Was born in Moscow in 1913. His father was a German from Kurland, uneducated,
worked for a bank, was in the Red Army and perished in 1919. The mother came
from Kiev, Ukraine; their daughter was a music-teacher (piano).
He spent several years in children’s homes in the Kuban Region (his mother was working there at the same time). Went to the technical college of agriculture as from 1930; he finished his studies there in 1934 as an agronomist. In 1937 he registered at the Krasnoyarsk Institute of Agriculture. It is reported that there was a photo of him in the „Izvestia“ (newspaper) in March or April 1938 („The sentencing of Bucharin“).
In April 1938 Vladimir Ernstovich was arrested. He spent two months in the remand prison, then another six months in a common prison. He was given 10 years for KRD (counter-revolutionary activities; translator’s note).
Until December the mother remained in a state of uncertainty – she neither knew where her son was, nor what had happened to him. Early in 1939 he was taken to Arkhangelsk by a prisoner transport and worked there as a lumberjack. After the previous cruelties in prison and during the transport life was somewhat tolerable there.
Later he was sent to Mordovia by a prisoner transport; the train once stopped in Vologda in November 1939. Until 1948 he stayed in the Temnikovsk camps cutting peat.
When his term had come to an end, they did not release him immediately, but kept
waiting for a couple of months, until the authorities had made the decision to
send him into internal exile for another period of 10 years.
He was then taken to the Krasnoyarsk transit prison together with prisoners, who had been sentenced to 25 years; shortly after he had to embark the steamer „I. Stalin“, without being accompanied by guards anymore, and left for Kasachinsk.
At first he was given a job according to his qualifications, later he worked for the State forestry enterprise.
He was rehabilitated in 1956.