a coconut fiddle

In december I discovered an unusual kind of two-string fiddle at a charity shop. It was lacking the pegs, strings and bridge, the body is a coconut shell with holes that seem to be carved to create the image of an angry cat (or is that me imagining things?):

I think it may be some sort of Asian instrument. The Vietnamese dan gao also appears to have an artfully carved backside (though not necessarily cat-faced). Southern coastal China and Taiwan have a coconut fiddle known as yehu, apparently, where the "ye" syllable specifies that it's made out of a coconut. The Indonesian kongahyan is also similar. If anybody happens to know anything about this sort of instrument, all hints appreciated.

As I couldn't find an exact equivalent to inform me about the set up required, I just improvised something with the materials I happened to have:

The bridge is half a bamboo ring which I previously used on violin 1) before cutting a proper bridge for it:

and the pegs are just sticks from a shrub (Philadelphus coronarius, I think) in our garden.

It does sound nice on the open strings, but the harmonics aren't all that great, so I'm now wondering whether to put the strings much closer to the stick or to add some rings around the stick as frets. Either approach would make it easier to produce higher notes by pressing down the strings. Some of the Asian instruments on Wikipedia also seem to have the strings shortened by a loop tied around the neck and pulling them down. Oh and I should make a bow for it too. Watch this space.

the year of global enshittification

In the year of the accelerating global enshittification of everything, I managed to find some joy in messing with musical instruments in one way or another.

The pirate luthier workshop has been busy throughout the year, with 12 violins, 2 guitars, 2 cellos coming in, as well as a small kora and a lute-like instrument made from a coconut shell yet to be identified. I've recently braved the challenge of opening up instruments, practicing the procedure on violin number 13:

and cello number 2 (a 3/4 from freegle in very poor condition) before applying it to more interesting instruments. Next step is to glue and patch up the cracks, oh and eventually I'll have to stick the instruments together again. Watch this space.

I'm especially excited when I discover old (from the 1960s or earlier) European instruments. Highlights this year include my new favourite violin, my new session violin, and a 19th century cello. The instruments list at the end of this entry is likely the last one where I include almost everything (give or take a kora and a coconut lute), and in the new year I will have to figure out a mechanism to archive the older entries and keep the length of the list to a manageable size.

In terms of music making, the holiday chamber groups have become a regular thing this year, covering nearly all of the Wednesdays that didn't have orchestral playing. The chamber music collection is growing more slowly these days, as I keep finding things that I own already, such as the Mozart and Haydn quartets. There has also been another FOFO orchestral playday with another Farrenc piece (the overture) and we borrowed last year's Farrenc symphony for a term to play it at Cowley at one of our feature evenings.

There have been a few EuroPlus sessions at the bandstand, but by the time autumn came around, the session merged into the Bal minuscule which now happens on the fourth Sunday of every month (except December). The Euro session has now moved to the Half Moon which is much more convenient for me, and I'm loving the new session at the Oxford Blue which is also within easy reach. I also love the Sunday sessions at the Lamb & Flag - this US based ethnographer studying British pubs on his summer holiday caught a second of me playing fiddle in his short video clip.

After hearing an inspiring oud recital in October, I've finally managed to get my head round the playing of the oud I bought a few years ago - it is basically an upside-down cello, with the four melody strings going ADGC and the bass strings just repeating the DG an octave below. As the string length is similar to the cello, the fingerings work, they are just mirrored.

I completed the second season of my lost cities blog series. Using the series as a travel guide for trips with Deutschlandticket, I have explored Idstein, Gütersloh and Hamborn this year, as well as revisiting Wuppertal (where I explored the old new town hall) and Münster.

During last year's November visit to Düsseldorf I invested in a Gildepass which gives you access to cheaper tickets in arthouse cinemas. During the one-year running time of the pass I have used it 12 times (making an effort to also attend the other local cinemas that accept it, not just the one in my street), and seen some amazing European movies of the sort that nowadays don't get shown in the UK any more. Including: Mü & Kandinsky, Oxana, La venue de l'avenir, Franz, as well as two that later actually did make it to the UK, namely From Hilde with Love and The Marching band.

A selfie from the fleamarket at Aachener Platz, Düsseldorf.

There has also been a full set of 24 features in Current Biology again, listed in this Mastodon thread. And I did get some really interesting books to review for C&I, while also making an effort to review on this blog most of the books I just read for fun.

I did not review Cory Doctorow's book "Enshittification" which I am sure is excellent (judging from the excerpt published in the Guardian), but I did manage to use his word in my review of the book How to think about AI, as AI has been the turbocharger that sent enshittification into overdrive this year. Ooops. looks like the word has been edited out at the last minute. Maybe by some enshittifying AI that didn't like being called out.

updated 2.1.2026 to add the Lamb & Flag sessions and the last sentence.

Previous year reviews (I don't always write one):
2024
2022
2021
2018
2017

random old books revisited

Way back when (OK, it was 2009) we rescued more than 100 old books from going to landfill. We donated some to Oxfam, put some on our shelves, and offered the rest for sale on Amazon marketplace (before Amazon enshittified everything). After I sold a few, Amazon added some hoops to the procedure that I didn't want to jump through, so I stopped using the site. The remaining 45 books have been sitting in our attic for ten years, but now I've brought them down to check if there is anything of interest to me that I missed back then (there wasn't really), and hopefully to rehome some or all of them.

The books date from 1916 to 1977. The list of stock right now looks like this:

Novels, plays, Poetry (33 titles):

Lascelles Abercrombie (1881-1938): Four short plays, Martin Secker, FE 1922

Lascelles Abercrombie (1881-1938): Twelve Idyls and Other Poems, Martin Secker, FE 1928 These two books have matching outfits.

Herbert Asquith: Young Orland, Hutchinson & co. fifteenth edition Author is the son of the prime minister Herbert Asquith

Douglas Brown (ed.): A book of modern prose Harrap, London, FE 1957

Gerald Bullett (1893-1953): Nicky Son of Egg (FE 1929)

Arthur Gray Butler (1831-1909): Harold, A drama in four acts (SE 1906, orig. 1892). The author was the dean of Oriel College, Oxford.

