an ancient university

Lost cities 2:9

About this series: Until 1960, all my direct ancestors from the great-great-grandparents through to my parents lived in towns and cities. After November 1972 nobody did, as my parents and grandparents had embraced the car-dependent life in the sticks and the previous city-dwelling generations had all died out by then. When I escaped the countryside and moved to various university cities I discovered that I had been missing out on the opportunities and structured environments of cities since we moved away from Würzburg when I was 5 years old. I started to strongly identify as a town mouse, even though I had to re-learn city life (which is why I didn't dare moving to really big cities like Berlin). In this series I am reclaiming my urban heritage in exploring/presenting some of the towns and cities that my DNA passed through within the last two centuries. As the four generations before me have mostly been quite mobile (often starting with employment in the nascent railways), there are many towns and cities popping up in my family tree, including quite a few where I wouldn't mind living myself.

Approaching the tail end of season two, I remembered two university cities which I had previously dismissed as too transitory, but on reflection I realised more things happened there, so they're in. First up, my parents' station before Würzburg, and a lovely city too.

Freiburg's University was founded in 1457 and is thus among the five oldest in Germany. The town today situated in the corner where Switzerland, France and Germany meet has variously belonged to Austria, France, and the dukes of Baden. The arrival of the railway line from Karlsruhe to Basel brought tourism to the town and the Black Forest region. Freiburg grew to become a city of 100,000 residents just before WW2. After the war, it was briefly the capital of the Baden region, which in 1952 merged into the new southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg.

The university has always maintained a stellar reputation especially in the sciences. It boasts five Nobel laureates in chemistry alone, including the founding father of macromolecular chemistry, Hermann Staudinger.

The university on a postcard from 1930, the year Ruth moved from Freiburg to Bonn. I reckon it will have looked similar still when her son arrived in 1957.
Source.

What happened

My grandmother Ruth finished school at Rheydt in 1928 and started studying chemistry, physics and biology at Freiburg in the summer semester of the same year. Not sure why, but she moved to Münster for the winter semester and returned to Freiburg for the summer semester of 1929.

In the summer semester of 1930, she moved to Bonn and stayed there until her final exams.

My father started studying chemistry at Freiburg in the summer semester of 1957, but initially didn't get lab space for the important practicals, so took until late 1961 to finish his intermediate exams. He also found a lot of time for cultural interests. In the first year there were three visits to Strasbourg, and he claims he saw every production of the Wallgrabentheater, a small, alternative theatre. My mother followed in the summer of 1958, at which point they bought a matching pair of his and hers bicycles which survived into the 1980s. In the winter semester of 1961/62 they both moved to Würzburg.

My aunt also studied at Freiburg, however, and stayed on to work in the physics department of the university after graduating, while her husband completed his PhD. Her family stayed at Freiburg until well into the 1970s.

When I was growing up in the sticks, we used to go skiing in the Black Forest in the Christmas holidays, and sometimes stopped over in Freiburg, staying with my aunt's family, so I do have some vague childhood memories of the city.

Locations

• Vierlinden 5
• Kreuzstraße

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
12. Bonn 1929 - 1934
13. Lorsch 1890 - 1938/1973
14. Krefeld 1764 - 1924/current
15. Gütersloh 1825 - 1928/1950s
16. Breslau 1830 - 1877
17. Bad Münster 1919 - 1930/1952; Bad Kreuznach 1945 - 1951
18. Bruchsal 1889 - 1909/2023
19. Idstein 1714-1804

NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim, Hamborn and Krefeld.

The Mastodon thread for season 2 is here.

quantum mechanics in the snow

some thoughts on

The Universal Theory
(Die Theorie von Allem)
Timm Kröger
Germany 2023

This film had a grand total of three screenings at Oxford's Ultimate Picture Palace, and I was lucky to catch the last one. IMDB doesn't even list a UK release for it, although the Observer had a review.

So a quantum mechanics meeting in the Swiss Alps gets derailed when the multiple universes theory gets a bit too real and weird things start to happen. I loved the black and white cinematography - films set in the 1960s should be in black and white really! - and the portrayal of the 1960s physicists, and also the underlying romance thread. Not everything made sense, but that's very fitting for a film about quantum mechanics, and I tend to like things I don't understand completely. Also, to be taken as evidence on how weird a European movie must be to have a chance of even a fleeting appearance in UK cinemas.

