marches and veal dumplings

One hundred years of cellotude continued:

Fifth part of

Chapter 1

A cello called Heinrich

Previous section: Romantic writings

Dieuze, Lorraine. Postcard from 1913.
Source.

Marches and veal dumplings

That has been all we know about our romantic couple at Strasbourg. While we’re lacking evidence on the events of the next 18 months, I am guessing that all this romantic fervour must have take a while to dissipate.

On April 1st, 1906, two years after the engagement, the happy times at Strasbourg came to an abrupt end as Max Heinrich’s regiment was relocated as a collective punishment. I haven’t been able to find out what they were punished for, but I imagine some may have found the entertainment on offer in the city irresistible. So the regiment moved to the small town of Dieuze in Lorraine. In that year, the town had precisely 5893 residents, including around 1000 soldiers. Dieuze, as part of a territory where the majority spoke French, kept its French name until 1915 and only fleetingly became “Duß” until it transferred to France in the Versailles Treaty. The barracks at Dieuze are still there and used by the French army now.

Changing places with Max Heinrich’s regiment, the 4th Lorraine Infantry Regiment No. 136. moved from Dieuze to Strasbourg. Thus the geographic identity was lost, with the Lorraine regiment based in Alsace, and vice versa.

This change of circumstances must have upset Max Heinrich and Maria as it involved times of separation. Being merely engaged they couldn’t just move in together, and it would have been hard to find a job and accommodation for Maria in the tiny town of Dieuze. She must have remained in Strasbourg until they got married more than two years later.

On September 4th, 1908, Max Heinrich was promoted to the rank of Hoboist. As this is formally equivalent to his previous rank of sergeant, I guess this may just have been a lateral move from the normal infantry ranks to the position of musician in the regiment band. So at least now we can be sure that his role in the regiment was that of playing music. Seeing that a tuba mouthpiece is the only evidence we have that links him to a specific instrument, we’ll assume he played the tuba. As the military music in the infantry mainly involves wind and percussion instruments, there wouldn’t have been an opening for a cellist (nor for a violinist, in case this was his first instrument as the musical signature of HG may be suggesting).

Every regiment in the army of the German Empire had its own wind band playing its own specific march for ceremonial marching around. Other occasions calling for music making included festivities as well as funerals. The size of the regimental bands grew in the course of history. Under Frederick William III of Prussia (1770-1840) it expanded to 26 men, in World War II it reached 37. In 1908 it must have been somewhere in between these two figures.

The newly appointed hoboist swiftly moved on to get married on October 8th, 1908. The church ceremony took place in the gothic St. Stephan’s church in Tangermünde, where Max Heinrich had also received his confirmation. It was held as a double wedding jointly with that of his sister Gertrud.

The other half of the double wedding: Max Heinrich's sister Gertrud and her husband Robert Goetzky.

We have a copy of the nonsense “wedding newspaper” produced on the occasion, but unfortunately it contains very little useful information. Of musical interest, perhaps, the fact that it includes made up parody lyrics to be sung to well-known song tunes. Thus we conclude that the celebration may have involved some raucous singing. Sadly, we have neither a photo nor a list of the guests. As Maria was orphaned by then and her step family would have had a long way to travel from Baden, there may not have been all that many relatives to invite. Conceivably, the double wedding may have served to bring the numbers to a socially acceptable level.

The newspaper called for the rapid production of offspring in no uncertain terms, to which Max Heinrich and Maria obliged. Nine months and six days after the event, their son (later to be my grandfather) was born in Dieuze and named after his grandfather Richard. If tradition had continued in the male line, I would be a Richard and my son another Heinrich, but we gave up on that so we have the cello as the only Heinrich in the family.

The lifetimes of the two Richards only overlapped by a few years, as the grandfather died in July 1913 in Tangermünde. His widow spent some time living with Max Heinrich in Dieuze (as noted in his military records) and some in Magdeburg with her daughter, where she died in April 1916.

Richard’s godparents were Max Heinrich’s half-brother and a woman named Henriette Seidensticker, about whom we know absolutely nothing. I am guessing that she was part of the couple’s social circle rather than a relative.

The first photo of baby Richard shows him naked, lying on his tummy on a fluffy rug, and resolutely lifting up his head. The proud parents sent this as a postcard to a woman called Friederike Heinemann in Magdeburg. Again, I have no idea who she was – and how the postcard found it way back into my family.

A glimpse into the daily life of our nascent family is provided by a hand-written book of recipes, which I found between my grandmother’s gardening books in March 2023. Maria had signed it as:

Marie Pfersching
Strassburg i. Els.
1908.

confirming my suspicion that she was likely forced to remain in Strasbourg until their marriage.

In addition, there is also another inscription, possibly from a previous owner of the book, which is hard to decipher as it has been crossed out with a double line. As far as I can read it, it may have been:

Mieze Reinecke 1905

If this is the correct version it is a curious combination, with Reinecke being the name often used for a fox in fables as well as a common family name, and Mieze being a common nickname for cats as well as a somewhat disrespectful word for women. Conceivably, the nickname Mieze could be hiding another Maria.

The book contains more than 200 recipes on 76 pages, of which the first 190 are listed in an alphabetical index at the back. The first date mentioned is 19.4.08, found under a recipe for veal dumplings. Just before that, the formatting of the headlines changed. At first they were aligned to the left and ended with an exclamation mark, while from this point onwards they are centred and end with a full stop. This change makes me wonder if the first 19 pages were perhaps written by the mysterious Mieze Reinecke. The handwriting also shows some very subtle differences.

Therefore, for clues to the life of our young married couple, I am looking at the 98 recipes of the second phase in the book, covering 26 pages with occasional dates spanning from April 1908 to March 1909. These can give us an impression of what they ate and what household concoctions they may have prepared. After that point, the entries become rarer, with six pages mainly containing tips for household cleaning methods and home remedies, fizzling out at the end of 1909. Although Richard was born in July 1909, there are no recipes for baby food or anything else relating to him. Maybe she had a separate notebook for baby things that I haven’t found yet. After that, there is a gap of five years, and the records resume with “war recipes” in a less diligent handwriting.

In 1908, the year of their marriage, there were plenty of cakes including Linzertorte, Sandtorte (with the remark added: very good!), yeast cakes filled with fruit, and Topfkuchen. Pastry recipes include Schokoladenplätzchen, Madeleines, Mandelhäufchen. The initial pages of the book were already offering quite a lot of pastry such as Muzzemandeln. Sweet casseroles were also popular, including the elaborately named Verschleierte Dame (veiled lady) and Arme Ritter).

The favourite type of meat appears to have been veal, which comes in various shapes and sized. Just occasionally interrupted by mutton, or ox. We find instructions on how to marinate an eel, and recipes for whitefishes (Coregonus), carp and herring. There are dumplings of all sorts, as well as tomato sauce and mustard sauce.

For my taste, there’s not enough about salad, but there is one “Russian salad” and an instruction on how to grow radishes in every season. That’s a start.

For desert, there was jelly, cherry pudding, chocolate pudding, and vanilla ice cream. How she would have prepared the ice cream in 1908 without a freezer – and, in Dieuze, probably without any electricity? – isn’t quite clear to me.