Donn Byrne: Destiny Bay Sampson Low, Marston & Co London, undated edition, text dated to 1927

F.J.Harvey Darton: Without fear and without reproach – the adventures of the famous knight Bayard. Wells Gardner Darton & Co, London, undated

Oliver Davies: Songs at random (FE 1912) Poetry from the author of “Between-time poems”

Walter D. Edmonds (1903-1998): Chad Hanna (1942 reprint of 1940 publ.) US author of historical novels

Leonard Feeney: In towns and little towns (poetry) The America Press, NY, 1928 Contains a type-written poem by the same author, implying a triangular friendship with two women named Ruth and Grace (who received the book as a gift from somebody else). As Wikipedia seems to suggest that Feeney was a catholic extremist with antisemitic views, I am wondering what the deal was with these two ...

Paul Fox: The Daughter of Jairus, W.H Allen, London, date ?????

Sir John Froissart: The Days of Chivalry: Stories from Froissart’s Chronicles, edited with an introduction by John Hampden, Edmund Ward date???

Halcott Glover: Morning Pride (FE 1933) Novel by a UK playwright, friend of Richard Aldington, to whom there is a letter at the front. o

A.D.Godley: Lyra Frivola (poetry) Methuen London 4th ed. 1907 Acquired by Trinity College Oxford in 1935.

Jackson Gregory: The Everlasting Whisper, Hodder & Stoughton 1922 (FE?)

Maurice Hewlett: Peridore & Paravail W. Collins Sons & Co London FE 1917 Ex Libris Albert Louis Cotton

Charles Lee (1870-1956) : The Widow Woman, Wayfarer’s Library, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd date???

D. M. Low: Twice shy (a novel) Chatto & Windus London FE 1933

John P. Marquand: H.M. Pulham, Esquire Undated edition, foreword dated 1940. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._Marquand

Alida Monro, ed.: Recent Poetry 1923-1933 (FE 1933) The editor appears to be the widow of the poet Harold Monro (1879-1932), who is also represented in this anthology.

E.C. Oakden and Mary Sturt: Pattern plays Thomas Nelson and sons, London 1956 (originally publ. 1925)

Edward A. Parker: A book of longer modern verse OUP / Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1926

Edward B. Powley: The Laurel Bough: An anthology of verse (1380-1932) excluding lyric and dramatic, G. Bell and sons, ltd 1934 FE

Alfred Tresidder Sheppard: Brave earth Jonathan Cape, London. Reprint of FE in same year (July 1925, FE was April)

Leonard Shoobridge: Poems No publication date, but purchase or gift date 27.9.1920 written inside front cover.

J.C. Snaith: Lady Barbarity: A romantic comedy, Ward, Lock & Co., Limited date???

Booth Tarkington: Monsieur Beaucaire; The beautiful lady. Thomas Nelson & Sons, undated (looks like early 20th century)

Darwin L. Teilhet (1904-1964): The fear makers (UK FE 1946, c 1945) This novel was turned into a movie in 1958, The Fearmakers.

Sylvia Thompson (1902-1968): The people opposite (FE 1949)

Agnes Sligh Turnbull (1888-1982) The Gown of Glory (Originally published: Boston Houghton Mifflin 1952, this is the 3rd printing of the UK Collins edition, Oct. 1952) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Sligh_Turnbull http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gown_of_Glory

Elinor Wylie: Mr Hodge and Mr Hazard, Heinemann 1928 (FE)

E.H. Young: The Misses Mallett Jonathan Cape, London, 1949 reprint, first publ. 1922

Non-fiction (12 titles):

Gerald Bullett: The Story of English Literature, A& C Black ltd 1935 FE The author also has a title on the fiction list: Nicky son of Egg

Harold Gomes Cassidy: The sciences and the arts. FE 1962

S. J. Curtis: Education in Britain since 1900 FE 1952

G. Lowes Dickinson: A modern symposium J.M.Dent & sons, London 1923

William J. Entwistle and Eric Gillett: The Literature of England A.D. 500-1942: A survey of British literature from beginnings to present day, Longmans, Green and co, 4th edition 1944

Graham Hutton: We too can Prosper: the Promise of Productivity, George Allen and Unwin ltd , 1953 FE

J. Isaacs: The background of modern poetry G. Bell & Sons London 1951 Based on lectures “delivered in the B.B.C. Third Programme” 1948-49

Philip E. B. Jourdain: The Nature of Mathematics, The People’s Books SE 1919

Robert Lacey: Majesty – Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor 1977 Book Club Associates ed.

A.B.Mayne (Headmaster of the Cambridge and county High School for boys and open scholar of Balliol College, Oxford): The Essentials of School Geometry (with answers), Macmillan 1933 FE

E. A. G. Robinson: The structure of competitive industry Nisbet & Co. London / Cambridge University Press, 1946 reprint, first published 1931.

University of Durham College of Medicine: Calendar 1916-1917 This one and some of the others are signed by C. J. Colquhoun - seems to suggest old CJ was a student at the Durham College of Medicine, which was based at Newcastle?

music making for all

Some thoughts on

Divertimento
Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar
starring Lina El Arabi, Oulaya Amamra
France 2022
showing on TV5monde
trailer

I had this film on my films not shown wishlist for a while, and now managed to catch it on TV5 monde. The TV5 blurb only gave first names for the characters and made it look like fiction, so I only found out from the end credits that this is based on real events.

Twin sisters Zahia and Fettouma Ziouani grow up in the 1990s studying music and wanting to become professionals as conductor and cellist, respectively. Coming from an Algerian family in the Parisian social housing suburbs of Seine St. Denis, they face prejudice and open hostility at Paris conservatoires but manage to bridge the cultures, setting up an orchestra called Divertimento among other things.

I love the way the film reflects the single-mindedness of Zahia in particular. There is absolutely nothing in it that isn't related to playing music, either as a help or as a hindrance. Fettouma gets about two seconds of dreaming of quiet conversation with a potential love interest, but Zahia rather counts that as a hindrance too. After that it's music for all and all for the music again.

A musical cliché that the film should have avoided is the young cellist starting her practice with the first movement of the first cello suite. As youtuber Alexis Descharmes has pointed out in his series about cellists in movies many years ago, these bars account for the majority of cinematic cello-playing. Play the Bach suites by all means but there are so many other movements to choose from. I fear the flashmob orchestra performing Ravel's Bolero is also at risk of becoming too widely used, but in defence of this film, it was made before the other recent film that uses it, namely The Marching Band (En fanfare). Which covers a similar subject matter in an interestingly different way.

More interesting music to discover through the film includes Bacchanale by Saint-Saens, which incidentally you can see on YouTube performed by Divertimento, conducted by Zahia Ziouani.