I am sure that people more knowledgeable in sci fi and classic American cinema will find lots of references to all sorts of things (as some reviewers have pointed out), but I'm more of a naive viewer in that respect and can enjoy the film on its own merits.

A good one to see on the big screen with the glorious Alpine views if you can, but I might also be tempted to rewatch it in a smaller format at a later point. Also, I'm a bit tempted to watch Drei Männer im Schnee to compare and contrast - also black and white Alpine scenery, I expect, but no quantum mechanics, as far as I remember from reading the book multiple times when I was growing up.

Not adding this to my films not shown list as it was obviously shown, if ever so fleetingly, but will add the tag regardless.

not quite a shtetl

Lost cities 2:8

About this series: Until 1960, all my direct ancestors from the great-great-grandparents through to my parents lived in towns and cities. After November 1972 nobody did, as my parents and grandparents had embraced the car-dependent life in the sticks and the previous city-dwelling generations had all died out by then. When I escaped the countryside and moved to various university cities I discovered that I had been missing out on the opportunities and structured environments of cities since we moved away from Würzburg when I was 5 years old. I started to strongly identify as a town mouse, even though I had to re-learn city life (which is why I didn't dare moving to really big cities like Berlin). In this series I am reclaiming my urban heritage in exploring/presenting some of the towns and cities that my DNA passed through within the last two centuries. As the four generations before me have mostly been quite mobile (often starting with employment in the nascent railways), there are many towns and cities popping up in my family tree, including quite a few where I wouldn't mind living myself.

The lovely market town of Idstein is pushing the boundaries a bit as its residents are more remote in time and the data availability is more of a challenge, but I'll include it regardless, as a reminder that I have yet to visit it, and because it was home to the only Jewish ancestors I know of.

Idstein today has a historic centre with some very pretty half-timbered houses dating from around 1600, so this area would have looked similar in the 18th century as today. Located on the edge of the Taunus range just north of Wiesbaden, it was ruled by various branches of the house of Nassau, until it fell to Prussia in 1866. In the 17th century the Nassau count had dozens of women executed based on witchcraft allegations there. The town also had a rather wobbly balance of welcoming / harrassing Jewish residents as will become obvious below.

Idstein as shown in a steel engraving dated 1835
Wikipedia photo by Frank Winkelmann - Eigenes Werk, CC BY 3.0,

What happened - I've written about the Jewish ancestors at Idstein before, but not about the Schmidt family - the ancestry of the Protestant girl the last Jewish ancestor married. The Schmidts are actually better documented so they also have the earliest dates:

On 13. 6.1714 Conrad Georg Schmidt was baptised in Idstein, so I am assuming that his parents Heinrich Schmidt, cooper, and Anna Apollonia Thiel, were resident in the town before that time, but we don't have any dates for them.

In 1731 Isaak Lazarus from the nearby village of Usingen obtained the Schutzbrief, a protective document allowing him and his wife Bele to settle in Idsteinn where he worked as a cattle trader.

In 1744 their son Jakob Isaak obtained the Schutzbrief and married Libbet.

In 1745, the boy who was later to be called Karl Henrich Weyland was born - presumably Jakob Isaak's and Libbet's son. They lived in their own house in Borngasse 8 and ran a shop there. There were only seven Jewish families in Idstein registered with a Schutzbrief around this time, and Jakob and Libbet are the only couple that could plausibly be Karl Henrich's parents.

So small was the Jewisch community in Idstein that it didn't have its own cemetery. Until 1874, residents were buried in nearby Esch instead, but that cemetery was completely destroyed in the Nazi era.

From 1750 Jews were banned from operating "open shops". As our shopkeeper carried on regardless, he was ordered to pay a penalty of 10 guilders in 1756.

In 1746, Conrad Georg Schmidt, farm worker and cooper, married Anna Christine Fischer from Ober-Seelbach in Seelbach - but settled in Idstein. There are a dozen places called Seelbach, but this one seems to be quite close to Idstein

In 1749 Katharine Margarete Schmidt was born.

On 1.5.1768, Karl Henrich Weyland, a butcher, was baptised at the age of 23. He married Katharine Margarete Schmidt in September of the same year. Her father had died the year before. He appears to have borrowed the family name of Weyland from records of an earlier Weyland family that lived at Idstein in the 17th century.

