sicut pater sic filius

(like father, like son)

Philipp Nicolaus Ebner (1682-1734), vicar of Alterkülz is one of the two clergymen in the family tree we knew about from the Weiß Chronicles. He was the father in law of the other one, namely Johannes Weiß, the vicar of Eckweiler. Earlier in his life, he was a teacher at the Lateinschule Trarbach (a secondary school teaching mostly Latin, preparing pupils for university), following in the footsteps of his father, Johann Jacob Ebner. The school had confirmed this, but we didn't know much more about the Trarbach times.

Recently, when I was looking for details concerning the difficulties that Johann Conon had in Trarbach (from the other side of the Weiß family tree, so not linked to the Ebners in his lifetime), I found the book Trarbach in alter Zeit by Ernst Schütz online, which dates from 1909. It contains a lot of information about the Lateinschule and provides enough material for biographies of Ebner father and son:

A German version is available on request - deutsche Fassung auf Anfrage.

 

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Johann Jacob Ebner

Johann Jacob Ebner came from Hungary - as the book states in agreement with the Weiß Chronicles. We don't know any specifics. Intriguingly, there is another Ebner family from the Black Forest, whose members emigrated to Hungary and came back a few generations later, but the timings don't match. (See eg this Joseph Ebner from Zechenwihl who emigrated to Hungary in 1767, long after our Ebners arrived from there.)

He arrived at the Lateinschule in 1675, where he taught the younger pupils (Infima) at first in his dual role as Kantor and Präzeptor. At that time, Johann Thomas Hase was the Konrektor, which meant that he taught the middle section (Secunda) students, who learned Latin and the basics of Greek, and Johann Tobias Germann was the Rektor teaching the Prima, preparing them for university. The whole school was under the supervision of the vicar of Trarbach in his role as the inspector of the Oberamt. From 1671-78 that role was held by Johann Heinrich Horb. He was replaced with Johann Peter Rodaug who served until his death in 1699.

Johann Jacob Ebner married a woman from Trarbach in December 1674 (the same year he started teaching at the Lateinschule), but we aren't told her name. In Gedbas she appears as Maria Brigitta, without a family name, calculated birth year 1646. Schütz notes, however, that among the ten godparents of his first child there are four members of the local nobility, adding that he appears to have been well connected. I might add that it could be a hint that she was from a well-connected local family?

Stop Press - familysearch names the wife as Brigitta Maria Christophor, baptised 21.12.1650, surprisingly in a Catholic church in Cologne. This entry reveals six children, three more than in Gedbas, namely:

Hetwig Magdalena Sophia Ebner 2.10. 1676– apparently the first child with the big baptism.
Christianus Ebner 1679–1679
Johann Andreas baptism 30. January 1680 Trarbach,
Philipp Nicolaus baptism 25. May 1682 Trarbach, see his CV below
Anna Elisabetha Ebner 1685–1749 She married Philipp Georg Hornmann in 1711.
Carl Ludwig baptism 18. January 1688 Trarbach, died 1692

Familysearch also provides names for her parents but not for his. The site suggests that Johann Jacob Ebner was born in Wurttemberg, which is rather vague and in conflict with the statements elsewhere that he was from Hungary. Maybe his parents were, and he was born en route to Trarbach. The site pins his birth to 30. July 1660 which can't be right as it would mean he started teaching and got married at age 14. A plausible interpretation would be a reading error with the real birth year being 1650, which would match the birth year of his wife too. However, the age noted with the record of his death would give us 1646 or late 1645.

Johann Jacob was promoted to Konrektor at the Lateinschule in 1686. Johann Conrad Arnoldi, the son of an earlier Rektor and himself an alumnus of the school had replaced Rektor Germann the year before and stayed on until 1708 (more about him below and in Wikipedia). Johann Friedrich Fritzsche became the new teacher for the Infima.

In 1693 his wife died. In 1695 he married the widow of the mayor Mülberger. Earlier in the book, the mayor is further identified as Johann Ruprecht Mülberger from Cronweißenburg (Wissembourg, Alsace), who came to the town after the war and became its first apothecary. In 1665, he married the daughter of the Kirchenzensor Meurer. From this incomplete info I could pin down Johann Jacob's second wife as:

Ursula Elisabeth Meurer, born 11.12.1646 Trarbach, died 9.10.1705 Trarbach. Her parents were both born in Trarbach, the origin of her grandparents aren't specified in the Gedbas entries. Note that her mother was born Haussmann. The Lateinschule had a schoolmaster by that name for many years until 1618. Her husband the apothecary Mülberger had been the mayor from 1673 until his death in 1692 at the age of 56.

After Ursula Elisabeth died in 1705, Johann Jacob felt his forces dwindle (although he was only 60) and relied on the help of his son Philipp Nicolaus (see below) who served as an adjunctus.

In 1708, Johann Jacob retired and Philipp Nicolaus took over his role, although some church records after that still call the father the Konrektor and the son the adjunctus.

When his son moved to Alterkülz, Johann Jacob may have gone along with him, as it was there that he died in October 1726 at the age of 80.

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Trarbach - The Lateinschule is the building to the left of the church. Source: Wikipedia. Von Rolf Kranz - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 4.0

 

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Philipp Nicolaus Ebner,

He was born in 1682 in Trarbach.

In 1708, he officially took over his father's role as Konrektor at the Lateinschule. The same year, he married Dorothea Elisabetha Hammers in Traben, just across the river. As I only found out in the process of preparing this blog entry, Dorothea was the daughter of Christoph Hammes and Anna Dorothea Arnoldi. Her maternal grandfather, Johann Conrad Arnoldi was the vicar of Traben until his death in 1711, so he may have well held her wedding service. Oh, and his brother Johann Justus Arnoldi was the Rektor at the Lateinschule back in the 1650s. Johann Conrad Arnoldi II, the Rektor of the Lateinschule from 1685 until 1708, was Johann Justus Arnoldi's son and thus Anna Dorothea's first cousin. He became quite famous later as a professor at Giessen, see his Wikipedia entry.

Philipp Nicolaus and Dorothea Elisabetha had at least ten children, as I conclude from combining incomplete lists from Gedbas and from a Pfalzdorf researcher.

Gedbas lists six children born in Trarbach:
11. June 1709 Johann Conrad - died in October that year
16. September 1710 Johann Christoph - died February 1712
6. November 1712 Catharina Elisabetha
30. April 1715 Maria Margaretha
27. August 1717 Anna Maria
17. March 1720 Susanna Margaretha

In 1720, he became the vicar of Alterkülz, where he remained for the rest of his life. Times were particularly hard for the people of Trarbach around this time, as the latest peace settlement had assigned the strategically important castle Grevenburg just next door to the Archbishop Elector of Trier, who refused to pay for the repair of its unusable living quarters and instead ordered his garrison to be housed in the town. Thus the fiercely protestant little town was, for the third time in a century, under a hostile occupation lasting many years. This situation may have made the move to remote village of Alterkülz look attractive.

In Alterkülz, four more children were born. Two died in infancy, and of the other two we have no further information.

In 1732, the firstborn, Catharina Elisabeth married Johannes Weiß, who became the vicar of Eckweiler.

Philipp Nicolaus died in August 1734 in Alterkülz aged 53. In 1741, his widow married Johann Hasselbach (source to be confirmed)

In 1742, Maria Margaretha married Johann Matthias Krämer in Traben. The couple had six children according to GedBas.

In 1749, Anna Maria married Carl Morlang from Weiler and had four children with him. The family settled at Pfalzdorf in the Lower Rhine area, together with a whole group of would-be migrants who had wanted to go to America via Rotterdam but only got that far as the Netherlands refused to let them pass.

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Long story short, between them, Ebner father and/or son taught at the Lateinschule for a continuous period of 45 years.

 

And I just found out that the building of the Lateinschule now serves as a hostel for pilgrims, I think I will have to make a pilgrimage too! They do mention cyclists too, so I'll bring a bike.

A brief history of Trarbach and its Lateinschule will follow in two weeks time.

PS A glimpse of my own experience of learning and teaching Latin is in the first paragraph of this book review.

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

a cello with a chip on its shoulder

Pirate Luthier update

A special delivery brought five instruments into the pirate luthier workshop at once, namely violins 35 and 36 and cellos 4-6. These instruments had been donated to a local youth orchestra but needed a bit of care to be made playable. I took on the cellos first, as there was a more immediate demand for those, so this post is only about the cellos.

Cello number 6) is a full-size cello made in Western Germany in the 1950s or 60s I would guess (see the label below). It had a bit of wood missing on the treble side of the shoulder, which I filled in. Not that I care about cosmetic repairs, but there was the risk of a player's sleeve getting caught in the sharp edge and ripping off more of the wood, so it was just an operation to make it smooth.

