I’ve already written about the mysterious story of my grandfather, and little by little, I continue searching for evidence about him. At the beginning of summer, I received scans of documents from the Aral District Archive in Kazakhstan, and just recently, I received copies of his personal file from the archive of Technikum Mittweida.

In Germany, institutions retain their archives indefinitely, without transferring them to regional or municipal archives. Thus, my grandfather’s personal file has been preserved in the Technical Institute of Mittweida in Saxony. This file contains many curious details.

First, it turns out that my grandfather only studied at the institute for one semester—in 1909. He received a transcript with grades for that semester and, for some reason, left the Technikum afterward. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop him from claiming in Soviet questionnaires that he had obtained a higher engineering education in Germany and even attaching his one-semester transcript as proof. Moreover, at Mittweida, he studied in the master’s department, not the engineering department. Therefore, his later role as the chief engineer at major machine-building plants was not directly tied to his education.

Even more intriguing is the fact that, according to various sources, my grandfather was connected with revolutionaries in Germany. It now turns out that in 1909, and specifically at Technikum Mittweida, a circle of revolutionary students from Russia was exposed. The Saxony State Archive contains several large files on the investigation of this circle's activities. I obtained copies of these files, but my grandfather is not mentioned in them.

I’ve also come across many 1909 documents about Russian students at Mittweida in the files of the Russian Consulate in Dresden, which are kept in the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire. However, there’s no information about my grandfather there either.

Curiously, a newspaper article about the revolutionary students’ case is attached to my grandfather’s personal file at the Technikum. While his name is not mentioned in the article, why was it included in his file? I’ll need to investigate further.