another family tree from Eckweiler

... rescued from my ancient website which is now offline. Looking at this again after around 15 years, I've discovered a few things to add, including new ancestors 768, 769, 2900 and 2901 and some details found online. (I needed this genealogy to be online because there is another entry coming up where I will have to refer back to it.)

Early 20th century photo of the inn Gastwirtschaft "Alte Post" (former post station on the route Brussels to Innsbruck) held by the Schauss family over several generations. The chestnut tree is still standing. Source.

Ancestors of Johann Nikolaus Fuchs, born 1820 at Eckweiler compiled by Jörg Groß and Michael Groß based on the book: Einwohner Eckweiler Daubach 1519-1900. Heimatkundliche Schriftenreihe der Verbandsgemeinde Kirn-Land, Bd. 28 NB these people are not linked to my ancestors yet, but as they inhabited an area that was crawling with my folks (specifically the Kauer and the Imig clans), and both sets of ancestors were of similar social standing and even held the same job at different times. For instance, the Faber men below were vicars of Eckweiler like my ancestor Johannes Weiß and his son in law Philipp Jakob Bauer in the Weiß Chronicles, which were actually written in Eckweiler. Hence I reckon there must be a link somewhere, it's just a question of finding it. Further details regarding some of these people (e.g. professional careers, descendants) are available upon request.
Number	name, first name		birth date, place	death date, place	marriage date, place
1	Fuchs, Johann Nikolaus		24.08.1820 Eckweiler		emigrated to the US
2	Fuchs, Friedrich Adam		27.03.1785 Eckweiler	12.08.1861 Eckweiler	05.04.1807 Eckweiler
3	Schauss, Maria Katharina		21.03.1791 Eckweiler	17.09.1845 Eckweiler
4	Fuchs, Johannes		~28.04.1759 Allenfeld	31.03.1835 Eckweiler	18.05.1784 Eckweiler
5	Böhler, Anna Sophia		01.06.1766 Eckweiler	29.12.1824 Eckweiler
6	Schauss, Johann Adam		04.01.1756 Eckweiler	26.05.1794 Eckweiler	26.04.1774 Eckweiler
7	Enders, Catharina Elisabeth		12.12.1756 Eckweiler	05.10.1805 Eckweiler
8	Fuchs, Johannes				31.01.1758 Allenfeld
9	Beuscher, Maria Margareta		~24.01.1740 Allenfeld
10	Böhler, Friedrich Adam		1718 (calc.)	16.09.1797 Eckweiler	11.01.1740 Eckweiler
11	Leyendecker, Maria Ursula		1723 (calc.) Eckweiler	23.11.1800 Eckweiler
12	Schauss, Peter		28.01.1728 Eckweiler	18.02.1818 Eckweiler	1751 Eckweiler
13	NN, Anna Maria		ca. 1730 Eckweiler
14	Enders, Samson		~ 12.04.1726 Eckweiler		1756 Eckweiler
15	Reiniger, Anna Katharina		05.01.1728 Eckweiler
18	Beuscher, Johann Peter
19	NN, Maria Elisabetha
22	Leyendecker, Johann Jost		~ 17.12.1690 Eckweiler		07.09.1716 Winterburg
23	Jung, Maria Johanetta		~ 28.10.1695 Winterbach
24	Schauss, Johann Heinrich		~ 07.02.1694 Eckweiler	21.08.1772 Eckweiler	before 1717 Eckweiler
25	NN, Anna Katharina		1695	04.02.1741 Eckweiler
28	Enders, Hans Valentin		~24.6.1677 Eckweiler	[]28.1.1743 (calc.) Eckweiler	30.1.1713 Eckweiler
29	Schanzenbach, Anna Katharina		~5.8.1691 Eckweiler	24.1.1774 Eckweiler
30	Reiniger, Hector		ca. 1700 (est.)		before 1723 Eckweiler
31	NN, Anna Katharina		ca. 1700 (est.)
44	Leyendecker, Johann Franz		ca. 1665		03.01.1690 Eckweiler
45	Bauer, Maria Elisabeth		27.12.1664 Eckweiler	before 1715
46	Jung, Johann Gabriel				20.4.1669
47	Spang, Elisabeth Engel		~
48	Schauss, Hans Christoph		~ 18.10.1663 Eckweiler
56	Enders, Johann Georg		ca. 1645 (est.) Eckweiler		20.4.1675 Eckweiler
57	Schmidt, Maria Margaretha		~24.1.1655 Eckweiler
58	Schanzenbach, Melchior		1652 Eckweiler		01.06.1683 Eckweiler
59	Schlarb, Gertrud		ca. 1660 (est.) Winterbach
60	Reiniger, Gottfried		ca. 1680 (est.)		before 1704 Eckweiler
61	NN, Maria Ursula		ca. 1680 (est.)
88	Leyendecker, Johann Justus		1642 (calc.) Trarbach	28.11.1699 Weiler	before 1660 Niederbrombach (?)