PS Interestingly I had seen each of the two lead actresses separately in their previous films, Lina El Arabi in Les Meilleures, and Oulaya Amambra in Fragile, both dating from 2021. Which is why I had Divertimento on my list.

bridges of folly

Some thoughts on

Folly Bridge: A romantic tale
by D. L. Murray
Hodder and Stoughton 1945

I used to think that the folly of Folly Bridge was the unusual house with the statues enshrined in the walls (No. 5 Folly Bridge) but this book taught me about the real folly, a gate tower that was actually sitting on the bridge and was known as Friar Bacon's Study until it was demolished in 1779. In the "romantic tale" the building burns down as a consequence of the fictional events related, set in two subsequent academic years the 1770s. Lord North shows up as Prime Minister (which he was between 1770 and 1782) and the timing is further narrowed down by the fact that another bridge, the Petty Pont across the Cherwell, is being rebuilt (1772-78) as the structure we now know as Magdalen Bridge. So let's say 1777-1779.

The story is an elaborated plot of students and robbers reminiscent of the 19th century robber romances around figures like Schinderhannes in Germany. The message seems to be that Oxford in that time was such a corrupting place that it turned an innocent boy from a village rectory into a hardened criminal within one academic year. So there's definitely more than one interpretation to the folly of the title. There doesn't seem to be much learning going on between the college dinners, academic ceremonies and church services. Towns folk only occur as mobs watching executions or seeking to fight with students, and the roles of Gypsies as criminals and a Jew as moneylender are also stuck in cliché.

I mainly read the book for the intriguing sights of 18th century Oxford, assisted by a historical map I happen to have (see photo below). Most of the places are genuine, but the college featured in the novel is imagined (as are the out of town locations Vailbury Park and Little Mildington). The imaginary Maryol College is on the site of the Cistercian Abbey of Rewley (behind today's Said Business School). At the dissolution of the monasteries, the last abbot of Rewley did suggest turning it into a college, so we're in the fictional world where that initiative succeeded.

Apart from the tower on the bridge (also accessible by boat via the pillars of the bridge), I also enjoyed the descriptions of the "Venetian quarter" with all the waterways around Oxford Castle (top left in the photo below), most of which have been filled in since. We should bring some of those back, if only to give the river space and prevent flooding.

David Leslie Murray (1888-1962) was editor of the Times Literary Supplement in his day job. He has also written novels tied to other specific cities, including Regency (1936; Brighton) and Enter Three Witches (1942; London).

my copy of the book (it came without the dustjacket, which apparently shows Friar Bacon's study) on top of the historical map I used. Folly Bridge appears at the bottom of the photo. Own photo.

a cello jigsaw

Pirate Luthier update

No new violins turned up this month, but I finally built up enough courage to open up instruments to repair cracks in the body, starting with the less lovely ones to practice on. Violin 13 opened up very nicely and made no trouble at all. Cello 2, a 3/4 instrument I received via freegle in January, was a bit trickier. The top had multiple cracks already, and seemed to be inclined to break into more pieces rather than detouch from the sides as it should.

The inside has been messed up to an extent that makes it look more like an art project:

I think the top is actually beyond hope, but I will keep using it to practice repair and patch technique. As for the rest, I am slightly tempted to use the neck and tailpin to build a Stroh cello. Looking out for a suitable piece of wood to make a solid body for that, and for the horn. I do have horns that might fit a violin but don't have a cello sized one yet.

Apart from the damage to the top, the instrument also has a label saying "Blessing" inside, which I think is a Chinese brand and not a good one. More of a curse than a blessing, I suspect. In very faint print it also says "Made in China" followed by the number 196 which I suspect may have been intended for the last figure of the year to be filled in manually.

 

I think this is definitely the last time I reproduce the full list, which is becoming too long. Next year I'll start a new one or use shortened versions.

List of violins in the pirate luthier series:

violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. After restoring it in November 2022, I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.

violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 (a very widely used brand of cheap fiddles available everywhere and still being produced). I bought it very cheap on gumtree, mainly because I needed a case for number 1). It has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below. After stripping it of some accessories and spares, I am now inclined to keep it in a semi-functional state to try out experimental repairs, i.e. use it as a wooden guinea pig of sorts.

violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.

violin 4) is a modern Chinese one which I bought from one musical friend and sold to another, no work needed.

violin 5) (donated by a friendly freegler) was my second favourite and the one I played in folk sessions for roughly a year until number 22) showed up.

violin 6) is the half-sized Lark which was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 7) is a skylark from 1991 which I bought on gumtree for £ 10 and fitted with a new bridge. Good enough for folk I would say. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 8) is the "ladies violin", a 7/8 skylark. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 9) is the one which needed a new bridge and a tailgut and turned out to sound quite lovely on the E string. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 10) is the 3/4 sized one with a broken neck and traces of multiple repair attempts, which I've now repaired. I kept it for a couple of months to check the neck stays in place, then gave it away to a good cause in June 2025.

violin 11) is the 3/4 sold by JP Guivier & Co Ltd. in the 1950s but may actually be older than that. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 12) is a full-size Lark which a freegle user kindly donated and delivered after seeing my offer. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

violin 13) is still broken

violin 14) is a half-size Lark which I gave away to a good cause in June 2025.

violin 15) is a 3/4 size Stentor student 2, which I gave away to a local school in October 2024

violin 16) is the Sebastian Klotz branded one, sadly not made by the Mittenwald luthier, but by Yamaha Malaysia, who appear to have trademarked his name.

violin 17) is the supersized violin with a very strong sound.

violin 18) is the slightly drunken but nice sounding violin from Poland, which I restored and returned to its family.

violin 19) is a Stentor student 1 violin which only needed a little TLC, and within less than a week I had it brushed up and ready to move to our local school. The most intriguing problem it had was that somebody had put in the bridge the wrong way round, with the lower slope under the G string.

violin 20) is a Stentor student 1 violin I bought via GumTree. It sounds really nice for what it is, thanks in part to a good set-up with Dominant strings. I have labelled this one as an official Cowley Orchestra instrument.

violin 21) is a nameless student violin I bought via facebook, not quite sure what to think of it. The fingerboard is horizontal, which is all wrong and may mean there is not enough pressure on the bridge to produce a good sound.

violin 22) is the 19th century Guarneri copy, still my favourite, although I'll have to fix that crack at some point. Because of the crack I play it only at home and take number 24 to sessions.

violin 23) is a nameless student violin I bought from a charity shop. It looks unused but had no strings, so I set it up with a set of spare strings that came with another violin. It turned out to be no trouble at all and sounds ok for an instrument that looks really cheap (with the purfling painted on). It now lives with a young cellist in my neighbourhood who is keen to learn the violin as a second instrument.

violin 24) is the densely cratered one I found lying on a chair at Oxfam, and which I currently play at sessions.

violin 25) is the fleamarket find from Neuss

violin 26) is the lady in red, which has now rejoined its family.

violin 27) is the Czechoslovakian student model

violin 28) is the black one I found three minutes before number 29), so they're basically twins. It has now found a new home.

violin 29) is the odd-size one with the lovely rosewood tailpiece

violin 30) is the one with the lovely case which still awaits repair

violin 31) is the one with the whistle, which the owner now has lent out to a visiting student, so you might hear it being played in sessions.