I also made a foot for it out of a cava cork (forgot to take a photo, but see cello 3). Otherwise it was fine, I happily played it for a week and got on well with it, so all good. The labels reveal that it was "Made in Western Germany" after Stradivarius 1713. Imported by Leslie Sheppard in the 1950s. It has now returned to the good people looking after that youth orchestra.

Cello 5) is a 3/4 cello that was brandnew and in my opinion has never been playable, because the pegs didn't fit quite into the pegholes all the way, so they didn't have enough wood surface to grip on. Which explains why at least one was absolutely unusable. In the end I widened the holes for 3 of the pegs to make sure they are functional. Similar story with the endpin hole - that was too narrow and left the endpin plug sticking out by half a centimeter. More of an aesthetic problem, but I adjusted that as well. And lowered the bridge by half a centimeter.

My overall impression was that the company that sold this instrument just plugged together the parts as they came in from different factories, without ever checking if the combination resulted in a playable instrument. That one is now also back with the owners.

Cello 4) is a half-size one which has a few bits of wood missing which I may or may not fill in and which more importantly has lost all the metal parts of its endpin, leaving only the wooden plug. So it does hold the strings alright but you would have to support it with your legs if you wanted to play it. That can be done but it's not everybody's idea of fun. Endpins come in various sizes that aren't necessarily standardised, and vendors online don't necessarily reveal the crucial measure I need to know, namely the maximal diameter of the wooden conical bit, so I am still looking for the right one to fit this instrument at a price that doesn't exceed the value of the cello itself.

endpin plug of half-sized cello 4) in comparison to the complete endpin of 3/4 cello 2), which has in fact a bigger plug than eg full-size cello 3). It's all very confusing.

NB I've now moved the list of instruments that pass through my pirate luthier workshop to a permanent page which I will update whenever necessary, independent of the blog entries.

meet Conon the contrarian

Among the inlaws of Conrad von der Rosen, who came from Strasbourg to settle in Winterburg in the Hunsrück area, we find the vicar and church inspector Johann Conon who gets a lot of praise in texts relating to the von der Rosen family history and also in the Monatshefte, but is vilified in a history of the town of Trarbach. So let's get to the bottom of that:

 

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Johann Conon

He was born around 1542 in Reichenbach (Vogtland). He studied theology in Rostock and Strasbourg, spent two years as an assistant priest in Mundolsheim, Alsace, then became the court priest of the Counts of Winneburg in Beilstein (Mosel).

From 1572 to 1575 he was the Diakon (assistant priest) of Trarbach, serving under the very popular priest Heinrich Henning who was the first protestant vicar of that town, which at the time had between 1000 and 1200 residents and was the adminstrative capital of the Hintere Grafschaft Sponheim (Upper County of Sponheim). The town was in principle Lutheran but it appears that some people including Henning had Calvinist inclinations. (Note that Calvinism wasn't recognised in the Augsburg settlement of 1555.) Diakon Conon together with an unnamed Diakon of neighbouring Enkirch wrote a letter of complaint about those Calvinist tendencies to the authorities in Zweibrücken, resulting in the removal of both Henning and the vicar of Enkirch, Heinrich Gallus in 1574.

Reporting the events in the book Trarbach in alter Zeit, dating from 1909, author Ernst Schütz creates the impression that Conon acted maliciously against a universally popular parish priest, which at the next "Visitation" from the authorities led to the good people of Trarbach denouncing Conon for all sorts of misdemeanors, such as playing cards and running up debts in the local inns. Apparently he was also fond of hunting and fishing, and a good businessman.

As a result of the "troubles in Trarbach" as other sources put it, Conon was moved to a smaller town, Dill, where he became vicar, so it isn't exactly a punishment as he moved to a higher rank in the clergy albeit in a smaller parish. He stayed there for a year, 1575-76.

As if to prove that the authorities were really on his side in the troubles he faced, he was then made the court preacher of Birkenfeld and inspector of the districts of Allenbach, Birkenfeld and Herrstein, a role which he fulfilled until 1602. Mentions of his name in the Monatshefte mostly refer to his official actions as an inspector, such as installing or removing clergymen in various positions around the area, or commenting on their merits, so he appears to have been carrying out his duties as he should. (Although I also recall seeing a statement from someone who was disappointed after following Conon's recruitment recommendation.)

Birkenfeld in an engraving after Merian. Source: Wikipedia

On 18.12.1600 he held the Leichenpredigt (funeral sermon, a tradition going back to Martin Luther) for Charles I, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld in Meisenheim, which has also been published in print. (The count's main claim to fame, I just learned, is that he is the ancestor of the future kings of Bavaria.)

Around 1573 he married Anna Gräf (Croef). Their children include:
Ursula, who in 1602 married Georg Christmann Nesselius, who from 1600 to 1602 was the schoolmaster and Diakon at Birkenfeld serving under Conon, see his CV below. Their daughter Elisabeth married Johann Conrad von der Rosen, the son of the Strasbourg goldsmith. After Elisabeth died, he married her sister Ursula (blog entry on their descendants coming soon).
Hans Konrad 1577, died the same year
Margaretha 1578 died 1579
Petrus 1579
Sara 1581
Johannes 1583 died 10.9.1602
Christina 1585
Karl 1587 died 12.8.1602
Dorothea 1588
Friedrich 1590

Update 10.4.2026: According to familysearch he died 12.8.1602 at Birkenfeld. The same dataset says his daughter Ursula married Georg Chr. Nesselius on the 15.8.1602, just three days later. Sounds very implausible to me. Gedbas says 12.7. (and still 15.8. for the wedding), that's a bit better. Note that among Conon's children, found on Geneanet, two teenage sons also died in the summer of 1602, Karl on the 12.8. (and his father the same day) and Johannes on 10.9. Three funerals and a wedding then.

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And while we're here, I'll add a short bio of his son-in-law, the priest Christian Nesselius, about whom we don't know quite as much. In fact, I have come across an amazing number of such cases where the clergyman's daughter marries another clergyman, often carried on across several generations, like we have in the Weiß Chronicles as well. One could describe this as matrilinear, as the daughter of the Pfarrersfrau (vicar's wife) becomes a Pfarrersfrau again. So in the Weiss Chronicles we have Elisabeth Hammers - Catharina Elisabeth Ebner - Maria Elisabetha Weiß. Which makes sense as this role came with a whole host of social obligations as well and the daughters could be trained for it from an early age. Church historians like Friedrich Back and O. Penningroth are good at pointing out these connections. Watch out for a separate entry on this phenomenon coming soon.

Anyhow, here comes Conon's daughter and her husband:

 

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Georg Christmann Nesselius

Born in Speyer

From 1600 to 1602 was the schoolmaster and Diakon at Birkenfeld serving under Conon.

in 1602 married Ursula Conon, daughter of Johann Conon, his boss.

Their daughter Elisabeth Nesselius was born 1606 Winningen

1603-1616 he was Diakon (assistant priest) in Winningen. In these years he had to temporarily take on the tasks of the vicar on two occasions when the position was vacant, but each time he failed to get promoted to get the job permanently.

From 1606 to 1607 he had was the acting vicar after Johannes Porta was dismissed. Petrus Merkator, the vicar of Gödenroth was then moved into the position. Merkator died of the plague (which had also killed four of his children within a fortnight) on 28.10.1611. Although the members of the parish supported Nesselius as the permanent replacement, Konrad Greulach was installed in the post in 1613.

Protests only subsided when Nesselius became vicar of Winterburg in 1614. Greulach also died of the plague, in 1623.

In 1628 Elisabeth Nesselius married Johann Conrad von der Rosen, the son of the Strasbourg goldsmith.

On 10.6.1633 he is no longer alive as his daughter Ursula marries Andreas Quinckh from Kreuznach.

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Long story short: Conon the contrarian becomes a respectable inspector and his daughter marries his deputy.

PS More treasures from the Trarbach book to follow next week. Oh, and a potted history of the town is also in the pipeline.

 

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

the AIpocalypse starts here

I'm not particularly interested in AI, and just wish the bubble would burst and go away, but every once in a while the problems it creates get so urgent I can't avoid writing about them. Two years ago it was the environmental footprint of all the fancy new data centres. Now, I'm afraid, it's everybody's safety. I started from the recent safety report that was covered in the media and addresses issues like deep fake videos, fraud, job losses, false health advice etc.

What I found to be missing from the report, however, is a lot more worrying than that, namely the fact that AI is already choosing targets in the wars in Gaza and Iran. So we allow it to kill humans. What could possibly go wrong . Well, it only gets more depressing from there (eg there's the AI2027 scenario which came out last year), so the latest feature is not for the faint-hearted:

Handing over to AI

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 7, 6 April 2026, Pages R265-R267

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(Unfortunately, this year's features will no longer become open access one year after publication - do contact me if you would like a PDF. Last year's features will still move to the open archives as this year advances.)

