Peter Paul Haase

Peter Paul Haase

“One of the Last Prussians”

January 1, 1928 - February 5, 2018

(Age 90)

Peter Paul Haase, 90, passed away peacefully in his sleep on February 5, 2018 at Hospice by the Sea located in Boca Raton, Florida.

Peter was born in Koeingsberg, East Prussia in 1928 to an affluent patrician family where he spent the majority of his childhood and later attended the prestigious Count Zinzendorf Cadet School in Niesky, Silesia prior to WWII. The school was run by Moravian monks and attended by European nobility which Peter accredited with forming his strong mental discipline, deeply religious Lutheran Christian beliefs, love of country, strong ethics, and moral values that would carry him throughout the rest of his life. He was a true man of God and used his Christian faith to help give him courage to overcome great adversity. He also was a tireless defender of human rights and freedom.

At the tender age of 15 towards the end of WWII, Peter was removed from school and drafted under national orders to serve as a German laborer and soon a combat exposed German soldier serving on a large anti-aircraft battery unit in Leipzig, Germany. As WWII reached conclusion and Soviet occupation was imminent, Peter trekked on foot to West Germany as a teenage boy to reunite with his family along with tens of millions of East Prussian refugees that fled East Germany and who had managed to survive, but lost everything including their home country. Once WWII ended, Peter attended college with what little money he had and then immigrated alone to the United States in 1952 seeking a better life. His first job in the U.S. included hard labor as an agricultural laborer and working in the U.S. steel mills in the winters near Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In 1954 Peter was drafted into the U.S. Army and he proudly served the U.S military as an M.P. while stationed overseas in Frankfurt, Germany. When he returned to the United States again and was honorably discharged, Peter proudly became a U.S. citizen. He worked numerous jobs and attended night schools trying to educate and better himself to improve his life. One of Peter’s proudest achievements of his life was to learn computer programming on his own and to be hired by IBM as a software engineer in Cape Canaveral working on the esteemed and historical NASA Apollo/Saturn V launch team responsible for the first landing of humans on the moon.

Peter is survived by Rosemary Sprenger Haase, his loving wife of 54 years, his sons Yorck Peter Haase (47), Nicholas Immanuel Haase (44), and his daughter-in-law Tatiana Ivanovna Haase (43). He has two grandchildren, Alexandra Tatiana Haase (8) and Sophia Rosemary Haase (6). He has been a member of the congregation at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Boca Raton, Florida since 1982.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to The American Cancer Society

https://www.cancer.org

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