Balance of violins as of 27.12.2025:
Of the 31 violins listed above, 8 received via freegle, 3 from friends and family, 16 bought (gumtree, facebook, charity shops, flea markets, cost ranging £ 10 to £45), 3 taken in for repair only and returned to their families, one taken in for repair but not done yet.
Of the 27 acquired, 8 given away via freegle, 2 given to a local school, 1 given away via a neighbourhood mailing list, 1 given to a folkie friend, 2 sold to musical friends, 1 moved to Germany for holiday practice, 11 currently in house and ready to play, 2 in house and still broken.

List of other instruments in the pirate luthier series:

cello 1) is the one I bought for my own use when old Heinrich moved out. As I changed the setup quite a bit, it does get a number.

cello 2) is a 3/4 instrument with serious cracks which I received via freegle, shown above.

cello 3) is the old German cello that I rescued and repaired. I'm now playing this daily at home while keeping number 1) in the bag for weekly orchestra use.

an old Irish banjo

guitar 1) is the 100 year-old one from Valencia which I set up with frets and strings and handed back to its owner.

guitar 2) is one I spotted in a charity shop "sold as seen" for a very affordable price with nothing more than a broken string, and I bought and repaired it because I knew the owner of the next one needed one while their guitar was out of service.

guitar 3) had a broken neck which I glued back on with hide glue at the same time when I repaired violin 10). It has now returned to its family.

the zither I found at the flea market in Dusseldorf and restored.

and finally a shout-out to our family-built hammered dulcimer, which dates from 2016, long before I got any ideas about violins.

our oldest book

When I looked up Doris Siepmann's old book from 1916 for the previous entry, I also took our oldest book off the shelf to see whether it, too, might contain any information I hadn't appreciated yet. It is an edition of the poetry of Friedrich Schiller, signed by one of its owners with the year 1838. So we always assumed that was the age of the book, too, which doesn't carry a printing year. However, the name of the author is given without the "von" - he became Friedrich von Schiller in 1802. Accordingly, when I search with the text of the title page:

Gedichte von Friedrich Schiller. Mit dem Portrait des Verfassers

I get shown a similar edition dated 1801, which makes sense in terms of the missing "von". Also, my edition says it is the most recent and most complete one - suggesting the author was still alive and writing when it was printed. (In postumous publications, they would either claim to have the complete poems or a selection.) So that is already quite exciting and mindboggling to have Schiller's work in an edition dating from his lifetime (1759-1805).

Then that inscription. In ink and with a beautiful handwriting we have

C. de Lorenzi 1838.

A couple of practice rounds appear below, in very faint pencil, maybe they tried to rub those out.

The same hand has also signed the inner cover page of the second part with "C. de Lorenzi" in the top right corner and with "Lorenzi" further down. There are three parts bound together in this volume, maybe they were united after C. de Lorenzi signed the first two? Note that the front of the third part isn't signed. Maybe the arrival of the third part was the point when the three parts were rebound as one volume.

Then on inside of the hardcover (so more recent if the binding unites previously separate volumes), we have in pencil, with a less secure handwriting, possibly from a child:

Karl de Lorenzi
Karl de Lorenzi (in a less secure writing, maybe the top line was a parent showing young Karl how to sign his name?)
in
Simmern
den 29. Februar
1864

then a calculation:

2222
-
2016
-----
206

and a stray figure 8 to the right of the calculation. I do like everything to do with numbers, but can't think of anything to explain these figures.

A child also added a moustache to Schiller's portrait in the frontispiece, and the grownup with the inkpen added the missing "von" to his name in several places.

Zoom into this one to appreciate the wormhole appearing symmetrically either side of the crease between "F. Schiller" and "In der Verlagsbuchhandlung". It goes through more than 100 pages and towards the end of vol 1, page 160 ff, it extends sideways and may still contain the dried out bookworm. Will have to do some microscopy or macro photography on that.

And for comparison, here is a similar print without the embellishments, credited to a different artist, probably both etchings based on the same painting by Anton Graf.

Considering the chaos on the cover pages, there are only very few markings in the text - one I've spotted is very unoriginally drawing attention to Schiller's most famous poem, Das Lied von der Glocke (Song of the bell), which appears in volume 2:

Books we have from the 19th century would normally come from the family of Christoph Gottlieb Kauer the station master of Adamsweiler. He was born and grew up in Simmern, so it is quite conceivable that his parents got the book second hand from the de Lorenzi family who lived there throughout the 19th century (and into the 20th - a de Lorenzi was the mayor's deputy 1917-1938). Some finds that may or may not be linked to our book scribblers:

A Joseph de Lorenzi born 8.9. 1856 at Simmern emigrated to the US in 1881 and later had a shop in Mishawaka, Indiana. His parents were Karl de Lorenzi and Louise Rottmann (likely from the family of the poet and local politician Peter Joseph Rottmann, we also have one of his books which I believe was signed and/or gifted by the author, there was some sort of story attached to it, but I don't have it here to check). So his father could be our Karl and/or the C of the book.

As a representative of the de Lorenzi family, here's a portrait of the migrant Joseph de Lorenzi, courtesy of the Mishawaka Museum.

Another Carl, Carl Joseph de Lorenzi was born 9. 4. 1845 - he could still be responsible for the more recent pencil inscription.

Johann Baptist De Lorenzi was born in Simmern in 1807 and died in Koblenz in 1883. He was the landlord of the inn La Maison Rouge, according to the website geni.com. Simmern was under French occupation until 1815, so the French name may be referring to that time when JB De Lorenzi was still a child. In October 1852 he signed a guest book of a spa hotel at Bad Homburg (Hessen) as "Herr von Lorenzi, Gastwirth" cheekily trying to create the impression that his name includes a nobility title.

