a famous cousin

One of the nuggets of family history information that have been handed down the generations ever since Christoph Gottlieb Kauer and Margaretha Imig brought up their five daughters in the railway station of Adamsweiler is the fact that the writer Johann Peter Hebel (1760-1826) was a first cousin of Christoph Gottlieb's maternal great-grandmother Maria Magdalena Hebel, born 1747 in Simmern.

Given what we know now, I am particularly intrigued by this information transfer, because our most recent Jewish ancestor, Karl Henrich Weyland, born around 1745 in Idstein, sits directly below Maria Magdalena in the Kekule list. (They both died long before Karl Henrich's daughter married Maria Magdalena's son, so they wouldn't have met each other even though they share lots of grandchildren.) Whereas everybody knew about the Hebel connection, allegedly nobody knew that Karl Henrich was Jewish.

Anyhow, the Hebel lineage has always been from Simmern, but Johann Peter's father migrated to Basel (Swiss Confederacy), so I assume Maria Magdalena may not have seen him all that often. I'll put a potted biography below. Note that he, too, like a dozen ancestors of the Kauer household and innumerable relatives, studied theology. He never quite managed to become a parish priest, but somehow found himself presiding over the protestant church of the Grand Duchy of Baden (that last bit wasn't part of the orally transmitted story).

As the story of our link to fame was handed down the generations, so were the books. I have one from my childhood, so had my father and I believe the one here on the left is from my grandmother:

And this one is signed by my father:

Johann Peter Hebel

His parents, Johann Jacob Hebel (born at Simmern, baptised 29.1.1720) and Ursula Oertlin (born 10.11.1726 Schopfheim) married on 30.7.1759 at Hauingen (Lörrach).

He was born on 10.5.1760 in Basel, where his parents worked during as servants to the Iselin family during the summer season. Their permanent residence was in the village of Hausen in the Wiesental, the home of the mother's family, where Johann Jakob worked as a weaver during the winter. His paternal grandparents from Simmern, who are also my ancestors, were no longer alive by this time: Johann Nikolaus Hebel (1677-1739) and Maria Magdalena Müller (1687-1752).

On 25.7.1761, his father died of typhoid fever, as did his younger sister Susanna, who was only a few weeks old.

His cousin and my ancestor Maria Magdalena Hebel married Christian Kauer at Simmern on 2.9.1773. I suspect that given the early death of his father and considering the distance, he may not have come to the wedding.

His mother died when he was 13. Benefactors enabled him to attend the Gymnasium Illustre at Karlsruhe from 1774 until graduation in 1778.

His oldest uncle and my ancestor Johann Georg Hebel (1708-1785), a linnen weaver at Simmern, was alive at that point, but Simmern and the entire Hunsrück area never quite recovered from the wars of the 17th century and were by that time a major source of migration to the New World, so going back to his paternal family probably wouldn't have improved his prospects.

1778-1780 he studied theology at the University of Erlangen.

From 1780 he worked as a teacher in Hertingen, and from 1783 at the Paedagogium in Loerrach.

In 1791 he moved to the Gymnasium at Karlsruhe, where he became head teacher in 1808. He remained at Karlsruhe for the rest of his life, as his wish to become the vicar of a parish in his native Wiesental area did not come to fruition.

His literary work started in 1799 when he wrote the 32 "Allemannische Gedichte" in the dialect of the Wiesental after a visit to that region. They were published in 1803 and favourably reviewed by luminaries including Goethe.

From 1807 he was in charge of saving the publication that became the "Rheinischer Hausfreund" for which he wrote the widely known Kalendergeschichten in an effort to boost its circulation. The first book version of these stories appeared in 1811 as the Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreunds (see the somewhat later editions above).

In 1819, he became the first prelate of the Lutheran state church of the Grand Duchy of Baden.

In 1821, when the Lutheran and Reformed churches of the Grand Duchy of Baden united to become the Evangelische Landeskirche, he became the first prelate of the new organisation.

He died on 22.9.1826 in Schwetzingen during a business trip undertaken in this function.