89	NN, Katharina		1639 (calc.)	20.03.1710 Weiler
90	Bauer, Eberhard		21.09.1638		18.08.1663 Eckweiler
91	Enders, Katharina		ca. 1645 Eckweiler
92	Jung, Hans Jacob		Gebroth	18.12.1666 Winterbach	7.6.1636
93	Spengler, Anna Elisabeth
94	Spang, Heinrich				9.1.1648 Winterburg
95	NN, Ottilia		Johannesberg
96	Schauss, Johann Gabriel		23.01.1625 Eckweiler	09.07.1678 Eckweiler	30.01.1644 Simmern
97	Klein, Maria Magdalena		ca. 1620 Simmern
112 =182	Enders, Valentin		23.09.1617 Eckweiler	01.04.1667 Eckweiler	before 1645 Eckweiler(?)
113 =183	NN, NN		ca. 1620 (est.)
114	Schmidt, Hans Martin		ca. 1630 Winterbach		24.01.1654 Eckweiler
115	Bauer, Ursula		ca. 1630
116	Schanzenbach, Hans Bernhard		17.9.1616 Winterburg	5.12.1681 Eckweiler	24.6.1651 Eckweiler
117	Kilian, Anna Katharina		~6.8.1620 Eckweiler	11.2.1663 Eckweiler
118	Schlarp, Theobald
119
180	Bauer, Hans		15.08.1591 Eckweiler	05.01.1662 Eckweiler	before 1637 Eckweiler
181	Faber, Anna Bärbel		19.08.1612 Eckweiler
182 =112	Enders, Valentin		23.09.1617 Eckweiler	01.04.1667 Eckweiler	before 1645 Eckweiler(?)
183 =113	NN, NN		ca. 1620 (est.)
186	Spengler, Hans Peter			16.11.1654 Winterbach	3.1.1609 Winterburg
187	Beuscher, Gertrud
188	(Spang)
189	NN, NN			10.12.1660
192	Schauss, Melchior		24.02.1595 Eckweiler	24.06.1628 Eckweiler	04.12.1621 Eckweiler
193	Anthes, Helena		ca. 1600 Schönberg
194	Klein, Theobald
224 =364	Enders, Johannes		28.06.1580 Eckweiler		05.06.1615 Eckweiler
225 =365	Kilian, Agnes		~15.09.1590 Eckweiler	20.05.1657 Eckweiler
228	Schmidt, Johannes
230	Bauer, Hans		ca. 1606	15.01.1662 Eckweiler	before 1623
231	NN, Philippina		ca. 1600
232	Schanzenbach, Christoph				25.1.1614 Winterburg
233	Beier, Ursula
234	Kilian, Valentin		~11.11.1594 Eckweiler		before 1616 Eckweiler
235	NN, Elisabeth		ca. 1595 (est.)
236	Schlarp, Johann(?)
360	Bauer, Hans		ca. 1560		before 1587 Eckweiler(?)
361	NN, Maria Elisabeth		ca. 1560 (est.)
362	Faber, Valentin		1580 (est) Eckweiler	12.1.1621 Eckweiler	4.8.1607 Eckweiler
363	Schauss, Agnes		3.8.1589 Eckweiler	12.1.1621 Eckweiler
364 =224	Enders, Johannes		28.06.1580 Eckweiler		05.06.1615 Eckweiler
365	Kilian, Agnes		~15.09.1590 Eckweiler	20.05.1657 Eckweiler
374	Beuscher, Franz
384 =726	Schauss, Hans Velten		ca. 1560 Eckweiler	25.3.1644 Eckweiler	1584 Eckweiler
385 =727	Plezena, Katharina		ca. 1565	5.4.1609 Eckweiler
386	Anthes, Hans
448 =728	Enders, Hans		1534 (calc.)	27.2.1614 Eckweiler	before 1570 Eckweiler
449 =729	NN, Ena		1550 (calc.)	1586 Eckweiler, 36 y.o.
468	Kilian, Adam		ca. 1555 (est.)		before 1580
469	NN, Agnes		ca. 1560 (est.)
724	Faber, (Johann) Valentin		1553 Erbesbüdesheim	Jan 1621 Eckweiler	ca. 1580
725	Teutchag, Juliane		before 1555	before 1607, 52 y.o.
726 =384	see above
727 =385	see above
728 =448	Enders, Hans		1534 (calc.)	27.2.1614 Eckweiler
729 =449	NN, Ena		1550 (calc.)	1586 Eckweiler, 36 y.o.
730	Kilian, Hans		1550 (calc.)	4.9.1626 Eckweiler, 76 y.o.	before 1577 Eckweiler
731	NN, Else		ca. 1555 (est)
768 =1452	Schauss, Hans Jürgen Bregh		ca. 1535 Eckweiler	2.11.1582 Eckweiler	source
769 =1453	Hoelfeldt, Johanne Margrethe		ca. 1540 Eckweiler	1.11.1582 Eckweiler
896 =1456	Enders, Hans		1510 (calc.)	17.6.1588 Eckweiler 70 y.o.
897 =1457	NN, Elß		ca. 1510 (calc.)	7.5.1580 Eckweiler 70 y.o.
936 =1460	Kilian, Hector		1525 (calc.)	24.7.1572 Eckweiler, 47 y.o.	ca. 1550 Eckweiler
937 =1461	NN, NN		1521 (calc.)	23.3.1607 Eckweiler, 86 y.o.
1450	Teutchag, Jost =? Justus Jacobi Tautphoeus, vicar of Wallhausen			11.5.1617	source for the Tautpheus
1456 =896	Enders, Hans		1510 (calc.)	17.6.1588 Eckweiler 70 y.o.
1457 =897	NN, Elß		ca. 1510 (calc.)	7.5.1580 Eckweiler 70 y.o.
1460 =936	Kilian, Hector		1525 (calc.)	24.7.1572 Eckweiler, 47 y.o.	ca. 1550 Eckweiler
1461 =937	NN, NN		1521 (calc.)	23.3.1607 Eckweiler, 86 y.o.
2900	Tautphoeus, Johannes Jacobi, vicar of Wallhausen				source
2901	Walther, Margarethe

