Erna Cornelia Thiel

1898 – 1983

Erna Thiel was the youngest daughter of Karl Thiel and the last of their three children born in Nylstroom. She was only 9 years old when the family moved to South West Africa. After completing her schooling in Windhoek Erna married Traugott Kuchenbecker in 1919 when she was 20. He came to South West Africa as a member of the medical corps of the German Schutztruppe.

After the First World War they moved to Germany where Traugott was a banker. Their four children were born in Berlin between 1920 and 1926. Erna and her children visited the family in South West Africa in the period before the Second World War. In 1943 their third son, Ernst Traugott Gottfried Kuchenbecker, passed away in Berlin at the age of only 18. After Traugott Kuchenbecker retired, he and Erna moved to South West Africa with two of their children, Johannes, the eldest and Cecilie, the youngest. Their second son, Hermann, stayed in Germany and later moved to München.

They spent their last years in Swakopmund where Traugott died in 1979 and Erna in 1983.