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.
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.
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