Career
He was the paternal grandfather of German chancellor Angela Merkel, whose birth name Kasner is the Germanized version of Kaźmierczak that Ludwig Kasner adopted in 1930. In 2013, he received significant media attention, in Poland and Germany, after a new book shed light on Merkel"s family background. This was not only due to his being of Polish origin, but also because Kasner"s nephew provided a photograph of him in the uniform of the Blue Army (also known as Haller"s Army) which fought for Poland"s independence in the late stages of World War I. He was born out of wedlock to Ludwik Wojciechowski and Anna Kaźmierczak (1867–1943), ethnic Poles and citizens of the German Empire from Posen.
His mother was the daughter of Bartłomiej Kaźmierczak (born 1828) and Apolonia Bielejewicz (1826-1903).
The Kaźmierczak name derives from January Kaźmierczak, a Pole from the Poznan area who lived in the 18th century. During World War I, he was drafted into the German Army in 1915 and fought on the western front, before being taken as a prisoner of war in France.
He subsequently joined the Blue Army, a unit that fought for Polish independence on the side of the Entente Powers. However, it is not known, if he took part in any fighting against Germany.
Together with the army he returned to Poland to fight in the Polish-Ukrainian war and the Polish-Soviet war.
After returning from the war, he opted for German citizenship in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles and relocated to Berlin, the hometown of his fiancée Margarethe. He worked as a policeman in the Berlin Police, most recently in the Pankow district of Berlin, and was promoted twice, reaching the rank of Hauptwachtmeister (chief watch master, the most senior constable rank). The family Germanized their family name from Kaźmierczak to Kasner in 1930.
They still kept in contact with the Polish side of the family, visiting them in Poznan several times in the 1930s as well as receiving visits in Berlin by Polish relatives.
Despite the name change, Ludwig Kasner"s nephew Zygmunt Rychlicki said he always stayed true to his Polish roots.