In May 1908, Maria wrote down a lovely recipe for a May punch with woodruff and four bottles of white wine. It doesn’t say how many people she meant to serve, but it sounds like quite a party. Maybe she had to host the whole marching band?

Dieuze in 1912 - Max Heinrich and Maria's house must be in there somewhere, but I don't know where.

In December 1913, Max Heinrich is promoted to the rank of Vizefeldwebel, a non-commissioned officer one rank up from the Sergeant. He remained listed as a Hoboist as well, so I am thinking that the promotion was just for the pay grade, and didn’t affect his musical activities. For instance, on January 12, 1914, he received an award for 12 years service in the army, where his rank is given as Hoboist. In later documents he is sometimes referred to with both titles, as Hoboist/Vizefeldw. It’s all a bit confusing but also reassuring to know that he remained with the marching band. Presumably, the place behind the tuba was safer than one in the trenches.

Read on:

A wanderer between both worlds

romantic writings

One hundred years of cellotude continued:

Fourth part of

Chapter 1

A cello called Heinrich

Previous section: What happened in the Orangerie

Frontispiece of Max Heinrich's poetry album.

Music in poetry

All in all the album contains 16,000 words, in 160 texts (some of them are aphorisms rather than poems). I believe this size is comparable to the known work of Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170 – c. 1230). After reading this work, one wouldn’t necessarily conclude that Max Heinrich identified as a musician. In terms of musical instruments, we have the minstrel’s fiddle, some jubilating violins at a festivity which our protagonist promptly leaves, and then, in the girl’s song the harp as a metaphor for sensitivity.

„Kann’s die Harfe meiden, daß, berührt, sie klingt?“

Keeping the instrument’s grammatical gender:

“Can the harp avoid to sound when she is touched?”

All other musical accompaniment is left to bells, birds, and roaring streams. The only composer referenced is Chopin. One of his songs floats through the silence at one point.

One interesting musical aspect is the emotional power and long-distance effect of music, typically in the shape of songs. This is especially powerful in the ballad of a soldier who deserts his post after accidentally hearing a passing tradesman singing a song that reminded him of home.

Variations of this story were widespread. One version, „Zu Straßburg auf der Schantz“, was set to music by Gustav Mahler in 1887. In that version, it is a Swiss soldier in the German army, at Strasbourg, who deserts after hearing the sound of an alphorn.

Whereas the musically inspired deserters were executed in those songs, the consequences are less dramatic in the song of the minstrel with the fiddle. Remarkably, it is written from the pespective of a woman who is touched by the music of a passing musician and reminded of another who is far away.

Plants are much more abundant than musical instruments, including roses following the clichés of love poetry, but also a few species that I hadn’t heard of before, such as saltbush (Atriplex). There is a lot about walking around in the green environment, with forests and streams and wild flowers. Which may have the advantage that an as yet unmarried couple can secretly share a kiss.

Although the secrets have a life of their own, as one of the funnier poems elaborates. It outlines the lengths to which young lovers went to keep their relationship secret, with the punch line being that at the time of the carefully planned revelation, all their friends already knew.

Overall, I feel that the poems are a little bit limited in their subject matter, but otherwise quite presentable. Many things that we today would regard as cliché would have been less so 120 years ago, before sound recordings and radio. The notorious example of rhyming the words Herz and Schmerz (heart and pain) is completely unacceptable today as it has been used in too many Schlager songs that have been heard too often, but back in 1904 I imagine that would have been just another rhyme between two words that, given the subject matter, were bound to come up from time to time.

Even though the Romantic period in literature is already a thing of the past, our poet openly confesses that he is a belated Romantic, when he dedicates a whole poem to the mythical blue flower made famous by Novalis (1772-1801). The centuries-old quest for this romantic ideal finally comes to fruition. Our poet discovers the mythical treasure in the eyes of his beloved.

The beginning of the poem "Die blaue Blume" (The blue flower).

One could argue that the Romantic period in classical music was still ongoing when Max Heinrich wrote this, even though romanticism in poetry was obsolete. So I think we can forgive him this delay on the grounds that he was a musician as well as a poet.

The poet presents himself as a good-hearted, maybe slightly dull character. Djingoism and testosterone-poisoned boasting are entirely alien to his personality. He writes several poems from a female perspective (perhaps in collaboration with Maria?) or from changing perspectives. He often pontificates on a morally irreproachable way of life. Several texts carry the title “Mahnung” (admonition). This general moralising may remind us of his Strasbourg contemporary Albert Schweitzer.

The highest form of happiness our poet can imagine is an evening with his beloved at the home fire. A rare poem contributed by Maria describes the scene with both reading from the same book, hand in hand and cheek to cheek. No words were spoken and the desires have been put asleep. But what were they reading?

An old book tells its story

Here we are very grateful for the book which both lovers have signed and dated, giving us some insight into their minds. As mentioned above, Max Heinrich signed it presumably upon receipt, thus:

Heinrich Groß Musiker 1. Oktober 1900 Bielefeld

What first drew my attention to this inscription was the fact that it is the earliest evidence of Max Heinrich being a musician, just three weeks after his 18th birthday.

His second notice tells us that he read the book within two months:

Gelesen 30. November 1900 Bad Warmbrunn Im Rosenheim

In Strasbourg, he must have passed it on to Maria pretty swiftly after meeting her, as she signed it:

Gelesen Ende Oktober 1903 M. Pfersching

The book in question is volume 3 of the „Selected stories“ of W. O. von Horn (1798-1867), published posthumously in 1892 by J. D. Sauerländer’s Verlag at Frankfurt. The author’s real name was Wilhelm Oertel, a protestant vicar who hailed from the village of Horn in the Hunsrück mountains and used its name as his pseudonym. In a crazy coincidence, this puts the author within touching distance of some of my grandmother’s ancestors in the area. His ancestors may well have conducted the weddings of some of mine. While these links to their future daughter-in-law have no relevance to Max Heinrich and Maria’s lives in 1903, they may explain why my grandparents kept the book on their shelves.

Moving on to the contents of the book: 1. Soneck. Historisch-romantische Erzählung aus dem dreizehnten Jahrhundert 2. Aus dem Leben eines Vogelsbergers in Krieg und Frieden 3. Das Original. Ein Stücklein 4. Das Mühlchen in der Morgenbach. Eine Begebenheit aus dem Jahre 1716 5. Der Apostelhof. Eine Geschichte aus der Vorzeit Bacharachs. (12 Teile) 6. Die Elzer. Eine Geschichte aus dem Nassauer Land

Three of the stories, namely 1., 4. and 5. are clearly classifiable as Rhine romanticism. All three are love stories against a backdrop of robbers, corrupt clerics and castles on the banks of the Middle Rhine. All three are written with an exquisite sense of place. It shows that the author, who worked at Bacharach for a time, knew his way around the ruined castles and wild rocky hills of the area.