1770 Gedbas has a Christian Weyland born in Idstein around this time - could be the first child of this marriage.

On 7. 7.1778 Anna Christine Weyland was born in Idstein.

Her mother died 1792, her father in 1796. The death of her grandmother Libbet in 1804 is the last timepoint associated with Idstein.

In 1810, Anna Christine married the shoemaker Johann Christoph Kauer in Simmern. Although none of her direct ancestors survived after 1804, she may have stayed with other relatives at Idstein until she got married. The house in Borngasse 8 remained the property of Libbet's son in law until he sold it in 1826,

The conservative time range estimate, however is 1714-1804

Locations

• Borngasse 8 - google doesn't offer me any streetview images, will just have to go there myself, old school.

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
12. Bonn 1929 - 1934
13. Lorsch 1890 - 1938/1973
14. Krefeld 1764 - 1924/current
15. Gütersloh 1825 - 1928/1950s
16. Breslau 1830 - 1877
17. Bad Münster 1919 - 1930/1952; Bad Kreuznach 1945 - 1951
18. Bruchsal 1889 - 1909/2023

NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim, Hamborn and Krefeld.

The Mastodon thread for season 2 starts here.

tiny survivors

Tardigrades (water bears) have often appeared in my writing as an example of remarkable resilience under extreme conditions. Our shared history goes back to the German edition of Life on the Edge, which came out in 1997, and from there they spread into the pages of Astrobiology. I just noticed I even created a tag for them back in the 00s when they took up space travel. Since then, they even landed on the Moon.

Surprisingly, however, I haven't had a full feature dedicated to them. As there have been several new developments in the field of tardigrade evolution, ecology and resilience accumulating in the last few months, and as I often use the first feature of the new year to describe "fantastic species", I felt the time had come to put the spotlight on tardigrades. In the process, I learned that apart from individual specimens surviving the most horrendous physical conditions one can imagine, their lineage has also survived the last three of the five big mass extinctions. Hence it isn't even a an exaggeration to call the feature:

Ultimate survivors

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 1, 6 January 2024, Pages R1-R3

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

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

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

Last year's thread is here .

Much about the distribution, ecology and physiology of tardigrades remains to be explored. (Photo: Frank Fox/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE).)

a small town with a big palace

Lost cities 2:7

About this series: Until 1960, all my direct ancestors from the great-great-grandparents through to my parents lived in towns and cities. After November 1972 nobody did, as my parents and grandparents had embraced the car-dependent life in the sticks and the previous city-dwelling generations had all died out by then. When I escaped the countryside and moved to various university cities I discovered that I had been missing out on the opportunities and structured environments of cities since we moved away from Würzburg when I was 5 years old. I started to strongly identify as a town mouse, even though I had to re-learn city life (which is why I didn't dare moving to really big cities like Berlin.) In this series I am reclaiming my urban heritage in exploring/presenting some of the towns and cities that my DNA passed through within the last two centuries. As the four generations before me have mostly been quite mobile (often starting with employment in the nascent railways), there are many towns and cities popping up in my family tree, including quite a few where I wouldn't mind living myself.

When I started getting obsessed with the musical biography of Heinrich our family cello and the eponymous cellist, I also got in touch with the descendants of Maria's nieces, I had never met them before but had heard as a child that they are an amazingly musical family and have produced several professional musicians. Maria grew up in Bruchsal, and some of her relatives have lived there for more than a century, so that's a good enough excuse to include the town here.

Bruchsal hosted the residence of the bishops of Speyer since 1716. Which explains the rather sumptuous baroque palace built from 1722 based on plans by Balthasar Neumann (famous for the Würzburg Residenz among other things). Today, the Palace is home to a rather lovely museum of musical automata.

Next door is a less appealing vast prison complex, which was built in the 1840s and has been the site of some infamous history including Nazi era executions. Both the palace and the prison look rather oversized on the map of what remains a small town. At the beginning of the 20th century it had fewer than 15,000 residents. It only passed the 20,000 mark around 1955.

In 1841, Bruchsal became an important railway stop half-way between Heidelberg and Karlsruhe.

In 1945, when Allied troops were only 20 km away on the other side of the river Rhine, it was bombed to the ground.

