1664: something brewing in Strasbourg

After discovering various ancestors in 17th century Strasbourg (still a Free Imperial City at that point), it occurred to me that Kronenbourg, having named one of their beers "1664" might have been around at that time too. Unfortunately, the history of the brewery doesn't appear to be very well presented anywhere (it is extremely thin on the company website), so I will just have to compile the bits and pieces I find in this entry.

Von Florent from Paris, France - 1664, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10911888

In 1664 Geronimus Hatt IV (Jérôme Hatt in French; 1633-1675), son of a dyer, started brewing in a house called Zur Kanone (cannon) at the square Rabenplatz (now known as Place du Corbeau). It was named after the raven as in the Middle Ages this area was the place of executions and the birds came to consume the dead bodies. More recently though, this has become a very desirable address, just across the river Ill from the cathedral (reached via the raven's bridge). The brewery business stays in the possession of the Hatt name line until 1977, across more than three centuries and eight generations, which is very impressive. According to his French Wikipedia page (no other language versions available at this point), he had obtained his brewer's licence the same year, whereas this F1 fan page suggests a slightly different version.

According to the F1 page, his son Claude took over the brewery in 1683. However, this name and date doesn't appear in the Wikipedia overview of the family history. There, many different descendants are brewers in various places in Strasbourg and beyond, so to simplify things I'll try to pick out the lineage that leads to the last owner of the family business.

1) Jérôme Hatt IV (1633-1675) marries in 1664 Marguerite Hamm, daughter of the baker Johann Hamm. As described above, he starts brewing in 1664 at Rabenplatz (Place du Corbeau). The very amazing website Maisons de Strasbourg has info on the house numbers 1, 7, 8 and 9 and none of these had a Hatt person (nor a brewer) in the 1660s. The numbering around the square (see the map) only went up to 9, so that only leaves numbers 2-6. Number 5 is huge, so for the humble beginnings of a newly licensed brewer I'd imagine one of the smaller houses.

2) Jérôme Hatt V (1668-1734), brewer renting the house Zum Vogelgesang / Chant des Oiseaux in 1692 (7 quai des bateliers, just a few doors down from the Rabenplatz), marries Catherine Boch the same year. In 1713, he inherits the birdsong house from his mother, who had married the owner Hans Jacob Verius in 1675 and bought the house with him in 1689 when the previous owners filed for insolvency.In 1716 he marries Catherine Goll, mother of brewer number 3). She was previously married to a priest called Georges Frédéric Leonhard, and in 1736 marries Philippe Guillaume Milius In 1746 her son, the brewer Jean Daniel Hatt and his wife (oo 1740) Susanne Marie Kammerer inherit the house. It stays in the Hatt family until 1759. Search "Hieronymus" on the page about the house to find 25 entries relating to the Hatt family. For instance, in the 1730s they also buy neighbouring properties and apply for permission to knock through walls to expand their business space.

3) Jean Hatt (Strasbourg, 14 août 1720-Strasbourg, 29 octobre 1753), founder of the brewery l'Espérance en 1745 à Strasbourg then at Schiltigheim. Marries Marguerite Barbe Heyl 1746 at Strasbourg. Rents the basement of 6 rue de la Croix in 1747. (There are many more hits for Espérance on the website, probably enough info to reconstruct the history of the breweries operating under that name.)

4) Jean-Louis Hatt (Strasbourg 1752 - 1804), brewer at l'Espérance. Marries Anne Barbe Kellervitter in 1780 at Strasbourg.

5) Philippe Jacques Hatt (Strasbourg 1787 - 1862), brewer at l'Espérance, founder of the brewers' association of Strasbourg. Marries Marie Catherine Rothenbach (1791-1838) 1812 at Strasbourg.

6) Philippe Jacques Hatt (Strasbourg, 16 november 1813)

7) Frédéric Guillaume Hatt (Strasbourg 1849 - 1916), leads the brewery at the Kronenbourg quarter of Strasbourg. Marries Eugénie Boersch (1854-1883) 1874 at Strasbourg.

