Lost cities 2:10
About this series: Until 1960, all my direct ancestors from the great-great-grandparents through to my parents lived in towns and cities. After November 1972 nobody did, as my parents and grandparents had embraced the car-dependent life in the sticks and the previous city-dwelling generations had all died out by then. When I escaped the countryside and moved to various university cities I discovered that I had been missing out on the opportunities and structured environments of cities since we moved away from Würzburg when I was 5 years old. I started to strongly identify as a town mouse, even though I had to re-learn city life (which is why I didn't dare moving to really big cities like Berlin). In this series I am reclaiming my urban heritage in exploring/presenting some of the towns and cities that my DNA passed through within the last two centuries. As the four generations before me have mostly been quite mobile (often starting with employment in the nascent railways), there are many towns and cities popping up in my family tree, including quite a few where I wouldn't mind living myself.
Münster (Westfalen) was the university where most people from my school went to study, so not something I would have considered for my escape, and it has suffered from this image problem ever since. Only recently it hit me that three of my grandparents lived there at two separate times, and we may still have relatives there.
Münster, seen from a greater distance, is an attractive university city, with an interesting history. From 1534 to 1535 anabaptists ruled the town in a highly unusual rebel state (anabaptist dominion). After a coalition of protestant and catholic troups reconquered the city, the bodies of executed anabaptist leaders were left in cages suspended from the spires of St. Lamberti church to be eaten by birds. The cages are still there today, presumably as a reminder to citizens not to revolt against the official church. On a more positive note, the city also hosted the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War in 1648.
Under Prussian rule since 1815, it served as the capital of the Westphalia province. By 1915, it passed the threshold of 100,000 residents and became a major city. Today, with a population of over 300,000, the city hosts one of the biggest universities in Germany and it is famous for its cycling culture.
City Wine House and the town house, in a postcard from 1928.
Source.
What happened: In between her two stints at Freiburg, Ruth also studied in Münster for a semester (winter 1928/29, although I'm still in the dark regarding the reasons for the move back and forth.
A few years later, my other grandparents, Peter and Frieda lived at Münster for two years 1934-1936 with their two young daughters. Unfortunately they don't show up in the address book of the city dated 1934/35, they may just have missed the registration deadline for that one? On January 30, 1936, Peter was promoted to the position for which they moved to Aachen.
Frieda had a cousin, Ewald Brunschier (1912-1956), whose daughter lived in Münster after the war, but Ewald died in Neesen so seems to have stayed closer to home. Ewald's widow died in Münster in 2000.
Seasons 1 and 2 of the #lostcities series now complete (but there will be an epilogue or two):
- Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
- Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
- Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
- Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
- Rheydt 1923 - 1935
- Königsberg 1935 - 1945
- Aachen 1936 - 1940
- Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
- Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
- Würzburg 1961 - 1968
- Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
- Bonn 1929 - 1934
- Lorsch 1890 - 1938/1973
- Krefeld 1764 - 1924/current
- Gütersloh 1825 - 1928/1950s
- Breslau 1830 - 1877
- Bad Münster 1919 - 1930/1952; Bad Kreuznach 1945 - 1951
- Bruchsal 1889 - 1909/2023
- Idstein 1714-1804
- Freiburg 1928-1930, 1957-1961
- Münster 1928-1929, 1934-1936
NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim, Hamborn, Krefeld, Gütersloh and Bruchsal.
The Mastodon thread for season 2 is here.
I have now started a pin board "vintage postcards" on pinterest with postcards from the cities in this series.
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