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.

Last year's thread is here .

Drones guided by AI are already a common feature of current conflicts. (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Victoria Granado/Wikimedia Commons.)

lives of the Caesars

Among all the Renaissance humanists and Reformation clerics who followed the fashion of translating their family names into Latin or Greek, some were luckier than others. I think the too blatantly obvious cases like Mercator or Piscator fell out of fashion pretty swiftly. Then there are the too difficult Greek names like Arthopoeus. I guess Caesar is a good middle way as it is memorable and not too trivial. There's also a justification in that the German word and name Kaiser is derived from Caesar, so rather than translating to a posh language, you could say they just reverted their name to its original version.

Anyhow, among the multiple clergymen that have popped up in the ancestry of Anna Katharina Andrae, there are also a few called Caesar, and I just can't resist the temptation to write their biographies under the title you see above.

 

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Valentin Konstantin Caesar (No. 70 in Anna Katharina Andrae's family tree)

Born in Suhl, County Henneberg (today Thuringia)

1585 vicar of Sien (Kr. Birkenfeld)

1593-98 vicar of Enkirch (Monatshefte 1914, 321-355)

In 1597 he was reported to be not strong enough for this tiring position, so he moved to become:

1598-1600 vicar of Dill

Married Sara, no further details of her are known. Their only known child was Catharina Caesar, who married Heinrich Orth (* ca. 1561 at Kirn, + … 1612/15, Braunsberg, see V-30 in the Orth genealogy). He was Amtmann in Merxheim and the son of the second Lutheran vicar of Kirn, Johann Balthasar Orth (IV-43).

Martin Caesar the vicar of Traben (1585-98), may have been Konstantin's brother or a close relative, as both were born in Suhl, according to the Enkirch article.

From 1586-1595, he was the vicar of Traben (the third since the Reformation). In his account of the parish of Traben 1560-1620 (Monatshefte 1917, 3-32), Friedrich Back doesn't say much about his tenure, but has several pages about how his successor Wenzeslaus Fend, vicar from 1595-1598, quarrelled both with him and with schoolmaster Musculus. Part of the problem was that Fend alleged that Martin Caesar was intimate with his maid. It is not clear at all why Caesar was still present at Traben during that period (in a different text, Back claimed he was moved to a place called Franken in the Eifel in 1595). The quarrels became so bad that the intervention of a single church inspector wasn't sufficient to call the vicar to order. In addition to Inspector Jacoby from Trarbach, the Duke also sent Inspector Johann Conon (his CV is coming up next week as it happens) to Traben to sort things out. Eventually, Fend was moved to Allenbach (Hunsrück).

In 1599 Martin Caesar was vicar of Irmenach.

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Sixtus Caesar (140.)
According to Penningroth, Sixtus Caesar, vicar of Demmingen and Salzungen, is "probably" father to Konstantin Caesar and possibly also to Martin who were both born in Thuringia. I found a Caesar family history where this Sixtus appears as many times great grand uncle, so I'll just adopt him as No. 140. and translate their biography:

He was born ca. 1522
In 1537 he enrolled as student at Wittenberg.
In 1542 he graduated as a magister, then became parson at Wersternach. After the death of his father in 1543 he looks after his mother and younger siblings.

Further positions:
1543 parson at Finningen
1545/46 Planverweser (sounds like a planning admin role) in Löpsingen
Diakon in Nördlingen (that is the town that was famously built into the crater a meteorite left 15 million years ago, which kind of provided a degree of natural fortification)
1548 After the Augsburg Interim he moves to Thuringia
1549-1552 vicar at Salzungen
Also enrolles at the University of Jena since 1549.
1553/54 Lauffen (Neckar)
1554/55 Kürnbach then Finningen
1558 good report from a visitation at Finningen.
1561 Demmingen
1566 appointed to a positin at the palace of Count Wolfgang of Zweibrücken/Pfalz, possibly in parallel to the position at Demmingen.
1578 celebrates 18 years as vicar of Demmingen, aged 56
1584 presumed to have died as the position is filled anew.

Merian view of Nördlingen.
Source: Wikipedia Von Martin Zeiller - Scan eines Original Buchs, Gemeinfrei,

Johannes Keyser (280.)
(listed as father of Sixtus and earliest ancestor in this Caesar family tree). Also listed on Gedbas.

born around 1480 in Nördlingen.
He served first as a Catholic then as a Protestant priest in Harburg / Ries. Married Barbara NN. They have at least ten children.
1518-25 Frühmesser in Harburg (this is a very Catholic thing, with a foundation set up to fund a priest reading the mass before everybody else goes to work)
9.8.1524 Son David Caesar born at Harburg. For the other 9 children there are only estimated birth years (interestingly, one site claims that eight of them were born in 1524).
1525-43 vicar in Harburg and Großsorheim, court preacher for the count Carl Wolfgang of Oettingen at Harburg.
1535 also listed as an assistant preacher in the town of in Nördlingen.
From 1538 Kapellan in the Frühmesshaus Großsorsheim.
Died 1543.

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Long story short: A whole dynasty of Caesarean clergymen.

 

Unfortunately, not very much is known about the wives of those Caesars! However, in other parts of this network of clergymen I am currentlly unravelling the connections are very much matrilinear, will blog about those separately.

What I find absolutely mindboggling is the fact that this is the third lineage that leads us to a protestant priest of the first hour, taking office with the Reformation. Johannes Keyser joins Peter Siegel, the first vicar of Kirn, and Johannes Andreae of Schönbach (the elder). (Oh, and coming up, one Diakon who made himself very unpopular by triggering the removal of a first-hour Lutheran vicar for Calvinist tendencies.)

Overall, including the Andreae lineage and the Caesars as possible/plausible ancestors, I now have 14 clergymen in the family tree. Of those, 13 are (possible) ancestors of the five Kauer sisters. One (Peter Siegel) is from their mother's side, the remaining dozen connects via the people mentioned in the Weiß Chronicles, so they are all ancestors of the teacher Christoph Gottlieb Weiß, the father of their paternal grandmother. There may be a couple more hiding in the bushes. Plus quite a few more among the many-times-great uncles (such as David and Martin Caesar, above).

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

understanding the Andreae connection

The brilliant thing about clergymen showing up in the family history is that there are actual short biographies of these people online, eg in the very amazing Monatshefte für Rheinische Kirchengeschichte (cited below as Monatshefte). And the authors of these texts like to report family connections to other clergymen as well. So in my quest to find the ancestry of my vicar of Gebroth, Johann Nicolaus Andreae, I went through a lot of these issues, checked all mentions of the name Andreae, made a shortlist of candidates, and I think I found a plausible connection to an earlier Andreae clergyman. It will become clear from their biographies, so I'll write out Nicolaus's CV first and then that of his prospective grandfather (or possibly father if he had a much younger wife).

 

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Nicolaus Andreae (1580s to 1640s)

He was born in Enkirch on the river Mosel (just downstream from the town of Trarbach, which will become relevant). He studied in Strasbourg and got married while he was there.

In 1607 he came to Kastellaun (Hunsrück) as a schoolmaster and Stipendiat (F. Back, Monatshefte 1911, 301-304). I guess that may have been like a practical year after his studies, before becoming ordained as a priest? The article notes that he couldn't move in with the Kaplan of the parish (the assistant to the vicar I believe) because both men were married, adding that Nicolaus Andreae got married while he was still a student in Strasbourg, but failing to mention the name of his wife. Also, no mention of children.

Note that the older Andreae, below, took up office as the 74-year-old belligerent vicar of Kastellaun at that very moment, but the biographies of both don't reveal whether this is coincidence or family connection. An official assessment visit praised the young teacher's work but noted that he wasn't very musical and that his singing was awful, which is interesting because we have a teacher among his presumed descendants who had the same problem and became a pioneering special needs teacher because of it. Remuneration of the schoolmaster was an issue, at one point there was trouble because there were no funds for him to buy wood to heat his home.

Matthäus Merian, view of Kastellaun 1645. Source: Wikipedia/ Achim Berg - eigene Aufnahme von Thementafel im Hunsrück-Museum Simmern, CC BY-SA 3.0.

In 1609 he took up the position of vicar in Gödenroth (Monatshefte 1912, 65-78), where he became notorious in 1613 for beating up his wife (whose name isn't mentioned). A report is made to authorities with graphic detail, but in the end he is allowed to stay in position based on the promise that it won't happen again. Part of the reasoning was a political complication which I didn't quite understand and which would kick in if the post were to become vacant.

By 1632, he had caused no further trouble, but his health had made it difficult for him to serve the outpost of the parish at Sevenich (Monatshefte 1912, 79-82), which would require regular foot journeys in all weather (a kind of problem older clergymen in those days often faced). For this reason he asked to be moved to a less tiring job.