My hypothesis would be that the book came from the de Lorenzi / Rotter families to the family of the old shoemaker

Mathias Kauer * 21. 6.1813 Simmern + 2. 4.1885 Simmern,
} oo 13. 9.1844 Simmern unter Dhaun (NB different place from the town of Simmern)
Katharina Sophia Weis * 25. 3.1815 Raversbeuren + 8. 1.1862 Simmern

whose photo appears at the top of the Kauer clan entry.

For instance, when Joseph de Lorenzi emigrated, Mathias Kauer was still around and could have snapped it up.

After he died in 1885, it must have moved in with the station master's family in Alsace, and ended up with the station master's daughter Johanna Kauer when she moved to her retirement residence at Hahnenbach. Where my mother must have nicked it, because I remember my parents had it on their shelves when I was at school age. And now I have it here in Oxford. The book has travelled a bit over the last 224 years.

PS 25.12. In a slightly more recent (19th century, see photo below) edition of Schiller's complete works I spotted a few late poems that aren't included in the very old book, such as Der Antritt des neuen Jahrhunderts (The start of the new century) likely written in 1801. That newer edition has no family connection beyond my great-aunt Esther who bought antiquarian books. I'm intrigued though that the volumes (12 bound into 4) were bound by G. A. W. Särnstad in Mariestad, Sweden, which almost hints Esther may have acquired the edition during her student days in Königsberg or in Posen.

revisiting the Siepmann family

Back in 2009, I made a blog entry about the Siepmann family, based on the very detailed church record of the death of my ancestor Anna Elisabeth Siepmann who died in 1788 and on this occurrence of the name in an old book I found in a skip:

The ancient Siepmann post has been very popular, and this month I had another comment on it bringing the total to 18. A lot of new information has been contributed by the correspondents, so it's time to organise all of this into new post, working towards a family tree.

This will be a story of four parts that are not connected yet:

(1) family of Doris Siepmann from Bristol, UK, whose book inspired the old blog entry
(2) Siepmann families immigrated to the US in the 1870s to 1910s coming from Oberhausen, Germany
(3) early Siepmann families in the eastern Ruhr area, Germany, around Hattingen, Bochum and Herne and possible origins of the name (see the map below of how the name was distributed in 1890).
(4) the immediate family of my ancestor Anna Elisabeth Siepmann and her husband Henrich Tüselmann who lived first at Strünkede (Herne) and then Dahlhausen (Bochum) where they ran a mill.

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(1) Doris's family

So let's start with Otto Siepmann, language teacher at Bristol and dad of Doris - I am quite excited to have found out just now that his letters to his son Harry are archived here. What if he writes about his ancestors in those letters? That could be really useful to the Otto descendants who have commented on my old blog entry.

Right now, my understanding of Otto's extended family now is looking as follows:

August Siepmann (1835-1908) oo Wilhelmine Henriette Hasenbach (1836-1891)
The eldest of 9 surviving children is:

1. Otto Siepmann * 1861 Waldbröl (east of Cologne, south of the Siepmann heartland in the Ruhr area) +1947
oo 1889 Grace Florence Baker (1858–1937)

They had three daughters and three sons:

Harry - the letters to him from his father while he was at school and at uni date 1902-1913.

one son missing here ?!

Edith Alicia aged 9 on census day 31.3.1901; oo Bankes-Jones

Phyllis aged 6 on census day

Doris (1895-1988) aged 5 on census day (owner of the book that inspired the blog entry of 2009, see her autograph and rubber stamp above)
oo 1920 Percival Waterfield (1888-1965), senior civil servant involved in the creation of the WW2 motivational posters like Keep calm and carry on.
son: John Waterfield (1921-2003), diplomat

Charles (1899-1985)
oo Charlotte "Dolly" Tyler (according to wikipedia) and/or oo Janey (according to an anonymous correspondent to the earlier blog entry)

Another son of August and Wilhelmine appears in Gedbas (the mother is called Hansenbach in this entry but that must be an error, there are multiple Hasenbachs in the right area and only this one occurrence of Hansenbach):

2. Gustav Heinrich Siepmann * 26 Sept 1870 Waldbröl, + 16. August 1948
oo 11. 2. 1902 Hamburg Gisela ROOSEN ,
Ricardo SIEPMANN 6. 1. 1903 + 1948
Hans-Werner Heinrich SIEPMANN 14. 7. 1908 +1984
Ursula SIEPMANN 1. 11. 1913 + 1990

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(2) Transatlantic Siepmann connections

Several people have contributed infos on immigration of Siepmann families to the US. The farthest back in time is the 1870s wave of catholic Siepmanns (everybody else in this story is protestant as far as I know) coming from Oberhausen, which is in the western part of the Ruhr area, but not too far away from the Hattingen/Bochum area where I think the nameline may have originated in the middle ages. According to Elianah we have:

Wilhelm and Catharina Lang Siepmann

Catherine Siepmann Hartgenbush,
Wilhelm (?),
Friedrich (Fred)Siepmann,
Joseph James,
Gertrude Siepmann Page,
Mary C Siepmann,
Frances Siepmann, and
Peter August Siepmann.

Elianah writes:

"The first to arrive was Wilhelm in Buffalo, NY. He eventually made it to Iowa. As far as I can tell, all of the other siblings came to Iowa directly, settling in Cedar, Linn, Johnson and Benton Counties. From there, the descendants went to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, California, Washington and Oregon."

As Elianah also mentions, Oberhausen was a city made up of various towns and villages in 1862, so the Siepmanns coming from there may not have Oberhausen on their birth record but one of the places we now know as a district of Oberhausen. Note also that in the reorganisation of the area some historic units were split up, so we now have districts called Styrum and Borbeck in Oberhausen as well as in neighbouring cities (Mülheim and Essen, respectively).

In Gedbas.de I can't find any Siepmann in Oberhausen or any of the preceding towns and villages. The closest match would be this Wilhelm Siepmann born in Mülheim.

Debra has written about a separate lot of Siepmanns also coming from Oberhausen

"My grandfather Wilhem Siepmann sailed to the port of Boston on the Willehad from Germany, arriving sometime in August 1914. He came from a family of 11 siblings who were mostly teachers and musicians. His family was also from Oberhausen in Westfalia. My grandfather settled in New Jersey and is buried in Brielle, N.J."