Steel engraving from "Views of the Rhine" by William Tombleson (around 1840): Ruins of Sooneck Castle
source: Wikipedia

One may wonder what all of this meant to a young musician born in Thuringia of Silesian descent. The castles on the Rhine must have been an exotic subject to him when he first read the book in 1900. But maybe an interest in these faraway lands moved him to sign up with an Alsatian infantry regiment in romantic Strasbourg?

An alternative interpretation is provided by the one and only page that has come loose in the book. It is the first page of the last story, and the following pages also show some signs of wear. This last story is about the people from the town of Elz. Allegedly many of the residents of this town responded to the wave of mass poverty triggered by the Industrial Revolution by earning their living as travelling musicians. To this day, there is the tradition of Elzer Musikanten.

According to von Horn’s novella, the musical history of the town started with a resident named Steffen who got drunk on the eve of his planned wedding and ended up being drafted into the war against the Turks. In the first of two love stories in this novella, his bride-to-be, Mariechen, patiently waited for him until he hobbled back home on one leg and married her. He had funded his return journey as a travelling organ player and remained in the music business after his marriage. This allegedly inspired other people from Elz to do the same, setting avalanche of Elzer Musikanten going.

Love story number two still in the same text concerns Mechthild, the daughter of Steffen and Mariechen, who grows up to become a gifted singer and harp player. Her love interest is an aristocrat with a precious Amati violin who wanted to join the French Revolution and narrowly escaped the guillotine. Returning from France, he took on a false name and made his living as a violin teacher, until he saw young Mechthild performing and fell in love with her. I am getting the impression that female harpists had a bad reputation at that time (around 1800), as every mention of the instrument is backed up with a justification against prejudice.

In this novella there’s music and musically induced romantic entanglements aplenty, so it is easy to imagine that our young couple enjoyed reading this, quite possibly more than once.

Read on:

Marches and veal dumplings

imagining extraterrestrial life

For somebody writing about astrobiology, I haven't read much science fiction, even though there are obvious parallels and connections. Thus the book

The possibility of life

by Jaime Green

came in handy to fill me in on some of the relevant books that I should have read. As in astrobiology, the author ponders the deep questions of how to find, recognise and deal with extraterrestrial life, but mostly from the perspective of the imaginary encounters of the sci-fi world.

More about it in my long essay review now out:

Imaginary aliens

Chemistry & Industry Volume 88, Issue 1, January 2024, Page 34

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.

Blackwells

a battered old violin

After successfully restoring my late aunt's violin and playing it for a few months, I started thinking I'd like to do some more pirate lutherie and put up a call for broken string instruments on the local Freegle group. This was first posted in May 2023 and gets auto-reposted regularly - and sometimes I update it.

Now, for the first time I have actually obtained an instrument from somebody in response to this post, a battered old violin:

There wasn't much background info available. The person who kindly replied to my Freegle call had inherited from their late uncle who was a pianist, and they weren't sure why he had a violin at all, as he wasn’t known to have played it. Other relatives had it looked at by Oxford Violins who said it is not valuable. Judging by the case (woodpulp/cardboard lined with felt, see photo) it could be from the 1930s like my aunt's but in a higher price bracket. No mark or label of any kind. The bow (hair cut out) is by Herrmann , a known maker family in Vogtland, Germany.

Intriguingly, the case contained an itemised luthier’s bill from Dec 1985 for

rehair   £ 12.65
repair to violin
shoot fingerboard, new bridge
clean & polish, glue seams, tailgut   £ 103.50
set strings   £ 10.33
4 adjusters   £ 2.05
total cost   £128.53,

which is almost £400 in 2024 pounds. Extrapolating from today’s cost of bow rehairs would even suggest £ 700. The bill is from John & Arthur Beare in London, who have a reputation as specialists in old violins according to their Wikipedia entry.

After them, somebody less qualified must have messed with the instrument, as I found all four strings attached to wrong pegs. At least the soundpost solidly in place and the bridge was kept separately in the case, so I was able to set it up in less than one hour.

The body is battered and scarred with various repairs but solid. The instrument settled in within 24 hours and sounds lovely to my not very demanding ears - even with the old strings which may well date from 1985 - notably better in the lower register than the other violins I've played so far. The old school tailpiece is fitted with 4 adjusters (as per the luthier's bill). The chinrest has an awkward shape with a rather steep edge. It has no cork,just glued paper on the clamp side and two felt tabs on the chin side. The case contained two packs of rosin: one Hiddersine unused, one Sonella in fragments, also a mute made of horn. And three unidentified spare strings.

Only one moan so far. Taking off the chinrest to look at the seam underneath it (which was ok), I discovered that somebody appears to have renovated (presumably sanded and re-varnished?) the top without taking off the chinrest. Like wallpapering around a small item of furniture. I think the appropriate pirate luthier response to this is: Arrrrrrgh. I'm slightly worried now that the same person may have effed up other things I haven't discovered yet, such as using the wrong kind of varnish or glue. Then again, can't complain about a gift horse and all that. I am aiming to keep this one to play it myself, but have already lent out another one that I restored to a young musician. If and when I am able to rescue more stray instruments the general plan is to make them available to players on a non-profit basis.

what happened in the Orangerie

One hundred years of cellotude continued:

Third part of

Chapter 1

A cello called Heinrich

Previous section: Strasbourg in the Belle Epoque

Strasbourg: Orangerie, postcard from 1902
Source

What happened in the Orangerie

After I had finished writing up the very first version of this chapter believing that we couldn’t know much about the private lives of Max Heinrich and Maria at the time they met and became engaged, a shock discovery changed everything. A small art nouveau decorated manuscript book with guilt edges turned up in a rather unexpected place, namely on the shelf between my late mother’s poetry books. (Note that she was not related to Max Heinrich and Maria and successfully divorced from their grandson.) It contains more than 150 poems, written by Max Heinrich for his beloved Maria, within just one year (November 1903 to Christmas 1904). It very nearly knocked me over.

The poems are of acceptable quality as far as I can tell as a layperson in these matters. Our musician clearly had a sense for meter and rhythm, and sometimes he also had original ideas. What I was hoping for but didn’t find, however, is usable biographical information. Among all the glowing hearts and rolling tears flooding the poems, it is rather hard to find any connections to the real world. The most interesting findings in this respect are in the meta-information, ie the dates and occasional references to places. Based on these, here’s the short lyrical guide through a very eventful year:

The earliest date linking Max Heinrich and Maria is in the above-mentioned book of novellas by W. O. von Horn, which he had signed with „musician“ behind his name back in 1900. It must have impressed him as he gave it to Maria to read in the year they met. Under his note she wrote that she read it in October 1903. We’ll come back to the content of the book later.

According to the poetry collection, significant events happened a few weeks later, on November 18 1903. So significant that Max Heinrich commemorated the day with a special poem called Jetzt und immer (now and forever) pondering the timelessness of his eternal love.

Then we get an atmospheric description of Christmas 1903, which he seems to have spent quietly gazing into her dear blue eyes. Note that her passport details list her eyes as grey.

Obstacles show up in the next poem with nameless people advising the poet to steer clear of his love interest and giving many reasons – we don’t get the specifics though.