In 1632, therefore, he became the vicar of Gebroth (Monatshefte 1913, 193-209 covers the parish before his arrival, 1560-1620), where he stayed until he died between 1635 and 1641. The surviving church records of Gebroth only begin in 1739, so all earlier info is glanced indirectly from other documents. Thus, on 20.2.1635 he christened the son of vicar Jacobi at Winterburg, which is the last evidence we have of him being alive. He left a widow called Anna Amalia, who continued to serve as a godmother at christenings eg in Winterburg on 19.8.1641, then in 1643 and 1651.

One Gedbas entry identifies the widow as Anna Amalia Orth, who went on to marry the vicar Johann Valentin Corvinus in 1652, who had been married to two other Orth women before, namely her sister and her cousin. We obviously don't have evidence yet regarding whether she is Nicolas Andreae's only wife, i.e. we don't know whether Anna Amalia is the same person he married at Strasbourg and/or the same wife he beat up in 1613 and who had children from a previous marriage. I would say probably not, because there was the 30-years-war going on with marauding troops and the plague coming through, so life expectancy was short and the lucky survivors often went through several spouses. We also don't know for sure whether she was actually the mother of Franz Nickel Andreae whose descendancy we believe leads to Anna Catharina Andrae.

Note, however, that any children born to Nikolaus and his wife in his early adult life would have been long grown up by the time he moved to Gebroth, so would have had no reason to join him there. And I am fairly confident that he was the one who brought the name to Gebroth and is thus the ancestor of future generations of Andrae people from there (see the names in their churchyard).

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Among the many other Andreae priests I listed last week I've now homed in on:

Johannes Andreae (1532-1613).

Johannes Andreae was born in 1532 in Schönbach (Dillkreis) or Dillenburg as the son of Johannes Andreae who later became the parson of that parish which turned protestant in 1536. I guess Johannes senior may have been the first protestant priest at that parish, but my email enquiry on that matter hasn't been answered.

Johannes junior visited the grammar school at Dillenburg and the universities Wittenberg (matriculated 1551) and Marburg. At Wittenberg, he became close friends with Friedrich Wiedebrand, who wrote a poem for him on the occasion of his marriage to Agatha in 1559: Epithalamia in nuptias M. Joannis Andreae Schonbach et pudica virginis Agathae.

A footnote to Sinemus's piece (Monatshefte 1928) informs us that he had a son called Emmerich Andreae, who was a student in 1583 and a vicar in Bechtheim (near Worms) around 1618. These dates are compatible with Emmerich being born in the 1560s from the marriage to Agatha in 1559.

After that he worked for two years as an assistant teacher at the Dillenburg school, before returning to Wittenberg. He stayed there for three years including two years as an assistant (famulus) to Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560). After his ordination he briefly worked as a teacher for the count Adolf of Nassau, spent another two years at Wittenberg, (According to Rotscheidt, he travelled with the junior count Adolf 1554-56 visiting both Wittenberg and Strasbourg) and then became head teacher of the Dillenburg (Herborn according to the more recent source) grammar school. Later he served as a vicar in Haiger (1561-64) and in Diez at St. Peter 1564-73.

In 1573 he was forced to abandon the latter position because the area switched to Calvinism. The Counts of Hessen moved him to the vicarage of Braubach on the river Rhein. When faced with the threat of salary cuts, he applied to become vicar of Rockenberg in 1587.

In 1588 he became vicar and superintendent at Altenkirchen. He and his colleague are presumed to have written the church constitution for the rulers of the area, the counts of Sayn-Wittgenstein.

In 1605, Count Wilhelm of Sayn-Wittgenstein abruptly switched to calvinism, and Johannes Andreae was forced to leave the area at the advanced age of 73. He turned to Inspector Nicolas Jacobi of Trarbach for help. He may have known him personally, and he definitely had connections to the area as his brother-in-law Michael Artopoeus was a vicar at Traben at the time (just across the river Mosel and now united with the other side in the town of Traben-Trarbach - I need to memorise once and for all that Traben is on the left bank and Trarbach on the right, just like they appear in the combined name).

Jacobi wrote a glowing recommendation letter to the authorities, which resulted in Andreae getting the opportunity to give a trial sermon at Birkenfeld. After further examination he was finally installed as the new vicar of Kastellaun (Hunsrück) on 21.6.1607 at the age of 75. We don't have an arrival date for the young school teacher Andreae, above, so don't know who was there first and whether the incoming vicar perhaps installed a family member in the newly created teaching post.

Having been chased out of his jobs and hometowns by Calvinists on two separate occasions, he was understandably hostile to this particular creed. In his new position he established a reputation as a "hyper-Lutheran" who kept sniffing out even the faintest traces of Calvinism. Church inspectors who liked him in general commented on his anti-Calvinist fervour on several occasions. People remarked that he was quite the opposite of the good-natured spirit of his famous mentor Melanchthon.

In the summer of 1613 he died at the age of 80 and is likely buried in the church of Kastellaun.

Sources: The Monatshefte include biographies of him in different places, once as a superintendent in Altenkirchen (M. Sinemus Monatshefte 1928), and later in his life as a refugee from there finding shelter in Kastellaun (F. Back, Monatshefte 1911, 301-304). Just before the Monatshefte died, the editor W. Rotscheidt published a short notice adding crucial details to the earlier articles (Monatshefte 1942, 185-186).

---

 

Long story short: two Lutheran clergymen with the surname Andreae meet at Kastellaun in 1607, when the older becomes vicar and the younger the schoolmaster of the parish.

Based on these biographies I can see two possible scenarios that could link Johannes to Nikolaus:

1) Johannes as the grandfather

Johannes * 1532 oo 1559 Agatha (I conclude from the title of the poem that it's her first marriage, so let's say * ca 1540)

Emmerich * ca. 1560

Nikolaus * 1580s

2) Johannes as a father with a much younger wife

Friedrich Back, writing about Johannes Andreae's tenure in Kastellaun, informs us that Michael Artopaeus (1574-1629; also on GedBas), then vicar of Traben, was his brother in law. As the wives of Artopaeus are named in various places in the Monatshefte and are not called Andreae, I conclude that Johannes Andreae was married to a sister of Michael Artopaeus. (Also, Artopaeus is 40 years younger than Andreae, that's easier to fit together this way.)

Which means any descendants of this marriage would have maternal family in the Mosel valley around Traben and Enkirch, which makes it entirely plausible that our Nikolaus Andreae born in Enkirch in the 1580s could be a son of that marriage. Michael Artopoeus's parents (Franz, another vicar, and Gute Arnold married in 1574, so any daughter from that marriage would have been too young to be Nikolaus's mother, but a daughter from a previous marriage of either would still qualify to make Michael Artopoeus the brother-in-law of our Nikolaus.

Johannes was also married to Margaretha NN at one point. It would be really useful to know more about his wives to sort this out! Either way, we could add three clergymen to the family tree.

I think for the time being and until further evidence materialises, I favour version 1) as all connections are between people who we actually know existed.

Regarding the descendants, note that, in addition to our Nikolaus, all other Andrae people I found in the Hunsrück and Mosel area could in principle descend from Johannes Andreae from Schönbach, including everybody listed under 3) and 4) in the previous entry, namely:

Johann Andrae, the earliest ancestor of the Andrae population in the Mosel valley, whose only listed child Matthias Andrae was born in 1640, so he would be a bit younger than our Nikolaus. Confusingly, there is also a catholic Andrae clan in the Mosel valley, starting from a younger Johann born around 1645 who married Elisabeth Maria Scheuren and had seven children born in Ediger in the district of Cochem. As I believe the name Andreae / Andrae is a typical protestant invention, I suspect this Johann, if his confession is correct in GedBas, may have converted back.

Johann Nikolaus Andrae * 1685 in Krummenau is a priest whose family connections are completely obscure. He was vicar of Dörrenbach 1708-1728 and married Anna Eva Simon, daughter of the vicar of Kirn, Johann Daniel Simon, in 1710 - that's all the info we get from O. Penningroth who was writing about the Simon lineage in Monatshefte 1933.

Conrad Andreä was vicar of Winningen (Mosel) 1596-1599 according to an article about this parish (Monatshefte 1909, 225-286) According to Friedrich Back (Monatshefte 1933, 275) he died of the plague which hit the town in 1597, with 206 casualties. ,

NB he could be the same person as the husband of Agnes Orth, (V 4 in the massive Orth clan) * …, + …, ∞ … Konrad Andreas, who died after 1586, and was a vicar at Koblenz, very close to Winningen.