Re Siepmanns in Oberhausen, note that there is a street called Siepmannstrasse in Oberhausen Dümpten, not far from Müheim, named after a Siepmann family who had their farm there before industrialisation.

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(3) Early Siepmann families

We're going further back in time now to look for the origins of the Siepmanns and for potential relatives of my ancestor Anna Siepmann who died 14.12.1788 at Dahlhausen (now in the southwestern part of the city of Bochum) aged 82 - see further details under (4).

The distribution of the name in 1890, shown in this map, suggests that it has scattered from one origin in the general area of Westphalia. (Map is a screenshot from this site.)

Three separate lineages are going back to the 16th century, two from Schwelm, one from Hattingen. Schwelm is half way between Waldbröl and Dahlhausen, so a plausible departure point for the radiation of the later Siepmanns. I'll give the founding fathers of each name line capital letters starting with A (not strictly chronological):

(A) Johan Sipman / Im Siepen * 1590 + 5.1.1657 Schwelm, Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis, lived "am Zipp" in Schwelm, which would plausibly explain the origin of the name. Zipp exists still today as a street ca. 2km SE of Schwelm, going off the A 483 main road and serving about 5 houses.

1. Johann SIPMANN about 1620-after 1690
1.1. Hans IM SIPPE about 1650-after 1713
1.1.1. Hans Evert ZIPMANN about 1681-1761 - lots of descendants listed here who seem to have kept the spelling "Zippmann"

1.2. Elsabeth IM SIPPE about 1659-1752

Note how fluctuating the family name still was then.

Two of the oldest Siepmann families I found on Gedbas go back to

(B) Jürgen Sippmann in der Wischen born Schwelm, late 16th century,

Now this is interesting: Henrich Siepmann * 1670 in Hattingen got the name via his mother who is a granddaughter of that very same Jürgen in der Wische from Schwelm, who appears here with a different set of descendants compared to the first lineage linked to under (B). Note also that Henrich married Elisabeth Kistner - his maternal grandmother was also a Kistner

let's aggregate these two lineages leading back to (B):

Jürgen (Sippmann) in der Wischen

1. about 1590 Peter in DER WISCHE

2. about 1600 Hans in DER WISCHE

2.a about 1607 Johannes SIEPMANN these two are the same person as both oo Elsa Kistner 4.11.1622 Holthausen, Borken

children listed for Hans:

2.1. Johannes im SIPEN * 13. 11. 1622 + 11. 12. 1685 Darmstadt, Hessen,

2.2. Elsabeth im SIPEN * 30. 5. 1627
oo 30. 4. 1666 Hattingen ev Wilhelm in DEN BERCKEN

2.2.1.Jurgen SIEPMANN * 1667
oo 8. June 1687 Hattingen ev Christina SIPMAN her nameline goes back to Adolph Sipmann * around 1560 Hattingen, ie the same generation as the founding father of this name line, see under (C) below.

2.2.2.Henrich SIEPMANN about 1670
oo 21. October 1697 Hattingen ev Elisabeth KISTNER Johann Henrich SIEPMANN * 18. 1. 1699 Hattingen ev + 8. 12. 1778 Hattingen oo Catharina Gertrud LEMBECK

2.3. Catharina im SIPEN * 27. April 1631

Catharina and Johannes are listed for 2.a Johannes Siepmann, but with the family name Siepmann / Sippmann, respectively. Both went off to marry in Darmstadt, Hessen, and I think Johannes's descendants may have stuck with the Sippmann spelling.

(C) Adolph Sipmann * around 1560 Hattingen died before 1615 (as wife married again)
oo Trine + 17. 2. 1625

1. Henrich SIPMAN about 1590-
1.1. Christina SIPMAN 1615-1615
1.2. Johannes SIPMAN 1617-
1.2.1. Christina SIPMAN 1668-
.3. Catharina SIPMAN 1620-
1.4. Maria SIPMAN 1624-
1.5. Gertrude SIPMAN 1629-
1.6. Adolph Sipman EFFMANN 1630-after 1702

2. Cathrina SIPMAN about 1595-
2.1. Everhard WISSMAN 1621-
2.2. Cathrina WISSMAN 1624-1625
2.3. Maria Gertrud WISSMAN 1636-

3. Adolph SIPMAN about 1605-1635
3.1. Henrich SIPMAN 1628-
3.1.1. Margreta SIPMAN

4. Else SIPMAN about 1600-1625

5. Anna SIPMAN -1625
5.1. Margarethe SIPMAN 1623-1625

Other 17th / 18th century Siepmann lineages include:

Hermann Siepmann
oo Margarethe BRÖGELMANN
1. Margarethe SIEPMANN * 3. 8. 1691 Hattingen

Arnold Siepmann
oo 1696 Anna Engels Solingen lots of descendants

Johann Diedrich Siepmann
Johannes Peter SIEPMANN * 1718 (lots of descendants)
Anna Margarethe SIEPMANN * 26. August 1719

Johann Henrich Frielinghaus oo Anna Christina Siepmann daughter 1725
Margarethe Christine SIEPMANN * 1725 Linden (now part of Bochum but next door to Dahlhausen where my ancestor died) + 1805

Henrich Adam Siepmann * 1712 + 21. 01. 1797 Himmelmert
oo Anna Christina Hustadt
1755 Johann Henrich SIEPMANN
1767 Diedrich Adam SIEPMANN

Peter Siepmann * 1730 in Moers.

Looking into the Siepmanns in the German Wikipedia, I found the industrialist brothers Hugo and Emil Siepmann from Hagen (Ruhr area). Their steel works at Warstein remain in the family to this day. Their ancestry is on Gedbas, going back to Peter Wilhelm Siepmann born in the mid 18th century, one generation younger than my ancestor.

Intriguingly, the mother of Emil and Hugo was also born a Siepmann, but Gedbas has her lineage only back to her grandfather Peter David Siepmann, who must have been born around 1800 as he had children between 1827 and 1839. Surely this wasn't a coincidence and the parents were some sort of distant cousins?

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(4) Anna Elisabeth's family

Finally, we come to my ancestor Anna Elisabeth Siepmann, whose married life is described in some detail in this churchbook entry from December 1788.

