The Broomcorn Express, Quarterly Publication of the Broomfield Historical Society
Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2025
BY FRED MARTIN
The Broomfield Historical Society sponsored a special presentation on the 200-year history that led to the Wottge open space. Mayor Guyleen Castriotta said,
“Broomfield, Colorado has been built by pioneers, historic visionaries, veterans, farmers, ranchers, and more recently, technologists. Among our important agrarian pioneers is the Wottge-Stonehocker family. Their story is an amazing journey from a 200-year family farm in Germany, the loss of that farm and family fortunes in World War II, forced migration through the ruins of post-war Germany, and their courageous resettlement in America; in Broomfield. They made a new start in a strange land as farm laborers until they could again build a family farm that has become the Broomfield-Wottge open space at 144th and Sheridan. Now Broomfield enjoys this recreational resource, wildlife preserve, and open landscape. With much pride, we thank the Wottge family—Ben Wottge, and sister Rose Stonehocker, who lived this heroic history.”
At the end of World War II, after the horrific crimes of Nazi Germany, there was a mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from homelands annexed to Poland, which has been chronicled in documentaries by National Geographic, Britannica, and others investigating this period of forced migration of enormous scale and tremendous human cost. Future Broomfield family, Alfons and Klara Wottge and five children, including Ben and Rose, lived this history.
For over two hundred years, the Wottges lived a stable and reliable family life on their farm: about the same length of time Americans have enjoyed the freedoms and stability of democracy. Then, suddenly, it all changed. People with longstanding traditions and loyalty to their homeland were subsumed by radical political change they did not believe in or support. Despots and their followers sowed division and fear-of-the-other. Society was splintered. The Wottges then lived through the upheaval of World War II. The Normandy D-Day was about to occur, beginning the Allied sweep through Europe into Germany. Russian forces were pressing in from the east. After Nazi depredations in their invasion of Russia, Russian soldiers were brutal to German soldiers and civilians alike. The Wottges were surrounded by combat in the final months of the war as Russian troops pillaged the countryside. The family patriarch, Alfons Wottge, who later started the Broomfield farm, was drawn into the war. A neighbor in their small village of Rathmannsdorf reported to the authorities that Alfons was not flying the Nazi flag, nor was he participating in party activities. Alfons was subsequently drafted into the German Army in December, 1943, and sent to the brutal Russian front.
While Alfons was away, war closed in on the family. Ottmachau, a few miles to the northeast was bombed. Fires lit up the night sky. On February 13 came the Allied firebombing of Dresden, west of Rathmannsdorf, with 80,000 killed. The family was threatened by patrolling fighter planes. In these last months of the war, with the Luftwaffe suppressed, American fighter bombers were roaming the countryside seeking targets of opportunity. At times they dropped leaflets warning people where bombs would be dropped. Yet, unleashing their firepower was just as common. Trucks, trains, barns, and farmhouses might be hiding retreating Nazi troops and were considered fair game for the Allied pilots.
Fearing the low-flying fighter planes, the family left the farm in March, 1945, on hay wagons to nearby towns. In the evenings they returned on bicycles to take care of the animals and gardens, but they had to leave again by morning, fearing the fighters. By the end of April, they returned home to the farm, but just as they started to get back into daily routines, the front again moved closer. Every day the “Stalin Organ” (what they called the Russian cannons and guns) came nearer. On May 9 they had to leave again, fearing the Russians. They headed into the hills and in the evening stopped, not knowing what to do. A farmer came and said “You can’t just stand there. If you are satisfied with the barn, come with me. The house is already full of other refugees.”
The next day, the Russians came. The farmer offered them a very small room saying, “Come, you can no longer stay in the barn.” In this room lay 15 people on the floor, packed like herrings. During that night the Russians molested and harassed the women in the house. They beat hard on the door with their rifle butts but did not break down the door. The family prayed. Klara cried, saying, “If they get in, they will trample the children.” They felt the guardian angels watched over them that night. The next day, propaganda fliers and Hitler pictures were floating in the river. Silver crosses were given by the Nazi government to a mother after the birth of her 6th child. The mothers threw them in the river so the Russians would not find them. They spent two nights in that small room. The next afternoon they began the trek back to Rathmannsdorf. Now it seemed it was over and there would be a new beginning. But that was not to be. The next day, Russian and Polish hoodlums came and took everything they could use: food, clothing, sewing machines, farm machinery. The plundering lasted three weeks.