What happened:

I'm not sure when the family of Maria Pfersching (future wife of Heinrich the cellist) settled in Bruchsal. Maria was born in Münzesheim, where her paternal family was long established (now part of Kraichtal and with 2,800 residents too small to qualify as a lost city). Her mother, Barbara Klundt, from the eponymous winegrowing dynasty in the Palatinate, died in this place in 1886 (aged only 39), so I'm assuming the family lived there until that point. In 1889, Heinrich Pfersching remarried in Bruchsal and lived there until his death in 1905. His mother, Elisabeth Hörle, survived him and died in Bruchsal in 1909.

Maria grew up there and in 1903, aged 22, moved across the river Rhine to Strasbourg to train as a secretary there. It's just over 100 km away, so I am guessing she must have gone back to visit quite frequently (which would explain Heinrich's heartfelt poems about good byes). She stayed there until she married Heinrich in 1908 and followed him to Dieuze.

Descendants from Heinrich Pferschings second marriage lived at Bruchsal until 2023, so for more than a century. After the end of World War I, Maria and her son Richard were evicted from Dieuze, Lorraine, and found refuge with the Bruchsal family. Richard attended school there for half a year until Heinrich got a job at Elberfeld and the family moved there. I guess I'll ignore this half year, it would make the numbers game complicated, and they didn't have their own place and were kind of visiting family. I'll just go for 1889 - 1909/2023.

Source

Locations

Bruchsal was a mythical place for much of my life as my grandparents talked about it but never took me to visit. I only got round to visiting Richard's last surviving cousin there in 2018. It was an extremely hot day, so we spent much of the time indoors, and I also visited the museum of musical automata in the palace and learned how robots using 19th century wind-up technology can play violins, but I will have to revisit some time to get a better impression of the town as a whole.

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
12. Bonn 1929 - 1934
13. Lorsch 1890 - 1938/1973
14. Krefeld 1764 - 1924/current
15. Gütersloh 1825 - 1928/1950s
16. Breslau 1830 - 1877
17. Bad Münster 1919 - 1930/1952; Bad Kreuznach 1945 - 1951

NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim, Hamborn and Krefeld.

The Mastodon thread for season 2 starts here.

bridges built and strings attached

Plenty of reasons to get depressed over the quarter century that humanity has now spent accelerating the destruction of our planet, and the outlook getting darker still, so here's to the small pleasures and tiny achievements attained on the sloping deck of a sinking ship.

My nascent pirate luthier workshop has been fairly busy this year. Essentially, I keep posting on Freegle that I aim to restore and rehome unloved violins that are essentially worthless because their value in good condition would be less than what a professional would charge to restore them. I also buy cheap violins when I find them on gumtree or fleamarkets for £ 30 or less. There have been 15 violins coming in this year (numbered 5-19 as there were 3 last year, and counting started with the one from my aunt in 2022), as well as a vintage guitar and a venerable old banjo. I managed to restore and give away eight violins this year, one returned to its family after restoration, another four play very nicely but still live under my roof, and four are still broken. The latest blog entry with a list of the violins restored is here. Funnily enough I just came across a short documentary on TV5monde about a woman who does a similar thing with umbrellas ...

In other string playing news, Cowley Orchestra's very own double bass, The Captain, also lives under my roof and has seen two exciting outings this year, each time accompanied by Jenny the cello who joined me in 2023. In April, both instruments (and me behind the cello) played in an orchestral workshop day culminating in a performance of Louise Farrenc's third symphony (op.36), organised by members of the Freeland Orchestra. In July, both instruments (without me) appeared in the international youth orchestra featuring musicians from Oxford's twin cities an performing Orff's Carmina Burana in Oxford Town Hall.

Me looking clueless at the orchestral playday preparing Louise Farrenc's third symphony.
Photo by the official photographer of the event, Phil Hargreaves.

New instrument acquisitions include two lovely bass recorders as well as a garklein, expanding my range to six recorder sizes. And by the end of the year I also found a bag to carry all six sizes at once. I also acquired two violas of different sizes. I like the sound of the bigger one better, as one would expect, but it is also more tiring to play, so I still haven't quite made up my mind about them.

Which means that I could now easily supply an entire string quartet with instruments. As it happens, some quartets have been played during the holidays when Cowley Orchestra was taking a break. There has been only one bandstand session due to weather and early closure times conspiring against us, but there were five indoors meetings in various constellations. Inspired by these, I have further expanded my music collection and recently reorganised the lists of quartets and trios.