My rough translation:

On the 14th of December, Anna Elisabeth Siepmans, widowed wife of the grain miller Henrich Tüselmann at the Dahlhausen grain mill, at an age of 82 years, after a 14-day suffering with severe chest illness, by death exchanged the temporary for the eternal and has on the 17th been buried with a sermon about the words of psalm 71 verse 9. With Henrich Tüselmann from the parish of Herne she entered matrimony in 1730, wherein she lived with him peacefully for 40 years, and [verb missing] 13 children, 10 sons and 3 daughters, of whom 4 sons preceded their father to eternity. In the status of widowhood she lived 18 years and awaited the salvation of her body.

Unfortunately, nothing about her origins. I'm sure she must be related to some of the Siepmann families listed under (3) but how?

Of those 13 Children we have some further info only about three:

1. Wilhelm Düsselmann oo 1772 Dahlhausen Anna Maria Düppen from Meinerzhagen (He is described as the young miller from the Dahlhausen mill, so I guess he must be the oldest surviving son and heir to the business.)

2. Jürgen Henrich Tüselmann, * 1743 Strünkede, oo 1.9.1778 Dahlhausen Marie Elisabeth Dünnewald

... ten more children ...

13. (Johann) Georg Wilhelm Düsselmann ~30.4.1757 Dahlhausen - the relevant ancestor for my lineage, who moved to Krefeld and had hundreds of descendants. Note that his mother was 50 or 51 at the time of his birth, which is impressive. And he definitely must have been the last of the 13 children.

Just about the only Düselmann person we can't quite account for is

Johann Wilhelm Düselmann, * 27.5.1778 Bochum

lost cities in literature

I have read several historic novels set in Oxford recently (see list at the bottom), enjoying the discoveries to be made even in a familiar environment (having lived here for more than 30 years now). This set me thinking about my lost cities series (about towns and cities where my direct ancestors lived before 1972) - it would be doubly interesting to read fiction set in these places both from the perspective of knowing (most of) the cities and to gain insights into the kind of places they were when (or before) my ancestors lived there. It's all about getting a sense of place, so I expect that some of the books I find will be good at conveying that and others won't. I also appreciate some real historic people among the fictional characters.

Off the cuff I can think of only one historic novel I've read that is set in a city from my series, and that's the very impressive Riemenschneider by Tilman Röhrig (about the late Gothic / early Renaissance sculptor who lived in Würzburg and the rather gory Peasants War).

In an effort to find more novels, I'll paste in my list of cities here and try to fill it with lots of book titles too (and make them bold once I've read them). Books are all in German so far but I will consider other languages as well.

Cities listed in chronological order, sorted by the year in which the city was lost to my direct ancestors (where a second end year is given, it indicates the continued presence of other relatives):

• Idstein 1714-1804 - Die Hexe von Nassau: by Nicole Steyer
• Breslau 1830 - 1877 Schuhbrücke: Ein Breslau-Roman by Wolf Kampmann
• Strasbourg 1901 - 1908 - Die Patisserie am Münsterplatz a trilogy by Charlotte Jacobi; Wie der Weihnachtsbaum in die Welt kam by Astrid Fritz (Author), Andrea Offermann (Illustrator)
• Bruchsal 1889 - 1909/2023
• Tangermünde 1888 - 1916 - Grete Minde, a famous novella by Theodor Fontane
• Krefeld 1764 - 1924/current - Der Seidenweber, Thorsten Weiler
• Gütersloh 1825 - 1928/1950s
• Bad Münster 1919 - 1930/1952;
• Bonn 1929 - 1934
• Rheydt 1923 - 1935
• Münster 1928-1929, 1934-1936 - Die Stadt der Auserwählten Michael Römling
• Lorsch 1890 - 1938/1973
• Aachen 1936 - 1940
• Königsberg 1935 - 1945 - Die Buchhändlerin von Königsberg by Christian Hardinghaus
• Bad Kreuznach 1945 - 1951
• Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
• Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961 - Und morgen eine neue Welt: Der große Friedrich-Engels-Roman Tilman Röhrig
• Freiburg 1928-1930, 1957-1961 - Der Totentanz zu Freiburg: Historischer Kriminalroman by Astrid Fritz (Author) - 7th of a whole series of crime novels set in medieval Freiburg
• Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
• Würzburg 1961 - 1968 - Riemenschneider, Tilman Röhrig
• Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
• Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015

Cities organised geographically, many are in Northrhine Westphalia (NRW), some further south, a few further east:

NRW: Aachen Bonn Elberfeld / Wuppertal Gütersloh Hamborn Krefeld Minden Münster Rheydt

Southwest: Bad Münster Bad Kreuznach Bad Nauheim Bruchsal Freiburg Idar-Oberstein Idstein Lorsch Strasbourg Würzburg

East Breslau Königsberg Tangermünde

Tilman Röhrig's big novel on the other Tilman, Riemenschneider, which vividly brings Renaissance Würzburg to life. The author was born in the next village up the hill from where my great-great-aunt, my grandparents and my father lived their retirement years, but I understand that his father, a vicar, was banished there for disobedience in Nazi times, so this doesn't make him a relative.

Historic novels set in Oxford

• Folly Bridge, by D. L. Murray (now reading, watch this space)
• The looking-glass house, by Vanessa Tait
• The dictionary of lost words, by Pip Williams
• The bookbinder of Jericho, by Pip Williams

Not counting fantasy versions of the city as in Philip Pullman's books or in R.F.Kuang's Babel.

nature in recovery

I needed cheering up after covering 30 years of climate failure in the penultimate feature of the year, so I followed a suggestion from the editorial team and chose species recovery as the topic for the last one. From the global moratorium on whaling to the European ban on neonics, if we just stop destroying nature, it actually helps the planet to heal, so we should really do more of that.

The feature is out now, completing my set of 24 features in this calendar year:

Roads to recovery

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 24, 15 December 2025, Pages R1165-R1167

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

Global populations of humpback whales have made a remarkable recovery since the whaling moratorium, offering opportunities for scientific studies as well as for recreational whale watching.
(Photo: NPS Photo/Kaitlin Thoresen.)

what happened in Hamborn

I'm trying to figure out what happened to the ca. 15 children of the East Prussian patchwork family we met in the Every picture series, so let's tag the three patches. There are the litters Faust 1 and Faust 2 sharing Franz Faust (1857-1938) as a father, and the Wittke family from Wilhelmine Domscheit's (1863-1942) first marriage.

