Bridge Builder Vorndran

I got to know my grandfather Johann Vorndran in 1945 in the Hochtief barracks in Walldorf/Hesse when want and misery reigned everywhere in Germany. He didn’t tell much about his life in Turkey. Only occasionally did he speak Turkish with his wife Minna when he did not want us children to understand them. It was only later that I became interested in his life and that of our family. That so many documents had been preserved was a stroke of fortune. During my research, I benefited from the fact that I myself went to school in Istanbul for four years and later remained connected to Turkey both professionally and privately. The country and language are very familiar to me.

Our grandfather and his family had twice left for Turkey to seek their fortune. When he “screwed” the Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn for the first time in 1911, he got to know Ottoman Constantinople. On his second move there in the autumn of 1924, he experienced the up-and-coming metropolis of Istanbul under Atatürk. During the construction of bridges in remote regions of Anatolia, he got to know the old Turkish culture. The world wars twice ended his stays in Turkey, which had become his home. When he returned to Germany, he was a German foreigner in his native country.

As the work on the “Bridge Builder” progressed, I realized that the fates of his sons Hans and Willy, who were born in Constantinople, grew up there and spent substantial parts of their professional lives in Turkey, had to be included. And because life in Turkey had such a strong influence on us siblings in the third generation, a family history became inevitable. I have tried to place the life and circumstances of the family as described into a historical context in order to make them understandable for those of us who live today. It was important for me to recall the suffering and misery that National Socialism brought to countless people through its dictatorship and the criminal wars it conducted.