We have a bit of a consistency problem here, as the company website claims that Frédéric Guillaume Hatt moved the brewery to Kronenbourgh in 1850, at which point he would have been around one year old. Maybe he had an uncle with the same name who is missing in the wiki family history. That would also fit the counting of generations on the website as they say sixth generation. The reason for the move was the flood risk in the city centre. The Kronenbourg district is on hills and thus safe. Wikipedia gives 1862 as the date of the move (still inconsistent) and also mentions that hills enabled the use of cellars for cold storage during longer brewing procedures.

8) Maurice Jérôme Hatt (Strasbourg 1869 - 1958), acquires the brasserie du Tigre and creates the brand Tigre Bock. Marries Hélène Nessmann 1897 at Strasbourg, then after her death, Valérie Fischer 1911 à Strasbourg.

9) Jérôme Maurice Hatt (Strasbourg 1912 - Perthuis 1998). The last leader of the family business.

Production at the Kronenbourg site ceased in 2014. All brewing is now happening in Obernai.

Which is all very interesting but not much use for my family history. I need to find the first three bearers of the name Geronimus Hatt, as they would have overlapped with our goldsmith Franz Bolion von der Rosen and his wife Ottilia Flach.

 

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Stop Press: This Lutheran vicar Matern Hatten (1470-1546) moves from Speyer to Strasbourg and marries Barbara Hager from Regensburg has a son called Hieronymus, who marries Agnes Stock and again has a son of the same name, and he is a dyer. Now that looks very promising.

In the history of the birdsong house we find the marriage entry of Hieronymus Hatt IV with the name of his late father given as Hieronymus Hatten.

With the search term Hieronymus Hatt (as opposed to Geronimus which I had from the wiki page of the first brewer) I also found a family tree for the brewery founder in Geneanet. So, going backwards now, we have:

1. Hieronymus Hatt IV (1633-1675)

2. Hieronymus Hatt 1596-/1633 (this marriage in 1630 also in Gedbas)
3. Maria Gassner /1613-

4. Hieronymus Hatt 1573-
5. Susanna Jung 1575-/1625
6. Daniel Gassner †1631/
7. Anna Maria Mischler (according to GedBas)

8. Philipp Hatt /1550-/1611
9. Dorothea Windisch 1552-
10. Martins Damian Jung /1540-1595/
11. Margaretha Jud /1549-/1576

18. Matthes Windisch †/1577
19. Ursula Baldner †/1558
20. Martin Jung †1566/
22. Jacob Jud /1507-1566/
23. N Post /1510-

Sadly, Geneanet runs out of Hatt ancestors at this point, although we're still one Hieronymus short, if the one born 1633 is the fourth. I think this fits quite plausibly with the son of the vicar mentioned above though. So if we trust the numbering of the Hieronymuses, we could fill in Hieronymus I as number 16. and the vicar would be 32. Actually, Wikipedia says that Hieronymus (son of Matern Hatten) had sons called Hieronymus and Philipp. So that works. We then have, based on that Wiki entry:

16. Hieronymus Hatt + after 1566
17. Agnes Stock + before 20. Mai 1546

32. Matern Hatten * around 1470 Speyer + 14. März 1546
oo before July 1537
33. Barbara Hager * Regensburg

64. Matern von Hatten (from the place Hatten near Wissembourg?)
65. Margarethe Reuß (from a family with lots of clerics at Speyer)

While these brewers are not attached to my ancestry (yet), there are parallels to the history of the Kirner Pils brewery, where we have a known family connection, so I do have an excuse for being nosy.

 

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

There's also a nascent index of place names here.

And here's the index of migration events.

megalith mysteries

Some thoughts on

Stonehenge: Making Sense of a Prehistoric Mystery

by Mike Parker Pearson, Joshua Pollard, Colin Richards, Julian Thomas, Kate Welham.

Council for British Archaeology's Archaeology for All 2015

I didn't know much about Stonehenge before reading this and had only seen the monument from the roadside, but seeing that I sometimes get to cover ancient DNA work about various prehistoric populations and communities, I figured I should know something about it, so I picked up this book when I saw it at a charity shop.