Notes

725, 1450 The name Teutchag only occurs in the residents book of Eckweiler referring to the daughter of the vicar of Wallhausen, whose name was in fact Tautphoeus, so I assume that this is just a misreading of a very unusual name, which the ancestors derived from the village of Dautphe near Biedenkopf, Hessen.

2900/01 the Tautphoeus / Jacobi and Walther ancestries lead away from the area of interest (specifically to Biedenkopf in Hessen) but is apparently well-researched and both lineages have lots of clergymen. See this biography of a son of 2900/01. Some of their descendants have Wikipedia entries and apparently became catholics at some point.

eagle issues

There are animal species, often apex predators, which many humans seem to worship for their fierce power, such as lions, cheetahs and eagles. Sadly, this connection, often engrained in cultural traditions over centuries, doesn't automatically protect the admired animal. Although eagles are generally faring better than the less admired vultures, there are a few conservation concerns which I have covered in my latest feature which is out today:

Keeping an eye on eagles

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 4, 23 February 2026, Pages R105-R107

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

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

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My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky.

Last year's thread is here .

Eagles like this golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) have symbolised power since Roman times.
(Photo: Susanne Nilsson/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).)

a world gone mad

Some thoughts on:

A world gone mad
The wartime diaries of Astrid Lindgren
book (2016) and film (2025)

I started reading the English edition of Lindgren's wartime diaries on my recent trip to Dusseldorf, and when I was in the middle of it, I had the opportunity to watch the film in the subtitled version. So here's a combined film and book review.

The English book contains only the translation of the diary entries mainly describing the course of World War II from the perspective of neutral Sweden, which is an interesting angle, especially for those of us, who are like most Europeans used to the perspective from warring factions on one of the other side. Although I haven't been able to locate a copy, I believe the German edition, which has more than twice as many pages, also includes facsimile pages of the original diaries, with clippings and all.

Family life only shines through very sparingly in the English edition, mainly on the occasion of family events such as her daughter's birthday and Christmas, when the presents are listed and menus as well. The family doesn't really come alive from that, so you have to be really interested in the recounting of the war from an unusual angle to make it through this book. Although it is also relatable in the sense that we are now again living in a world gone mad, with surging fascism and wars going on elsewhere, so the feel of watching disaster unfolding from the sidelines does resonate, although there is no real solution on offer.

The film by contrast, puts the family in the centre, with long appearances from several descendants, and lovely visits to the relevant properties, including Lindgren's flat in Stockholm (Wikipedia says it's open for visitors), their summer house, and the house of her parents, which I believe she bought later in life to keep it in the family. Seeing that her daughter Karin was ill for about half the duration of the war, it is good to see her fit and well at age 90.

The film also gives the origins of Pippi Longstocking more time than the diaries did. Apparently, young Karin conjured up the name out of thin air when asking her mother to tell her a story (according to Karin, not in the diaries), and while Astrid Lindgren was herself off work with an injury, she found the time to write it up. Spare a thought for the first publisher who received the manuscript and rejected it. I believe the second one took it on and the rest is history. I read the books multiple times as a child and may have retained an anarchist streak from the exposure

Passages from the war diaries are only used very sparingly in the film, read by an actress playing the writer reading or writing the diaries or engaging in family activities. So, altogether, although the book was useful in keeping track of what is or isn't in the original diaries, I found the film a much more enjoyable and enlightening experience than the book.

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a UK release in the pipeline.

not understanding quantum mechanics

As a chemist, I have of course used quantum mechanics in various ways and learned the essential textbook equations, but like everybody else on the planet I don't really understand it. I find comfort in the wise words of Richard Feynman that went something like "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

After a few decades of not using my non-understanding of quantum mechanics on a regular basis any more, I found the book Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics by Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert a welcome refreshment of nearly lost memories.