An entry signed Strasbourg 4/2 1904 is in a different handwriting, probably Maria’s and signed Souvenir de Marie Vogel. Not sure what the bird is doing there. The poem is all about flowery metaphors for love and friendship.

On April 18th 1904, the pair became officially engaged. The occasion was celebrated in Tangermünde with a professional family portrait with Max Heinrich’s parents, sister and half-brother. The two young men in their uniforms stand there like guard posts gazing intently towards the future. Maria manages the same gaze even without a uniform. Meanwhile, the old folks sitting in the middle are looking rather grumpy. Max Heinrich’s sister is sitting as well and holds an album on her lap with a photo of a child that doesn’t appear to belong to the family. I was told the album was probably a prop from the photographer’s studio.

Max Heinrich (left) and Maria (standing) visiting his family in Tangermünde after becoming engaged.

There is also a studio portrait of the couple made in Strasbourg by the studio of F. Mehlbreuer (located in the East of the city close to many of the barracks, so they may have done lots of portraits of soldiers and their sweethearts). We don’t have a date for this one, but it appears plausible that it was also made in celebration of the engagement. As on the big family portrait, Max Heinrich wears round, frameless glasses, and his hairline has already moved upwards to the zenith of his skull. The date of the engagement was also engraved into a pair of rings, which are still in the family.

Engagement portrait, Strasbourg 1904.

In the poetry album, the date of the engagement, which was also Maria’s 23rd birthday, is linked to the Orangerie in Strasbourg, today known as Parc de l’Orangerie. It is to the Northeast of the city centre, where we now also find the European Parliament. As it happens, I have a Brockhaus Encyclopedia from 1903 from the other side of the family (to be visited in chapter 2), with a map of the Orangerie, showing: a large restaurant on the shore of a lake, a kiosque and an Alsatian farmhouse, as well as an Octroi at the edge of the park which may have something to do with raising the eponymous community tax.

The poems suggest that Max Heinrich popped the question during a visit to the Orangerie, although there is no more specific information on the precise location. The 18th was a Monday, but not Easter Monday – as our poet has left us with an Easter poem on Sunday 3rd.

There is a poem about popping the question which carries two dates, namely: „Straßburg, Orangerie, 18.4.04“ as well as the earlier date of 9.2.04. So I am assuming that he wrote the poem on the earlier date and then performed it as part of the engagement ritual.

Further poems come with notes referring back to the place and time of the engagement, so there is no doubt that the question was popped then and there, and the portraits were taken after that date.

At the end of May, there seems to have been a painful farewell, linked to the address Schwendistraße 6. This street is today known as rue Schwendi, named after a village on the other side of the Rhine. It is the easternmost of the three small streets that lead towards the front facade of the barracks.

We don’t get any further information on the significance of the address. We can admire the house on archi-wiki – like much of the Neustadt it looks quite lovely. There is no obvious indication that it was a restaurant, bar, or meeting point of any kind. A plan dated 1891 suggests that a painter/decorator called Oswald had his workshop on the ground floor.

There is the possibility that Maria lived at that address – close to the barracks but a bit far to commute to the Hopital Civil. However, we know another address where she lived at one point, but without a date. In any case, Schwendistraße 6 appears to have witnessed mutual oaths that the lovers would only kiss flowers, not people, for as long as they had to be apart. Apparently, purple coloured flowers were densely crowded around Maria’s house – not quite enough to pin down its location 120 years later – whereas Max Heinrich was the one who had to leave Strasbourg and would be restricted to kissing roses that reminded him of her. The handwriting in this poem is clearly rattled by emotion making it harder to decipher than most of the others.

After this tearful departure, the next poem is dated July 8th, so it appears the lovers may have had to survive separately for five to six weeks.

In an undated entry after July 10th, we find – finally – something about music, namely a minstrel’s song. It is mostly about the longing produced by separation, we’ll come back to its content later.

Some poems are explicitly marked as songs in their titles. Thus we have an evening song, a spring song, a lullaby and several bridal songs, a girl’s song and three love songs bundled up together. The latter are dated November 18th, the first anniversary of the date when the whole thing started. Like several other poems, the middle one of the love songs includes an example of telepathic communication between the lovers which I find touching.

We find a bonus poem on a postcard that came with the album. Unfranked and undated, the card does carry a useful address:

Fräulein Marie Pfersching
Straßburg / E.
Steinstr. No. 54

This road, today Rue du Faubourg de Pierre, leads from the city centre to the Steintor (stone gate), which is in Neustadt, between the barracks and the main station. Still on the other side of town from the Hopital Civil, but there will have been a tram going down this road, so it would have been feasible.

The poem on the card is signed with two musical notes, the first sitting underneath one ledger line, the second under two. If these ledger lines live under the treble clef, the notes would in German nomenclature spell out H G, so (Max) Heinrich Groß’s initials. One of the poems in the album also contains this musical signature, I just hadn’t understood it while I was transcribing the poems. As they weren’t normally signed with anything, I had seen the notes just as a kind of illustration.

The young poet's musical signature.

Maybe the notes also tell us something about the instruments Max Heinrich learned to play. As a cellist, one would preferably use the bass clef. A flautist uses the treble clef but can’t play those two notes under the staff. A pianist can play them of course but wouldn’t need the ledger lines, as there would be a second staff below the first ledger line. To me this looks suspiciously like the work of somebody who learned music with a violin – although a few other instruments such as clarinet would also qualify.

Read on:

Romantic writings

Strasbourg in the Belle Epoque

One hundred years of cellotude continued:

Second part of

Chapter 1

A cello called Heinrich

Previous section: A railway family

The Sängerhaus (today Palais des Fetes) on a postcard sent in 1905. Source

Strasbourg in the Belle Epoque

At the beginning of 1901, 18-year-old musician Max Heinrich signed up with the infantry – voluntarily. Although military service was compulsory in theory, only half the male population coming of age was drafted. Entering as a voluntary recruit rather than being drafted had the advantage for the recruit that he could choose which branch of the military he wanted to join.

I’m not quite clear whether Max Heinrich had a musical role in the infantry from day one. His military record card notes promotions to the ranks of Gefreiter, Unteroffizier (both 1903), Sergeant (1906) and Hoboist (1908). Although Hoboist literally means oboe player, and we spent some time thinking that Max Heinrich must have played oboe, we later found out that all musicians in the infantry were given titles based on this word, from the Hilfshoboist through to the Stabshoboist, regardless of which instrument they were playing. In the cavalry they were all trumpeters and in the pioneer brigades they were hornists. Very weird. The only piece of evidence we have regarding his instrument is a tuba mouthpiece. Based on this, let’s assume that from 1908 onwards his main job in the infantry was playing the tuba. Until then he may have had to muddle through as a common or garden infanterist, not sure. Based on this assumption, I’ll come back to the hoboist life later.