 

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

PS Since I started visiting the street libraries of Düsseldorf, I also discovered a few more editions, including:

... and this one with a dedication dating from 1925 and some intriguing illustrations:

an international family history

Some thoughts on

Café Heimat
Louise Jacobs
Ullstein Taschenbuch 2007

This is one of several interesting books the street libraries of Düsseldorf offered me this month, and I read it immediately in my ongoing quest to learn how best to distil family history into book format.

Jacobs is a household name in Germany as a leading brand of coffee. It is the standard middle of the road coffee that your aunties would share at their Kaffeeklatsch since the 1950s and 60s. By the time I started drinking coffee, this brand was so desperately uncool I probably never bought their coffee. Also, I was shopping for fair trade, single origin coffee of course. Note that the whole Fair trade concept is largely motivated by companies like Jacobs who developed clever ways of keeping the money that consumers pay for their coffee in Bremen, rather than paying producers in the developing world a fair share of it.

Thus I didn't read the book for the coffee connection (although I'm sure the brand recognition helped the author to get it published), and I also don't care how much money the Jacobs family earned with the coffee business and how many race horses they bought with it. So let's look at it as just another family history with interesting international connections.

The story telling switches back and forth between two branches of her family tree, namely that of her maternal grandmother Ann Jessurun, whose name line descends from Sephardic Jews in Portugal who came to Hamburg at one point (glimpses of that lineage are on GedBas). During Nazi times her great-grandparents with two young daughter emigrated to Portugal, and onwards to the US. Later her grandmother ended up in Nicaragua, and her grandaunt in Bresil. I'm loving the Latin vibe here.

Her paternal family comes from a farmstead near Bremen, which has been handed down to the oldest son since the 16th century, so nothing too exotic there. The excitement comes from the younger sons who have to go out into the world to find another way of earning a living. Her great-granduncle went to Bremen to set up a shop there (born in 1869, so a little bit older than our shop keeper Julius, born 1883). Her grandfather Walther Jacobs went to America to learn all about capitalism and then came back to Bremen to work with his uncle in the shop, which he then turned into the successful coffee business.

That is obviously more than enough material to fill a book and keep readers interested with the back and forth, culture clashes, success stories and deathly dangers. The author adds an extra layer to it with the discovery story of how she found out about various relatives - not surprisingly as she was still around 20 when she investigated all this and discovered lots of things that clearly weren't discussed openly in the family.

She also dramatises the story with dialogues which may in part come from the memories her older relatives shared with her, but in other parts must have been made up. To me when I write about family history, this would be a bridge too far. While I am happy to speculate about thoughts and motivations, I wouldn't put words in people's mouths when I don't have a record or evidence that they actually said them. In summary, not an example I would follow, but an interesting read nonetheless. I suspect it may have been inspired in part by the Ullstein novel by Sten Nadolny about the Ullstein family who founded the eponymous publishing house where both books appeared.

What's missing from the book? There are obvious asymmetries in the way the Nazi times are treated in the two branches. The tribulations of the Jewish family having to emigrate are covered at great length, but for the coffee family the 1000 years seem to be passing quite quickly. Now that the membership files of the NSDAP are on open access, there may be another journey of discovery to be had here. I note also that two other grandparents are just floating by without revealing much about their lives, namely the wife of Walther Jacobs, Lore Beckmann, and the husband of Ann Jessurun, Fritz Grobien.