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

Quantum understanding

Chemistry & Industry Volume 90, Issue 2, February 2026, Page 34

access via:

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

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

As always, I can send a PDF on request.

To sell books about quantum mechanics, you have to have Schrödinger's cat on the cover. It's the law.

a book for our time

Some thoughts on

Mein Opa, sein Widerstand gegen die Nazis und ich
(My Grandfather, His Resistance Against the Nazis and I)
Nora Hespers
Suhrkamp 2021

Nora Hespers grew up rolling her eyes at her father’s outrageous stories about how his father was an important resistance fighter against the Nazis from the very beginning and how they executed him by hanging him from a butcher’s hook. After her father left the family and disappeared from her life, she never heard the name Theo Hespers mentioned again, as nobody outside the family seemed to be aware of his story. Until the fateful day when a colleague at the broadcaster where she worked casually mentioned that he had written his PhD thesis about her grandad and would she perhaps like to take part in a radio show about him?

This jaw-dropping moment sparked a blog, evolved into a podcast, and eventually crystallised into this very impressive and deeply moving book, which intersperses Theo Hespers’ biography with the journey of discovery undertaken by his granddaughter after she began to realise that the wild stories she heard as a child were largely true, actually. The learning experience that started in autumn 2012 and snowballed through to the completion of the book in 2020 became all the more dramatic as some of the history repeated itself in ways that were unconceivable at the beginning, making it all the more important to pay attention to the lessons of the past.

West Germany honoured the resistance of a very few select people including the White Rose circle around the students Sophie and Hans Scholl, and the July 20 (1944) coup attempt led by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. The famous book Das Gewissen steht auf by Annedore Leber, which we had on our shelves when I grew up contains biographies of 64 members of various resistance efforts. (An English version has been published as Conscience in Revolt) In the GDR, the emphasis was naturally on communists fighting the Nazi regime, including the group known (in Nazi documents, not in their own understanding) as the Rote Kapelle (featured in the recent movie From Hilde, with love).

As Nora Hespers notes, the resistance of the July 20 movement only awakened at the time when it was obvious that the war was lost. The officers involved had previously served Hitler’s army without resisting too much. In contrast, her grandfather, motivated by a deep Christian humanism (but also critical of church officialdom) recognised and militated against the sheer inhumanity of nazism from the very beginning. Therefore he and his family had to flee to the Netherlands as early as April 1933 and had to flee further when the Netherlands and Belgium were occupied. At one point, Theo had the opportunity to escape from Dunkirk to England but would have had to leave his family behind, which he refused to do.

This early anti-fascist engagement makes it practically inevitable to compare his story to the modern developments. At the stage where we are now, the likes of Theo Hespers are shouting from the rooftops that we have to stop fascism. Other early resisters around him who also feature in the book include Hans Ebeling (nickname Plato) from Krefeld, Max Behretz (executed 1942), Josef Thome, Josef Steinhage (cofounder of the antifascist paper Der Deutsche Weg, Peter Lütsches, Selma Mayer. Many of Hespers contacts were from various catholic movements, but he didn’t fundamentally object to working with communists united in the cause against fascism.

I read this sort of books partly as examples of how to turn family history into something that is relevant and interesting to humans beyond the family circles in question (which worked out amazingly well for the Hespers family). In this case there was an additional overlap of interest as Theo Hespers’ family lived near Mönchengladbach, in the village of Dahl, which is between Mönchengladbach and Rheydt. (Rheydt was merged into the bigger city in August 1929 and demerged at the specific request of Joseph Goebbels, who hails from there, then merged again in the 1970s.) My grandmother Ruth went to school in Rheydt, and the family lived there from 1923 until they moved to Königsberg in 1935. I didn’t spot any familiar names in the book, and she wasn’t quite the same age as Hespers (she’s from 1908, he from 1903) but I love the idea that with enough info about the social networks around both, one could probably find a connection with fewer than the famous six degrees. I was also intrigued by the very fleeting mention on page 53) that Nora Hespers’ great-grandfather might have ended up owning Kaiser’s Kaffee (a chain of grocery stores originating in Viersen).

Speaking of which, I think a book like this should definitely have an index - if only to save me the trouble of noting down all the names and page numbers. The other thing I missed was: What did that colleague write about Theo in his thesis? I may have missed something but I didn't see it mentioned or cited as a source again.

Nora Hespers launched her blog and podcast as Die Anachronistin, a word merged from the German versions of a (female) chronicler and anachronism, as she describes herself as a chronicler fallen out of the time she's writing about. Unfortunately the times have somehow looped back since then, such that this book about how brave people resisted the Nazis in the 1930s has turned into a very important book for our time, not anachronistic at all.