I was surprised to learn that the site is a lot more complex and dynamic than I would have thought. It had been a major site even before those famous megaliths were installed, and there are five major phases of its development spanning more than a thousand years (2900-1600 BCE). Intriguing points I noticed include:

• The fundamentally egalitarian nature of pre-agricultural societies, which the authors seem to struggle to understand. They keep wondering about why we don't see the "elite" of stone age groups being marked in any obvious way. I would suggest that's simply because there was no elite, when you were hunting and gathering in a group of a few dozen people, you didn't have the resources to spare to feed a king and his entourage, even though you would still respect the experience of your seniors.
• The scientific challenges of finding out where those stones came from, how they were transported and erected etc.
• How it makes sense that populations that lived in wooden huts if they had any shelter at all spent all this effort to create stone monuments for their deceased. Apparently, an archaeologist visiting from Madagascar made that point clear based on his knowledge of similar megalith culture surviving in Madagascar to this day. The point is that life is transient but the afterlife is forever, so you want ephemeral structures for your lifetime but eternal ones for eternity. Makes sense, in a way. And we still use gravestones, too.
• Archaeologists also found related settlements nearby which may have housed the workers.
• Back in the days of megalith societies, the Orkney Islands were a major centre of excellence for building megalith sites. Part of the reason being that the settlers on those islands had used up all the trees and had to use stones for building by default, so they had more expertise in the use of stones.

don't create, evolve

I've taken the recent media attention around an effort to create "artificial cells" as an excuse to revisit the boundary between non-life and life, and how life emerges from non-living material. To me, evolution removes the entire question of "creating" complexity, as complexity tends to evolve from simpler forms all by itself. What we really need to find is the point where chemicals, instead of just sitting there, start to evolve.

Based on this philosophy, I was quite underwhelmed by those artificial cells, which, in the tradition spanning from Frankenstein to Craig Venter, represent another attempt to create something with dubious credentials as a living being but still much too complex to count as an origin of life. Luckily, there has been a significant breakthrough in self-replicating ribozymes recently, so I covered this as a positive example of what I would like to see instead of all the "creator" hybris.

Anyhow, the resulting feature is out now:

Making life from scratch

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 16, 17 August 2026, Pages R875--R877

Restricted access to full text and PDF download

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

(Unfortunately, this year's features will no longer become open access one year after publication - do contact me if you would like a PDF and the magic link has expired.)

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 .

Mythological and fictional accounts of the origins of life feature the creation of complexity (Prometheus producing humans, in this case). As we now know that complexity evolves, we only need to find the origin of evolution. (Image: marble relief by an unknown artist courtesy of the Louvre Museum.)

time flows slowly in Venice

Some thoughts on

The glassmaker
Tracy Chevalier
The Borough Press 2025

In her novel about the glassmaker families of Murano, which is next door to Venice in the same lagoon, Chevalier uses a slightly unusual technique of slowing down time for the main protagonists of her story. We follow the fates of one family across five generations, but it magically spans more than five centuries (1486 to the present), as time flows more slowly for them. The author uses the allegory of a stone skimming across the lagoon and touching the water several times to visualise the way her characters touch the normal timeline of world events at timepoints separated by decades, sometimes even a century.

As a chemist, I would rather describe the family as an experimental sensor dipped in to probe the times. One could easily rationalise this by prefacing the beginning of each chapter with "What if". What if Orsola Rosso's family had lived during the time when the Black Death first arrived in Venice? What if, only slightly older, they had still been around (minus one or two inevitable deaths) at the time Napoleon conquered the city and handed it over to the Austrians? What if the more mature Orsola Rosso and her grandchildren lived through the Covid-19 pandemic and to the present day?

The advantage of this approach for writer and reader is quite obvious to me - you can have a family history spanning five centuries, without the confusion of going through 15-20 generations of the family involved. It saves time, names, and dead bodies. And in this particular ecosystem, where families really have stayed in the glass making business for centuries, it kind of makes sense. Of course the same people can't be around 500 years later, but their descendants, pursuing the same trade and possibly sharing the same Christian names could be. So it may be less confusing to just use the same cast to dip into the flow of time at various points.

