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 of 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. the quest for further Andreae ancestry continues, watch this space!

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

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, so stay tuned for a blog entry dedicated to the lives of the Caesars!

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.