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. (I am told a recording of the event is due to be posted on the OCLW website soon.)

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!

missing megafauna

There is so much exciting research based on sequencing of ancient DNA coming out now that it's easy to lose track of the historic and prehistoric humans and hominins getting sequenced and sorted into family trees. Not quite as much ancient DNA work targets animals, if only because they are more likely to get eaten after death, rather than being buried in a form that benefits genome analysis.

A recent paper on a dozen well-preserved cave lions found in permafrost soil and sequenced in comparison to modern lions caught my eye, however. I used it as an excuse to revisit megafauna extinctions, this time through the lense of genomic studies. It's always useful to have a mascot to remember a feature by, so this is now the cave lion feature, although other species of Pleistocene megafauna also appear, including elephants, ground squirrels and giant echidnas.

The resulting feature is out now:

Charting the missing megafauna

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 13, 6 July 2026, Pages R729--R731

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

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

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

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky.

Last year's thread is here .

This exceptionally well-preserved female cave lion cub named Sparta was discovered in 2018 in Belaya Gora, near the Indigirka River in northeastern Siberia. Her genome was one of the twelve studied by David Stanton and colleagues. (Photo by Love Dalén.)

of goats and Bitsches

Names with a geographically defined origin - kind of a series.

When I was looking into the connection to Grace Kelly's ancestor Leonhard Treusch in the Odenwald, I was reminded of another case of a nameline leading back to the place after which the people are named to add to my occasional series, namely the Bitsch lineage hailing from Bitsch in Switzerland, in the German-speaking part of the Kanton Wallis / Vallais. (Not to be confused with Bitsch in Lorraine.)

The lineage can be traced back to Christian Bitsch, who was born around 1611 in Bitsch and died in Schiers (Kanton Graubünden/Grisons), which is also the place where his relevant son, also Christian, was born. We don't have documentation for the older Christian's birth in Bitsch, so my guess would be that when he settled in Schiers he became known as the guy from Bitsch, and the name stuck.

The younger Christian Bitsch was among the many Swiss immigrants who helped resettle southwestern Germany after the devastation of the Thirty-Years War. He went to the Odenwald area, married Katharina Zehfuss from Wernigerode (Harz) at Reichenbach in 1666, had at least 11 children (that's a lot of bitches!) and died at Raidelbach in 1708.

Her name, which literally translates to "toe-foot", sounds a bit strange, but her paternal grandfather was called Baltzer (Balthasar) Ziegenfuss, which means goat's foot, which makes more sense, especially as he died in Geisleden, a place that also has a goat in its name. Oh and the Swiss village of Bitsch has a goat in its coat of arms. Coincidence? There's definitely a goat theme emerging in this story.

Coat of arms of Bitsch, Switzerland.

The most recent Bitsch in my family tree, Barbara Bitsch, was born at Bonsweiher (now part of Mörlenbach) in 1704. So we have four generations of Bitsches.

Interestingly, the distribution of the name is still heavily focused on the Odenwald, with a secondary hotspot in Baden.

 

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List of origin stories for name lines in my very irregular series:

• Siepmann from the farm "Am Zipp" in Schwelm.
• Trimbach - a wine-growing family in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, Alsace to this day, originally from the eponymous village in Switzerland.
• Zeutzheim from Horchheim (Koblenz), not far from the village of Zeuzheim.
• Wolff (named after the Wolffskotten farm in Styrum).
• Kauer (linked to the Kauerhof at Nickweiler, mentioned in 1074).
• Weyland is a name chosen by my most recent Jewish ancestor upon his adult baptism.
• Obelode is a unique name linked to a farm at Steinhagen near Bielefeld.
• From the same branch of the family tree and geographic area comes the French connection of Dopheide / d'Oppède.

Ancestors' names matching place names that I should look into include: Trimbach, Wilsberg,

 

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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.

Stop press, here's the index of migration events.