Although, on the other hand it reduces their humanity, as they remain aloof from the times they dip into. I vaguely remember getting a similar feeling in Simone de Beauvoir's novel Tous les hommes sont mortels, where the protagonist is immortal (read 40 years ago). We wouldn't want to do that to real people we're interested in eg from our family history.

Venice and Murano provide a unique test tube for this experiment, with the Venetian cityscape uniquely protected by the lagoon environment which rules out modern development and the Murano glass trade maintaining its traditions in isolation from the world. Thus, while others might feel tempted to apply the dip-in sensor approach to other long-lived trade ecosystems such as wine growing or brewing, I feel it wouldn't work as well without the magical isolation of Venice.

how many insects are there?

Attempts to get an overview of all living species on Earth always run into trouble when it comes to insects. There isn't even a clear consensus on how many species there may be. Historically, estimates have gone as high as 30 million, with a recent trend towards lower figures around 6 million. New research now suggests that this last figure needs to be multiplied by three.

This is in line with the fact that wherever researchers have a closer look at insect diversity, they tend to discover several times more species than were previouslly known. I've combined both the challenge of the global count and some recent discoveries, together with the threat of population losses and extinctions to a feature about insect numbers which is out now:

Counting insects

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 15, 03 August 2026, Pages R833--R835

Restricted access to full text and PDF download

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

(Unfortunately, this year's features will no longer become open access one year after publication - do contact me if you would like a PDF and the magic link has expired.)

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 .

A study of rove beetles in China revealed 61 new species. (Photos: Qing-Hao Zhao.)

lucky day

Pirate Luthier update

After a bit of a drought period in terms of new violins coming in, I had a lucky day this week discovering a violin (number 38) and two violas in one lot at the Gloucester Green market. They appear to have come the same journey because all three instruments have been "decorated" with splodges of red paint. initial tests show the paint isn't water soluble so I'll probably have to leave it on.

Will share some photos once I've put strings on them. I'm not entirely against the red paint. In the meantime here's how I carried the three of them back from the market (hashtag #carryshitolympics). I'm really glad I decided a few months ago to have the big blue coop bag in my shopping bag when I go into town just in case any instruments need carrying. It would have been tricky without it:

The instruments are short of almost everything (although they do have cases and their soundposts are in place), but I also picked up some accessories from a friendly freegler on the same trip, so it will work out in the end. Will have to order viola strings though. And pegs are beginning to become a crisis. The three instruments only have eight pegs between them, and not necessarily well-fitting ones either.

 

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

pioneering printers

Our Strasbourg goldsmith Franz Bolion von der Rosen married Ottilia Flach, born around 1560, and I have seen speculation that she might descend from the Strasbourg printers Martin Flach the Elder and his son, the Younger. So let's see how these fit together:

Martin Flach the Elder was born mid 15th century in Küttolsheim near Strasbourg, and died 20.11.1500 in Strasbourg. After an apprenticeship with Johannes Mentelin, he started his own printing workshop in Strasbourg in 1487 and mainly printed religious works eg by Albertus Magnus. For reference, Gutenberg completed his pioneering printing of the bible in 1454 and died in 1468.

Bust of Johannes Mentelin at the humanists' library in Sélestat
Source: Von Alexandre Dulaunoy from Les Bulles, Chiny, Belgium - La bibliothèque humaniste de Beatus Rhenanus / Humanist Library of Beatus Rhenanus, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11779810

His son, Martin Flach the younger, was also a printer and active in Strasbourg between 1500 and 1539.

Our earliest Flach, Adam Flach (the Elder) was born around 1480 in Maisonsgoutte (source). (Note that this local tourism website says the village was called Hisselbach in the 14th century, which then mutated to the French Maisonsgoutte, which was Germanised in 1603 to read Maisengott and then became Meissengott in 1665.) Judging by his age, he could be a brother or cousin to Martin the Younger. He died 6.3.1533 in Schlettstadt (today Sélestat).

