Knatz family members fought on both sides of the war. Below is a picture of a photo postcard that shows the soldiers from Niedenstein in September 1914. Standing in the back row, second from the left is Johannes Knatz. Standing on the far left is Ludwig Knatz. Both soldiers survived WWI. Ludwig Knatz and his wife and daughter were killed in the allied bombing of the city of Kassel in WWII.
SOLDIERS FROM NIEDENSTEIN IN WORLD WAR I
A KNATZ WWI MEMORIAL TREE IN BROOKLYN
This is a picture of a curved plaque made to honor Frederick G. Knatz who was lost in the Battle of the Marne in 1918. The plaque was placed on a tree in front of the Knatz house in Brooklyn. If you look at the Walking Brooklyn website, you can see that using trees as memorials was something pretty common in WWI, although the Knatz memorial is the only one that I know that was curved and placed right on the tree. I imagine this was because families in WWI had nothing to bury. The plaque is now with the Fred Knatz family in northern New Jersey (Demarest). A temporary cemetery was established near Belleau Wood for the soldiers killed in this battle and in 1921 the US Congress authorized retention of this site as one of the eight WWI military cemeteries on foreign soil. Today is it known as the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau. The cemetery contains the graves of 2290 american soldiers killed in the Battle of the Marne while the chapel contains the names of 1060 (the Tablets of the Missing) who are resting in unknown graves. In fact, Frederick was officially classified as missing in action. He name can be found on the tablets of the missing.
The inscription on the plaque that was on the tree in Brooklyn reads
SGT FREDICK G. KNATZ
BATTERY G
10 FIELD ARTILLERY
DIED JULY 16, 1918
BATTLE OF THE MARNE
Frederick G. Knatz was born on October 23, 1896 in New York City. He is the son of Jacob Knatz (my grandfather’s brother) and Kate Hill. He is my Dad’s cousin. Fred entered the service as a private on May 14, 1915. He was promoted to a Sergeant on August 1, 1917. He departed for Europe on April 23, 1918 from Hoboken New Jersey on the troop ship Tenadores as part of Battery C, of 101st Field Artillery Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division. Here he is as a young boy and a soldier.