On April 25 1901, Max Heinrich started his service in the infantry regiment No. 138 (IR138), which one year later acquired the regional name of Lower Alsatian regiment by decree from the emperor. The regiment was based in the Manteuffel barracks in Strasbourg, at the time an exemplary modern building quadrangle with all bells and whistles. Even today it is still presentable. Under the name Quartier Stirn it serves the French military as an army education facility. The bicolour facade in brick and sandstone was then the biggest (of many) barracks in Strasbourg, and the only one equipped to modern hygiene standards. It had been erected after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 and the annexation of Alsace Lorraine as part of a comprehensive urban development plan.

In a large-scale concept inspired by Haussmann’s reinvention of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s and executed from 1880 onwards, a new quarter shot up northeast of the historic town centre with large boulevards, a new central railway station, university buildings, administration, residential blocks, theatres and shops.

This quarter known as Neustadt (new town) became a complete new city designed to show of the capabilities of the empire – even though the central government shifted the burden of the costs for the works back to the city itself. The built surface area of Strasbourg tripled between 1871 and 1914, and the number of residents rose from 80,000 to 180,000. New arrivals included numerous civil servants, as well as lots of soldiers.

Postcard sent in 1917, showing the view across the Neustadt with the neogothic church (inspired by the Elisabethkirche in Marburg), towards the medieval core of the city with the gothic cathedral.
Source

When young Max Heinrich first arrived in Strasbourg in the spring of 1901, the Neustadt development was mostly completed, even some small parts remained unfinished even until 1914. As of 1900, the city had 151,041 residents. including 90,000 native to the Alsace-Lorraine region, 56,000 from the rest of the German Empire, and fewer than 4,000 from abroad. For the wide-eyed young recruit from the remote provincial town of Tangermünde, this modern model city must have been an impressive experience. We can imagine that he didn’t get bored in his spare time. There were cultural activities and entertainment aplenty. And he found his future wife.

Maria Pfersching hailed from Bruchsal on the other side of the river Rhein, so she had a much shorter route when she came to Strasbourg to train as a secretary. Both her parents came from families associated with the wine growing traditions in the area. Her father Heinrich Pfersching (1850-1905) was a cooper and her mother Mutter Barbara Klundt (1847-1886), who had died very young, was from a long line of wine growers at Godramstein, near Landau in the Palatinate. Two separate family vineyards in the area still trade under the family name, but the exact connection to Anna Barbara’s ancestry remains unresolved. Both parents had interesting migration stories in their background including emigration to the Odessa region and Huguenot ancestors (plus some more Huguenots) on the Klundt side, as well as lots of Swiss ancestors on the Pfersching side.

Portrat of Maria Pfersching undated. Taken by the atelier of Fritz Rühl, official court photographer of the King of Bavaria, at Landau (Pfalz) where Maria's maternal relatives, the Klundt clan lived.

Maria’s godfather (no idea who he was - maybe one of the Klundts?) had financed her training as a secretary at Strasbourg – presumably this opportunity would otherwise not have been within her reach. Her niece remembered stories from her childhood suggesting that Maria worked for „Professor Lederhose“ (professor Leather Trousers), which the children then found hilarious. In fact it is only one typo away from the truth.

At the medical faculty in Strasbourg we find the surgeon Georg Ledderhose (1855-1925), with just the doubled-up letter „d“ setting him apart from the word for a garment. Like Maria, he had arrived from the other side of the Rhine, coming to Strasbourg as a medical student and staying on as a professor until 1918. He even has a morbus Ledderhose to his name, a benign swelling in the sole of the foot.

We can even figure out where Maria and the professor worked. The official hospital for academics of the University is the Hopital Civil, which has a long and distinguished history going back to the Middle Ages. After several moves it was established in its current location in 1398, just south of the main island where you find the old town and cathedral. It evolved as a loose settlement with separate buildings for distinct functions, originally including a bakery and a wine cellar, and with the diversification and specialisation of medicine, each discipline had its own building. This principle was only abandoned in 2008, with a large new-built block designed to house everything.

During the German Empire, the Hopital Civil (then known as Bürgerhospital) became a showcase project like the Neustadt on the other side of the city. New buildings were erected for surgery (1881), psychiatry (1885), gynaecology and obstetrics (1887) and eye health (1891). Professor Ledderhose was a surgeon, so I assume that the surgery building from 1881 was their workplace, as the second surgery department was only opened in 1914. Sadly, the 1881 building is no longer there – it has been replaced with a car park.

To recap: Maria was working south of the old town in the hospitals quarter, while Max Heinrich was stationed north of the centre in the Neustadt. We don’t know how and why Maria from Baden and native Thuringian Max Heinrich found each other, but I suspect that music may have played a part, if only in the shape of dance events. Although we can’t prove any musical activity for Maria herself, we know that her half-brothers were musicians playing at local events like fairs, and there are several professional musicians among the offspring of her nieces.

Musical entertainment will have been plentiful in Strasbourg. In 1905, for instance, the city hosted the first Alsace-Lorraine Music Festival, which in the spirit of understanding between nations presented a programme alternating between German and French music. Highlights included works by César Franck and Gustave Charpentier, conducted by Camille Chevillard. The composers Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss came from Vienna and Berlin, respectively, to conduct their own works as well as those of Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner.

The event took place in the Sängerhaus (singers’ house), a very beautiful Art Nouveau venue which opened in 1903 as part of the Neustadt development (see the postcard above). It is now known as the Palais des Fetes and still hosts cultural events to this day. You can find it in rue Sellénick (named after the French musician Adolphe Sellenick (1826-1893)), just one block away from Max Heinrich’s barracks. Back then the street was unoriginally named “Beim Sängerhaus.” We could almost speculate that he and Maria witnessed the performances of some of those illustrious guest musicians.

From 1904/05 the Sängerhaus also hosted the regular subscription concerts of the city of Strasbourg led by Franz Stockhausen (1839-1926). The first season already featured stellar soloists including cellist Pablo Casals. I hereby decree that they must have heard Casals play – no excuses will be accepted.

I took up the trail of musical events in Strasbourg after I read in Simon Winder’s book „Germania“ that Strauss and Mahler had jointly performed Strauss’s freshly written Opera Salomé in a piano shop in Strasbourg in 1905 – just a factoid the author dropped without further details or references. I found out that the shop in question was Musikhaus Wolf, which in June 2020 was forced to close after 195 years in business. Press reports on the closure of the shop note that Strauss played his new oeuvre for Mahler, his young wife Alma and some baffled customers of the shop. Clearly impressed by this sneak preview, Mahler wanted to premiere the work at Vienna, but was blocked by the censors due to the content of the libretto based on Oscar Wilde’s work. The actual premiere then took place in December 1905 in Dresden.

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) also resided in Strasbourg after finishing school and until he took up working in Africa. Max Heinrich and Maria may well have heard him playing the organ and/or delivering a sermon in the St. Nicolas church where he held the Strasbourg sermons between 1898 and 1913. The church is south of the old town, near the Hopital Civil. Although he already had a habilitation (post-doctoral degree as qualification for a professorship) in theology and held a teaching position, Schweitzer chose to study medicine at Strasbourg from 1905 to 1913. He thus will have had things to do at the Hopital Civil. During his Strasbourg time, Schweitzer also made his name as an expert on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Read on:

What happened in the Orangerie

one hundred years of cellotude

During the plague years I have been writing up a musical family memoir built around the biography of our venerable old cello. After completing a draft version in German (some chapters accessible through the link above), I have now started translating it into English, so here comes chapter 1, introducing Heinrich the cello and its eponymous owner, as a short blog series - one entry for each of the sections of the chapter (this entry also includes a very brief introductory passage before the first subheading). There will also be a few old photos with each entry.

