The Biography of Otto Friedrich Baltutt

Otto Friedrich Baltutt was born into the Germany of late 19th and early 20th century expansion. Just thirty years before, Bismarck had unified all Germans into one state, under the King of Prussia. Germany had a number of colonies in Africa and other places, and was a power to be reckoned with. Otto was too young to fight in World War I, but did experience the war's aftermath, a Germany stripped of its monarchy and its colonies, economically crippled, first by war reparations, and then by the worldwide Great Depression, which in Germany was particularly dire.

In all this turmoil Otto became a highly skilled master machinist, an occupation that later kept him out of immediate personal combat during World War II. He was an athletic and active young man who could see to his family's needs in many ways, including building toys, appliances, and boats.

Like many young German men during this period of economic difficulty, he delayed marrying until his economic prospects were more certain, and at the age of 30 found a wife in the person of Gertrud Jakumeit, 21 years old, also of his hometown Memel. Not long afterwards, Otto joined the German Army and served out a two year hitch. While serving in the Army, Otto and Gertrud moved to Gilgenburg, East Prussia, where Otto was posted. Here their first two daughters were born. After completing active service, Otto took a job as a machinist in an ammunition plant in Koenigsburg (the East Prussian capital), while moving his family to the city of Osterode, 120 km south of Koenigsburg, where their two youngest daughters were born.

Otto's family name was Baltuttis, but because of pressures in the Army he was induced to change his name to Baltutt, making it more German by removing the ending letters "-is". This was due to ethnic hostility; Otto was German, but names in the Lithuanian language typically end in "-is" or "-as", and there was a lot of ethnic friction between Germans and Lithuanians in East Prussia (the Memel area had in fact changed hands between Germans and Lithuanians multiple times over a span of centuries). Changing his name meant that his career in the the Army would be more successful, if he chose to remain. But he did not stay.

While his family lived in Osterode, Otto had to commute weekly to his place of work in Königsburg. He lived in Königsberg during the week, but on weekends he took the train to come home and be with his family. And so it continued until the end stages of the war, when the German Army began to retreat from the Red Army through East Prussia.

As Königsberg became threatened by Soviet forces, the factories were shut down and the workers sent home. Otto arrived back in Osterode just as the Soviets had broken through German forces 20 km south, in Tannenberg, just in time be reunited with his family. They immediately fled on a refugee train northwards, but had only made it to the town of Preußisch Holland (Prussian Holland in English), about 40 km from Osterode. They took shelter in this mostly empty town as Soviet combat forces blew through in their mad dash to the Baltic Sea.

Three weeks after their arrival in Preußisch Holland, the Soviet occupation forces began posting placards in German, instructing Germans to report to the commandant of the town to be registered; death was the punishment for failure to obey. Accordingly, Otto and Gertrud left their four little daughters, ages 4 through 10, alone in the house they had been sheltering in, and reported to the commandant's office. They never returned.

Gertrud was immediately shipped to the Soviet Union, and worked as a slave laborer, logging in the forests of the Ural Mountains for over three years before being returned to now Eastern (Communist) Germany. Otto was not immediately moved from Preußisch Holland. Some time after their parents vanished, the two older girls were able to visit with him briefly while he was laboring with a number of other prisoners, working on clearing up debris, with armed guards present. That was the last known sighting of him.

Eventually the German Red Cross, Hamburg Search Service, entered Otto on its Civilian Missing Person List as having been carried into the Soviet Union, but this appears to have been nothing more than an educated guess, since tens of thousands of Germans were handled in this way. The Red Cross continued to keep him on the Missing list until 1981, when they officially removed him, as no trace had ever been discovered. He was now, officially, presumed dead.

And that is the way it remains to this day, 27 December 2004. Given all that is known of Soviet treatment of prisoners, it is fairly certain that he did not live long in their custody.

---Michael L. Clark