I've paused my "Every picture" series after the 100th episode but revived my lost cities blog series about interesting places that pop up in my family tree. The series has also inspired my travels in Germany, using the flat-rate Deutschlandticket to get around practically for free from my base near the amazing new regional station Düsseldorf Bilk. This year, I have (re)visited Aachen, Bonn, Krefeld, Bad Nauheim, and Wuppertal. I am beginning to wonder if there is a travel memoir waiting to be written about these adventures - watch this space in the new year.

I've completed another year with a full set of 24 features in Current Biology, they are highlighted in this mastodon thread. That's always a very satisfying thought at the end of a given year. And the 24 features of 2023 are now all in the open archives.

One of my features was about the dodo and other extinct species. Only after sending it off I realised that I own a dodo hat.

Own photo

My latest book, Intertwined, has come out in October. I have yet to create a proper page for it on my crumbling old website, so in the meantime this blog entry will have to do.

Speaking of books, I have reviewed quite a few memoir-style books, hoping for inspiration for my musical family history memoir and similar endeavours. I've published chapter 1 of the musical memoir as 100 years of cellotude on this blog starting here.Chapters 1-3 in German are available here. All my reviews, including the scientific ones for C&I are tagged #bookreview.

What I didn't do. It just occurred to me after turning down a lift, that I haven't been inside a car of any kind (not even a taxi) since June 2023. Haven't been on a plane since flying to Bucharest in 2016.

Executive summary: ship still sinking, band still playing.

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

two spa towns united

Lost cities 2:6

It was a bit of a shock to learn that the small but charismatic spa town of Bad Münster am Stein (the stone in the name refers to a massive red rock towering over the town, the Rheingrafenstein) lost its independence in 2014. It was merged into neighbouring Bad Kreuznach, which is ten times bigger and less picturesque, although it has an iconic bridge with historic houses perching on top - one of them has a Swedish cannon ball of the Thirty Years War stuck in its wall. On separate occasions and for unrelated reasons, both towns have been home to some of my ancestors, but as the stay at Bad Kreuznach was brief and uneventful I'll combine them into one entry.

Bad Münster am Stein is an icon of the romance of the Nahe valley with its salt extractors squeezed between vineyards and steep cliffs. The village Münster goes back to 1200 and has had spa visitors since the 15th century. It became a more widely known spa destination when the railway line along the river Nahe was completed in 1859. It gained the official name Bad Münster in 1905. It merged with Ebernburg in 1969 - until 1945 both communities had separate histories as Bad Münster was under Prussian rule and Ebernburg part of the Palatinate, thus ruled by faraway Bavaria.

Bad Kreuznach is the district capital of a fairly large region and thus a bit more of a city, but still very modest in size. It has a very turbulent history, being conquered back and forth by various armies in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) and also in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), so it is quite amazing that those 15th century houses perching on top of the bridge are still there. It also has an impressive Roman mosaic floor.

Honestly, how these houses survived five centuries is a bit of a mystery to me.
Source.

I hear Bad Münster am Stein has the highest concentration of salt extractors (Salinen) anywhere.
Source.

What happened:

Until June 1919, Margaretha Imig, the widow of our station master at Adamsweiler (Alsace), had been living with her daughter Auguste Kauer at Saargemünd, Lorraine (today Sarreguemine, dept. Moselle). After the Versailles treaty, they found themselves on the French side of the new border and were evicted. They moved to Bad Münster am Stein, where Auguste's husband continued working for the Post Office. Auguste's sister Johanna also moved with them and stayed until 1929, when she took early retirement to build herself a house in the countryside.

Thus, Bad Münster am Stein became a focal point for the Kauer Clan. On big occasions such as Margarete's 80th birthday, everybody gathered there. Auguste's family lived in a flat within the main post office in the centre of town, the church towering in the background when they took family photos on their balcony.

I think it must have been this building Pfarrer-Dr.-Nagel-Weg 1 = Berliner Straße 23 - the balcony with the view of the church tower would have been at the back:

Von Karsten Ratzke - Eigenes Werk, CC0, Link

Confusingly, Margaretha's first identity document issued by French authorities upon arrival at Bad Münster gives her address as "Villa Günther" - as I've just discovered while looking for the address. As I've never heard of that place, I am inclined to think it must have served a kind of refugee accommodation for new arrivals. Her arrival date is given as 12.6.1919.

