From: Karamurat, Constanza, Dobrudscha
8 March 1920

Worthy Staats-Anzeiger!

I would like to ask the editorship to kindly accept my few lines to the paper.

Perhaps my brother-in-law Johannes Schuck to whom I would have liked to have written a personal letter will read these lines. This I cannot do, since I don’t have his address.

We, who are still alive and healthy, thank God, but I don’t want to conceal our great misery. It was in the year 1916 on 7 August when my dear husband Joseph Bartsch and our two sons went to the war. It was very hard during that terrible time to be without a husband and being without help. But how great was my grief when every one returned home, only my husband and our youngest son did not. It cannot be described!

Now I am alone with my eight children. Our oldest son is also not with us. He fled to Bulgaria when the Rumanians returned. You cannot imagine how it looks and what is going on here. Everyone has been taking - the Russian military has been stealing, the German military has been taking, the Bulgarian military took along things, and finally the Rumanians took what the others had left behind. From all the crying, I was almost totally blind and had to let my eyes heal for a month. The pain has now eased, but I can only see faintly.

One has been hearing that the wives of the fallen soldiers are supposed to receive a pension, but up to now no one has received anything.

If brother-in-law Johannes Schuck gets to see these lines, I am asking him to write immediately.

With a friendly greeting,
Widow Margaretha Bartsch