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Who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

PS A comprehensive listing of the Artopoeus family, which has produced 10 clergymen, is given by Oskar Penningroth in Monatshefte 1933, page 252, and also in English here. Depending on how the balance between scenarios 1) and 2) develops, I may or may not be coming back to them later.

how trees rule the world

I keep writing about trees, all the wonderful things they do for us, and why we stop forestation. I never joined the dots quite like Harriet Rix does in her amazing book

The genius of trees:
How trees mastered the elements and shaped the world
Bodley Head 2025

which shows that our whole environment is basically the product of trees controlling earth, water, air, and fire, the classical elements referenced in the title.

So I should have written this book, but it was more relaxing just reading and enjoying it.

My review of the book is now out in the March issue of Chemistry & Industry:

A world shaped by trees

Chemistry & Industry Volume 90, Issue 3, March 2026, Page 34

access via:

Wiley Online Library (paywalled PDF of the whole review section)

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

As always, I can send a PDF on request.

PS I believe the book is now available as a paperback too - saves some trees!

save the microbes

Over the last few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the fact that commensal microbiota are important just about everywhere, from our bodies to the leaves of tomato plants. Funnily enough this hasn't quite translated into the realisation that saving life on Earth from another mass extinction will also require saving the microbes that are the foundation of all ecosystems as well as the little helpers in many symbiotic relationships.

Only last year did the IUCN (which looks after the Red List of endangered species) launch a specialist group focused on microbial conservation. Reason enough to write a feature about it which is out now:

Towards a Red List for microbes

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 6, 23 March 2026, Pages R229-R231

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(Unfortunately, this year's features will no longer become open access one year after publication - do contact me if you would like a PDF. Last year's features will still move to the open archives as this year advances.)

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.

Last year's thread is here .

The cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus is a major contributor to photosynthesis globally but may be more vulnerable to ocean warming than previously predicted. (Image taken by Anne Thompson, Chisholm Lab.)

meandering Andreae clans

Digging into the ancestry of Anna Katharina Andrae (1742-1816) from Gebroth, we've established that her presumed great-great-grandfather Nikolaus Andrae (or Andreae) was the one who brought this name to Gebroth (where it is present to this day) when he took up the position as a vicar of this remote village in the Hunsrück in 1632. We have found half a dozen other Lutheran priests in his extended family, specifically including both grandfathers of his wife, as well as several ancestors of his daughter in law.

Although some of these in-law ancestries go back to the 15th century, we still don't know who his parents were. I have been following two leads, first geographically, as he was born in Enkirch on the river Mosel, I have been looking at the Andrae and similarly named families there, and then, as he seems to have been well-connected in the Lutheran clergy network, I wondered whether he also came from such a background. And I did find lots of Lutherans with that name. Note that it's not a very common name otherwise, so my suspicion is that it only originated as a family name whent protestant clergymen and teachers latinised their germanic names. I am looking at four separate groups of findings:

1) the Stuttgart/Tübingen clan

The name change is documented for the most prominent Andreae family, which goes back to a smith by the name of Endriss, whose son Jakobus latinised the name to Andreae and founded a whole dynasty of protestant intellectuals with very impressive biographies in Wikipedia:

Jacobus Andreae (* 1528 Waiblingen)

Johannes Andreae (* 1554 Tübingen)

Johann Valentin Andreae (*1586 Herrenberg)

Jacobus Andreae painted by Hans Ulrich Alt, Öl auf Holz, 1590, Sammlung Tübinger Professorengalerie

Each of them had lots of children (20, 8, 9 respectively), some of the sons were also clergymen. My Nikolaus Andrae is about the same generation as Johann Valentin, so could be eg his cousin. I haven't found an obvious connection yet, but it could still happen. Then again, as these men were very famous Lutherans in their time, a young priest from a less eminent family could have adjusted his name to bask in their reflected glory. Latinised names were all the rage at the time, so we find Schmidt turning into Faber, Raabe into Corvinus and Kaufmann into Mercator.

The well-documented members of this dynasty have largely remained rooted in the Wurttemberg region, but the Sponheim county where our Nikolaus was born isn't too far away, so a black sheep needing some a bit of distance from that high-flying family could easily have moved there.

2) the Saxony clan

A bit further afield, we have another dynasty of Lutheran priests in the vicinity of Halle on the river Saale (today's Saxony Anhalt). The nameline documented on Gedbas.de goes back to

Georgius Andrae * around 1500 in Geneva

then the parsons start with

Thomas Andrae + 1575 Halle

Elias Andrae * 1561 Halle

Laurentius Andrae * 1594 Halle and Thomas Andrae * 1598 Halle

There are no other carriers of the name listed in this submission, but the data don't look complete, so there could be other sons, and, again, our Nikolaus could be a cousin to the priests Laurentius and Thomas.

Intriguingly, a Tobias Andreae from Halle studied theology in Heidelberg in 1587, then became a parson in Lorsch, and from 1594 in Dillheim, may have stayed in the Rhine area (Monatshefte für Rheinische Kirchengeschichte 22 (1928)).

3) the Mosel valley clan

A lineage in the Mosel valley goes back to

Johann Andrae who is roughly the same generation as our Nikolaus as he had a child in 1640. Unfortunately no further info about him, apart from many generations of Andrae descendants who largely stayed in the Mosel valley. Can't find any priests among the descendants. Although the name Franz seems to be popular in this family, as it is among the descendants of Nikolaus Andrae in Gebroth.

4) ... and another clan in the Hunsrück area?

Johann Nikolaus Andrae * 1685 in Krummenau is a priest whose family connections are completely obscure - he may very well turn out to be a descendant of our Gebroth vicar but so far nothing links him to the place. He was vicar of Dörrenbach 1708-1728 and married Anna Eva Simon, daughter of the vicar of Kirn, Johann Daniel Simon, in 1710 (O. Penningroth in Monatshefte 1933).

Conrad Andreä was vicar of Winningen (Mosel) 1596-1599 elsewhere: 1586-1597, died of the plague which hit the town in 1597, with 206 casualties. Actually, I like this guy, he's on the right river, at the right time, to be the father of our Nikolaus. Apparently, Winningen was a lutheran enclave in an otherwise catholic region, and widely praised as a model protestant community. Conrad reportedly fought to keep his protestant flock away from the temptations of hitching up with catholics. There are two short (half-page) reports about him (Monatshefte 1909, 225-286; 1933, 275). ,

NB he could be the same person as the husband of Agnes Orth, (V 4 in the massive Orth clan) * …, + …, ∞ … Konrad Andreas, who died after 1586, and was a vicar at Koblenz, very close to Winningen. He could plausibly be a son of the following:

Magister Johannes Andreae vicar of Altenkirchen (Westerwald) 1589–1605 evicted from the town as it becomes a reformed parish on 9.10.1605 and he refuses to adhere to that creed (* 26. Dezember 1532 in Schönbach Dillkreis; † summer 1613 in Kastellaun) There is a lovely biography of him in the Monatshefte für rheinische Kirchengeschichte vol 22 (1928) which I'll translate in a separate entry. From a footnote to that bio, we learn that he had a son:

Emmerich Andreä called Schönbach (after his father's birthplace, which his father had also used after his name sometimes), who was a student in 1583 and a vicar at Bechtheim near Worms in 1618. So he would have been born in the 1560s.

I had this forth section under the headline "strays" initially, but I'm beginning to get a dynasty together here. Johannes's nameless father was also a priest and I am trying to find out if he was the first vicar of Schönbach (which still a Lutheran parish today, so there is a successor).

Note that our Nikolaus Andreae, the stray Nikolaus, the whole clan of the Mosel valley Andrae people under 3) and Konrad could all descend from Johannes A. from Altenkirchen. I'll explore this possibility in the next entry.

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Who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

overtures from Fanny and Louise

I'm organising a Cowley Orchestra Feature Evening for next week where we will focus on:

Fanny Hensel (Mendelssohn): Overture in C major, H265 (1832)

Louise Farrenc: Overture No. 1 Op. 23 (1834)

Conductor: Elsa Vass-de-Zomba

That's happening Wednesday 18.3. at 7pm (play will start around 7:15) at the Oxford Academy, Sandy Lane West, Littlemore.

As always, all players of orchestral instruments welcome.

We have borrowed a complete professional set and score of the Farrenc, so can accommodate any number of players on that. For the Hensel I printed the score and one copy of each part, so if anybody is bringing in several players with the same instrument, (we could do with eg half a dozen violinists!) please do let me know so I can print more copies. Or print your own from HenselPushers.

I've also created a facebook event for those using facebook to share.

Videos of professional performances:

Hensel

Farrenc

from the vicar of Gebroth to the mayor of Marburg

In the Weiß Chronicles, Johann Gottlieb Weiß (1736-1800) the mayor of Pferdsfeld (see generation 8) marries Anna Katharina Andrae (1742-1816) from Gebroth. She is the paternal grandmother of the author of the chronicles but he did not supply any additional information about her. He was born around 1821, after she died. By 2000, we still didn't know anything about her. By 2013, we had found the names of her parents. Based on that information, my father hired a professional genealogist who came back with a report of six pages (including two pages from an earlier effort published by Ulrike Kühne in 1994 (Mitteilungen der WGgF Bezirksgruppe Mittelrhein). From that I extracted the names and dates that go into our official family tree but somehow I never got round to looking at it in depth and searching some of the new names that came up.