Following the nameline down from Adam, we have Adam the Younger, Gabriel, then Ottilia:

Adam Flach was born in Schlettstadt around 1510, immatriculated at the University of Freiburg in 1538 , died at Weilertal after 1539.

Gabriel Flach was born 1524 in Weyerthal near Strasbourg, and died 1580 in Strasbourg.

The second question is if and how Ottilia is related to the Flach ancestors of Albert Schweitzer (which is claimed in this forum contribution). The longest Flach nameline I could find online goes up from his great-grandmother Marie Madeleine Flach (1782-1847) to

Jean Jacques Frederic, born 1756, then

Johann Christoph, 1725

Johann Christoph, 1701

Johann Christoph, 1656

So we're still a century or 3-4 generations away from a potential brother of Ottilia.

On both fronts, I could do with a few more Flach people to join those dots.

 

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

There's also a nascent index of place names here.

And here's the index of migration events.

a barefoot cellist

Thanks to a very inspired suggestion of the youtube bots, I discovered the performance of Dvorak's cello concerto by Anastasia Kobekina which opened the Schleswig Holstein Festival on 5.7. (the video on youtube has now been blocked, but it is available via the ARD Mediathek). I guess the bots not only remembered that I love this concerto but also that I watched a number of movies from ex-Soviet Union countries with a manic pixie dream girl character in the main role. As the video fits all of these these criteria, it was an easy catch. (Anastasia Kobekina is Russian but has been living in Germany since the age of 18 or so, according to this German TV documentary about her.)

I'm loving her emotionally intense interpretation of the Dvorak to bits. As the cherry on the cake, I discovered some way into the Adagio that she was playing barefoot on this very posh occasion of a festival opening concert, so that just tipped me over and I had to look up her entire back catalogue as well. Turns out that she very much likes the repertoire pieces that I like, so I'll list a few links below to her videos of pieces for which I have the sheet music in the hope that it helps to inspire me to actually learn some of these pieces.

Barefoot publicity shot from her website.
©Nicolas Hudak_Sony Music Entertainment

Bach: Cello suites 2 and 3 - recorded in the plague year 2020, when I was also studying these suites.

Debussy: Cello Sonata - recorded 2018.

Franck sonata in A - recorded with an orchestra in 2017 at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, with other pieces including movements of the 6th Bach suite. I've played the Franck sonata on the flute at some point.

Haydn: Cello concerto Nr 2 in D - recorded with an orchestra in 2017 at the Queen Elisabeth Competition.

Marin Marais: Les folies d'Espagne - a music video filmed in 2022 to promote an album. More barefoot playing in this one. I tried this on the flute around the same time, but didn't get the hang of it.

Schubert: Arpeggione sonata - recorded in 2015 with a pianist. I've always loved the arpeggione sonata and actually played it on the flute when I had lessons. I also have the cello version, although my daughter's teacher insisted that it is too difficult for mere amateurs.

PS I had looked at the German version of her Wikipedia entry but not at the English one - I only just discovered that it has a very lovely barefoot (and spikeless) photo of her which I would have nicked:

Kobekina in deSingel Antwerp
Source: Wikipedia

all our Alsatian connections

My (paternal) grandparents met at Bonn, but each had a family background with (temporary) stays in Alsace and Lorraine. I knew them well, but the extent of this shared cultural background only dawned on me long after they both died.

Ironically both were born in Lorraine (just outside Alsace), but more attached to Alsace. The main connections are the railway station of Adamsweiler hosting Ruth's grandparents (after many years of migrating between other stations in the Alsace Lorraine network) and the Strasbourg love story of Richard's parents. Beyond that, they were probably unaware of additional Alsatian roots that both their families had much deeper in the past, which only came to light through recent research. I had started a list of Alsatian connections at the bottom of the recent entry about the Adamsweiler station but then realised there are around ten different stories, so they need a blog entry all of their own.