Oh, and the music is missing too. The one reason I am interested in the Sephardim is that I happen to love their music, and that isn't even mentioned. There is some singing on special occasions and I recall somebody in the family played cello at one point, and great-grandfather Fritz Jessurun shows off his dance moves late at night in a jazz bar in New York, but for wealthy and cultivated families in the early 20th century, there is less music than I would have expected. Oh, the Jessurun girls got to hear Albert Einstein play his violin - because they were staying with a family friend whose job involved delivering eggs to the great physicist.

books growing old with me

One of the perks of getting older is that I suddenly own lots of antiquarian books, although I am almost sure they were new just a few years ago. For instance, I still have a few books from my preschool childhood which are now antiquarian treasures. I think the oldest one may be the Wolkenschaf (cloud sheep):

or possibly the green parrot:

(which takes on an entirely new meaning now that there are feral green parrots in many cities in Germany and in the UK).

and then the three more mechanical ones, on the tram, the plane and the crane:

and finally the more overtly educational ones:

That pseudochronological ordering is purely subjective by how deeply buried I feel my associated memories are. Don't want to spoil it by checking actual publication dates. But may reread the book some time. I took the photos ten years ago probably to share them on my bookish blog on tumblr and just rediscovered them by accident looking for something else.

PS We put on the green stars to mark the books as German language books for our preschool children growing up bilingually.

a rare find

At the beginning of January I discovered a 19th century French book selling for a very affordable £ 1.50 at a charity shop and really liked the look of it so I just bought it without thinking much about it.

With a leather back and nice marbling on the hardcovers it looks like this:

It's a first edition of Le docteur Pascal, the last volume of Emile Zola's epic series of novels Les Rougeon-Macquart, from 1893. Sadly somebody cut out the family tree of the Rougeon-Macquart family which was included as a fold-out page. Otherwise it is in good condition, slightly foxed as they like to say in the trade but I love it.

More photos:

The good thing about French books in the Oxford second hand and antiquarian market is that there's supply from expats and visiting academics but virtually no demand, so I can snap up some rather amazing things sometimes (I don't do that for German books very often these days because I get them free in the street libraries in Dusseldorf, but see this one and these from pre-plague times). Abe books currently has several copies of the Zola for sale at prices of a few hundred pounds, so I think I managed to find a bargain here ...

random old books revisited

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

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

Novels, plays, Poetry (33 titles):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Non-fiction (12 titles):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bridges of folly

Some thoughts on

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

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

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

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

Apart from the tower on the bridge (also accessible by boat via the pillars of the bridge), I also enjoyed the descriptions of the "Venetian quarter" with all the waterways around Oxford Castle (top left in the photo below), most of which have been filled in since. We should bring some of those back, if only to give the river space and prevent flooding. Speaking of waterways, the Oxford Canal was under construction in the 1770s, but still far from reaching Oxford. The last stretch into central Oxford was only opened in 1790. Accordingly, it doesn't get a mention in the book.

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

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

our oldest book

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

Gedichte von Friedrich Schiller. Mit dem Portrait des Verfassers

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

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

C. de Lorenzi 1838.

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

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

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

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

then a calculation:

2222
-
2016
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206

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update 25.1.2026: I created a new portal to navigate family history blog entries in the shape of a permanent Who Is Who page. This is because the old webpage at michaelgross.info will go offline on February 2nd.

revisiting the Siepmann family

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

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

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

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

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(1) Doris's family

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

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

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

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

They had three daughters and three sons:

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

one son missing here ?!

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

Phyllis aged 6 on census day

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

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

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

Update 9.1.2026 Note that the previous generation may not have been based in Waldbröl - the address book of Rhineland/Westphalia from 1834 does not include a Siepmann in this district (it seems to be more of a VIP list though, with no farmers or farm workers included?). There is a Peter Siepmann in Schwelm, however, which is mentioned below as a likely source of the Siepmann name.

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

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(2) Transatlantic Siepmann connections

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

Wilhelm and Catharina Lang Siepmann

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

Elianah writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

(3) Early Siepmann families

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

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

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

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

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

1.2. Elsabeth IM SIPPE about 1659-1752

Note how fluctuating the family name still was then.

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

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

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

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

Jürgen (Sippmann) in der Wischen

1. about 1590 Peter in DER WISCHE

2. about 1600 Hans in DER WISCHE

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

children listed for Hans:

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

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

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

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

2.3. Catharina im SIPEN * 27. April 1631

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

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

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

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

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

4. Else SIPMAN about 1600-1625

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

Other 17th / 18th century Siepmann lineages include:

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

Arnold Siepmann
oo 1696 Anna Engels Solingen lots of descendants

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

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

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

Peter Siepmann * 1730 in Moers.