The main result of the professional report was establishing that, in spite of some gaps in the church books of Gebroth, the name line Andrae can be traced back to Nikolaus Andrae or Andreae, who was the vicar of Gebroth from 1632 presumably until his death, but records aren't all that complete in the middle of the 30-Years War. Although not all parent-child links are clearly documented, the genealogist made a convincing case based on mutual exchanges of godparents between families. Also, it appears that the name Andrae, which survives in Gebroth to this day (I checked 28.2.2026; see also their cemetery), was introduced to the village with the arrival of that vicar, so the lineage of our Anna Katharina must be going back to him even if one of the links may be a bit wobbly.

The genealogist also discovered a skeleton in the vicar's closet - there is a file about Nikolaus with allegations of domestic violence from 1613, during his earlier tenure as the vicar of Gödenroth. Apparently the church was so short of candidates with the right academic qualification willing to take up poorly paid posts in remote Hunsrueck villages that they couldn't dismiss him but gave him a second chance when he promised it wouldn't happen again. He stayed until 1632, when he was moved to Gebroth. His redemption appears to have worked out well as his nameline descendants remained in Gebroth and networked with everybody who was anybody and found some rather interesting spouses, including the granddaughter of the Strasbourg goldsmith about whom I raved last week. Incidentally, her brother Johann Conrad von der Rosen is the vicar of Gebroth

Some 13 years after the report came in I now looked at the earliest ancestors listed there again, because I had been looking into the social network of the vicars of Eckweiler and wondered whether there were any more to be found in the vicinity of the vicar of Gebroth. I found quite a few new ancestors, including four additional protestant priests (total now stands at 9, or 10 if I include the one listed as "probably" the father of another, below), as well as connections to the ancestries of Goethe through common ancestors in Marburg and, separately, Albert Schweitzer. Of course these links are too remote to be of any biological significance, but they are enormously helpful as these VIP family trees tend to be well researched and documented. Oh and I'm still discovering more things that will go into another blog entry. I do wonder why our old chronicler didn't show any interest in the family of his grandmother.

Merian engraving of Marburg in 1605, a time when lots of Orth people were active there. Unfortunately I couldn't find any interesting illustrations of Gebroth. The church has burned down and been rebuilt since Nikolaus Andrae was the vicar there and there aren't any historic postcards of the place online (although I have a tiny image of one in a web page that I printed out 20 years ago). Source.

So here we go, starting from Anna Katharina, generations 0-4 all born in Gebroth unless otherwise specified. The five protestant priests in her direct ancestry are set in bold:

1. Anna Katharina Andrae 1742-1816

2. Franz Nikel Andrae 1705-1765, juror in Gebroth
oo

3. Maria Magdalena Metzler 1711-1779

4. Johann Nikolaus Andrae from Gebroth appears as a godfather at christenings in nearby Winterburg in 1689 and 1700.
Intriguingly, the list of protestant parsons in the area has one by the same name born in Krummenau in 1685, but without a clear connection to Gebroth.

8. Frantz Nickel Andrae died before 1685. The genealogist argued that the combination of Franz and Nikolaus is rare outside this family, so this guy would likely be the grandfather of the eponymous ancestor number 2.
oo 21.2.1654 Winterburg

9. Maria Ottilia von der Rosen

16. Nikolaus Andrae, born in Enkirch on the river Mosel, an area where the name Andrae is more common; vicar of Gödenroth 1609-1623 and of Gebroth from 1632 until his death before 1643
oo

17. Amalia NN in the genealogist's report, but nowadays, various online sources identify her as Amalia Orth, from an ancient family from Hessen (Marburg / Butzbach) traced back to before 1400, which also appears in Goethe's family tree. After Nikolaus Andrae died, Amalia became the third wife of the clergyman Johann Valentin Corvinus who had also been married to two other Orth women before. The Goethe pages (see VI 59) note that one was her sister, the other her cousin.

18. Johann Conrad von der Rosen born 1599 Strassburg, died Winterburg 13.9.1656
oo 1628 Winterburg

19. Elisabeth Nesselius born 1606 Winningen

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NB From here on we leave Gebroth behind and the known lineages mainly involve relatively famous ancestries easily found online, so I'm only listing them as far as necessary to demonstrate the connections to the four additional clergymen I just discovered:

32. In the quest for further Andreae ancestry I have screened various candidates and decided to adopt the lineage of Johannes Andreae of Schönbach in the end. He could be the father or the grandfather of 16. Nikolaus. Even if he's no blood relation, we know that they met because they worked in the same small town, Kastellaun, for a couple of years, one as the old vicar, the other as a young schoolmaster.

34. Heinrich Orth, , * Kirn ca. 1561, + … 1612/15, Braunsberg, Amtmann des Grafen Wilhelm v. Braunsberg, in Merxheim.
oo

35. Katharina Caesar (Kaiser?) ,

36 Franz Bolion von der Rosen, the goldsmith of Strasbourg
oo 21. November 1581 Strassburg,

37 Ottilie Flach born in Schlettstadt, Alsace, from the Flach family that also features in Albert Schweitzer's ancestry.

38 Georg Christian Nesselius vicar of Winterburg, Kaplan at Winningen, Diacon at Birkenfeld. Studied at Strasbourg.
oo 15. August 1602 Birkenfeld

39. Ursula Conon

68.Johann Balthasar Orth, *ca. 1526 Bingen, + Kirn/Nahe 5.1.1569, Kaplan 1555, From 1560 until his death in 1569 he was the second protestant vicar of Kirn. As it happens, his predecessor, Peter Siegel, is in my family tree too, though through the Imig rather than the Kauer route. See further Orth ancestry here. Johann Balthasar is IV.43, and apparently there are three different lineages that are proposed for his ancestry, but all lead back to Antonius Orth, below.

70 Konstantin Caesar / Keiser Vicar in Sien (1585), Enkirch (1593-98), Dill (1598-1600)
oo

71 Sara NN

72 Humbert von der Rosen, from Liege

74 Gabriel Flach * 1525 Schlettstadt May be related to the Strasbourg printer Martin Flach who died in 1500?

78 Johann Conon (ca. 1542-1602) vicar of Trarbach, Dill, Birkenfeld; born Reichenbach, Vogtland, studied at Rostock and Strasbourg. Note that a couple of generations earlier there was a monk with that name who was praised by Erasmus.

140 ? Sixtus Caesar O. Penningroth writes that 70. Konstantin Caesar was "probably" the son of Sixtus Caesar, who was a vicar at Demmingen and Salzungen (Monatshefte 1933). Not sure how reliable this guess is, but I'm adopting him. The blog entry dedicated to the lives of the Caesars is now online.

For the common ancestor with Goethe, I have to go 3 generations up from the vicar of Kirn to generation I in this Orth genealogy, arriving at:

544. Antonius Orth, (Donges) * Butzbach or Wetzlar + 1486/93 Marburg , Bürgermeister of Marburg 1463/64, where he was a merchant, and where his seven children were born.
oo ca. 1454

545. Grete from Mardorf

This couple sits at the top of three different lineages leading to Goethe (and probably everybody else with ancestors in Hessen).

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Note that Anna Katharina, with five vicars in her family tree (six if we count Sixtus Caesar, and there may be more, I'm still digging!), went on to marry the son of a vicar, who had several more in his extended family. Oh and the Johannes Andrae from Gebroth who went to study theology at Gießen 1767 may well have been her brother.

Makes me wonder to what extent she was aware of her family history, and why none of this information percolated down to her grandson.

I'm chuffed to have found this connection to Marburg actually, going back to the time before the university was founded in 1527.Antonius Orth lived there exactly 500 years before I went there to study.

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Who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

the mysteries of syphilis

Many infectious diseases have managed to establish themselves in human populations after the advent of agriculture, when dense settlements enabled them to spread and persist. Later, trade and warfare carried them around the world, typically from densely populated Eurasia to other parts of the world where the lack of immunity led to catastrophic consequences.

Syphilis is the great exception to this scenario. It likely originated in the New World (if it hasn't spread with humans since the expansion out of Africa) and has now been shown to predate intensive agriculture and dense settlements. The pathogen Treponema pallidum has been challenging researchers, but ancient DNA is now showing up that clarifies the origins and early evolution of this disease, which has terrified Europeans since Columbus came back from his transatlantic voyages.

Read all about it in my latest feature which is out now:

An ancient disease from the New World

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 5, 9 March 2026, Pages R171-R173

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(Unfortunately, this year's features will no longer become open access one year after publication - do contact me if you would like a PDF. Last year's features will still move to the open archives as this year advances.)