I'll separate his and her Alsatian ancestries, starting with Ruth, and having earliest stories first. On Ruth's side, there are twice as many stories, but there is a conspicuous gap between 1681 and 1870, which is the time when Strasbourg and the Alsace were under French rule.

 

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Ruth's six connections:

The goldsmith of Strasbourg, Franz Bolion von der Rosen (ca. 1552 - ca. 1620). While the von der Rosen nameline only passes through Strasbourg (coming from Liege and moving on to Winterburg), his wife, Ottilia Flach appears to be from a resident Alsatian family that also turns up in the ancestry of Albert Schweitzer through his maternal line great-grandmother Marie Madeleine Flach (1782-1847). Ottilia's father Gabriel Flach was born 1524 in Weyerthal near Strasbourg, and died 1580 in Strasbourg. Her grandfather Adam Flach was born in Schlettstadt (today Sélestat) around 1510, immatriculated at the University of Freiburg in 1538 (he might be another clergyman???), died at Weilertal after 1539. Her great-grandfather, also called Adam Flach, was born around 1480 in Meissengott (today Maisonsgoutte, Alsace) and died 6.3.1533 in Schlettstadt. So that seems to be a solidly Alsatian background, although we sadly don't have the names and origins of the women involved. The assertion that these Flachs are Schweitzer's ancestors too rests on this forum entry. As yet, I haven't been able to find the whole connection, will do a new entry when I find it.

Conon the contrarian (1546-1602) studied theology in Rostock and Strasbourg, then spent two years as an assistant priest in Mundolsheim (today part of the Strasbourg metropolitan area), before moving on to the Mosel valley. His Alsatian years must have been in the 1560s.

Conon's son in law Christian Nesselius (ca. 1576-1631), whose bio is included in the same blog entry) studied in Strasbourg as well, that must have been in the 1590s. In 1600 he came to Birkenfeld where he served as a schoolmaster under Conon's supervision and ended up marrying his daughter.

Nicolaus Andreae (1580s to 1640s) studied in Strasbourg and married there, which became an issue when he arrived in Kastellaun in 1607 as a young schoolmaster needing accommodation. He would have been at Strasbourg in the first years of the 17th century, but could in theory have overlapped with Nesselius. Sadly we don't know who the wife of the Strasbourg and Kastellaun years was and whether she also was the founding mother of the Andrae lineage at Gebroth and the widow who survived Nicolaus and married again. Probably not, considering the record of domestic violence in between. Also, considering the known background of his widow (Anna Amalia Orth), I don't see how he would have married her at Strasbourg.

Johann Conrad Arnoldi I (1628-1711) Matriculated at the University of Strasbourg 25.2.1645. Now that's what I call a clear and specific date. By 1651 he was in office in the Hunsrück area.

Cover of a timetable brochure from 1902. Source: Wikipedia.

The family of the stationmaster of Adamsweiler Christoph Gottlieb Kauer (1845-1909), who joined the Imperial Railways in Alsace Lorraine (Reichseisenbahnen in Elsass-Lothringen) after the war of 1870/71 and stayed in their service until he died. His widow and all remaining family members were evicted from Alsace Lorraine in 1919.

 

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Richard's three connections (four if I split the second one):

I had a vague memory that my Bondam / Bonnedame huguenots had an Alsatian connection, but that turns out to be Phalsbourg just beyond the border to Lorraine, a town in a German-ruled enclave founded in 1570 specifically to offer refuge to Huguenots persecuted in France. Then again, I read that after the town fell under catholic rule in 1608, many of the protestants fled to Bischwiller in Alsace. So there could be another Alsatian connection waiting to be explored.

