Modest prosperity

While Schmidt’s father Gustav relies on hard work and ambition to take him from a poor upbringing to being a senior teacher, and later even a school principal, his mother Ludovika (née Koch) comes from a better-off family. By trade, Helmut’s grandfather Heinrich Koch is a typesetter and printer who works for the distinguished newspaper Hamburgischer Correspondent. He also owns a small shop for linen and haberdashery (buttons, thread and other sewing materials) at Mundsburger Damm that his wife Amalie runs with two of the children. »Grandpa Koch« was, as Schmidt writes about the period 70 years later in his memoirs, the only relative who was interested in politics.