A German vacation ended in tragedy for Guenter and Ute Lotzmann, who died two days apart in May following a car crash. Best known in Waterloo Region for Finest Sausage & Meat, the business they established in 1975, the couple leaves a lasting legacy of embracing their German culture and sharing it with the community. The story of how they came to be a couple in postwar Germany reads like a Hollywood romance.
Guenter was born April 18, 1938, the youngest of three. When he was 18, Guenter saw his freedoms disappearing as the Berlin Wall was being constructed and he left home for West Germany, where he worked as a butcher, a trade he learned from his father. A few years later he moved to Canada, envisioning a life of opportunity, adventure and even cowboys.
Like many young Germans at the time, Guenter was enamoured with the idea of wild frontiers. It was a love he would never get over, even well into his senior years as he pored over his collection of Karl May adventure novels. Arriving in Canada as a young man, he was first sent to London for a job in a meat processing facility.
He soon moved to Waterloo where he took a similar job in Breslau. Guenter worked hard and saved enough money to return to East Germany to visit family. He was a Canadian citizen and had the freedom to travel, but he didn’t have the freedom to marry local girl, Ute Schmiechen.
Ute was born on Aug. 18, 1945, close to Guenter’s home village. Her father, a math teacher, expected his two daughters to get.