PS This English-language web page from her publishers seems to be an attempt to sell translation rights, which doesn't appear to have worked so far. Would be good to see more international publicity for this story though.

aptamer sensors patched up

My astrobiology co-author Kevin Plaxco has been pioneering the development of biosensors based on aptamers (the artificially generated DNA equivalent of antibodies) for many years now and every once in a while I write about the progress in this fascinating field. Now the work has reached its first clinical trial, so I wrote a news story for Chemistry World to help spread the word.

The news story is out now:

World first for clinical trial of skin patch to monitor therapeutic drugs in real time

Chemistry World 5.2.2026

Source: © Marsilea A Booth et al/Springer Nature America 2026

Previous episodes in this serie are listed here.

off to the Netherlands

While obsessing with various migration stories in my distant family history, including the 19th century departures to the Black Sea and to Brazil, I neglected one example much closer to the present. In 1910, the oldest sister of my great-grandfather Julius (about to set up his own shop in Luisenthal) emigrated to the Netherlands with her husband who hailed from Barmen and with her three children who were all born in Krefeld.

There is some info about these people on Dutch archive sites, so let's add some flesh to the bones I had in the ancient Krefeld clan entry:

7. Karl Düselmann ~ 11.3.1841 Krefeld
oo (2) Elisabeth Catharina Imig (1851-1924)
7.2. Elisabeth (Elise) * 9.8.1876 Krefeld, +19.06.1945 Bergen, NL (I saw her referred to as a student of theology in one of the archive entries, but after finding other errors there as well, I am beginning to think that this may have been a mix-up with info referring to her son? Would be quite something if true though.)
oo Otto Finkensieper * 4.11.1871 Barmen + 2.8.1930 Alkmaar NL, aged 58, furniture trader,

7.2.1. Karl Otto * 8.11.1905 Krefeld +9.11.1960 Valburg, NL, writer, priest in Zetten (biography in Dutch), photo
oo 20.10.1932 Johanna Koning, * 10.1.1911 Meppel
7.2.2. Hugo Kurt * 10.7.1907 Krefeld, merchant in Scheveningen; received the Orde van Oranje-Nassau in Silver
oo 5.5.1931 Bergen Elisabeth Wilhelmina Kerkmeer, born 17.4.1907 in Alkmaar, 24 years old
7.2.3. Benjamin 15.2.1909 Krefeld merchant in Scheveningen
oo Augusta Matthilde Dahlhaus

Cover of the book Holland zoo ben je (1934),
to which Karl Otto Finkensieper contributed two novellas: Waterpost and Nieuw land.

As far as I know nobody in my family was in contact with the Dutch relatives after 1945. From my grandmother I had the names of the three brothers and their career choices, but that's as far as the info went. (Sounds like the families kept in touch while the Düsselmanns still were in the Lower Rhine area, but lost touch when they moved to East Prussia.) The names of their wives are from the Dutch archives website.

I didn't find any children of the three couples but I'm spooked by the discovery that there was a scandal at the Heldring-Gestichten in Zetten in the 1980s where a psychiatrist called Theo Finkensieper was the culprit (sentenced in 1992 according to Dutch wikipedia) Unfortunately, Karl Otto Finkensieper was the director of this very same institution from 1939 until his death in 1960, and I think this documentary says (at 2:20 mins) that Theo was his son. As far as I understood from the Dutch commentary, the place was known for very strict protestant morals until 1960 (when Karl Otto died), and the liberation beginning the 1960s may have led to transgressions that ended up in abuse cases.

This obviously swamps all the searches and I didn't look further for descendants, because even if I could find them I guess they wouldn't want to have their family relations publicised.

On the migration theme, in March 1930 Benjamin travelled to New York on the ship Nieuw Amsterdam, and after that I can find no further register entries in NL that mention him (apart from his father's death where he and his wife are mistakenly labelled as parents of the deceased, which doesn't really inspire confidence in these archive records). So did he emigrate??? It's a bit tricky to investigate as he shares his name with an architect who built lots of things in New York a generation earlier, around 1900. So that's all I can find right now.

Regarding the origins of the name Finkensieper, there is a hamlet and a creek called Finkensiepen which are today part of the town of Radevormwald, Oberbergischer Kreis, NRW. This would be plausible, especially as Gedbas has a bunch of Finkensieper children born in Radevormwald around 1770. Etymologically, this seems to have the same roots as Siepmann, which I've pinned down to Schwelm, which is in Westphalia but not all that far away.

plants recycling metals

It has been known for centuries that certain kinds of plants thrive on soils heavily contaminated with toxic metals, even on mining waste. It took a while for people to realise that these plants can be used to extract desirable metals from such soils. Especially in our times with ever-growing hunger for resources like nickel, gold, and rare earth metals, the rising prices of these metals have led to some plant-based mining methods becoming economically attractive.

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

Mining metals with plants

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 3, 2 February 2026, Pages R73-R75

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

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

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

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky.

Last year's thread is here .