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

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

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(4) Anna Elisabeth's family

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

My rough translation:

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

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

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

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

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

... ten more children ...

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

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

Johann Wilhelm Düselmann, * 27.5.1778 Bochum

Update 25.1.2026: I created a new portal to navigate family history blog entries in the shape of a permanent Who Is Who page. This is because the old webpage at michaelgross.info will go offline on February 2nd.

looking for Milena

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

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

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

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

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

life story of a stradivarius violin

Düsseldorf's street libraries never fail to provide me with amazing books I never knew of, so this week I discovered, among other things:

Die Meistergeige (the master violin)
Hans Werder
Otto Janke Verlag 1914

First, it turns out that the male pseudonym hides a female author I never heard of, Anna von Bonin (1856-1933). Although successful in her lifetime, her works fell into oblivion after 1945. You can see why, as the pathos overload typical of the Romantic period doesn't quite fit the reading habits of our times. If you can look past that, however, here is a rather interesting novel, representing the complete life story of a stradivarius violin, some real historic musicians as well as fictional ones.

As the book doesn't provide any years or biographical data, I'll try to conjure up a chronology by listing the owners/players of the violin and including historic events mentioned.

Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), obviously, made the violin, and sold it to:

Lorenzo de Medici allegedly the nephew of Cosimo (III) de Medici (1642-1723), Arch Duke of Tuscany, for whom Stradivari had made a violin before (so we're looking at a period when the luthier was already quite famous, maybe around 1700?). I still think this Lorenzo may be fictional though (seeing that Cosimo III appears to have had a sister but no brothers, so any nephew would have had a different surname). Corelli (1653-1713) is mentioned as his teacher and inspiration. After dramatic events involving a love triangle as well as a vision of the violin being played by a dead man, he sold it to an

unnamed musician who took it to the Franciscan friary of Assisi and died there, leaving it to

the prior of said monastery who gave it to

Guiseppe Tartini (1692-1770) when he sought refuge there in 1710-1713 and studied with Padre Boemo (aka Czech organist and composer Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský, 1684-1742). The author makes it explicit in a footnote that all biographical details of Tartini are historic. His baroque colleague Veracini (1690-1768) makes a brief appearance in 1716, as does the devil whom he credits for a sonata he wrote. Tartini left the violin to

Rinaldo Nazari, allegedly a pupil of his but probably fictional? After being saved from an untimely death by a pirate's daughter, Nazari took the violin to Germany and left it to

a woman who looked after him until he died. She later gave it to

Sdenek, a travelling gipsy musician (Zdenek being a Czech name, related to Zdeňka as in Zdeňka Černý), who reluctantly sold it to

the Earl of Konsbruch (fictional? although there was a Konsbruch branch in the descendance of the Goltz family), who left it to his nephew

Roderich who suffered injuries at the battles of Jena (1806) and Leipzig (1813). A young Paganini (1782-1840) also got to try out our violin in this chapter. After Roderich's death it was neglected for decades and eventually came down to his grandson:

Roderich the younger who wasn't a musician and died at the battle of Mars la Tour (1870), leaving it to his musically inclined cousin

Isabella who later gave it to

Harald Eginhardt, a celebrated soloist, who liked his Wagner. He took the stradivarius to the great concert halls and (spoiler alert) the violin died with him.

As for the violin itself, we have to assume it is fictional, as so many of its alleged owners are. While Tartini is known to have owned several stradivariuses, I don't think any of them could be made to fit this story. Although the author describes a specific decorative element, so maybe she had a specific instrument in mind?

So, across two centuries, this makes a dozen owners and eight players, with some having more soul in their playing than others, as the author discusses at length. It is fortunate that this was written before global fame catapulted Stradivari's instruments into the realm of investment bankers and safe vaults, from where only the more fortunate ones escape to play with globally celebrated stars.

