About Uwe
He emigrated to Canada in 1959 and quickly began working in what became his life-long career in the automotive industry as a mechanic, repair shop owner and then dealership owner selling Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Audi and Hyundai.
Uwe retired in 1999 and went to serve on various community boards. He was elected twice as the president of the Medicine Hat Rotary Club. He joined the Medicine Hat Genealogical Society in 2001, serving as president for three years, and developed obituary software used by the society.
He started to develop Kartenmeister.com in 1995 and made it available to the public on March 31, 2001. In the process, Uwe acquired a sizable collection of German maps and gained familiarity with old German script, Polish and Russian.
Kartenmeister is used extensively by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. He is not associated with the church.
In his free time he is building Free Mini Libraries, which are sold by the local library as fundraiser. He also is building birdhouses for local distribution and initiated a Books on Buses system. It makes surplus books available to the patrons of the public transportation system. Uwe also distributes books to the local Women’s Shelter, Food Bank, Tourist Office and Camp Ground.
He was awarded the Environmental Award for the City of Medicine Hat twice.
Uwe does most of business on his bicycle, plays golf and walks his nine holes pulling his cart behind him. He has been married for almost 60 years to Anke, and has two daughters and 5 grandchildren.
About his presentation: Kartenmeister
Kartenmeister is the most comprehensive database of its kind in the world with 108,246 locations along with their name changes where relevant.
All locations are east of the Oder and Neisse rivers and are based on the borders of the eastern German provinces in spring 1918. Covered are: East Prussia, including Memel; West Prussia; Brandenburg; Posen; Pomerania; and Silesia. It currently list most towns or points, points being: Mills, some bridges, battlefields, named trees, cenotaphs etc.
Uwe will give us a thorough presentation of Kartenmeister.com. Afterward, you will be able to decipher, with the few letters on your paperwork of any kind, the location(s) your ancestors came from.
