Helmut (and Laura): I thank you for that information. I'm assuming that the Standesamt for Frankfurt am Main is equally a needle/haystack situation for my father, birth name: Rudolf Berg (his mother was Anna Berg, 16 yrs old when he was born (perhaps 17) in that town).
I want to find out what relatives (of hers, an assumption) she stayed with in Frankfurt until her son's birth, January 12, 1907, I believe. She had lived with parents all her life, but the three family members (two parents and a brother, Wilhelm) had all died (I believe) by that date. Via her "start-in-life experiences with the unknown father of my father, she most likely developed a lifelong rejection of strong men.
My father was a sweet soul, but strong enough and independent enough to run away twice, once to Florida, and after they searched him out, he ran clear to California with "4 Russians" in an early Ford. Or so goes his story from his lips. Anna's daughter Val/Valeska (or -ca) did visit us in CA when I was in high school, so probably she and my dad took being siblings as a "like very much" situation for them. I only wish I had known enough (AND was SMART enough in a practical sense) to ask Val and her dau Melinda some deep history questions. No genealogy web sites were available to the common man then.
Anna kept secrets naturally--being ostracized was not for her, and so she fled to the US. But I'll never be able to forgive her completely for not bringing my father to the US (Connecticut) with her. Yes, she was only 16-17, but a relative in the US paid her passage and he missed his formative years with his birth mother. Perhaps, being very young, Anna was afraid of being a mother.
Once in the US, he ran away--twice. The second time (cross country to CA) worked, so he never saw Anna again.
Once, because as a child about 9 yrs old, I asked several times for one, we had a brief phone conversation with Anna in which my father handed me the phone after a literal minute-max-two. It's helpful to remember that in the 1940s, using the long distance phone from CA to CT was a quite rare and uncomfortable experience for "ordinary people", and between them that was very certain. I did get to hear Anna's voice, then with a fairly strong accent which I found a little scary. (Grandmother, I'm very sorry.)
