Ellen HarmseEllen Harmse 2022
Ellen HARMSE nee RUSCH, was born on 13 June 1950 in Windhoek, in what was then South West Africa. According to German tradition, a pink flag was hoisted at the hospital as a  welcoming sign and a notice was placed in the local newspaper! My parents are Franz * 1908 Windhoek, German South-West Africa x Else KAPPEL * 1911 Berlin, Germany. Grandfather Ernst Julius, the progenitor, was one of the first 41 Schutztruppler (German protection forces) to bring peace between the Hereros and Namas and set foot ashore in Namibia in January 1890. From 1970 she lived in Johannesburg, Kempton Park where she worked in the construction industry and as a lecturer in adult education for the Department of Education until 1995.
In 1973 she married Neels Harmse * 1939 Schweizer Reineke and they have two daughters, Benita and Anja and one grandson Tristan. She realized that not much research had been done on the HARMSE. She has placed a draft compilation of her research at the Heritage Foundation's Library and at Library of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) in Wellington which houses the GISA collection for comment and to be supplemented and replaced annually with the latest information.
Ellen is also the co-ordinator of the tours to the different archives every year for the GSSA. It has grown from only going to the Western Cape Provincial Archive (formerly KAB), initially, to so much so that now tours to the Free State Provincial Archive and also to the National Archive in Pretoria are organized.