The migrating miners and the Trimbachs are two strands that converge in the supremely unsearchable Paul Simon (1740-1813), who was born in Sainte Marie aux Mines but left Alsace to settle in Böchingen, Palatinate, where he got married in 1768. The Simon name line only passes through Alsace (Paul's father Johann Christoph Simon was born in Niederhosenbach, Hunsrück), but his mother, Maria Susanna Trimbach (1713-1752) has six Alsatian great-great-grandparents we can account for, including two local councillors in Munster and a woman born in Badonvillier. These were born around 1570. We know that the Trimbach name line came from Switzerland in the 16th century, but there must be at least some ancient Alsatian lineages among the others. Family names in Maria Susanna Trimbach's ancestry include Klein, Monschat, Saass, Fabry, Sturm. All of her ancestors with a known birth place were born in Alsace, with the earliest births in the 1540s. My 8th generation ancestor Maria Susanna Trimbach is also my strongest claim to (1/256) Alsatian ancestry. The more wobbly connection to Ottilia Flach, above, only gives me 1/4096 Alsacianicity (plus Albert Schweitzer as a bonus).

And finally, Heinrich the cellist meeting Maria at Strasbourg in 1903 and writing 160 poems for her. The other two Alsatians connections above are both via Maria and her mother. As she had grown up on the other side of the river Rhine in Bruchsal, Alsace wasn't so far away from her, whereas for Heinrich, coming from eastern parts of the German Empire, it must have been a more exotic location.

Strasbourg-Neustadt (German quarter):
the former Sängerhaus, which today is the Palais des Fetes in rue Selenick.

 

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After 1918

In September 1943, Ruth and Richard revisited Strasbourg in the awareness that the war was lost and Strasbourg might be lost and/or destroyed. Fortunately, both they and the city survived the war and we have been visiting the region quite often ever since. Might do a separate entry with old photos relating to some of those visits.

 

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

There's also a nascent index of place names here.

And here's the index of migration events.

antarctic in danger

The Antarctic is in danger of losing both its ice shield and its biodiversity. These two issues are typically treated separately, but are both linked via the climate catastrophe we are causing, so I hooked them up together in my latest feature, which is out now:

The Antarctic faces climate threats

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 14, 20 July 2026, Pages R777--R779

Restricted access to full text and PDF download

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

(Unfortunately, this year's features will no longer become open access one year after publication - do contact me if you would like a PDF and the magic link has expired.)

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 .

Gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) have recently been recognised as four separate species,
three of which are threatened. (Photo: Liam Quinn/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).)

an excuse for being nosy

I recently heard a very interesting presentation from Anne Sebba about her book The women's orchestra of Auschwitz hosted by the Oxford Centre for Life Writing. I feel reasonably well-informed about the topic, after reading Anita Lasker-Wallfisch's memoir as well as her daughter's, and the book Cello by Kate Kennedy (who hosted the event at Wolfson College), so I didn't rush to buy the book, although I will pick it up if it crosses my path again. As I understand from the presentation it interweaves biographies of several of the women who were involved with the orchestra. (A video recording of the event is now online.)

One new insight I took away from the event arises from the author's insistence that she felt her father's involvement as a young soldier in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, where the surviving members of the Auschwitz orchestra had ended up, gave her permission to write about their lives. Even though she never found positive confirmation whether her father had specifically met any of the women in the orchestra, she felt that in such a highly sensitive and much debated field as the Holocaust, writing about the lives of the victims and survivors would be an intrusion, and that her very marginal family connection gave her an excuse for being nosy.

Hearing her making this argument both in the presentation and in the discussion afterwards made me feel that I use family history in a similar way, as an excuse for being nosy about ordinary people of the distant past, most of whom weren't important enough to justify specific historical interest. When I am writing biographies of clergymen in the 9th to 16th generation of our family tree, as I have done in the first half of this year, there is the obvious risk that some of the connections may be erroneous. However, the assumed, and sometimes quite speculative family connection gives me an excuse to take interest in their lives and write about them, which is great fun and always enlightening.

Also, even if some of them may be the wrong person for a specific position in the family tree, they are quite likely to share similarities with the genetically correct ancestor, so the lessons I learn about the lives of my ancestors still broadly hold, even if the details may in some cases be misattributed. And as I get to know these people, they become family, even if I cannot prove with certainty that they are genetically related.