Margaretha died in September 1930 aged 83, and was buried in the local cemetery in what became a family burial site for the next 75 years. The presence of living ancestors ended at that point, but dead ancestors stayed a lot longer (and Auguste's family too). My great-grandmother Helene Kauer, Margarete's youngest daughter, had her husband Julius Düsselmann buried there when he died in 1950, with an additional inscription for their son who had died in the war. Auguste was buried there in 1952 and Johanna in 1953. (Auguste's husband, Wilhelm Fuchs, died 1963 and must have joined them as well, but I don't know that for certain.) Helene, the last survivor, joined her sisters in 1972. In 1973, her youngest daughter Esther had the tombstone of the old station master transferred from Adamsweiler to Bad Münster, and Esther's ashes were also buried there in 1983. The site was dissolved in 2005. It's a slightly weird thought in this day and age, to have such a huge family gathering underground. My grandparents opted out, however, otherwise the site could still be there.

Anyhow, that's the last the family saw of Bad Münster, so the dates (for living blood relatives) would be 1919 - 1930/1952

Next door in Bad Kreuznach, young Richard got his first teaching job after the war at the end of 1945, and the family moved to Philipstr. 12 at the beginning of 1946, and then to Carmerstr. 14 in July that year. They stayed there until the summer of 1951, when they moved to Idar-Oberstein, so let's call it 1945 - 1951

Locations

• Hauptpost Bad Münster, Pfarrer-Dr.-Nagel-Weg 1 = Berliner Straße 23
• Philipstr. 12, Bad Kreuznach
• Carmerstr. 14, Bad Kreuznach

As a child I must have visited Bad Münster am Stein a few times with my grandparents. Memories were kept alive by multiple times passing through on the train, marvelling at those rocks again. In 2015 I spent an hour there, just stepping off a train, having a walk around and taking the next train. No childhood memories of Bad Kreuznach, but I visited in 2018 to see the houses on the bridge and the Roman mosaic.

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
12. Bonn 1929 - 1934
13. Lorsch 1890 - 1938/1973
14. Krefeld 1764 - 1924/current
15. Gütersloh 1825 - 1928/1950s
16. Breslau 1830 - 1877

NB I'm adding a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim, Hamborn, Krefeld and Gütersloh.

The Mastodon thread for season 2 starts here.

a light in the dark

Coming out of the Lamb and Flag this Sunday, I thought St. Giles looked rather pretty, so in lieu of xmas cards which I have given up many years ago, here's my festive offering with best wishes to all:

own photo

in vino veritas

If you've ever drunkenly looked at the label on a wine bottle and wondered why it doesn't list the ingredients, you'll find the sober answer in the first half of this book:

Understanding wine chemistry
Andrew Waterhouse, Gavin Sacks, David Jeffery
Wiley 2024

which systematically discusses all the molecules you may find in the bottle, from H2O and ethanol to the more complex ones. And then their reactions. The second half is about how wine is made, so essentially first part is chemistry for winemakers (and -lovers) and the second is winemaking for chemists.

All in all 560 pages, but for a more concise coverage read all about it in my latest essay review:

Wine science

Chemistry & Industry Volume 88, Issue 12, December 2024, Page 35

access via:

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

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

As always, I'm happy to send a PDF on request.

another twin city

Lost cities 2:5

It amuses me that my ancestral Y chromosomes passed through two cities that are now twinned with Oxford. My granddad studied at Bonn and met my grandmother there, and his grandfather Richard the railways clerk was born and bred in Breslau (now Wroclaw), as was his father. The minimal dates are 1830-1877, but the data peters out on the far side, so the actual stay may have been longer.

Breslau had a turbulent early history which included total destruction by the Mongols in 1241. It became part of Prussia in 1741. When various educational institutions merged to form a university in 1811, it was the first university that had faculties for both catholic and protestant theology. In 1815, Breslau became the capital of the Province Silesia.

It grew rapidly in the Industrial Revolution and in 1842 it became only the 5th major city (with more than 100,000 residents) in the Deutscher Bund, after Vienna, Berlin, Prague and Hamburg. In 1875 it was the third biggest city in the German Empire (after Berlin and Hamburg).