The yellow zinc violet (Viola lutea ssp. calaminaria) has historically served as an indicator plant for soils rich in zinc ores. It is still found on former mining sites in the area where the borders between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet. (Photo: Gilles San Martin/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).)

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 ...

lives of Helene and Julius

continuing with the ancient info rescued from from the website about the Weiß chronicles, and following up from generations 10-6 in this blog entry, and Generation 5 here, we now come to:

4. The businessman

Helene Kauer, born in 1885 as the youngest of the five long-lived girls from the household of railway man Christoph Kauer and his wife Margarethe Imig, later told her grandchildren that she wanted to be a teacher when she was young, but that her parents couldn’t afford the fees to send her to the teacher’s seminar. Equal opportunities, she said, ended at the age of 10. Up to the fourth year of school, boys and girls had the same lessons. After that, girls were taught things like needlework and home economics, while boys studied more academic subjects like maths. Helene said she always considered that unfair, and when the time came she made sure that her daughters were able to study at university just as her son did.

Around 1905/06. she was still living with her parents at Adamsweiler (at the small railway station mentioned above, of which her father was the boss), when her cousin Julius Düsselmann (son of her aunt Elisabeth Catharina Imig, 1851-1924), came to live at Merlenbach, Lorraine, not all that far away. Julius (1883-1950) was an adventurous type and already had made a trip to the German colony in South West Africa (today’s Namibia), where he took part in the suppression of the Herero uprising. Historians now think that the colonial rule was upheld quite heavy-handedly, with interventions bordering on genocide.

The most notorious episode is the battle at the Waterberg of August 11, 1904, in which the German troups under the command of Lothar von Trotha surrounded 6000 Hereros, including women and children. The Hereros managed to break out into the Omaheke desert, where they were left to die of thirst and starvation. However, apart from some vague hints to “horrible things” he witnessed, we don’t know in detail what Julius did there or what he thought of it all.

In any case, he came back with ill health and had to settle for a quieter lifestyle, becoming the manager of a grocery shop belonging to the mining company in Merlenbach, 50 km east of the village of Adamsweiler, where his aunt and uncle lived with their two youngest daughters, Regina Katharina (“Kätha”) and Helene. Auguste and Anna were already married and had children of their own, while Johanna worked at Saargemünd at the post office.

Julius was the 4th child of a bunch of six produced by Karl Düsselmann (1841-1927) and Elisabeth Imig (1851-1924). I remember that my great-aunt used to refer to Julius’s younger sister Alwine anagrammatically as “Tante Lawine,” i.e. Aunt Avalanche. He also had a half-brother from Karl’s earlier marriage to Maria Schledorn.

Julius’s maternal ancestors were the Imigs from Simmern. On his father’s side, they all came from the Niederrhein area, i.e. the town of Krefeld, where many of them worked in the textile industry which Krefeld is famous for (see the Krefeld clan entry). Intriguingly, Karl’s mother was called Elisabetha de la Strada (1804-1882), whose paternal line we believe to have come from Italy. The current theory is that her great-great-grandfather had immigrated from Italy (a family tradition says it was from Capri, specifically) and worked as a gardener at a castle, which we believe to be Schloss Oranienstein at Dietz, Lahn. We now have a documented Johannes de Lastrada whom we believe to be that immigrant (though the gardener may have been in a different generation, and one de la Strada who is documented in archives relating to Oranienstein was a traiteur, not a gardener) . This Johannes de Lastrada married Elisabeth Hemmler at Wetzlar in 1681, they had 6 children baptised there between 1682 and 1691. In the marriage entry and in one of the baptisms, it is noted that the father of the family is Italian. (More about the Stradas here.)

The set of Karl’s ancestors is complete back to the 8th generation (i.e. Julius's great-grandparents), and there are some patches going back to the 10th generation, where we find the names Siepmann, Wilsberg, Röshof Wolffs, de la Strada, Hemmler, Jacob, Zeisen (=Zeutzem, Zeutzheim), Enkrich, Saur, Schönau, Giesen, Baxher (Bacher?) Vossen, and Gather.

In September 1907, Helene and Julius married. They spent their honeymoon at the Belgian seaside resort of Oostende, as my great-aunt told me in a letter. Apparently, Oostende was a very posh place back then, and the very posh ladies wore very posh frocks ensuring that their physical shape remained obscured even when they went swimming.

It is also said that, before they got married, Helene and Julius consulted a geneticist who assured them that their being first cousins would not affect their chances of having healthy children. (Which leaves me wondering exactly what kind of miracle diagnostic methods the geneticists of 1907 possessed?!)

And three healthy children they did have (although only one lived to an age commensurate to those of the Kauer girls):
1.   Ruth Düsselmann, 1908-1993, see below.
2.   Werner Düsselmann, 1911-1941.
3.   Esther Düsselmann, 1918-1983.

