<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/05/germany-patisserie-johanna-orth-bereaved-parents-ahr-valley-floods>
"Johanna Orth was a fun-loving, determined little girl and later a
purpose-driven young woman who revelled in making a creative mess in the
kitchen. Her parents, Inka and Ralph, chuckle quietly as they remember the
stacks of batter-covered bowls, spatulas and whisks repeatedly left in the
sink.
With time, Johanna’s cakes and pastries grew more sophisticated and elaborate,
guided by her grandmother, Marlies, who was also a talented baker. Marlies’ own
ambition of opening a cafe one day had been thwarted by the demands of
motherhood and postwar Germany’s rigid gender roles.
Johanna inherited the dream and worked hard to make it a reality, completing
the rigorous training to become a certified master patissière who could hold
her own with the rarefied global cadre of magicians of the sweet.
In 2021, aged 22, she was completing her business school training before
opening her own shop named for Marlies when a freak summer deluge bore down on
her home town of Bad Neuenahr, in western Germany’s Ahr valley. The river’s
water levels peaked at nearly 10 metres, roughly twice those recorded during
the previous record flood five years before.
On the night of 14-15 July, a panicked Johanna called her parents on holiday in
Spain as the waters rushed into her ground-floor flat. As she told them her
furniture was beginning to float around her sitting room, the line went dead.
Their daughter’s body was found two days later in a parking garage, her slight
frame probably carried away by the current when she tried to escape via her
terrace door. She was among more than 220 people who perished across Europe in
the disaster.
“That was the unspeakable night we’ll never forget, which took our beloved
daughter away from us,” Inka said."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