Couldn't quite find a postcard to match the time range when my ancestors lived in Breslau, but this one is at least from the correct century.
Source: Postcards from the past.

What happened:

1830 Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Groß was born in Breslau. There are no dates and documents before that and conflicting information on the name and profession of his father, so it's quite possible that some of his ancestry was present at Breslau well before that date, but we don't know. There is an address though: At the time of his baptism (4.4.1830), the family lived at Büttnerstrasse 23 in Breslau.

1852 Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Groß married Anna Rosina Faudner from Chursangwitz (Kr. Ohlau) in Breslau on June 1. The marriage must have been a little bit overdue, as only three months and a week later, their son Johann Friedrich Richard Groß was born in Breslau.

1866 Richard's confirmation in Breslau.

1874 Richard was spared military service due to crossed legs and height - not sure if he was too tall or too short but looking at his descendants as well as the literal meaning of our name being tall, I don't think he can have been too short.

Between 1877 - 1879 he married twice-widowed Maria Louise Mentzel, presumably between the birth of her son from her second marriage, in 1877, and the birth of their daughter. Although she wasn't born in the city, her previous marriage to shepherd Johann Gottlieb Reim was also in Breslau, and her son from that marriage was born there.

1880 By the time their first daughter arrived, the family had left the city and moved to Königswalde (Neurode). Their further moves are written out in this entry.

Independently of all of this, here's my great-aunt-in-law at Breslau in the 1930s, scroll down to see one photo of her with a recognisable cityscape and then the matching postcard.

Locations:

• Büttnerstrasse 23

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
12. Bonn 1929-1934
13. Lorsch 1890-1938/1973
14. Krefeld 1764 - 1924/current
15. Gütersloh 1825-1928/1950s

NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim, Hamborn and Krefeld.

The Mastodon thread for season 2 starts here.

let's celebrate trees

My last feature of the year is a seasonal offering with the radical suggestion that we should celebrate old trees growing in their natural environment, rather than murder millions of conifers for our festivities.

Happy holidays to all whatever you're celebrating.

Reasons to worship ancient trees

Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 24, 16 December 2024, Pages R1203-R1205

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

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my Mastodon thread where I highlighted all this year's CB features.

Last year's thread is here .

Many millions of Christmas trees are grown in plantations for seasonal consumption. (Photo: Jeanne Menjoulet/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).)

one plague to the next

Some thoughts on

Violeta
by Isabel Allende
Plaza & Janes 2022

In recent years I haven't quite managed to keep up with Isabel Allende's publishing speed (here's the last one I read), but picked this one because I thought I remembered her saying in an interview that it was based on the life of her mother, who was then in her 90s. Turns out that it isn't quite, but the 100-year timeframe may have been inspired by it. The fictional Violeta was born in 1920 during the flu pandemic and died in 2020 during the covid pandemic, so this is a very neatly defined life span from plague to plague. Even though it's not a real memoir, it is written like one, so I'll also tag it as such, to go in my memoir inspiration file.

Other than not being the biography of her mother, this is very satisfying for aficionados of the Allende universe, as we get elements of her family history and her early novels remixed and extrapolated into the 21st century. Criminal involvement of the CIA looms over people's lives as you would expect. Reviewers tend to emphasise that her novels are set in an un-named South American country, but here as in many of her previous books Chile is so clearly recognisable that no other interpretation is possible.

A bit more unexpected to me were the multiple links to European countries including Germany and Norway. With both Germany and Chile moving into and out of brutal dictatorships within the 20th century, it is kind of logical that there has been traffic of refugees in both directions, and some families have even moved back and forth. This connection between Germany and Latin America is also featured in a film from 2012, El amigo aleman (my German friend, by Argentinian-German director Jeanine Meerapfel), but other than that I haven't seen all that much coverage of it.

Naturally, with a focus on female character and the 100 year time span, progress in women's rights is a thread, but not waved around too much.

Overall a big and bold sweep of a female centred and unconventional family saga that may come to be seen as one of her major achievements.

I do like the cover designs they are now using for her novels. At one point, when El cuaderno de Maya came out, I hated the cover so much I couldn't bring myself to buying the book.

PS have now created a tag for libros en español - also, as promised in 2020, I will create a new book review master post at the end of the year.