Women's Portraits

Susanne Wellhäuser

Childhood and Youth

Suse, as she wants to be called, is born in 1924 in Ulm. Her family lives in Ulm since four generations. Her father is a watch-maker and Catholic, her mother a businesswoman and Protestant, The watchmaker’s shop is in the city but doesn’t realize enough profit. Therefore mother helps in her father’s paper shop that she’ll take over some years later.

Suse has a younger sister. She is highly talented for music but psychically ill. After the elementary school Suse is trained for technical design in a military school. She gets a job in a screw factory. She stays until after the war when she helps with removing the ruins.

Marriage and Family  

1948 Suse gets married with the postman Hugo Wellhäuser. They know each other from the association of Die Naturfreunde. Suse and Hugo have two daughters. Regina born 1950, Monika 1953. The family moves into their own house. Aunt Margret and the grandparents live with them. So for Suse it possible to carry on her job.

Suse remembers the family‘s trips on Sundays. They go on walking-tours and have picnics in the nature. Hugo has the talent to enthuse his daughters.

In the seventies Hugo is taken ill with cancer disease. Suse is his nurse until he dies in 1980. She falls into a deep depression and needs the help of a therapist. Later she joins a self-help group. As time goes by she feels better.

Active Aging

Suse gets into contact with a group of wanderers. She becomes a member. A new world opens. Equipped with rucksack, tent and a stool, she discovers the world on foot. The first journey leads to the North Cap, then to the mountains of Himalaya, China and North America follow. Last but no least she walks through the countries of Scandinavia. All these trips demand good feet.

Suse’s children have a special present for her eightieth birthday: a pick-a-back gliding flight. She becomes enthusiastic when she speaks about.

After her husband’s death she lives alone in her house for 29 years. Then daughter Regina and her son-in-law move in. They help their mother caring for the house. But Regina falls ill. Again Suse is responsible for her nursing. Daughter Regina dies in 2010. Mother Suse is suffering. She wishes her son-in-law will continue staying for a while.

Now 87 years old, Suse rides her bike and drives her car. She takes part in walking trips of four hours „only“. She reads passionately and is a member in an English conversation club.

What regards her own death, she hopes to be able to glide into Heaven and meet her husband. She has prepared the ceremony of her own buriel.

Erdmute Dietmann-Beckert und Barbara Heinze