalities with the name Schräder. But for this to be possible, cousins and relatives must set out to process existing documents or even do research themselves in libraries and church offices. This is tedious and time-consuming.
We know that there are always only a few who are able to take on this task. Complaints about too little research activity are nothing new. I quote the aforementioned archivist Richard Schrader (-Homburg), who made a remarkable statement on this subject in 1928 in Halberstadt at the 9th Association Family Day, as it was called at the time:

Our work can only consist of collecting, preparing, observing and recording, and many people find this work quite tedious, so they give up after a while. If it were possible to trace family history back to Adam and Eve overnight, it would be understandable if the family historian very soon lost interest in the matter, because when something is completely finished, it is put aside and can only rarely and temporarily captivate us.
We would be like a person who is constantly full. Even a table laden with the most exquisite dishes would fail to interest them. Hunger is the best cook. Those who are hungry will enjoy even the most modest meal and it will give them new energy. Those who have learned to rejoice in even the smallest successes in their work will not be discouraged by all their efforts and labour, no matter how many failures they experience.
Being full is our worst evil. Let us not be annoyed when things do not go according to our will and at a rapid pace. Let us thank God that he has not made our work so easy, thank him that he sometimes keeps us trapped in error for a long time.
We should not seek our bliss in the complete exploration of all mysteries,
but in hunger and thirst… Blessed are those who hunger and thirst.”

Now, I realise that we today are not particularly keen to hear such calls for ascetic living and working. However, I find the sobriety and realism of this assessment of family history work impressive. It is, after all, a laborious business. But perhaps the saying “the journey is the destination” also applies here. The feeling of being on a journey towards new discoveries and insights has something exciting about it, which does not lose its significance because we sometimes cannot go back any further or the data available remains too sparse to be able to reconstruct the lives of our ancestors in a satisfactory manner.

And that was also the case in the early days of the family reunions. Despite their noble intentions, many members were unable or did not know how to arrange to attend the family reunions. A cousin from Karlsruhe poetically declined to attend the 10th family reunion, which took place for the second time in Braunschweig in 1929, in the form of a poem entitled

---

---

3. The 1930s.

At the 11th Association Family Day on 27 and 28 September 1930 in Bremen, Artur Schrader (-Rottmersleben) from Hanover’s proposal that each year a member should give a lecture on a topic related to family history was accepted with “great applause”, as noted in the minutes. The proposer offered to give the first lecture for the coming year on the topic of “Name formation in general and the formation of the name Schrader in particular”.
Incidentally, the proposal to choose a fixed venue for the family day was rejected at this meeting.
On the other hand, the recommendation to consider venues that offered “opportunities for research” when choosing the locations for the meetings was welcomed. The 12th family day was to take place on 1 October 1931 in Berlin.
However, this did not happen. The economic decline since 1930 and the accompanying hardship of large sections of the population led to a five-year interruption of the family days, as already mentioned.
During these years, the number of members fell by more than a third to 120 in 1934. The chronicle notes that after the Family Day had ended, some of the Schraders took the opportunity on Monday to travel to Wesermünde and visit the giant steamship “Columbus”, which set sail at around 1 p.m. “amidst waving flags and the sounds of ‘Muß i denn zum Städtle hinaus'”.

It was not until 1936 that the 12th family reunion took place. Significantly, this family reunion did not take place in autumn as usual, but in January. On 25 and 26 January 1936, the family gathered in Hagen, Westphalia.
The 38-year-old Paul E. Schrader (-Küblingen) (born 24 September 1897) was elected to replace the first chairman, Privy Councillor Dr. jur. Emil Schrader (-Badeleben), who had died the previous year. Like his father Paul Sr., he was a merchant in Düsseldorf
and had been a member of the association since 1924. According to my cousin Carl-Hermann, he was chosen because they absolutely wanted a younger chairman. There was simply a fear that if an elderly gentleman were elected, the question of his successor would quickly become acute. Paul Schrader (-Küblingen) then fully lived up to these expectations and held the office of association chairman for 31 years until his tragic accidental death on 13 September
1967, a few days before his 70th birthday. In 1936, presumably as a result of the family days not being held for several years, membership had reached a low of 108 people. Three more family days were to follow on an annual basis until the Second World War prevented family days from being held for nine years. As the war dragged on, the association’s activities came to a virtual standstill.

The 13th Family Day brought cousins and relatives together again in the Harz Mountains on 22 and 23 May 1937. After Goslar and Halberstadt, Bad Harzburg was chosen as the venue.
With 38 participants, the Family Day attracted a number of visitors that would not be matched again until 1969. Given that we now usually have more than 40 people attending Family Days, this is an impressive figure when compared to the pre-war Family Days.

The 14th Family Day was held on 18 and 19 June 1938 in Magdeburg, at the Hotel Magdeburger Hof. Among the guests were Jack Schrader (Königslutter) from London and – I would like to draw your attention to this in particular – members from the Netherlands for the first time. As the chronicle notes, they were all men. The women had apparently stayed at home. It is expressly and appreciatively emphasised that the Dutch members had travelled to Germany “especially by car”.
The chronicle describes the 14th Family Day as “probably the most successful and significant conference of all previous Family Days” and emphasises that the entire German press reported on the event in detail and highlighted its importance. The reason for holding a Family Day in Magdeburg was linked to the rediscovery and restoration of the Schrader-Rottmersleben family crypt in the Church of the Holy Spirit in 1935. This family crypt, built in 1713 by Peter III Schrader-Rottmersleben (1670-1736), had been closed in 1809 by Napoleon’s occupying forces.
This crypt, which housed 44 coffins belonging to five generations of the family, was the largest preserved family crypt of a bourgeois family in Germany. The Holy Spirit Church, which dated back to the Middle Ages, was demolished in 1959 at the instigation of the Magdeburg Council under the GDR regime. The coffins containing the dead were burned and the church and crypt were levelled. This unique memorial to the Schrader-Rottmersleben family was thus destroyed.

The 15th Family Day was held in Hanover on 17 and 18 June 1939, already overshadowed by the looming war.
Among the guests was a new member from the United States, Commander Albert E. Schrader (-Lauenau) from Batesville, Indiana. He was then the US military attaché in Berlin and later took part in the Battle of Pearl Harbour.

Then the Second World War descended like a curse upon Germany and, spreading from Germany, upon the whole of Europe, with repercussions also felt in other parts of the world. The result was a Europe with devastated countries and traumatised people. A human catastrophe of hitherto unimaginable proportions had irreversibly changed Germany, Europe and the whole world.