All ten parts are now live, click the link at the bottom of each part to move on the the next one.

Table of contents:

1. A railway family
2. Strasbourg in the Belle Epoque
3. What happened in the orangerie
4. Romantic writings
5. Marches and veal dumplings
6. A wanderer between both worlds
7. A civil servant at Elberfeld
8. An amateur string quartet
9. When the music stops
10. Silence after the war

UPDATE 2.3.2024. I've added some extra photos to each entry, in addition to the one that each already had at the top. And a few more links.

"One hundred years of cellotude" is one of various title ideas I have been kicking around. I'll also use this as a tag to link the instalments of the English text, such as not to swamp the more general tabs with this content. Instruments of time and truth would be perfect - but there is already an early music ensemble by that name.

 

Chapter 1

A cello called Heinrich

Heinrich came into our family roughly a century ago, and definitely before 1924, but we don’t know exactly when and how. We know that Heinrich is a cello made in the tradition of Saxony in the late 19th century. The young cellist in my family baptised the instrument Heinrich after their great-great-grandfather in the name line, who was the earliest known owner and player of the instrument. To avoid confusion, I will refer to him as Max Heinrich, even though in real life he only used his second Christian name.

Before we come to Heinrich the cello, let us first get to know Max Heinrich the cellist and his family. Their lives were decisively shaped by the key innovation of the 19th century, the railways.

Staff at Tangermünde Railway Station, 1889.

A railway family

On December 7, 1835, the steam locomotive Adler (Eagle) travelled from Nürnberg to Fürth and thereby opened the age of railways in the German Confederation (a patchwork of principalities that lasted from 1815 to 1866). German engineers followed the lead of the British pioneers of railway technology and copied the details like the gauge and the propulsion technique that had already been proven in passenger services since 1825. Within half a century, the expansion of German railways overtook the British role model, At the beginning of 1885, the German Empire had the world’s largest network with 39,000 km of track, with Britain following in second place with 31,000 km. Today both networks are significantly smaller.

Initially, railways in the German Confederation emerged from a colourful mixture of state and privately-funded initiatives. In Prussia, however, and then after 1871 in the newly founded empire, the state took the lead and only left smaller local endeavours to private companies. One key reason for state leadership on long distance rail development was that Prussia’s rulers had recognised the importance of railways for rapid troop movements. For the same reason, the entire network has been more strategically planned than the British one, much of which has grown out of wild races between competing investors.

The advent of railways facilitated travel in ways that had been unimaginable a generation earlier. In 1839. a young pianist called Clara Wieck suffered some serious discomfort travelling from Leipzig to Paris on a stagecoach. Just ten years later, and then known as Clara Schumann, she could play concerts between Paris and St. Petersburg using trains to cross the continent at ease.

The dramatic expansion and efficient running of a vast railway network that in many respects surpassed the one we have today required countless employees in roles that hadn’t existed before, and thus couldn’t be inherited in the old feudal style of bygone times. Thus they brought opportunities and social mobility to many, along with the geographical mobility and the chance to see the world beyond your native area.

People in four separate branches of my family tree used these opportunities independently of each other, including the parents of Max Heinrich the cellist. Richard Heinrich and Maria Louise married at Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland) between 1877 and 1880. Maria was eight years older than Richard and had been widowed twice. She brought a son from a previous marriage into the family. They had a daughter in April 1880, and then Max Heinrich was born September 11 1882, completing a patchwork family that stayed relatively small for the time.

Richard, born in 1852, was spared military service in 1874 because of knock-knees and height. He was assigned as a “second-class reservist” meaning that in peacetime he had no military obligations of any sort, but until his 31st birthday he could be called up if there was a war. He was lucky, as the peace lasted more than forty years. He didn’t even live to witness the war that was to end the empire.

We don’t know much about old Richard, but we do know that he worked for the railways as an office clerk. At about the same time, another great-great grandfather of mine worked with the Reichsbahn Elsass-Lothringen where he eventually became a station master, and yet another one was a railway worker at Gütersloh. The daughter of that last one, travelled along the line to find herself another railway man, whom we will meet in the next chapter.

Like the other railway employees in the family tree whom he never met, Richard came from a modest background that soon gets lost in the mist of time. His father was a carpenter, apparently, and we’re already struggling with the identity of his paternal grandfather, who may or may not have been a coachman. Maria’s father was a shepherd.

As an office clerk (Bureau-Ass.), I imagine that Richard was kind of a precursor to the 20th century’s ubiquitous secretaries. Not the most glamorous social ascent, but his workplace was clean and dry, and his work didn’t ruin his health, in contrast to the many who signed up with the flourishing mining and steel industries. And he got to see a bit of the world.

Three times Richard and his family moved to an entirely new town, in a different area. Looking at the dates when these places were connected to the railway network, they match his moves. I conclude that he was involved more with the setup of new rail links than with the operation of existing ones – until he found his personal terminus.

Following his tracks one move at a time: His daughter Gertrud was born in 1880 in Neurode, still in his native Silesia. The railwau links from Neurode to Glatz opened in 1879 and in the other direction to Waldenburg in 1880. The latter required the construction of a bridge across the Schwarzbachgrund which at the time was the highest railway viaduct in Germany. Neurode was just a small town of 6,000 inhabitants but there were significant mining activities in the area, so I assume the transport of freight must have been the economic driver motivating the investment in the line with that spectacular bridge. Neurode was still reasonably close to home, only 60 km from Breslau.

Two and a half years later, when Max Heinrich was born, the family was already further away, in Thuringia, specifically in Zella St. Blasii, now part of Zella-Mehlis. There, the lines to Erfurt and Meiningen were built in 1881-1884 enabling onwards travel westwards to Schweinfurt, Würzburg and Stuttgart. Today, this track forms part of the shortest link from Stuttgart to Berlin.

Musically, Max Heinrich’s birthplace may have been touched ever so gently by the genius of Johann Sebastian Bach, who was born in Eisenach, just 40 km away, and lived in the district capital Ohrdruf, only 20 km away, from 1695 to 1703, while he served an apprenticeship with his older brother Johann Christoph and also played the organ for the local church.

We know that Max Heinrich stayed at Zella for more than a year, because he was vaccinated there just after his first birthday. The smallpox vaccine was the only vaccination that existed at the time, so the certificate doesn’t mention what disease is targeted, only that the legal requirement for vaccination has been fulfilled. In Prussia, vaccination was mandated since 1815, and in the German Empire since 1874. The certificate notes that the vaccination was successful in the first attempt, meaning that a pustule formed at the site of the cut. From the small print on the back we learn that the procedure is to be carried out up to three times if the first and second attempt don’t yield a visible result. Eleven years later, Max Heinrich received the second vaccination, also with immediate success – by then the family had moved on to Tangermünde.