In late April, the Reichstag in Berlin was overrun by Russian troops, Hitler commited suicide and Germany surrendered May 8. War in Europe ended, but the Wottge’s tribulations were just beginning. At war’s end, Germany was cut up into occupation zones. Stalin along with the allies, with little consultation with Poland and likely almost none with the defeated Germans, made a deal to partition a 200-mile section of east Germany to Poland. The Wottge farm was now in Poland.
Then came a big group of Poles—every one picked a farm and took possession of the property. The Poles confined the Wottge family to two rooms in their own home. On August 18, 1945, Alfons Wottge arrived home and found a 17 person Polish family had taken over the house. It had taken Alfons many weeks to get home from the war. On May 4, he was taken prisoner by the Americans and not released until June 16. He was taken by truck to the Russian Army border, but he had walked the rest of the way home.
September 2, 1945, happened to be the day the Japanese signed their unconditional surrender on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, finally ending World War II. It was on a late summer Sunday. The Wottges, still living as guests in their own home, were at church. When they came out, notices had been posted that all Germans must be out of Rathmannsdorf that day by 4pm. The Poles had stolen their car, tractor, wagons, even carts. There was nothing left with wheels. They walked away only with what they could carry, without a destination in mind, part of a great migration of thousands of East German refugees.
During this time, they survived by begging. They were also expected to help clean up the burned rubble and bombed building debris with shovels and wheel barrows. Alfons was forced into service as a mechanic because the Poles did not know how to use the diesel farm machinery they had stolen from them.
After many months of this, Alfons learned of the last train scheduled to carry refugees to western Germany. In the general perception of World War II German history, loading people into cattle boxcars is a frightening icon of the Holocaust. Yet these were post-war refugees traveling west. Still, the travel conditions were no better. At the designated boarding area they were plundered and robbed again, then loaded into boxcars with 25 to 30 people and headed west. The train stopped often in open areas. In Marienborn they were deloused and given their first food to eat. Very hungry, some overstuffed themselves and many vomited, their bellies not used to food. They were on the train several days, arriving in West Germany June 2, 1946, and given shelter in a hunting lodge, sleeping on straw where many other refugees before them had lain. The next day wagons took the Wottges to a farm near Adenstedt. From 1946 to 1952, Alfons found work on the German railroad operating track gates while the family worked on a farm. Klara and the children worked in the fields.
German people displaced from their homes after the war ended in 1945.
The cursory history most hear about post-war Germany is that the Allies liberated everyone and then they lived happily ever after. But life was very difficult in post-war Germany. Forty percent of homes had been destroyed. The ruined European economy could not absorb these huge, displaced populations, so humanitarian organizations looked to the United States as the site of new homes for the refugees.
It was in church that Alfons and Klara heard of the Catholic War Relief Services. US bishops played a role in this process of resettlement, working with the US government on a public relations campaign to persuade lay Catholics to open their communities to refugees. This is how Alfons and Klara Wottge were able to plan the family’s migration to America. They had captured the dream of finding a new life in America. They began a laborious application process with other families. The process was so difficult that the other families gave up, but Alfons said, “We’re not on a boat yet!” So Alfons and Klara persevered. At last, Catholic relief services provided passage to the port of Bremerhaven and they boarded the USS General C.C. Ballou. The Ballou was built and outfitted as a troop ship. After the war she served around the world in refugee relocations and made a number of trips between Bremerhaven and New York. The voyage lasted ten days.
They arrived in America June 10, 1952. Along with so many thousands of others, the Wottge family sailed past the lady, who is, as Emma Lazarus wrote, “A mighty woman with a torch whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name: Mother of Exiles.” Perhaps, in our modern contentious politics we should be re-inspired by her words that are a foundational principle of America and that for the Wottge family was lived experience:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Before departure from Germany, they had to secure work in America, but it was not until processing in New York that they discovered they were headed to Colorado. There was no delay in New York; two days later they arrived by train in Denver, then by bus to Ft. Collins. They were met by rancher Floyd Combs who put them on his cattle truck and headed north past La Porte, past the first foothills near the Wyoming border, where there was a small house in the middle of nowhere. That was their first home in America. In those days, up the dirt roads into those dryland, hardscrabble foothills, it looked nothing like the green fields back home in Germany. The family were not yet proficient in English. There was serious consideration given to finding a way back to New York. The General Ballou was likely still in port there. Could they get train tickets? Hitchhike? It was unimaginable disappointment bordering on despair that Alfons and Klara turned into determination to survive and succeed as strangers in this strange new land.