Of the (at least) four children of Faust 2, we know that the sisters Auguste and Hanna moved west to the short-lived industrial city of Hamborn in the 1920s, wheras Luise landed in Lippstadt via a refugee camp in Denmark so presumably stayed in East Prussia until January 1945. We know that their brother Otto Faust (born 1895 as the first child of Faust 2) died in January 1945 in the attempt to defend East Prussia.

Browsing lots of address books of Duisburg, I now discovered that the semi-mysterious aunt Therese Vietz (who could be from any of the patches) also lived in Hamborn for several decades, actually two doors down from her sister Hanna. So from 1950 to 1980 we have three patchwork sisters living on a geographically very limited patch in the former city of Hamborn, now part of Duisburg, less than a mile apart.

The iconic town hall of Hamborn, which reminds me of the one at Elberfeld, built only a few years earlier.
Own photo. More photos from my recent visit to Hamborn in this flickr album.

So to gain some clarity I need to spell this out as a timeline. Dates before 1950 are from documents and addresses on envelopes; from 1950 onwards from the excellent collection of addressbooks of Duisburg) in the city archives.

Timeline: 100 years in Hamborn

1922 13.10. Auguste registers at Weseler Str. 95 as a lodger with a resident called Hirsch. At the time, Weseler Str. and especially its intersection with Kaiser Wilhelm Str. were becoming the big shopping destination in the new city, with the Arnold Pollmann department store completed in 1929, after which the area is now named Pollmannkreuz.

1923 2.2. Auguste moves to Wittfelderstr. 189a (still in Hamborn but on the southern edge of the city).

1923 23.3. Auguste marries Ernst.

1924 2.8.; 21.11. They live at Kampstr. 140a, which is the northern edge of the Dichterviertel (poets'/writers' quarter) , a major development of workers' accommodation built by the Thyssen company (mines and steelworks).

By 1927 they move one block further east to Knappenstraße 43 which may have been new then, as this northeastern part of the Dichterviertel was developed later than the bit around Goethestraße.

1930s Auguste's sister Hanna and her husband Fritz Krieger also live in Knappenstr., at number 51 (based on a list of residents compiled by Auguste's son born 1926 who refers to the residents listed as the "Ureinwohner", ie original or indigenous residents). Other neighbours include the Kuhwald family.

section of a map from 1936. Schachtstraße is on the left under the red number 15, Knappenstraße runs diagonally into the top right corner. Hamborn town hall, post office, and the protestant church where Auguste and Ernst married are all on the large through road Duisburger Straße just southwest of the centre of this map. Although chronically overrun by cars now, it is essentially a 15 minute city, as everything is within walking distance and there are trams too.

1943 Hanna and Fritz now live Schachtstr. 27.

1945 Ernst dies, Auguste continues to live in Knappenstraße 43 with her sons.

1950 Therese now lives in Schachtstraße 23, two doors down from Hanna and Fritz. Therese is recorded as a widow in the address book of 1950, but we don't now what happened to Mr Vietz (or even what his first name was). We also don't know whether Therese arrived at Hamborn before the war like Hanna and Auguste or whether she had to flee from East Prussia like Luise.

1973 last addressbook entry for Auguste and her son Erwin in Knappenstraße.

Around 1975 Auguste has to leave her home of five decades in Knappenstraße as the site is cleared for a new development. She moves to Obere Holtener Str. 87. This is on the northeastern edge of Hamborn, the street leading towards Holten which is now part of Oberhausen. She was in a way unlucky to be in the newer and less coherent part of the Dichterviertel, as the older part around Goethestrasse has largely survived to this day (see my photos from Goethestraße on flickr). As do the Schachtstrasse houses where Hanna and Therese lived for several decades.

1977 First addressbook entry for Auguste and Erwin in Obere Holtener Str. In Knappenstraße, the odd numbers from 29 to 59 are now missing from the address book.

1979 Auguste dies. Two of her sons still live in Hamborn. Therese and the Kriegers are still living in Schachtstraße. The town of Walsum, which in 1975 also became part of Duisburg, also has a street called Schachtstraße. Therefore:

by 1981 the former Schachtstraße has become Dr-Heinrich-Laakmann-Straße, named after a catholic priest who taught at the nearby Abteischule and died in Hamborn. Therese is still there in the address book of 1981, but the Kriegers no more.

1982 Last entry for Therese Vietz in the address books.

1984 Therese Vietz no longer appears in the address book.

2015 The last survivor of Auguste's sons dies in Hamborn.

2025 A new development of 80 homes goes up on the north side of Knappenstrasse. where the lower odd house numbers must have been. Google Street View shows vegetation on that side of the road right now, and then the 1970s four-storey apartment blocks from around number 47 onwards. So maybe the development in the 70s never extended to this area of the new project? Meanwhile the relevant houses in the former Schachtstrasse are looking really lovely on Street View.

Resources

• Lovely website from Duisburg city about the district Hamborn.
• History of the Dichterviertel (in German), the area of which Knappenstrasse is a part.
• Havenburn, Hamborn, Duisburg-Hamborn: Geschichte und Geschichten. Walter Braun Verlag Duisburg 1979. I found a copy of this at a book exchange when I visited.

PS some of the patchwork grandchildren emigrated to Australia in the 1950s, so if anybody down there sees this and has ancestors in East Prussia named Faust, Domscheit, Wittke or Witt, do let me know.

looking for Milena

After watching the amazing new Kafka movie in November, I started reading his letters to Milena Jesenská in the old paperback edition that has been in the family since August 1966. (I can actually remember seeing it on my parents' bookshelves as child.) I stopped reading half-way in, however, when a glance at the afterword informed me that the editor had left out lots of material for fear of offending people who were still alive at the time of publication. I understand that more recent editions are more comprehensive, and have also reconsidered the chronology which is a bit of a challenge. So I'll look out for one of those to read instead.

The situation is similar for the biography of Milena and the anthology of her work that I read a couple of years ago (but forgot to review). Both have now been bettered by the efforts of Alena Wagnerová who wrote a new biography and edited a new compilation of the journalistic work as well as one with Milena's letters to other people (those to Kafka are lost). All three are in Czech originally and have been translated to German, but apparently not into English according to the references list in the Wikipedia entry.

I'll look out for all of these books, but in the meantime here's my (now somewhat antiquarian) collection of earlier Milena-related sources:

When I was looking for other Kafka-related movies, I also discovered one about Milena which I had never heard of before:

Milena by Véra Belmont, starring Valérie Kapriskie in the title role. This dates from 1990 so may not exist on DVD?