Some time between 1883 and 1888 the family moved from Thuringia to Saxony-Anhalt (in today’s nomenclature of federal states), first to Stendal and then to the nearby town of Tangermünde. At around the same time, a short branch line of 10 km length linking these two towns was built,

Planners had originally considered Tangermünde as a stop on the mainline from Berlin to Lehrte, but it lost out to Stendal. Only in 1888 travellers from Tangermünde could travel down the branch line to catch long distance trains from there. The branch line was developed by a shareholder company mainly to serve freight from the sugar factory at Tangermünde, but it carries passengers to this day.

Tangermünde was the last stop in the journeys of our railway clerk, thus we have to assume that he had a permanent job there, not limited to the duration of the development project. A group photo of the entire staff of the line taken in 1889 outside Tangermünde station (a slightly cropped version appears above) shows 25 people including one woman. Richard is one of those wearing a uniform with shiny brass buttons. I guess this was the prerogative of those who didn’t have to do dirty work. He is standing nearly in the middle, below the station clock.

The station master on the other hand keeps a low profile in the background, standing in the entrance of his office, with the big sign “Stationsvorsteher” above the door. He wears a tie and a hat and manages to look modest while also making his important role unmistakably clear.

Max Heinrich's parents, Johann Friedrich Richard Groß (*1852 in Breslau), left, and Maria Louise Mentzel (*1844 Skronskau), atanding on top of the boulder. Photo dated 1900.

Tangermünde flourished as a member of the Hanse trade network in the 15th century, but was then bypassed by most historical events, including the construction of the main railway line. Its numerous historical buildings including the town hall, gothic church, the city wall and several of its gates are impeccably well preserved. The wall owes its survival to the fact that much of it also serves to prop up the city on the slope leading down to the river Elbe, and to protect it from floods.

In the summer of 1888, Max Heinrich visited the Volksschule (people’s school) in Stendal, and from the Bürgerschule (citizens’ school) in Tangermünde. In 19th century Prussia, Bürgerschule was almost as good as the Gymnasium, but without the last two years leading to the Abitur qualification, and it only offered Latin but not Greek. His reports from 1894 and 1895 show good marks in drawing, history and singing, with all subjects apart from singing sliding from the first report to the second.

Heinrich at school around 1892- second row from front 3rd from the left.

The reports also offer us samples of Richard’s signature. Acknowledging the impressive results of 1894 he signed as „Richard Gross / Eisenb. Bur. Ass.“ A year later, the less glamorous results were only signed with his last name. In both cases, the name is framed in an oval shaped garnished with a flourish at the bottom – I am still not sure whether that is purely decorative or has some hidden meaning.

Max Heinrich received his confirmation in 1896 in the very beautiful Stephanskirche in Tangermünde. Not just from any old vicar but from the superintendent and head vicar named Fenger. In the relevant almanac for the clergy of the province Saxony dated 1903 he is listed as Franz Heinrich Leopold Fenger with the note: „Rother Adler-Orden IV. Classe“. The same source also gives us an overview of the school system in Tangermünde and the distribution of faiths among the 11,500 residents of the town (1,152 Catholics, 41 Jews, 24 of the Apostolian community, four Mennonites, three Dissidents).

April 1896 marks the end of Max Heinrich’s education at the Bürgerschule. According to his police records, he remained at Tangermünde until 1897 and was then registered at Stendal from 27.12.1897 until 24.10.1899/, but we don’t know what he did there during that time. Conceivably, he may have started an apprenticeship there and left without finishing it? There is a sewing table that he allegedly built, so I imagine he may have been a carpenter’s apprentice, which would make sense in that his paternal grandfather was a carpenter as well. On the other hand, I also heard of a similar item bought after 1918 as a kit for self-assembly, so the legend that he built the piece may only refer to assembly rather than building from scratch.

Within his teenage years he must also have acquired or improved his musical skills as he later signed up with the army as a musician. Stendal today has a music school, but I can’t find any trace of a more advanced institution like a conservatoire. Then again, these institutions have a habit of disappearing. Sadly we may never know if he already played the cello then.

What we do know though is that in November 1900, just after turning 18, he identified as a musician. He signed a book he read with: „Heinrich Groß Musiker, in Bielefeld.“ And no, I haven’t the foggiest idea what he was doing in Bielefeld. We have strictly no connection whatsoever to that city apart from this one inscription. The book is a collection of novellas by W. O. von Horn (1798-1867), and we will get back to its content later. A second note reveals when and where he read it – sounds like a holiday or spa break: „Gelesen 30. Nov. 1900 in Bad Warmbrunn im Rosenheim.“ This book will be an important piece of evidence later on.

Read on:

Strasbourg in the Belle Epoque

the long history of elephants' suffering

I've been going on a few times about how human hunters expanding out of Africa wiped out most of the megafauna on the other continents. (Big beasts in Africa had co-evolved with humans so had less of a surprise when they started throwing spears.) Recent research shows now that even Neanderthals successfully hunted and butchered elephants. As they left Africa before modern humans did, this widens the time range for human-caused megafauna extinctions.

With the last three surviving species of elephants still endangered, I used this as an excuse to look at the long history of humans bothering elephants. The resulting feature is out now (Note that the figure captions 1 and 3 in the html version are currently switched around, this will be fixed later this week - the PDF version has them in the correct order):

Of elephants and men

Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 2, 22 January 2024, Pages R37-R40

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 ishere .

The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), which became extinct around 4,000 years ago, has become a key species in studies of megafauna extinction. (Photo: Joseph Martinez/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0 Deed).)

streets of Hamborn

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 14:

Auguste from the East Prussian patchwork family lived at Hamborn (now Duisburg) most of her life, spending more than 40 years at Knappenstraße 43 from the late 1920s to around 1970. We have seen the front door of that building here and here. To get a better sense of the place, here is Auguste looking out of her window (street side I think):

and here is a view of her garden with her son Erwin:

Before moving to Knappenstraße, she and her family briefly lived in Kampstraße, where we see her looking out of the window (marked with a pen):

Should anybody have any answers to some of the many questions I am raising in this series, please leave a comment here (I'll need to vet it, so it may take a few days before it goes public) or contact me at michaelgrr [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

Navigation tools:

Season 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio
13. confirmands at Hamborn
14. streets of Hamborn

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

sorting the Toynbees

After reading and reviewing Polly Toynbee's excellent family history memoir I was still a bit hazy about the Toynbees so I had to sort them into a format I can understand:

Descendants of George Toynbee (1749 - abt. 1810) and Sarah Starkey (1753 - Jun 1829)

1. George Toynbee jr. (1783–1865) ~(wikitree has his ancestors back to his great-grandfather John Toynbee or Toyneby (bef. 1672 - 1740)). George's first wife was Elizabeth, née Cullen, (1785–1820). They were married at Bracebridge, Lincolnshire, on 21 May 1811, by Licence.