The more down-to-earth stories appearing in this novel, with periods of neglect, danger, and a whole spectrum of musical talents are more like the life stories that some of the 19th century German violins that are still among us might also have witnessed. Only, without a famous name, nobody bothers to write them up (or imagine them).

Photo of my very lovely copy. (own photo)

Copies are available to buy here, very cheap too.

I am now making sure I systematically use the tag antiquarian for all books I review after I found them at street libraries. May have to think of a more specific tag later, but for now this will do.

UPDATE 2.3.2026 See the interesting comment below about a book published in English a few years later that seems to retell a very similar story, Philip Van Loan, The soul of the violin: A dramatic musical inspiration. Perhaps the bare bones of this Stradivarius's biography were real and documented somewhere, and different people fictionalised them each in their way?

a family business

Some thoughts on

Sten Nadolny
Ullsteinroman
Ullstein 2004

Some family histories are so rich in material that one struggles where to start and how to relate it - a memoir, a group biography, a novel? Sten Nadolny (famous in the last century for The discovery of slowness, a novel about polar explorer John Franklin) has chosen to gently novelise the history of the Ullstein family, the descendents of a Jewish paper factory owner in provincial Fürth, who set up a successful newspaper and later book publishing business in Berlin.

Leopold Ullstein (1826-1899), who made the crucial step from producing blank paper to selling printed paper as well as the move from Fürth to Berlin, had ten children from two wives, and all five sons took on senior roles in the company. After the patriarch's death, and when the generation of his grandchildren also developed ambitions in this direction, it led to some family drama during the Weimar years, and after 1933 the Nazis evicted the Ullsteins from their family business. The book publisher and several of the newspapers still exist today, but not in the hands of the eponymous family.

Nadolny moves smoothly between novel writing (presumably leaning on letters and diaries as well as making up plausible dialogues) and straight history writing, filling us in on family events and the broader historical context. Twelve characters get a potted biography of several pages each. Supporting cast includes basically everybody who was anybody in Germany between 1871 and 1933, from Lorenz Adlon (of hotel fame) to Graf Zeppelin.

Cover of the Ullstein paperback edition, which I found in one of the street libraries in Düsseldorf - they have an amazing ability to provide me with the books I never knew I wanted to read. The lovely cover photo shows all 7 children from Leopold Ullstein's first marriage. Their mother, Matilda Berend (1830-1871), died a few days after the birth of the youngest.

In terms of parallels with my family history (which I'm not going to novelise any time soon) the large family and spirit of enterprise reminded me of the (economically less successful) Krefeld Clan and Imig clan, where we had similar numbers of children in the mid-19th century and also some businesses. Although, crucially, we don't have an example of more than two brothers piled up in the same business. Maybe the businesses weren't big enough to accommodate more family members. Neither of them has a Jewish ancestor yet, but the Kauer clan has one here.

gaudeamus igitur

In last week's Every picture story I mentioned the songbook that I inherited from my great aunt Esther. I am not sure whether the Hermann Bender who signed it was the confectioner or some eponymous stranger. The confectioner's wife, Henriette Düselmann was Esther's great aunt. (Is there a technical term for my great aunt's great aunt?)

I took photos years ago and must have shared them on my tumblr book blog (deleted by the Inquisition) but forgot to put them here. So here goes (with a fresh photo of the outside of the book):

Note the biernagels (beer nails) - the book is made to be used on drunken nights in unruly taverns, so these metal bumps are there to keep it safe from drink spills. The text on the cover is from a student song and translates as "Let's have fun while we are young." The song is called De brevitate vitae (on the shortness of life) and is entirely in Latin. (Video with text). I thought it was just a quaint old German thing, but Wikipedia tells me it is today widely used as an anthem of educational institutions of all sorts.