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.

Last year's thread is here .

Treponema pallidum, which causes several diseases including syphilis, has proven difficult to cultivate and to study. (Image by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.)

a goldsmith at Strasbourg

I recently revisited the family history around the Weiß chronicles, which I hadn't touched in a long time, and discovered quite a few new things and some old things that I knew superficially but never investigated in depth. Among the latter is an ancestry line that came to the Hunsrück from Liège via Strasbourg and included a goldsmith or three.

Specifically, my (presumed) ancestor Johann Conrad von der Rosen was born 1599 in Strasbourg, came to Winterburg (not far from Eckweiler) and married Elisabeth Nesselius (daughter of another protestant priest, more about that in a separate entry) and settled as an innkeeper and "Gerichtsherr" (juryman?) at Winterburg where he died in 1656.

His father, Franz Bolion von der Rosen is the goldsmith whose story I want to explore here. He worked at Strasbourg from 1579, so quite possibly in the rue des orfèvres, just northwest of the cathedral. Although it was only named thus in 1680, this street housed goldsmiths since the Middle Ages.

Photo: Par Nikolai Karaneschev, CC BY 3.0,

According to old family histories where he pops up, he was world famous in his time, see for instance this text from Karl Heinz Armknecht from the 1950s. As one of the genealogists who mention him pointed out, he has an entry in Thieme-Becker Künstlerlexikon, where I could track him down. As they spell him as Roosen, he appears in vol 28: Ramsden–Rosa. E. A. Seemann, Leipzig 1934, on pp 583-584:

Basically the entry lists like a dozen sculptures by him that were known to be in the art collection of Elias Brackenhofer (1618-1682). I love they way the author specifies for each single item that the figure is naked. With classical sujets like Venus, Cupid et al. you would rather expect that they aren't wearing too many clothes but this entry spends a significant fraction of its word count on spelling that out every single time. Note also that the dictionary has nearly 150,000 entries so being included doesn't quite make you a household name.

Apparently he had to flee from Liège to Strasbourg where he is recorded in 1579 (although I've failed to find a specific event at that time that might have endangered his life in Liège). At that time he was simply Franz von der Rosen. The Bolion being an extra he acquired upon acceptance into the goldsmiths' guild in Strasbourg, which happened before his marriage to Ottilia Flach on 21.1.1581 in St. Thomas church, Strasbourg. Which is interesting because ... Ottilia is from the Flach family that appears in Albert Schweitzer's family tree (his maternal line great-grandmother was nee Flach), and Schweitzer used to play the organ in St. Thomas church when he studied in Strasbourg some 320 years later. (Find Ottilia on GedBas too.)

Anyhow, what troubles me is that the world-famous goldsmith has been completely forgotten outside the circles of genealogists who proudly present him in their family trees. While there is a family "de Rosen" in Liege, the members who turn up online tend to be much more recent than our refugee, apart from the earliest ancestor, Pierre Rosen, who was a citizen of Liège in 1520. So he could theoretically be the father of our earliest ancestor, the father of the Strasbourg goldsmith:

Humbert / Humprecht Bolion von der Rosen born ca. 1530 in Liege, mentioned 1544-53 as an engraver in the guild list of the goldsmiths of Liège, married Gertrud de Pealier before 1560, then Ursula Meyer in Strasbourg in 1562, which seems to suggest that he came to Strasbourg earlier than the first date noted for his son.

One generation on, we're running out of Roses, but his father in law, Jean de Pealier, was mentioned as an engraver and member of the goldsmiths' guild at Liège from 1548-54. His wife was called Marie Surdelle (which sounds like a made-up name as it translates as "sure of herself").

So we have a whole lot of goldsmithery going on here across three generations, shame that these people have fallen into oblivion.

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Who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

NB these folks are completely unrelated to my great-grandparents Heinrich (the cellist) and Maria, who met at Strasbourg in 1903 and gave the place a prime position in my lost cities series.

Update 12.3.2026: The connection between these Strasbourg ancestors and those in the Weiß Chronicles is now outlined in this new blog entry.

Update 13.3.2026: I've just discovered two descendants of the goldsmiths have Wikipedia entries: Philipp Caspar Roos (1717-1805) and his son Johann Philipp Roos (born 1754). The first one includes a footnote listing the ancestors of Philip Caspar back to our common ancestor Johan Conrad von der Rosen, who came to Winterburg from Strasbourg.

fiddles fixed in February

Pirate Luthier update

After crack repair, successful reassembly and setting up of the quite lovely violin number 30, I turned to some less beautiful specimens.

First to finish off the number 13 which served as a guinea pig for the repair I did on number 30. When I had it assembled and started tuning up the strings, the neck fell off, which was completely unrelated to the problems I fixed before (and just serves as another warning not to buy fiddles from Facebook Marketplace). I've refitted the neck now and the strings have been on for a few days now, so I'm hoping it holds this time.

In an effort to make the old fiddles more user-friendly to modern players, I ordered in a few tailpieces with integrated adjusters, so I'm now fitting these to the instruments that came with no adjusters or just one. Have done that for number 30 and 13 above, and also for the czechoslovakian student fiddle number 27.

Right now I'm setting up the 3/4 Lark violin (number 33) I recently bought for £ 5, which I believe reflects its value. I'm cutting a bridge and putting on new string and will have to find a chinrest for it.

All of which isn't generating any particularly interesting photos, so I'm sharing one from my early years in woodworking instead:

The funny thing about it is that I still have most of the tools from the toolset you see on the wall behind me, so I arranged them for a still life:

If I ever decide to make a violin from scratch, I'll cut the f-holes with that fretsaw ...

NB I've now moved the list of instruments that pass through my pirate luthier workshop to a permanent page which I will update whenever necessary, independent of the blog entries.

the vicars of Eckweiler

After revisiting the Weiß Chronicles including the biography of Johannes Weiß, the vicar of Eckweiler from 1740 to 1772, I had another look at the history of the village, which unfortunately disappeared from the surface of the Earth in the 1980s, leaving nothing but the little church and an old chestnut tree.

It reminded me that the Lutheran village clergymen in that area formed an interesting kind of network between neighbouring parishes and across generations. For instance, the next vicar of Eckweiler taking over from Johannes Weiß, was his son in law. Four of my direct ancestors played parts in that game regionally. Johannes Weiß at Eckweiler was the most recent one, then there's his father-in-law Philipp Nicolaus Ebner at Alterkülz, then the great-great-grandfather of his daughter-in-law at Gebroth, and finally Peter Siegel, who studied with Martin Luther and brought the Reformation to Kirn, was the earliest.

In an effort to better understand the culture of these networks, I'll list all the vicars who held the parish of Eckweiler in a timeline from the Reformation through to its dissolution, to see if there are any further connections with people we know (names of interest in bold).

My main source for this endeavour is the book:

Eckweiler: Eine Kirche ohne Dorf
Monika Kirschner, Hans Werner Ziemer
2005 (printed privately, no ISBN number

referred to as "the book" below, but in an earlier effort to draw up a family tree of an Eckweiler person not (yet) related to me, I also used the Einwohnerbuch Eckweiler-Daubach, which I don't have at hand right now. That ancestry of Johann Nikolaus Fuchs also includes several of the clergymen listed below.

timeline

1557 16.7. official date of the Reformation in the Hintere Grafschaft Sponheim, the microstate to which Eckweiler then belonged. (While the book says it belonged to Hintere (Eastern) Grafschaft Sponheim, Wikipedia says at least in the initial partitioning it was part of the Vordere (Western) Grafschaft Sponheim. It may have been reshuffled to the other part at some point, but the Reformation came to both parts simultaneously, which were otherwise surrounded by mostly catholic areas.)

1557-1586 Remigius Thiel is the first Lutheran vicar of Eckweiler. He died at Eckweiler 9.1.1602 aged over 80.

1586-1593 Johannes Ries, then moved on to Gebroth.

1593-1599 Melchior Beerwein. He ran into trouble and disappeared without a trace.

1599-1621 Johann Valentin Faber. He died in Eckweiler January 1621. His son and grandson also were vicars, more info about the family here. According to that forum contribution, his wife, Juliane Teutchag, was the daughter of the vicar of Wallhausen, from a long line of clergymen in Hessen. The unusual name may be a misreading of Tautphoeus, which originated from a latinised version of the village name Dautphe (near Biedenkopf, Hessen) where that lineage came from.