1.3. (third son, not sure how many girls were ignored there) Joseph Toynbee (1815-1866), otolaryngiologist, married Harriet Holmes (1822-1897), daughter of Nathaniel Holmes. The couple had nine children:
1.3.1. Gertrude (b.1848),
1.3.2. William (b.1849),
1.3.3.Lucy (b.1850),
1.3.4.Arnold (1852-1883), married Charlotte Atwood (1841-1931), college administrator at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, no children
1.3.5.Rachel (b.1853),
1.3.6.Paget Jackson (1855-1932), Dante scholar,
1.3.7.Mary H. (b.1856),
1.3.8.Grace Poleridge (1858-1946), bacteriologist, married Percy Frankland
1.3.9.Harry Valpy (1861-1941), charity administrator, married Sarah Edith Marshall (1859-1939)
1.3.1. Arnold Joseph (1889-1975) universal historian, married Rosalind Murray (1890-1967)
1.3.1.1.Antony (1914-1939)
1.3.1.2.Philip (1916-1981)
1.3.1.3.Lawrence (1922-1902), painter
1.3.2. Jocelyn (1897-1985), professor of archaeology at Cambridge
1.3.3.Margaret (1899-1987)

1.6. (sixth son, not sure how many girls were ignored there) Henry Toynbee (1819-1909) was an merchant sailor and an early meteorologist, whose career was dedicated to passing on his expertise. He introduced local weather-forecasting to the British Isles. On 22 December 1854 Henry, aged 35, married 25-year-old Ellen Philadelphia Smyth (July 1828 – 1881), a daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth. No children.

2. Eleanor married Bettinson - see wikitree

Joseph Toynbee (1815-1866). Source

confirmands at Hamborn

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 13:

Let's have a game of "Where is Wally?" Below is Werner, the youngest of the Hamborn brotherhood, on the day of his confirmation, which happened at the Lutherkirche, Obermarxloh (which was part of the city of Hamborn while it existed - even if today the church stands in R&oum;ttgersbach) in 1951. Funnily enough, everybody else is there too. Catholics tend to get individual portrait of each kid with a candle (eg young Willy here) - protestants get the group photo. Wonder if that's just protestant penny-pinching? Then again, I shouldn't moan because I love this group photo with the low light and the crumbling classicistic church (built 1913, restored in the 1950s, listed monument since 2012) as the background:

To make it easier, I offer you another group photo, this one is from Werner's school a couple of years earlier, and he is marked with a pen.

This one has a rubber stamp on the back saying:

Foto-Kempken
Duisburg-Hamborn
Alleestra&szllig;e 93
18. Mai 1949

NB I have now created a Hamborn tag.

Should anybody have any answers to some of the many questions I am raising in this series, please leave a comment here (I'll need to vet it, so it may take a few days before it goes public) or contact me at michaelgrr [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

Navigation tools:

Season 3 so far:

1. family holiday
2. play time
3. fashion show
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle
11. push bike
12. mystery trio
13. confirmation at Hamborn

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

highway to hell

The first time I wrote something along the lines of we need to stop pumping so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was in 1989 - so that will have a 35th anniversary some time this year. But does anybody listen? Year after year it gets more and more depressing to see all these climate summits going by that effectively don't address the problem. COP28 happening at a petrol state for the petrol states was probably the most depressing one so far, but I'm sure Azerbaidjan is poised to beat that record.

In the final days of the summit, I channelled all that rage into another climate feature, and I borrowed Antonio Gutierres's lovely quote from last year for the title:

On the highway to climate hell

Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 1, 8 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 ishere .

Dubai, UAE hosted the COP28 climate summit, which called for a “transition away” from fossil fuels but did not show a way to make it happen. (Photo: © Jen Houston.)

a radical family

some thoughts on

An uneasy inheritance - My family and other radicals

by Polly Toynbee

Atlantic Books 2023

I remember reading Polly Toynbee's columns in the Guardian for more than 20 years. I clearly recall her warnings not to topple Blair because if we were to let the Tories back they would destroy everything. Well she was right on that prediction.

Sometime between then and now I looked up her wikipedia entry either because I wondered about her strange name or because she had mentioned one of her ancestors in one of her columns. Actually, I think it may have been that she mentioned the Toynbee Fountain in Wimbledon, that rings a bell of sorts. I clicked my way through five generations of Toynbees back to Queen Victoria's ear doctor and came away impressed.

Remembering bits and pieces of that, I was keen to read her more coherent account of her family history which came out last year. Hers is really quite a remarkable family tree, not just in the name line. There are equally famous Victorians in the family of her paternal grandmother. Amazingly, all the famous ancestors fit the "radical" tag in the title - lefties, atheists, reformers, teetotallers, champions of lost causes, and all against the Tories. There are a couple of conservatives too, but they never amounted to much and were horrible people according to the author.

To me this is worthwhile reading for the simple pleasure of discovering lots of humans wo went against the grain and often changed their society a little bit by disagreeing with the mainstream. Obviously, gloating about your ancestors isn't allowed, especially not in leftie circles. so the framing superimposed on this is Polly's embarrassment at the apparent contradiction of being leftwing while comfortably off and socially secure due to being born into the middle class, i.e. champagne socialists. While I find that angle less interesting than the radical Victorians, there are a few insights to be drawn from these reflections on class as well. (There was also a Feature in the Guardian consisting of edited extracts from the book and making this the main issue.)

One assertion I have to protest as a family history person is when she claims (repeatedly) that there are no working class people in her ancestry. The family tree provided only goes back to her great-great-grandparents (see the family tree here, almost identical to the one in the book), and even those aren't all known (There should be 16, but only six are named in the book). I am sure that with a more probing look at those missing in the tree and their ancestors, some common people such as farmers, shepherds, servants etc. would turn up at one point. Give it another four generations and you're at 256 ancestors. They will have a much wider spread of origins from rich to poor.

The truth in her assertion is, however, that her ancestors, like most of mine, will have skillfully avoided the trap of the Industrial Revolution. I'm happy to believe that there are no industry workers in the tree, because industry only existed for a couple of hundred years, and when it started hoovering up workers the ancestors already had better things to do than becoming part of the industrial proletariat.

So I am sure there must be some stories of social ascent just beyond the horizon of this book - maybe waiting to be discovered in the next one.

PS Looking for an image of the book cover (which I don't like particularly, hoping for an improved paperback cover), I found another Toynbee-related book, which has been (re)published just after this one:

Reminiscences And Letters Of Joseph And Arnold Toynbee. Edited By Gertrude Toynbee (Blackwells)

In which Joseph (1815-1866) is Polly's great-great-grandfather, the pioneering otolaryngologist, Arnold (1852-1883) is his older son, and Gertrude is Joseph's oldest daughter - not Arnold's wife asthe blurb below seems to think. Arnold's wife was Charlotte Atwood. (All nine children are listed here in a blog entry about one letter to Gertrude.)

Publisher's blurb:

This book is a collection of the reminiscences and letters of Joseph and Arnold Toynbee, two prominent British intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The book provides a unique insight into the life and work of the Toynbee family, including their views on education, social reform, and politics. It is edited by Gertrude Toynbee, Arnold's wife, who herself was a writer and social reformer.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Well, now, I might be a little bit tempted by that ...