It is the 43rd edition of Schauenburgs allgemeines Deutsches Kommersbuch. The excellent Wikipedia entry seems to suggest that it must be from 1891-1893, as these years are documented for the 42nd and the 44th edition, respectively. Wikipedia also lists the multiple subtle changes made to the frontispiece over the years, so here's my version:

the inscription on the left says somebody used it as a guest of the Tueskonia on May 2nd 1896. The closest match I can find is the Tuiskonia in Munich. I'm not clear about the signature, will have another think on that. In any case it could be a nickname. Below it says "Pension Grenzland" - today there is a B&B of that name in Bad Brambach, on the Czech border, near Hof, Bavaria. Not very close to Munich though.

And here we have the beautiful signature of Hermann Bender, who may or may not be the confectioner. He also signed in pencil on the dark paper facing the inside of the cover, but that one is hard to see and not as beautiful.

From the Wikipedia entry I also learned just now that these two mostly illegible handwritten pages shown below are not specific to my copy. (It had always confused me that this seems to be dated 1858 while the book was printed much later, it contains references to events in the 1880s.) Turns out the original authors dedicated the first edition to the poet Ernst Moritz Arndt (see the printed text above right and below left), and it's his reply that was included in later editions as a facsimile. So, phew, I don't have to decipher that.

vintage postcards

I got a bit obsessed with vintage postcards when I researched my lost cities series, and word got out, so a generous Santa helped me build a collection of beautiful books with such postcards, covering some of the lost cities and some others too:

The books typically date from the late 1970s, but those of the two cities that are no longer part of Germany (Breslau and Königsberg) date from the 1990s. Hence they all qualify for my much-neglected antiquarian tag. I still haven't quite figured out the rules predicting which places got into the series and which didn't. Regensburg, for instance, didn't make it. There may be an element of luck in that too.

a kitchen song

In the book Aimee & Jaguar (review to follow soon), Felice Schragenheim ("Jaguar") and a friend are reported as singing the traditional song "Mariechen saß weinend im Garten" in the kitchen, while washing the dishes (page 136 of my KiWi edition). I remember my grandfather Richard occasionally singing the first verse of this song when I was a child. (The only song I can remember him singing right now but others may come back?)

The song as I remember it from Richard's rendition appears very simple and quite monotonous to me, so I was wondering if his version was a simplified one, and therefore I wrote down what I remembered before looking up how it's meant to be. Turns out, however, that the first couplet really is that monotonous, and if anything, my memory across half a century tried to make it more interesting.

This is good news inasmuch as Richard had a reputation of not being very musical - although he was the son of our old cellist and also has lots of musical relatives on his mother's side. However, he did buy classical music LPs (including several recordings of the Dvorak cello concerto), so there can't have been a fundamental problem with his ears (read here why listening to music is as demanding as making music). He also had a go at teaching his daughter to play the recorder, but without lasting success.

The song, as I now learned from Wikipedia, is an old folk tune of unknown origin with a text by Joseph Christian von Zedlitz (1790–1862) first published in 1832. The text relating the story of a single mother despairing over having been abandoned by her baby's father is dripping with romantic pathos and tragic sentiment to an extent that 20th century kitchen singers like Felice or my granddad would likely have read it with at least a hint of irony, as the Wikipedia entry also notes.

Oh, and whereas the Liederkiste songbook, where I have a version of it, calls it a Moritat, the Wiki entry classifies it as a kitchen song. This song category was also new to me. Here is a 21st century recording from YouTube, performed straight-faced and not in a kitchen ...

Looking for an illustration I found several books and LPs collecting kitchen songs, including this one:

Source: Bertelsmann Vinyl Collection

PS: looking at the songs listed on the backside of the LP, there is one other that rings a bell: Du, du liegst mir im Herzen. Not quite sure but I may have heard this (not more than the first verse, again) from Richard as well. Will have to look at other kitchen song collections as well ...

Update 11.2.2025. In one of Düsseldorf's very amazing street libraries I found a vintage edition of
Lieder aus der Küche: Perlen vergessener Poesie gesammelt mit alten Singweisen und geschmückt mit anmutigen Bildern von
Hartmann Goertz
Ehrenwirth München 1957
Never got round to reviewing Aimee & Jaguar I'm afraid.