It is reported that Julius had been keen to emigrate to America, as his half-brother Karl had done already, and his brother Wilhelm would do as well in 1924 (while his oldest sister Elise only emigrated as far as the Netherlands, together with her husband Otto Finkensieper and their three sons). However, Helene dissuaded him from this plan.

Still, enterprising as he was, he set up his own shop in Luisenthal (Saar), which seems to have done well, as he opened a second one nearby, under the supervision of Helene’s sister, Kätha.

However, due to a heart defect that is believed to arise from a tropical disease he caught during his time in Africa (possibly typhus), he was forced to retire from business in 1918, at the age of only 35. The family, now complete after the arrival of the youngest daughter, Esther, moved to the Lower Rhine area, where the Düsselmann lineage came from. His brother Wilhelm helped him find a countryhouse with 6 acres of land and 200 apple trees at Mennrath, where they lived off the savings and the pension he received as a war veteran.

Only five years later, inflation put an end to this lazy life. Julius was forced to take on a sequence of jobs in various kinds of commerce. By 1928, the family lived in the town of Rheydt, Königsstr. 32, where the firstborn, Ruth, finished high school that year. (Rheydt is now part of the city of Mönchengladbach.)

In 1932, after a short spell of unemployment, Julius became a salesman for the textiles company C. Brühl & Co. at Rheydt (the company celebrated its centenary in 2023, but is now based in Rotenburg/Fulda). Following successful business in East Prussia, Julius was given the opportunity to start a new branch at Königsberg, which became a success. In 1936, the whole family, including faithful Aunt Kätha, moved to Königsberg, Münzstr. 10, renting a fourth floor flat with 8 rooms. They bought some of the furniture from a Jewish dentist who read the signs of the times and emigrated to Palestine. They let out the Mennrath estate. The factory, based at Kantstraße 10, started to run under Julius’s name, producing professional clothing and uniforms.

In 1937, Julius suffered severe injuries in a car accident. While he stayed in hospital, his son Werner interrupted his medical studies to run the business. At that point, the company had 150 employees and a new branch at Zinten, 30 km south of Königsberg. Werner then stayed on as a deputy manager until he was called up for military service at the beginning of the war.

In 1940, Julius split his business from C. Brühl by paying back the investment and a share of the profit.

Werner Düsselmann, who served as a simple soldier and truck driver on the Eastern front, was shot dead by snipers on the day of his 30th birthday, in 1941. His wife and young son both survived the war.

A week before Werner’s death, his sister Ruth had already paved the way for the family to return to the Hunsrück area (where her aunt Johanna Kauer lived in the house she built on her retirement in 1934), moving to Hahnenbach on the pretext of having to care for her aunt. After Werner's death, however, she returned to Königsberg to help out in the company.

In August 1943, Ruth went back west for good, taking both her children and Aunt Kätha to Hahnenbach. A year later, Königsberg suffered devastating air raids. Over 4,000 residents died, 200,000 were left without abode. Julius and Helene protected themselves from the firestorm by covering up with bath robes dunked into the water of the lake at the Königsberg castle. The factory was also damaged, but could continue production on a smaller scale, with 25-30 machines.

In December 1944, Helene went west and moved in with her sisters, daughter, and grandchildren at Hahnenbach. Julius stayed behind, but in January 1945, when visiting the seaside near Pillau, he spontaneously decided to board what turned out to be the last ship to leave the Königsberg area. Very wisely, he had been carrying his travel documents and essentials with him for a while. By the end of the month, the city was surrounded by Russian troups.

Julius arrived at Hahnenbach in February 1945. In August, as the war was over, and he set out to make a fresh start, he moved his family to Bad Nauheim (a famous art nouveau spa town north of Frankfurt), where they lived at Frankfurter Str. No. 26 at first, then moved to Frankfurter Str. 12, a substantial villa from 1898, which was to stay “in the family” until 1979. Initially, the family occupied only one room of this building. Using his old business contacts, Julius set up a wholesale trade for textiles. However, he did not have the time to develop this last business venture very much, as he died suddenly, in March 1950, at the age of 66, when visiting his daughter Esther at Frankfurt.

Helene continued to live at Frankfurter Straße 12 with her daughter Esther, who remained unmarried. They sold the property at Mennrath and set up a guest house catering for visitors to the spa facilities that Nauheim is famous for. (Come to think of it, maybe the town is more famous for the fact that Elvis Presley spent his military service time there, but I don’t know whether any of my relatives met him! They’re not very musical on that side of the family.) The two main floors of the “Pension Düsselmann” had 12 rooms with around 300 m2 total surface area, not to mention the small flat in the loft and the vast basement including a derelict bowling alley. Esther and Helene used three rooms themselves, leaving nine rooms plus the flat for paying guests or visiting family members.

Helene lived to the age of 87 in full possession of her wit and mental abilities. She died in November 1972, the only great-grandmother I got to know.