Some of the more general themes emerging from this research include:

• migration (mainly in the 17th century), listed here
• family networks of protestant clergymen since the Reformation, tagged Eckweiler
• musical traditions, as explored in my cello memoir
• sense of place, as highlighted in the lost cities series.
• origins of namelines, see the list at the end of this entry

a station lost

Update on the railway families:

I just learned that the small railway station of Adamsweiler (Adamswiller), where Christoph Gottlieb Kauer (1845-1909) spent the last 15 years of his life and career as a station master with his wife and five daughters, no longer exists. It was still standing on September 21st, 1989 when I visited the village, and it looked like this:

Own photo

We found the door where the Kauer family had posed for a family portrait around 1900, so here's my grandmother and myself in front of that door (I think it's the street side entrance, the platform side one doesn't have the extra wings on the sides):

Photo by Jörg Groß.

compare and contrast 90 years earlier:

The station master's family outside the station at Adamsweiler, around 1900. The daughters, left to right: Helene, Kätha, Johanna, Auguste, Anna. See also this postcard where family and staff stand between the tracks.

There was even a train stopping there (on the line from Sarregemuines to Strasbourg), although I'm not sure whether that was a regular service. The station building was up for sale at the time, so there definitely weren't any services happening there, but it may have functioned as an unmanned halt.

Own photo

Another descendent of the Kauer family happened to visit the station that same year in June, and even managed to get inside.

Photos by Lothar Bladt.

He told me later that he met a group of young folks from Berlin who wanted to restore the building but ran into a structural problem with the roof which they couldn't fix. So this may well have been why it disappeared.

Checking google streetview on 25.6.2026 I see lots of big lumps of stone by the roadside, ready to be removed. Apparently they belong to the quarry at the end of the station road, Carrières Rauscher.

I found some other photos online, most recent first:

In 2022, a train passes the site of the former station, some lumps of stone from the quarry also visible on the left.

In 2007, the station is still standing but the roof missing.

On this page, if you hover on the railway line next to the name of Adamswiller, a photo of the station will magically appear. The vehicles look like they may be from the 1960s/70s.

A postcard dated 1905 may well be showing Christoph Gottlieb Kauer on the right. The flirtatious messages from several writers are a mix of German, French and atrocious spelling mistakes.

Adding insult to injury, the French Wikipedia entry of Adamswiller lists the stations of Diemeringen and Tieffenbach-Struth as transport options, showing a photo of the latter which looks quite similar to the one that Adamswiller had. It doesn't even mention the station the village lost.

One reason why this little railway station was a bit more important than other properties where people lived at the time is that significant parts of the household contents are still with us, including the 20 volume encyclopedia from the 1870s, the Schiller edition from the early 19th century, and some pieces of furniture and kitchen gadgets. The house that Johanna Kauer built for her retirement has been useful for the preservation of the spirit of her childhood home.

 

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

There's also a nascent index of place names here.

All things Alsatian are tagged alsace. Note that there are four separate strands of Alsatian stories in my family history (most recent first):

Heinrich the cellist meeting Maria at Strasbourg.

The family of the stationmaster of Adamsweiler (above, also tagged kauer).

The migrating miners and the Trimbachs These two strands converge in the supremely unsearchable Paul Simon (1740-1813), who left Alsace to settle in Böchingen, Palatinate, where he got married in 1768.

The goldsmith of Strasbourg, Franz Bolion von der Rosen (ca. 1552 - ca. 1620). While the von der Rosen nameline only passes through Strasbourg, his wife, Ottilia Flach appears to be from a resident Alsatian family that also turns up in the ancestry of Albert Schweitzer.

PS I had a vague memory that my Bondam / Bonnedame huguenots had an Alsatian connection, but that turns out to be Phalsbourg in Lorraine, a town in a German-ruled enclave founded in 1570 specifically to offer refuge to Huguenots persecuted in France. Then again, I read that after the town fell under catholic rule in 1608, many of the protestants fled to Bischwiller in Alsace. So there could be fifth Alsatian connection waiting to be discovered.

Update 16.7.2026: I nearly forgot to mention that four of the clergymen studied in Strasbourg, so that calls for a new blog entry with all the Alsatian connections!