Valley ranching matriarch dies after brief illness

Longtime Carson Valley rancher Anneliese Schulz Herbig, 85, died Aug. 8, 2010, after a brief illness.

Born Sept. 24, 1924 in Wittingen, Germany, Mrs. Herbig served as a nurse in the Wermacht during World War II.

"She grew up there and went through the war there," said son Dr. Ralph Herbig.

Herbig's grandfather got his son out of the country, leaving for the United States before Germany invaded Poland.

"My grandfather served in the German Army in World War I and he knew what was coming," Herbig said.

"He told my father if we stay, you're going to be drafted. One of my dad's cousins died in the war. Hitler succeeded in wiping out a generation of Germans."

The Herbig family came to the United States ostensibly on a visit to family in Carson Valley, but really had no intention of returning to Germany.

Herbig's father, Herman, then 17, attended school in Carson Valley graduating from Douglas County High School in 1943.

During their first few years in Nevada, the Herbig family started out living with the Neddenrieps, before purchasing a farm on Centerville Lane.

In 1946, they bought a larger farm on Muller Lane. At the Muller property, they built a large barn and operated a dairy.

In 1949, Herman Herbig returned to Germany to visit family there and met Anneliese Schulz at his going away party.

The couple conducted a long-distance romance until September 1950, when he and Anneliese were married in the 13th century Lutheran church where she had been baptized and confirmed.

Ralph Herbig said that before Anneliese could return to the United States with her new husband, she had to undergo a background check and deNazification, though she had never been a member of the party.

"They wanted to be sure I hadn't committed any war crimes," she told R-C reporter Sharon Carter for a 1999 Carson Valley Almanac article. "I hadn't, of course. Our job was to nurse the sick people in camp. And, when the war ended, I spent eight months as an American prisoner of war in Czechoslovakia."

When the newly married Herbigs returned they lived and worked on the family ranch, where Herman Herbig died in 2002, two months after donating the land for the Carson Valley Skate Facility and the park that bears the family name.

"My mom was very active and loved to get out and be around other people," Ralph Herbig said. "It was just in the last month or so that her health really failed. She went downhill very rapidly."

A memorial service for Mrs. Herbig will be announced in the next two or three weeks, her son said of arrangements.

"We have to move on without her," he said. "She was really one of the last of that line."

Arrangements are in the trusted care of Autumn Funerals and Cremations in Carson City.

Condolences may be left for the family at www.autumnfunerals.com