Hedwig M. Frölicher
Hedwig Margaritha Frölicher was a First Class passenger on Titanic.
Early life[]
Hedwig Margaritha Frölicher was born on 13 August, 1889 in Zürich. She was 22 years old during the maiden voyage.
She was the daughter of Maximilian Josef Frölicher-Stehli and Margaretha Emerentia Frölicher-Stehli. Her Swiss family and friends nicknamed her Mädi. Her American family know her as Margit or simply Margaritha.
Titanic[]
In early 1912 she graduated. She and her parents booked a voyage on Titanic to get to New York, where her fiancee was waiting. The plan was to get married, her future husband was Robert Schwarzenbach who lived in New York. He also was from Switzerland and was the managing director of the silkweaving factory of Schwarzenbach & Huber in New York.
Hedwig boarded in Cherbourg on April 10. She took cabin B-39 and her parents occupied B-41, right next to her.
Mädi had enjoyed the trip from France to Ireland, but, after the ship left Queenstown behind, she had a difficult voyage. The whole time she had to endure seasickness. She felt perticularly bad on Sunday evening, and left for bed around 9:30 P.M. She didn't even take the time to get undressed but dozed off.
When Titanic grazed the iceberg, Mädi woke up. She felt sleepy and the shock of the ship reminded her of the Swiss ferries of the Zürich lakes, that often docked against the piers a bit too abrasively. She thought, that's funny, we're already there?
She was half awake in bed and heard her parents talking on the other side of the wall. Her father, always a bit easily miffed, was panicking and was worried about a collision. Her mother believed nothing of the sorts had happened.
She got up, went to her parents' cabin and they decided that they should go out and see what's going on, since they now felt that the engines had stopped. They arrived at the First Class Smoking Room and one of the stewards told them about the iceberg and took the family to the railling, and they could still see it behind them. On deck they met with several other people, like Colonel Simonius-Blumer and Max Staehelin-Maeglin, who joked that 'a whole iceberg is needed to get you out on deck!'
Convinced nothing was amiss, she felt her seasickness playing up again and immediatly she went down again. She saw a young man put on a lifebelt, but she didn't care because her condition got ever worse.
Then her dad came into her cabin with a serious look on his face. He had asked a stewardess if there was a threat of danger and she had confirmed that there was. He became strict with Hedwig and urged her to get out and get ready. She struggled to get up, got dressed, still being nauseous, put on her lifejacket and moved out onto the hall.
She took the Grand Staircase to the Boat Deck. When arrived there, she had a conversation with a steward, whom she got acquainted to days prior, just after leaving Cherbourg. She had asked him about the neccesity of the lifejackets, why do we need them on an unsinkable ship? He ironically replied they were just precaution and formality, and no one will ever use them. Right now, he saw her pale face, and he was concerned about her and tried to console her that she needn't be afraid. She had replied it was not fear, but merely seasickness.
She ended up being put in lifeboat 5, and she remembers stokers lying on the bottom of the boat, and that's what caused her and her mother to lose balance when boarding. The women were crying hysterically as she recalls, unwilling to abondon their men on Titanic. The discharging of the boat was suddenly halted. Men lowered themselves in the boat, Hedwigs father being one of them.
Despite her sickness, she later gave a lively account of the disaster.
Later life[]
She did get married in 1913 with Schwarzenbach and they got two boys and one daughter. The one was also named Robert, and went on to also become an important businessman like his father, as well as become a fighter pilot in World War II and joined the United States Olympic Ski-Team. The other son was Christopher who moved to California. After her marriage, she remained in New York and started a new life in Jericho. Meanwhile her parents returned to Switzerland.
She lost her husband on 3 August 1929 in Hicksville, Long Island. He passed very sudden. She and her boys then moved to South Norwalk, Connecticut in 1931.
On 16 July 1972, Hedwig 'Mädi Margaritha Frölicher passed away. She was buried in her family grave, in Zürich.
Sources[]
- 'De Titanic: De ware verhalen' ©2012 Edward P. De Groot
- https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/hedwig-margaritha-frolicher.html