German Rex

Munk spread his genes plentifully among the village's cat population till his death in 1944 or 1945.

[1] In the summer of 1951, a doctor in Berlin-Buch (Pankow borough), Rose Scheuer-Karpin, noticed a black curly-coated cat in the Hufelandklinik hospital garden.

She left a number of Rex and crossbred descendants - the last one of her offspring was born in 1962 - most of which were used to improve other breeds such as the Cornish Rex which was suffering from skin problems due to being descended from genetically impoverished thoroughbred stock.

A stock was established in the West through the efforts of the FRG von Zeitz cattery in 1973 which in the previous year had acquired their sample of the allele with the white female crossbred Silke vom Grund.

The tom named Schnurzel eventually contributed to German Rex breeding; it is not known how he related to Lämmchen but presumably he was a grandson of hers, as Scheuer-Karpin would let her cats roam free through the gardens and forests of Buch.

Even in more recent times, the genetic legacy of Lämmchen if not Munk manifests itself on occasion in the Berlin area, such as Pumina, found as a stray inage of Preuss from Siegburg which turned up in 1979 in the Rhineland town of Siegburg does not appear to be related to be a German Rex proper; it is almost certainly not related to Lämmchen.

In the following years, any curly-haired cats in the Königsberg area went unnoticed or at least were not bred on purpose; the allele nonetheless would have stood good chances to remain in the local cat population, as recessive alleles have a very low probability to disappear entirely.

German Rex kitten Alana .
Looking at the curly coat, it is easy to see why Scheuer-Karpin would call her cat Lämmchen (little lamb).