Alfons went to work as a farm laborer on this ranch that raised crops and had a dairy farm for a salary of $125 per month. Klara and the children also worked on the farm. Rose tells of having to dig fence post holes with tuna cans. They had no idea where they were, what schools might be available, or how to get to the nearest town, Ft. Collins, about 18 miles away. On a Sunday morning, Klara and Rose, 16 at the time, hitched a ride with a milk truck to Ft. Collins and found the Catholic church. They met some helpful people and were introduced to a farmer from south of Ft. Collins, Mr. Fatz, who spoke some German. He advised that they could not stay at the Combs place since there would be no way the children would get to school during the winter; they would be snowed in. So, he assisted the family in getting a new job on a farm about four miles south of Ft. Collins. Rose worked for a priest’s family for a dollar per day.
Wealth and success are common in America, but what is most admirable, and more rare in history, are self-made people, especially those who have recovered from near-total loss. The Wottges lost that 200-year farm in Germany, then survived terrible years in post-war Germany, then migrated to Colorado as farm laborers, which isn’t exactly a get-rich-quick scheme. Just four years after arriving in this new country, Alfons and Klara mustered the down payment for a Broomfield farm. All five children pitched in. Rose recalls the negotiations. There was no help from the government, no grants, and they couldn’t afford feed. Banks turned them down and were telling them, “That’s dry land, there’s not enough water for livestock. And, you’re not citizens.” Rose tells the charming story that her father Alfons had dropped a nickel in the collection plate at church and then entered the expenditure in his financial ledger. A third banker was impressed with that level of accounting detail and decided Alfons knew how to manage money. The farm was 80 acres costing 23,000 dollars.
When they bought the farm, there was no Broomfield. There was a whistle-stop train depot called Zang’s Spur, with grain elevators and the Grange Hall that is still here. 144th was a dirt road, as was Lowell. Sheridan came much later in the future. The farm had a couple of horses and a milk cow. To make a living on the farm, they had to start a dairy. So, in 1956, with a loan from the Farmers Home Administration, they bought 28 milk cows. By doing water-witching they located a stream about 80 feet deep and found sufficient water to run a dairy farm. They became quite successful, ending up with about 60 head of cattle, 40 milk cows, and 20 yearlings of cattle on average. It was not easy, but with the whole family working together, they overcame the obstacles.
The family has made two pilgrimages back to the old homeplace in Rathmannsdorf. What an evocative experience this must have been for them! They met and dined with the descendants of the Polish family that took their house and evicted them. An elderly woman was a young girl in World War II and remembered them. She cried with feelings of remorse when she met the Wottges.
Alfons and Klara achieved their dream of regaining self-sufficiency with the Broomfield Farm, raising the children in the three-bedroom farm house. They retired comfortably to a home they built in Thornton. Rose married Walt Stonehocker, known in Adams County farming history, and had seven children. She worked for CF&I, and with Walt, farmed in the Northglenn area until the city bought their farm, after which they purchased a farm in the Brighton area where Rose still lives. They also purchased a ranch near Granby where their kids and 17 grandchildren love to work and play.
Ben has four kids. He worked for Power Equipment Company for 44 years as a construction machinery mechanic and supervisor until retirement. Now he and Pam live on four acres of the original farm in Broomfield. Brother Konrad lived and worked on the farm, working part time for the railroad. He graduated from CU Boulder, has worked in oil and gas engineering throughout the world, and is currently living in Ecuador. He has five children. Ursula and her sister Renate left together for California. They stopped in Las Vegas, where Ursula remained for 50 years. She raised two sons, worked in the hotel industry, and then became a stock investment wizard and a happy dog caretaker. Renate became a US citizen in 1960. She married Gary Burkett, an Air Force veteran, and worked for Xerox Corporation. They had two daughters and four grandchildren and live in southern California.
For twenty years, Ben and Pam fostered children with Boulder County. From 1992 to 2012 they had 147 placements from newborns to preteens. That’s a lot of children to care for in your home. The farm was a wonderful place for these kids to be cared for. Josiah, their first foster child, they adopted.
So, consider how many lives this immigrant family, who were driven from their home in Germany, then came to America for a new life, have impacted and bettered in our city, county and nation. The Wottge name is now on this new land because of all these journeys of Klara and Alfons, Ben and Rose, and family. It’s now a permanent part of Broomfield’s heritage with this open space under development for everyone.
Fred Martin provides WWII aviation presentations to museums and civic groups at no cost. Visit his website: FredTMartin.com
Read also “A Short History Of the Open Space of Broomfield,” by Annie Lessem in the Broomcorn Express.