Edeltraut Elfriede Hattenbach

If you are going to throw away a bit of yarn, don’t. We were blessed to learn many valuable lessons from Oma during her 93 years, among them: even the smallest bits of yarn can make the most beautiful things with some ingenuity and resourcefulness. Also, one should never forget that with love and care the simplest of ingredients can make the most incredible food. But, her greatest lesson of all might have been that the impossible is possible, when we try.

It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that we announce the passing of our beloved Mutti and Oma, Edeltraut Elfriede Hattenbach (nee Kempf). Edeltraut entered eternal life on Monday, December 25, 2023 with the moon full and a lunar halo visible. Quite a send off and welcome home for our family angel. Her spirit is carried on by her three children Friedelgunde aka Gundie (Ken) Volk, Reinhild Howarth, and Fred Hattenbach; her grandchildren Verity Howarth (Michael Nelson), Annie Howarth (Richard Normand), Marte Volk, Carolynn (Chris) Keating, Megan (Michael) Taylor, Rob (Amber) Howarth; her great-grandchildren Connor, Jacob, Jude, Vallen, Jessica, Lochlan, Ledger, Avery, Nola, Fenton, Hope, Anna, Johnny, and James; her sister-in-law Alicia Kempf and Regina Pittelkau as well as cousins (Inge, Karl, Erika in Germany) and many nieces and nephews. Edeltraut was predeceased by her parents Paul Kempf and Martha (wid. Alfred) Starkowske, her husband Ernst, her brothers Richard, Arthur (m. Edith) and Erhard, a dear cousin Günter Pittelkau who was like a brother, and her son in law Garry Miller.

Edeltraut was born July 31, 1930, in Brühlsdorf, Poland. She was born into a very different world, travel was by horse and carriage and visits to her grandparents to listen to the tube radio was a treat. Like many children caught up in WWII and its aftermath, much of her childhood and early adulthood were marked with fear, pain, hard labour and grief. She demonstrated incredible resilience throughout her life and survived countless hardships with tenacity, determination, and sheer grit. Her family was relocated by the Soviet Union and abandoned in a community that did not want them so as a teenager she gave a resounding, passionate, and powerful speech leading people to take them in and help them. She fought at every turn to make the lives better for her family. After two attempts, and while pregnant, she led her children on a daring escape from East Germany. While she had no idea whether her husband would also make it, her incredible plan, undertaken with exceptional bravery, worked and they were reunited in a refugee camp within days.

Thanks to family, friends, and the Solmer family, in 1961 Edeltraut and her family arrived in Canada and settled in East Kelowna. This new beginning included learning a multitude of skills, including work as an orchardist. Through their lives Edeltraut and Ernst were engaged in the East Kelowna community, the BC Tree Fruit Co Operative, the German Canadian Harmonie Club, and the First Lutheran Church. Their lives were enriched as their family grew, and life flourished - filled with love, laughter, music, homemade liqueurs, and incredible food.

Edeltraut was renowned for her baking. An event was never complete without a banquet of tortes, cakes, or squares not to mention the Christmas stollen, rumballs, nussecken, and vanillekipferi. All her baking was divine and everything she baked rivalled the worlds’ best. She spent countless hours painstakingly perfecting her craft and passing it on to her family. This past summer, as she turned 93, she stood watch and directed while her family helped to make some of their favourites – generations of apprentices who are richer for every moment of teaching she provided.

Throughout her life you could be sure that Edeltraut had knitting needles and at least one ball of yarn with her wherever she went. The gentle clicking of her needles was a sound you could always count on. No one met her or stopped in to visit without leaving with spectacular creations for themselves and their loved ones. Over the years she won numerous awards for her knitting. Edeltraut’s dedication to her craft and its quality was unwavering. She enjoyed sitting with family and friends knitting, and she passed on her love for the arts to those that she loved and cared for.

Edeltraut lived a long and full life. She reunited with her family in heaven peacefully and with family by her side. While we can never fill the hole left by the loss of our centre, our family pillar, our matriarch, the influence of our incredible, strong, independent, courageous, loving Mutti, Oma, Tante, and friend will live on forever.