Honoring My Creative Ancestors and Living Artist Relatives

Tante Dorle looking out at the Elbe from her porch. This image was on a card sent by her immediate family to honor her death.

​Honoring Doris Waschk Balz, Sculptor
I was so sorry to hear that Doris Waschk-Balz, my German cousin, an artist and sculptor, died in May 2025. Hearing this news, I felt especially grateful that my sisters and I had the chance to visit her, along with many of our other German relatives, last spring. We took our mother with us, rented an Airbnb in Hamburg, and mostly just spent time catching up with one another. Or really, my sisters and I listened as our mother, her three sisters, and her brother shared memories and reconnected.
The house we rented had a lovely garden, with doors that opened onto a bright green lawn. Every day, the weather was beautiful. The focus of the trip was to be with family; to celebrate each other and listen to the stories our mother and her siblings told.
Since Dorle (our nickname for Doris Waschk-Balz) lived in Hamburg, we were able to visit her and her husband, Klaus Waschk, also an artist, in their home on Övelgönne. Övelgönne is a tree-lined path along the Elbe River, dotted with fish restaurants built on piers directly over the water. Dorle and Klaus’s home could only be reached by walking along a footpath, which makes access difficult—especially for older residents—as there’s no way for an ambulance to reach the house.
We sat with them on their porch, enjoying an apple tart Klaus had made and a chocolate cake baked by Dorle. It reminded me of my student days. I visited them often during my junior year studying in Hamburg, and I came to love the tradition of Kaffeestunde, a daily pause around 4 p.m. for coffee and cake. I think I gained ten pounds that year!
During our visit, Dorle gave us a tour of her basement, where she stored many of her sculptures; models for outdoor pieces that can still be found throughout Hamburg and other German cities. She had recently closed her studio, no longer feeling well enough to use it regularly. I posted some photos from that visit last year, and here they are again.

​A Brief Bio
Doris Waschk-Balz was a German sculptor. She began her education at the Stuttgart Academy under U. Günther and R. Daudert. From 1964–68, she continued her studies at the Hamburg Academy under Gustav Seitz. In the early 1990s, she began working with ceramics, later combining drawing and sculpture. She created numerous public works, including the fountain at Großneumarkt in Hamburg and the memorial to the former synagogue on Oberstraße. She lived and worked in Hamburg until her death in May 2025.
A Long Line of Artistic Ancestors
Dorle came from a long line of artists. All her siblings were artists in one form or another. Her father, Ernst Balz, was a sculptor and the brother of my grandmother, Annemarie Balz Nestele. Her mother, Doris Gerstel Balz, was a potter. Wilhelm Gerstel, her maternal grandfather, taught Ernst Balz sculpture.
I found images of some of their work, which I’ve shared below; pieces by Dorle and her grandfather Wilhelm Gerstel. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any photos of Ernst Balz’s sculptures, though I did find an image of him. Growing up, my mother often spoke about her artistic cousins. While she was also very creative, she never felt she could match the level of artistry in Dorle’s family. For her, creativity was more a way of living, a way of enhancing daily life, rather than something separate, done in a studio.

My great-uncle Ernst Balz.

​Interviewing My Mother
A few years ago, I decided to interview my mother about her experience growing up in wartime Germany and later immigrating to the U.S. alone to work as a Kindermädchen (governess). In the process, I spoke with my uncle, Wolf Nestele, who asked if I had ever heard of Frederika von Hauffe, a distant relative, probably five or six generations back. My great-grandmother, Mathilde Hauffe, descended from von Hauffe’s husband.
Von Hauffe wasn’t an artist, but a seeress. She created “automatic drawings” that are strikingly beautiful and could easily be viewed as art. I’ll be sharing more about her in an upcoming presentation. Her story is a rich and unusual one. Much of her short life was spent bedridden due to illness. She was written about by her doctor, Justinus Kerner, in his book The Seeress of Prevorst: Being Revelations Concerning the Inner-Life of Man, and the Inter-Diffusion of a World of Spirits in the One We Inhabit. More recently, John DeSalvo wrote The Seeress of Prevorst: Her Secret Language and Prophecies from the Spirit World.
Here is one of her automatic drawings, which she called a “Sun Circle”—though she imagined it as a three-dimensional sphere.

A Sun Circle by Frederika von Hauffe. With these circles, she tracked her daily experiences. Outside the ring are external experiences. Inside the ring are internal experiences. As one draws closer to the center, one is closer to profound oneness. Only a very few live from this place, she said.

​My Mother’s Quiet Creativity
My mother, Ursula Nestele, doesn’t consider herself an artist, yet she’s a masterful watercolorist (at least in my eyes). Watercolor is notoriously difficult to control, and she approaches it with a light and intuitive touch.
Her creativity infused our childhood. Though we didn’t have much money, she found ways to make everything fun and imaginative; whether through cooking, simple sewing, painting, singing, or playing with clay. She brought play and magic into everyday moments. When we were sick or injured, she would tuck her thumb under her pointer finger to make a little face that could “talk” to us and cheer us up. She sewed most of our clothes, decorated our plates and cups, made our curtains, and cooked nearly everything from scratch.
I especially remember baking pies with her. She’d give each of us a tiny tin to make our own little pie alongside hers. We were barely tall enough to see over the counter, but the experience felt magical.

​Stories That Shaped Me
It took me a long time to make the (obvious) connection between the fairy and folk tales my mother read to us and the art I make now. I still have some of those original books, a treasured legacy of being lulled to sleep by magical, haunting, and sometimes frightening stories.
She read us the original Grimm’s fairy tales—not the sanitized Disney versions. In those stories, evil is punished (often violently), and sometimes even the innocent suffer. In Snow White, the evil queen is forced to dance in red-hot shoes until she dies. In Struwwelpeter, a boy has his thumbs cut off for sucking them. Max and Moritz, after one too many mischievous pranks, are ground into flour and fed to ducks.
As a child, I instinctively understood the stories’ logic and deeper truths. Children often grasp the emotional reality of such tales better than adults do. These stories inspired me and my sisters to create and act out our own tales, draw cartoons, and imagine magical worlds all around us.
What Comes Next: Embroidered Images, Dolls, and More
Right now, I’m working on a few other projects in my studio, but soon I’d like to start a series of embroidered images, and maybe dolls, based on my German artist lineage. I’m interested in how my mother, her mother, and their foremothers lived creatively and resourcefully. They didn’t shop for toys or ready-made food; they made them. They knew how to entertain themselves. I want to capture that world in embroidered panels and perhaps dolls as well.
I’m also intrigued by the supernatural lineage of Frederika von Hauffe and hope to explore her world in my work. Stay tuned.
At the moment, I’m deep into a piece called The Loathly Lady—a fairy-tale-like character who’s been quite demanding. She keeps asking for more details, more stars, more layers of meaning. I’m currently working on stars that can snap onto her belly, arms, and legs. She’s the keeper of the stars and the night skies. I’ll share her full story when she’s ready.