Left to Right: Nellie’s youngest son Ernst, Else Lasch, Nellie’s daughters, Sophie and Elizabeth, Nellie’s eldest son Charles, and Edouard (seated). Photo taken in 1902.
EDOUARD RABENECK, BORN 1858
FLIGHT FROM THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
This is an autobiographical account of the life of Edouard Rabeneck, who worked in his family’s large cotton spinning, weaving and printing works. in 1918 he and his family fled to Finland to escape the early stages of the Russian Revolution. He explains that they had to escape secretly, because there was the danger of being detained or arrested for not having paid taxes, which were so high that it was impossible to pay them, or being detained or arrested by the workers’ committees. He describes how by 1929 he had: “Given up any hope that there could be a change in Russia during our lifetime, allowing us to go back and manage our business; a business in which the fourth generation of our family was working, dreaming of celebrating the 100th year jubilee in 1932, and into which we put so much pain and work in the hope of leaving it to our descendants.” The appendix is a separate article which describes the way in which, during the First World War, the Rabeneck factory was drawn into the production of poison gas as a weapon of war.
Source: Contributed in 2022 by Andrew Rabeneck, Edouard Rabeneck’s great grandson.