The Little Silver Spoons by Henry P. Kramer

        The little silver spoons with gilded shell shaped bowls have interlaced letters "A", "O", "P" inscribed on the handles. The letter A stands for Anna, the letter P for Philip and the letter O for Oppenheim. Anna Oppenheim was my maternal grandmother, the mother of Helene Elisabeth Kramer (nee Oppenheim). Grandmother Annie was born Philip and came from the city of Duisburg, a river port at the confluence of the Ruhr and the Rhein. The Philip family owned a prosperous bank in the district of Ruhrort, site of the largest inland harbor in Europe. These little spoons were clearly part of Annie's dowry. On the inside of the handle there is raised an inscription of 800. To the best of my knowledge this indicates that the silver is 800/1000 pure.
        Annie's mother, Dorothea Philip, was born in a little town in Westphalia named Brakel. Her father was a miller and owned a grain mill powered by a big water wheel on the river. His name was Sundheim. My paternal grandfather, Hugo Kramer, was originally from Brakel but as an adult settled in a town in Thuringia called Greitz where he was a partner in a textile mill. However, Hugo Kramer married Frederike Dalberg from Brakel. She was my grandmother Riekchen. And thus there was a connection with the little city of Brakel in Westphalia and both the families Oppenheim and Kramer. It was through that connection that my parents, Helene Elisabeth Oppenheim and my father Friedrich Kramer met. I believe that distant relatives named Lewy in Berlin introduced them. Little children called all relatives, no matter how distant, of a certain age either aunt or uncle. I remember my uncle Lewy. He knew magical card tricks and promised to show me one when I became ten. But, to my everlasting disappointment, I never saw him again.
        My uncle Julius Oppenheim, who died in 1997 in Jerusalem told me about visiting in Brakel with his father, Paul Oppenheim and his mother Annie to look at the old Sundheim mill after the first world war in 1923.
        Several of Annie's silver pieces have the shell motif. For example, we have a silver shell shaped cookie server. This is part of a tea set. My brother has the teapot and sugar and cream servers. I don't know whether it is because Annie was particularly fond of that motif or whether she adopted it in honor of her husband Paul who was a noted paleontologist and collector of fossilized seashells.
I knew the Lehman family who were related to the Philips and also lived in Duisburg. After the Nazi policies against Jews came into effect the Lehmanns moved to France and established a vineyard near Bordeaux. My brother Stephen visited them after the Second World War and spent time on their vineyard.
        Grandfather Paul was born in 1860. He was in his thirties when he married Annie who was only sixteen years old then. I think that they married in 1892. My mother Helene Elisabeth was born in 1896 and she was the second child of three. So the spoons are somewhat over one hundred years old.