Despite having a diploma in economics and a PhD dissertation in the drawer (it had become meaningless after the war, as it dealt with trade opportunities in Eastern Europe, or something like that!), Helene’s daughter Esther did not inherit her father’s business sense. She kept spending inordinate amounts on changes to the interior layout of the house (we made jokes about how the toilets ended up in different locations each time we visited!), while leaving the roof and structure to rot. On top of that, she also liked to spend generously on taxi rides, furniture made to measure, and antiquarian books. (I shouldn’t moan about the latter, though, as she left the books to me!) When a series of strokes left her paralysed before the age of 60, the family found out that the sale of the villa was only just enough to cover her debts. She died in 1983, aged 64, leaving my grandmother, Ruth, as the last survivor of the three children of Julius and Helene.

PS 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.

nature's chemistry

In the long list of potential books that I didn't quite get to the printers, there's one that I wanted to call Nature's chemistry - essentially a collection of snappy stories from the chemistry/biology interface. I think this idea came up just at the wrong time, namely at the point when my German publishers, Wiley-VCH gave up on such collections of stories. Previously they had been quite happy to publish them in their series Erlebnis Wissenschaft, probably based on the success of John Emsley's work in German translation, not so much on the success of my books.

Anyhow, Nature's chemistry never happened, and it never occurred to me to add the word amazing to the title. Now Michael Freemantle did just that , and with that magic ingredient he managed to get it published with the Royal Society of Chemistry, so well done to him. I was grateful to learn from his book about the chemistry of snowdrops (on the cover) and beaver excrements, but predictably more critical when reading about fields I have also covered. Overall, I guess it will face the same amount of disinterest from the general public as my books, so I suspect I should be supportive in solidarity.

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

Made better by nature

Chemistry & Industry Volume 90, Issue 1, January 2026, Page 35

access via:

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

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

As always, I can send a PDF on request.

on the origins of radio

Some thoughts on:

Listen in: How radio changed the home
Beaty Rubens
Bodleian Library Publishing 2025

I saw this small exhibition at the Weston Library last year and came away with not much more than some memories of a few old radios and covers of early editions of the Radio Times (published since 1923). It wouldn’t have occurred to me to invest £ 30 in the accompanying book. Less than a year later, however, I spotted it in a street library and picked it up. That’s the thing with street libraries, you can always return what you don’t like, so there’s zero risk in trying something out.

In the event I surprised myself by reading the entire book cover to cover. It starts from the invention of radio and the first technologies that enabled pioneering spirits to “listen in” (as they said in the 1920s) from the comfort of their own homes, albeit with the discomfort of fiddly equipment and bulky headphones.

Rubens describes the impact broadcasting had on home life in Britain, from its start in 1922 until the second world war - after which television sets started to invade homes and diminish the importance of radio. Of special interest to me was the ambiguous role of radio in giving access to culture (including eg live music) to households, but in many cases replacing the live entertainment that people were making for themselves before (gramophones and TV sets were also complicit in this). By making some of the best performances of classical music, for instance, available to all, broadcasting discouraged mere mortals from trying for themselves, because they would not be able to compete. This led to today’s situation where playing your own music has become a niche hobby, while most people think of music as something that streams out of their devices.

It was instructive to me to follow this development in the UK setting, not only because the BBC pioneered the technology, but also because in Germany we have the “1000 years” interlude where the Volksempfänger was Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine and the medium had to be reinvented after the collapse. As Rubens briefly mentions, part of the idea of rolling out a cheap and cheerful radio for all to the entire population was that these devices didn’t have the power to pick up foreign stations, so they tied listeners to the Nazi propaganda.

As it happens, I don’t know whether the musicians starring in my musical memoir had radio in the 1920s. Both Frieda the pianist and Heinrich the cellist will have had radio after the war, and both households went to join neighbours for shared TV viewing, but about the radio listening of the 1920s I am entirely in the dark, which made Rubens’s findings from early sociological studies of radio listening interesting.

Another very interesting thing I learned from the book was the earlier existence of systems that transmitted audio from theatre or music events live through phone lines to paying subscribers. This was first demonstrated in France in 1881 as the théâtrophone, and found commercial use there and in Britain (as the electrophone in 1896). Marcel Proust is among the few contemporary users of the service who left us written testimony. Allegedly there is no written testimony from subscribers to the British service, but I am struggling to believe that. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, in some old letters kept in a drawer. The number of electrophone users in Britain peaked at just over 2,000 in 1923, before the technology was swept away by the wireless.

The book comes with lavish illustrations (as you would expect from a volume accompanying an exhibition) with historic photos, cartoons and covers of magazines. What is sorely missing is a timeline - as I discovered when trying to find the dates I referenced above. Wikipedia has one for developments globally, from which I learned that Argentina started broadcasting entertainment programmes in 1920. The book didn’t mention that either. The centenary to which the book and the exhibition were pegged is that of the first broadcasts from the 500ft tall Borough Hill transmitter near Daventry in Northamptonshire, which for the first time reached most of the UK in the summer of 1925.

Here's a review in the Observer (when it was still part of the Guardian group)