1621-1635 Nicolaus Mohr Now that's interesting because I think he may very well be related to our Landschreiber Mohr in the same generation. Both are believed to have died from the plague which hit the area in 1635-36. The village of Daubach near Eckweiler was reported to have no residents left for about a decade.

until 1663 Johann Jakob Faber, grandson of Johann Valentin Faber, listed above, was the vicar. Not sure when his tenure started as the 30-years-war and the plague may have interrupted village life and church services. The earliest mention in the book is from 1650. From 1663 until 1677 he was the vicar in nearby Pferdsfeld, which meant he oversaw the burial of the next vicar of Eckweiler:

1663-1674 Johann Michael Becker who died 30.4.1674 aged only 37. According to Gedbas he married Anna Katharina Hauth (from a long lineage of clergymen, who married two other colleagues before and after this one) and had a son called Johann Friedrich Becker born 28. May 1673 in Eckweiler. NB I have an ancestor Anna Eva Becker from Laubenheim who married in 1671 at Horn. Her father was Wendel Becker from Laubenheim.

1674-1690 Johann Justus Leyendecker. Born ca. 1642 in Trarbach, died 28.11.1699 in Weiler. That is funny - he appears in a family tree we once drew up for somebody else who's not related to me (yet) but whose ancestors in the Hunsrück area moved very much in the same kind of social circles as mine. (That's the ancestry of Johann Nikolaus Fuchs, born 24.8.1820 in Eckweiler.) And oops, the Fabers mentioned above are also part of this family tree, as are the Schauss family who held the post station and inn in the village.

1691-1697 Johann Heinrich Brach

1697-1740 Johann Philipp Forst. According to this page, he married Elisabetha Margaretha Liernur from a family that produced multiple clergymen. Her Father was Johann Albert Liernur, who was the vicar of Bergen from 1678 to his death 31 Mar 1707. Johann Philipp Forst died 30.1.1752 at Eckweiler aged 77.

1740-1772 Johannes Weiß (1704-1772). My ancestor - see the Weiß Chronicles for his short biography. Note that his wife, Katharina Elisabeth Ebner (1712-1790), was the daughter of a Lutheran priest as well. She came from Trarbach, where her father and grandfather hat taught at the grammar school (Lateinschule) which still exists today.

1773-1818 Philipp Jacob Bauer, who was married to Maria Elisabeth Weiß (-1819), the daughter of his predecessor, so he also appears in the Weiß Chronicles, with the claim that they had no children. The residents register of Eckweiler notes two children, however, who both died before reaching school age. According to the book, Philipp Jakob Bauer died 27.7.1818 aged 85, having retired from the vicar's job earlier that year. According to GedBas, however, he was born 24.11.1734 at Enkirch (on the river Mosel, just downstream of Trarbach) and died 29.8.1818 in Eckweiler which would make him 83. He is part of a very extensive family network on GedBas, with a complete set of eight great-grandparents and name line ancestry (wine growers at Enkirch) going back to the 16th century, but no obvious link to any of my Bauer ancestors in the area. Funnily enough, I have another protestant priest from Enkirch among my direct ancestors, Nikolaus Andreae, who became vicar of Gebroth (not far from Eckweiler) in 1632. And his great-great-granddaughter married a son of Johannes Weiß. It's all one big network, I'm telling you.

1818-1822 The vicar of nearby Pferdsfeld, Markus Mitscher, also serves Eckweiler, but the parish resists being permanently merged into that of Pferdsfeld and having to commute for services.

1822-1827 Georg August Ludwig Schmidtborn, who moved on to Kirn after his brief tenure. He went on to have a rather stellar career in the church administration, see his Wikipedia entry.

1827-1829 Georg Röbenacke, who followed a call to Wetzlar after only two years in office. There he drowned in the river Lahn. Could have lived a long and happy life in Eckweiler ...

In 1828 Regina Katharina Weiss (born 10.9.1779), granddaughter of the vicar Johannes Weiss, and daughter of the mayor of Pferdsfeld, married Johannes Fuchs in Eckweiler. She was 49 years old at that point, so probably married to somebody else before?

1829-1844 Johann Wilhelm Arnold Mebus He died 25.3.1844 freezing to death at age 81 when travelling on foot from Winterburg to Eckweiler and caught in an unseasonal snowdrift.

1845-1847 Konrad Cörper Died 28.9.1847 aged only 39.

1848-1859 Gustav Adolf Lang, moved on to Hottenbach

1859-1862 Karl Heinrich Noel. Died 22.11.1862 at Eckweiler, aged 44.

1864-1888 Gustav Heinrich Roffhack. Died at Eckweiler 15.4.1888 aged 76. During his tenure, in 1881, the teacher Valentin Klee took office in the village, who left detailed comments about many aspects of village life. He was not impressed with Roffhack's work but liked the work of his successor better:

1889-1900 Johann Wilhelm Vogelsang. He moved on to Kirn. First to be represented with a portrait photo in the book.

On 28.8. 1891 Christian Gottlieb Weiß (* 29.5.1819), great-grandson of our vicar Johannes Weiß, wrote down the Weiß Chronicles, stating explicitly that he was living at Eckweiler at that time. Based on that date, our family connection with Eckweiler lasted for at least 150 years, from 1740-1891. However, his daughter Sophie married Franz Philipp Kehrein in Eckweiler (his family seems to have had a farm in Pferdsfeld). Their older son (born before 1880) appears to have stayed in Eckweiler had five children there (and Christian Gottlieb may have been living with them when he wrote down the family history, seeing his wife had died in 1886), so for all we know there may have been descendants right through to the time the place was evacuated. Their younger son Karl Kehrein (1880-1942) was a baker at Kirn, where my great-great aunt Johanna borrowed the Weiß Chronicles from him and made the copy we still have today (the original has gone missing). Incidentally, Karl Kehrein was married to Lina Martin, who according to our records was also a cousin of Johanna's via the Kauer family (Gedbas disagrees though). According to this newspaper clipping, Artur and Else Kehrein refused to leave Pferdsfeld when the villages were cleared in the 1980s. Artur died in 1994 and Else eventually moved to a care home in Sobernheim where she died in 2014, but their house was only demolished in 2022, long after the military airfield ceased to exist. So between the two villages we easily get to 250 years of family presence.

1900-1906 Wilhelm Rheingans. In 1906, he published a short history of the parish of Eckweiler which I haven't got. Then he moved on to the new industrial city Oberhausen in the Ruhr area (not to be confused with the eponymous village in the Hunsrück). According to Gedbas he had four children and died 7.2.1914 in Elberfeld, aged 43.

1907-1934 Otto Jungjohann. Building work on the church that was planned under his two predecessors finally started happening in 1908, always accompanied by the critical remarks of teacher Valentin Klee in his school chronicles. Both his predecessors came for the grand inauguration ceremony on 2.12.1908. On 9.2.1915, the village was connected to the electricity network.

1935-1942 Eduard Jungjohann, son of the predecessor. Retired for health reasons and died the same year at Ulm.

1943-1952 Ernst Altenpohl

1952-1952 Eduard Otto Heinz Hinnemann (GedBas entry) Died suddenly on 16.11.1952 while the bells were ringing for a service he was due to hold.

1954-1956 Erich Lotze. Moved to Wuppertal.

1956-1957 NN Theunert. Died 26.9.1957. Didn't even leave a record of his first name.

1959-1976 Peter Schumacher. The last one officially appointed to this parish. As the increasing problems with the nearby airfield made people move away, the remaining residents were served by priests from neighbouring parishes until the evacuation.

10.6.1979 the villages of Pferdsfeld and Eckweiler officially cease to exist. In Eckweiler alone, the last 302 residents were resettled and 51 houses demolished, leaving only the church standing.

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Other Eckweiler-related VIPs include Friedrich Wilhelm Utsch, who may or may not have been the inspiration for the folk song "Ein Jäger aus Kurpfalz", and who used a hunting lodge at Entenpfuhl, which the book claims as Eckweiler territory. A later reincarnation was built on Pferdsfeld's land in an effort to save tax, apparently.

Leads for further study:

• This genealogy wiki has short biographies of many parsons (more than 50 family names) in the Hunsruck area in English - sadly not including any of my ancestors or in-laws. Although the Andreae person at the top of the list must be related to my ancestor Nicolaus Andrae who was vicar of Gödenroth and Gebroth (Gedbas), who is mentioned under Corvinus, see below.
• Stop Press, clicking through from that Gedbas entry I found another clergymen in my family tree, Johann Balthasar Orth, vicar of Kirn from 1560-69, thus the direct successor of Peter Siegel. (Oh, and related to Goethe.) And another one, Valentin Konstantin Keiser. Basically both grandfathers of Nicolaus Andrae's wife were vicars too. And after his death, she married another one, Valentin Corvinus, who appears in that wiki list linked above. The Corvinus guy married three Orth women in succession, two sisters and their cousin. All of which calls for a separate blog entry or two.
• books I still have to find:
  Eckweiler Geschichte eines Dorfes by Engelmann, Uwe Karlsruhe 1983
  Die Geschichte der Gemeinde Eckweiler-Daubach by: Rheingans, Wilhelm, 1906

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Who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.