Irmgard Hertzog
1926 – 2016
Irmgard Hertzog, 89, of Huntsville, Alabama, passed away August 20, 2016. She was born in Gangkofen, Germany, on New Year's Eve, 1926, to Ludwig Seeanner of Vilsbiburg, and Irene Furst of Vilshofen, both in Bavaria, Germany. The youngest of three sisters, the first died at age two, followed by Hilda, and last came Irm. Music was an important part of her life from the very beginning. Her father was a gifted musician, a vocalist and organist who once performed in St Stephens Cathedral in Passau, which contains the largest pipe organ in Europe. Irm learned to play the piano at an early age. Her summers were spent with cousins at an ancestral country estate near Vilshofen named Frauendorf, a property that had been in the family since the 1700s. The success and expansion of Frauendorf were attributable to the work of her great, great grandfather, a noted Bavarian agronomist, writer, and educator who had gained fame promoting modernization of farming methods, benefiting all farmers of the region.
Irm's family relocated to Friedberg in 1934, shortly after the untimely death of her father, to the home of her aunt and uncle. It was at this point that she was encouraged by her music teacher to take up the violin. In 1944 an allied bomb forced the now extended family to move yet again, to Neunburg vorm Wald, near the German/Czech border. There she met her future husband, Frank Sherman Hertzog, a young officer who was part of the occupation forces of the U.S. Army at the close of World War II. She first saw him riding across the fields on horseback at sunset. When orders sent him back home after the war, patience was required, and creativity, to accomplish a reunion. Finally, on October 22, 1949, Irmgard and Frank married in St Bonifatius Church in Bad Nauheim, Germany. Along with a new husband, came a new citizenship and a new country. Not only that, the Immigration Officer insisted she have a new name. She chose “Jeanne” on the spot. A son, Frank Allen, came along the following September. While Jeanne was learning the ropes as a wife and mother in the States, her husband was busy with graduate studies and a full-time job. Then he was shipped overseas to the Korean War, leaving her to wonder if she would become a “war widow”. Throughout the first half of their marriage, they had military assignments across the country as well as back to Germany, with two more children, Michael Scott and Linda Karen along the way. Jeanne was always hard at work turning her house into a home. She loved gardening, cooking, needlepoint, knitting, and reading; but especially children. Roses were a particular interest, passed on from her great grandfather who was a horticulturalist and rosarian. Her own passions fostered lifelong loves of music, reading, and gardening in her children. After years of moving with the military, she was grateful to finally get her own home upon Frank's retirement in Huntsville, Alabama in 1975. Other pursuits during her almost 50 years in living there included a German club and Officers Christian Fellowship Bible study.
Jeanne is predeceased by her sister, Hilda, husband, Frank (just 5 days prior), and son, Frank Allen. She is survived by two children, Mike Hertzog (Mary Anne) of Signal Mountain, TN, Linda Jernigan (Randy) of Durango, CO, daughter in law Debbie Hertzog of Boise, ID, as well as her eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
She will be remembered for her devotion to her children and family, a love for music, for nature's beauty, and a desire to cultivate that beauty wherever she was planted.
She will be buried with her husband at the Chattanooga Military Cemetery on September 23, service from 2-3:00 PM.
Arrangements are by the East Chapel of Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory and Florist, 404 South Moore Road.
Please share your thoughts and memories at www.ChattanoogaEastChapel.com.
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Obituary for Irmgard Hertzog
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