Exploring histories mysteries, one leaf at a time.
Anna Eva (Braun) Artz
1729-1783
Yes, you read that right. I am related to Eva Braun. Not the Eva Braun you might be thinking of but, the name got me thinking if maybe my Braun family was related to THAT Eva Braun’s family.
The Eva Braun in my family tree was actually born Anna Eva Braun on August 8, 1729 in Tulpehocken Township in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Although she was born Anna Eva, she went by Eva. She was the first of her family to be born in the United States of America. Her mother and father both emigrated to America from Germany in 1710. Her father, Johan Philip Braun, Sr. came to the United States, at the age of 13, with his family from Undenheim which is in the Rhineland-Palatinate state of Germany. Rhineland-Palatinate is located in the central, western portion of Germany close to the borders of Belgium and France. Eva Braun Hitler’s family was from Munich which is in Bavaria, located in the southeastern portion of Germany. Undenheim and Munich are separated by almost 200 miles. So, they are not from the same area, but families could move around in 200 years. As it turns out, Anna Eva’s mother, Elisabetha Magdalena Loesch was born in Hernsheim in Bavaria but she married into the Braun family and was not a Braun originally.
Anna Eva grew up in Berks County, married Jacob Artz and had five children, including twin boys. She died in the same town where she was born in 1783 at the age of 53. She died just before the end of the Revolutionary War.
By contrast Eva Braun Hitler was born in 1912 in Munich, Germany to Friedrich Otto Wilhelm Braun and Franziska Kronberger. She was the daughter of a teacher and a seamstress. She was raised Catholic and became a photographer. She met Adolf Hitler in 1929 while she was working for a photographer for the Nazi party. They were married in Berlin in April 1945 as the Soviet Army was closing in. They both committed suicide shortly after their marriage. Eva Braun Hitler was 33 years old at the time of her death.
Although there is a possibility that we are related at some point, it is a pretty slim one. Eva Braun Artz and Eva Braun Hitler may share a name, and both died near the end of a war, but other than that, they are so disconnected by time and space that any family connection would have been dissolved over 200 years ago when my portion of the Braun family left Germany to embark on a new life in America.